Chapter 190: Behind Enemy Lines

With his shotgun finally inscribed, they were ready to cross the border. They still had a few hours before the unbreakable wall between Heaven and Hell formed, but they wanted to leave early enough that they could fight their way across if needed. Harvey walked through the garage door, placing Cataclysm back in his spatial ring before finding the rest of his family all sitting in the living room.

“You ready?” Steve asked.

“I’m ready,” Harvey assured, trying to look confident despite the pit slowly forming in his stomach.

With a sigh, Steve pulled Cassandra close for a long, tight hug. Not satisfied, she grabbed his face and pulled him in for a kiss.

“Ew,” Tyler winced.

“Grow up,” Eleanor chided.

Just before it was about to get awkward for everyone, the couple finally broke away, and Cassandra turned to Harvey. “Please don’t do anything stupid, okay? I’ve heard your stories from the last trial, and it sounds like you can get a little reckless.”

“A little,” Celeste chuckled. “Cassandra, I’m sorry to say, but the fact we’re doing this at all is reckless. Sadly, it’s the best option we have left.”

His mother had always been a strong woman. Assertive and confident. If they were back home on Earth, there was no way she’d let them do something like this unless she was marching out right beside them, but without the power to fight evil, all she could do was hold back the tears welling up in her eyes as she tried to look confident.

“Killing dragons, rock monsters, and undead priests… it all sounds impossible. But you’ve done it all. Please do it again, and bring everybody home,” she begged Harvey, slowly losing the battle against her tears as she choked out the last part.

“I will,” he promised, pulling his mother into a hug. The rest of the Thornes all gathered around them, forming a tangle of arms and tears that Cash, Celeste, and Mackenzie watched quietly.

“Alright,” Cassandra finally said, pulling away and wiping the tears from her eyes. “You better go before I change my mind.”

Harvey just laughed, extricating himself from the group before going to the bathroom to change into the black tactical gear he’d stolen from the Sinners he killed back when he saved Cash from the ambush that claimed the lives of Heaven’s first human soldiers. Tyler and Steve were already wearing theirs, but he’d changed back into his work clothes to avoid any unfortunate ink stains while he inscribed his gun. He felt naked walking into battle without his armor on, but there was no way to hide its holy origins. Not only did he lose the protection of reinforced plate mail, but he lost the 46 Vitality and 22 Endurance the armor provided through Soul Forge.

[We gotta do what we gotta do,] Julius sighed as Harvey stared at himself in the mirror.

Eventually, he nodded and rejoined the others by the front door.

“We might look too good,” Tyler remarked. “How are we supposed to sneak out without the angels shooting us?”

“I’ll blast out my regular aura,” Celeste said. “The guards should know it’s me.”

With that, they began the short walk back to the gates. Harvey had to stop himself from looking at all the destroyed neighborhoods lining either side of the main road. Left unchecked, the Helltaurs had ravaged dozens of homes. Letting them be destroyed could be considered a win since the forces diverted to try and break the Faithful’s spirit could’ve been the difference in actually killing the angel lieutenant, but they’d never know for sure.

A few people roaming the streets gave them strange looks as they walked by, but Celeste’s aura was enough to dissuade them from sounding the alarm. When they finally reached the gate, six soldiers moved to surround them.

“Celeste? Is that really you?” A man asked aghast. Harvey thought he recognized him, but couldn’t place where they’d met.

“Silas,” Cash swore.

[Isn’t that the guy who ran when Cash got ambushed?] Julius asked.

Harvey’s eyes glinted with recognition. This was the first angel he’d met besides Cash, and by the aura he could feel clamping down on the man, Cash still wanted him dead.

“Are these prisoners?” Silas stammered. “What’s going on?”

“How the hell would I know your name if I was a prisoner?” Cash exclaimed. “It’s Cash, you dumbass.”

Celeste ignored their bickering and bathed them all in her aura, silencing the murmuring crowd.

“We are going to try something Heaven’s never done before. The five of us are going to spend the night in Hell in hopes of finding a Lieutenant off guard and assassinating them,” Celeste began.

“What?” Silas stammered.

“Geez dude, you ask a lot of stupid questions,” Tyler complained, getting an approving grin from Cash.

“Risks have to be taken if we’re going to turn this war around. I’m telling you because I don’t want to get shot while we’re sprinting back across the battlefield early Monday morning,” Celeste continued.

Silas’ face rapidly cycled between confused and angry, but Harvey was surprised to see the rest of the angels looking back at her with subdued gratitude.

“You… you can’t do this! It’s suicide!” Silas complained.

“Who’s going to stop us? You?” Cash retorted.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Thank you, Captain,” another soldier chimed in. “The rest of us have been talking, and we know something’s gotta give or we’re going to lose this war. We thought the Commander was going to force us to try and make the assault ourselves, and even if we succeeded, most of us would die. We appreciate you and the Commander being willing to try this first.”

“The Commander has nothing to do with this. You can thank Harvey here for stepping up,” she replied.

“Harvey? Who the hell is Harvey?” Silas asked.

“Me!” he quipped cheerfully. “Don’t worry though, I’m not an angel, so if I die, it won’t cost Heaven any angel blood.”

Silas’ porcelain skin grew red with anger, but a slam of Celeste’s aura knocked him back in line. Without another word, the five passed right through the gates and started walking towards the dark sky ahead.

When they were finally out of earshot, Celeste asked, “What was that all about?”

“Just helping Cash bury the nail a little deeper,” Harvey replied.

“Silas was one of the angels who abandoned me and the Faithful back when we were still taking them to level up in the city. Harvey and I met him at the gate when we got back, and the first thing he said to us was, 'At least no angel blood was spilled,” Cash explained.

“He really said that?” Celeste asked.

“It was in the report I made to you!” Cash exclaimed.

Celeste rubbed her temples and sighed, “I get a lot of reports. I can’t be bothered to listen every time an angel wants to complain.”

“Hey!” Cash complained.

“See! It’s that tone. Every time I hear it, my brain just tunes it out,” she sighed.

Before long, they’d reached the wall of dead Marblebacks and Cathedral Beetles. Squads had already come out to clean up any stragglers with the help of the three surviving Fulgur Phoenixes, but they didn’t bother trying to clean up the hundreds of wet corpses lying in the mud. The bodies of hundreds of creatures summoned from pure essence were a veritable hoard of crafting materials, but Harvey restrained himself from throwing every body he passed into a slipsack.

The floodtusks had turned the space between Heaven and Hell into a pool of ankle-deep mud, making their feet sink in with every step. They were trying to move quietly, but the sucking noise of boots being pulled out of the mud was hard to hide. Celeste was forced to peel off her high heels and walk barefoot.

[We should at least take the horseman’s bodies,] Julius urged.

[Can we at least check? War’s probably gone since he died close enough for Heaven to easily retrieve the body, but Conquest and Famine both died deep in the mud!]

“Hey Celeste?” Harvey asked tentatively. “How mad would you be if I went and looked for the horseman’s bodies real quick?”

“As long as you’re done by the time we get out of this System-forsaken mud, I don’t care,” she replied.

“But what about the Commander? Will he care?” Harvey pushed.

“What he doesn’t know won’t kill him,” she replied.

With that, Harvey used Booster to fly over the surface of the mud, zipping around the battlefield in search of loot. The first place he checked was the Marbleback where they’d fought War, and he wasn’t surprised to not find either the horseman or his axes. A brief scan easily found Conquest, his white fur sticking out like a sore thumb against the mud and blood surrounding him. It took some work lifting the heavy centaur out of the muck, but his body eventually disappeared into Harvey’s spatial ring. He also spent the time digging through a sea of Hellhounds to find the bow, hoping that Hannah might be able to use it eventually. It was so massive that she’d probably need to add a few free points to Strength just to be able to draw it, but it should be a strong option whenever she was sitting atop Buttercup’s back.

Famine and his staff still lay where they had fallen, the asphalt around them stained black where the lightning cut him down. Harvey slowed as he approached, wary that whatever power had fueled the staff might linger even after its master had died. Feeling no drain on his body or his aura, he added both to his ring.

Death had walked back to Hell once his deed was done, so Harvey couldn’t get his hands on him or his scythe. His resonance would be nice to have, but he already had plenty of Undeath resonant materials that should produce similar effects. Famine and Conquest should both have resonances that were hard to find, and he was happy with his haul.

Harvey stood on the road and watched the other four all trudging towards him, pouring a bottle of cleansing jelly over his head while he waited. When they finally pushed past the mud and got back on solid ground, Celeste said, “You better have more of that stuff.”

“You didn’t come prepared?” Harvey chuckled as he handed them each a vial. Alchemy produced so many miracles, but being able to magically clean both himself and his clothes had to be one of his favorites.

It wasn’t long before they saw the wall of gluthogs in the distance. Harvey was surprised to find that most looked sickly and starved. Hell had no reason to clear out the wall since they could always use it next week if they had to, but it didn’t look like they cared enough to feed the beasts either. There were a few gaps where the fat hogs supposedly managed to get their feet back under them and wander off, but most were still wedged between the bodies of both living and dead brethren. The group crouched behind the rubble of a destroyed home and looked for an opening.

“What now?” Steve whispered.

Harvey pointed to where he’d collapsed a building with his catapult the day before. “You see that building? It looks like the gluthogs next to it are dead. I say we try to climb the rubble there since we know the hogs aren’t going to start squealing.”

“That won’t look suspicious at all. Remember, we’re supposed to be here. We’re not angels sneaking into Hell, we’re demons coming home. I say we just walk right up to that gap and see what happens,” Celeste offered.

“What if we get caught?” Tyler asked.

“Then the disguises never would’ve worked anyway,” Harvey answered. “Alright, Celeste. I like it.”

The angels slipped on their aura-masking rings, and the five sauntered right up to the wall. The closest gluthog let out a hungry wail, but Celeste hammered it with her transmuted aura. The blast caught the attention of a Sinner standing guard in a nearby building. Harvey felt an aura rush to the window, only to hide away when he saw the group walking down the trash-covered street. Nobody accosted them as they walked deeper into the concrete jungle, passing one neon sign after another attempting to lure them into smoke shops, strip clubs, and convenience stores.

Harvey’s eyes struggled to adjust to the darkness after spending a week under Heaven’s perpetual morning light. Eventually, they passed a relatively intact convenience store and stepped inside to refill their dwindling supply of Diet Coke and energy drinks.

“So far so good,” Tyler whispered.

“Hey Dad, can you grab some beer too? I’m guessing we’ll need alcohol if we don’t want to look out of place tonight,” Harvey asked while he raided what was left of the candy aisle.

“Ooh, can I have some?” Tyler asked excitedly.

“No!” Steve retorted.

“Yep,” Harvey and Cash replied in unison.

“Tonight, we have to fit in,” Celeste sighed.

Walking out of the store, they pushed deeper into hell. With the much smaller population of Sinners coming from Earth, areas that were heavily populated in the mirrored neighborhoods of Heaven were utterly barren. It wasn’t until they reached the area just outside the node where a demon lieutenant was holding back Heaven’s essence that they began to see signs of life.

Demons and sinners alike were walking out of large apartment buildings and dancing toward a towering structure made of golden glass. They were too mesmerized by the flashing lights and booming music to even notice the five of them joining the procession. Rounding the corner, Harvey saw the sign explaining what had so fully captivated Hell’s attention.

“A casino? Really?” Steve scoffed, not worried anyone else would hear him over the loud music bleeding out of the open doors to The Golden Calf Casino.

Harvey looked down at the watch he’d brought from home and noticed it was only 10:42 PM.

[Who cares about angels when you’ve got donations to make,] Julius laughed.