Chapter 198: Turning the Tide

The five of them strolled through the door of their family home, finding a teary-eyed Cassandra sitting on a dining chair in the middle of the hallway. Her eyes were red and puffy as if she’d been sobbing for hours, and Max and Eleanor cuddled anxiously on a couch in the living room.“You’re alive!” she screamed, scrambling up so fast the chair tipped over as she threw herself into her husband's arms. “I was so scared when you guys didn’t come home. I… I…”

Harvey winced, realizing that in their exuberance after killing the lieutenant and making their daring escape, they hadn’t thought to check in with their mother before waking up the Commander.

“It’s ok, honey,” Steve cooed, holding his wife close. “We’re home.”

“What took you so long!” she shouted, slapping Steve’s shoulder. “I’ve been worried sick all weekend! Did you all think it was better to spend another night in Hell than come home to your family?”

“We didn’t sleep in Hell,” Tyler began.

[Oof. Wrong answer, buddy.]

Cassandra’s eyes went wide as she pulled away to glare at her son. “Oh really? Pray tell, where exactly have you been, then?”

“We had to talk to the Commander about our plans now that a lieutenant is dead, and he invited us to stay over at his mansion so we could join the planning meeting this morning,” Tyler answered.

“AND YOU COULDN'T HAVE TAKEN 5 MINUTES TO CHECK IN!” Cassandra bellowed.

“We don’t have phones here! It’s not like we could send a text!” Tyler retorted.

“A TEXT?!” Cassandra screamed, somehow managing to get even louder than before. "I THOUGHT MY HUSBAND AND TWO OF MY SONS HAD BEEN EATEN BY THE LIVING EMBODIMENT OF GLUTTONY, AND YOU'RE WORRIED YOU COULDN'T SEND A TEXT?!"

Steve opened his mouth to respond, then hesitated. “We screwed up. We were so caught up in the war that we didn’t think to check in before meeting up with the Commander.”

“It’s my fault, really,” Celeste interjected. “I dragged them through the teleporter before we had a chance to think.”

Cassandra practically vibrated as she struggled to get her heaving breaths and pounding heart under control, but she forced herself to calm down before responding. Harvey was glad he’d been spared from having to say anything in their defense, since he did not want any of the smoke billowing out of his mom’s ears headed his way.

“The important thing…” she panted. “Is that you’re home. I knew you’d succeeded when I saw the quest update, but escaping afterward must have been awful. You guys have to tell me everything!”

Eleanor and Max joined the family hug before they all moved to the kitchen, catching up over bacon and eggs.

“So you guys were mostly hiding out in a hotel room all day?” Eleanor asked incredulously.

“I wasn’t. I was downstairs hustling Hell out of 8 million merit,” Harvey joked through a mouthful of food.

“Half of that goes to me,” Cassandra jabbed.

“For what?” Harvey exclaimed.

“Heart attack insurance,” she retorted.

Finishing their food, the five of them took turns showering while Eleanor and Cassandra went to find some hair bleach to try and get the angel's wings back to as close to normal as they could get after putting copious amounts of black dye into them. Brutus had set their martialing time around noon, which should hold unless Hell chose to try and attack early before Heaven could decide how to use their newly acquired essence. That gave them time to make sure Cash and Celeste would at worst be mistaken for ugly angels rather than demons in Heaven’s clothing.

“How long do I have to stand like this?” Cash asked as he stood in the tub with his wings spread wide.

Tyler looked at the back of the box before replying, “It says 45 minutes.”

“45 minutes!” Cash exclaimed. “What am I supposed to do while I’m standing here for that long?”

Harvey just shrugged. “Pray? I don’t know, but you can’t leave because Mom will kill us if you get bleach on the carpet.”

Max barged into the already cramped bathroom, holding a picture he’d drawn at school that he wanted to show everyone. The tiny bathroom quickly turned into an impromptu art show as Max eagerly explained each drawing while the others showered him with praise. Max always had a way of lighting up the room, and they barely noticed the time pass before the timer to rinse out the first round of bleach started ringing.

After three hours of painting, waiting, and rinsing, they’d managed to move their wings from black to a ruddy brown to a fiery orange, and eventually settled on a bright yellow that made each feather look like a banana hanging from a tree. Their feathers were damaged and brittle from all the chemicals, but a quick round of healing by Cash got them looking as good as new. Unfortunately, healing did nothing for the color.

“We better hope Hell doesn’t send some infernal monkeys after us,” Harvey laughed as they preened their feathers.

Rested and ready, the five hugged the family goodbye and marched to the battlefield. The bodies littering the mud from Saturday’s battle had been mostly cleared away, gathered up into slipsacks to be used as crafting material once they made it down to Earth. Harvey couldn’t pull his eyes away from the three fighter-jet-sized phoenixes perched atop the watchtowers looming over the silver gates, even as Celeste was rallying what remained of her squad.

“Last night, we evened the odds. Today, we flip the board in our favor. We have honed ourselves against one impossible battle after another, transforming into a blade capable of cutting through anything Hell places before us. I know many of us were beginning to lose hope. I know how much that hurt. Now is our chance to make them suffer as we have. All it will take is one final push to cut off the second head of the hydra!”

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The angels roared in anticipation, hoisting their rifles and swords high. When the cheer died down, one of their squadmates asked, “Celeste? We heard rumors that you were the one to kill the lieutenant… How did you do it?”

“I can neither confirm nor deny my involvement, but let’s just say I’m confident Hell’s suffering from quite the hangover right now,” she smiled.

Creatures of all kinds marched out of Heaven’s gates, forming a wall in front of the legions of angels. Harvey saw all the usual suspects: shield-bearing Nephilim Giants, lions, rams, eagles, Ophanim, and even a handful of Floodtusks. He hoped the plan wasn’t to flood the entire battlefield and force them to fight through the mud again, but it would be nice if they used their massive water reserves to soak and cut through Hell’s creatures with the more jet-style streams. Getting them nice and wet would do wonders for the Phoenixes flying overhead, and Tyler could make the most of it too with his new Fulmination skill.

Looking out over the horizon, Harvey couldn’t see a single demon marching out of the city, a stark contrast to the defensive battles he’d fought in all last week. Even as the army began marching into Hell, they didn’t see a speck of resistance. Approaching the wall of gluthogs, he saw why. In a final desperate attempt to use the essence advantage Hell had enjoyed for the past month, they’d gathered their forces behind the dying wall of pigs that had almost spelled Heaven’s destruction.

Having an idea, Harvey asked Celeste, “Can you talk to the eagles?”

“Not talk, exactly, but they can follow orders,” she replied.

A wicked grin crossed his face, and he started conjuring Shattersmite Cores and piling them on the ground between them. Not needing an explanation, she started calling their flying beasts over one by one and placing one of his bombs in their talons. Arming just half of them took every last drop of essence he had, so he downed a potion before the battle even began. Rather than arming the rest, he had Celeste instruct the birds to prioritize dropping the cores near the bases of the buildings. He’d yet to make the cores the last time they fought with the Eagles, and he hadn’t known just how destructive they were at the time. Now, Harvey was hoping to turn the cover they were hiding behind into their tombs.

Instead of a rousing speech or a hearty war cry, the battle began with the screech of eagles soaring towards massive bats that tried desperately to intercept them. Heaven didn’t have a numbers advantage – not yet anyway – but they did have a cadre of snipers who were already skilled at taking down infernal monsters from a distance. One bat after another tumbled out of the sky with bleeding wounds in their heads, wings, and hearts, opening the path for their own avian allies to soar right over the wall. Demon gunners responded in kind, but clearly struggled to hit the nimble flyers as effectively. Even when one did fall, the shattersmite core clutched in their talons fell with them, landing amidst the array of Hellhounds, Mortarhorns, and minotaurs standing below. Kill notifications streamed into Harvey’s consciousness at a steady pace before skyrocketing when the first buildings began to fall. What were essentially five-story concrete blocks began toppling over one by one, crushing any demon unlucky enough to be standing underneath them. Only the Helltaurs were hearty enough to survive the impact, and only the hellhounds were fast enough to get out of the way. Still, the chaos it caused prevented a proper response to Heaven’s indomitable advance.

Steve protected them with his Paternal Aegis while Tyler used Perfect Pitch and his ever-growing arm strength to knock fleeing Brimfiends out of the sky. Cash and Harvey both used their handguns to take out any stragglers who got too close while Celeste commanded the Nephilim to push the rotting gluthogs out of the way. Hell wasn’t going down without a fight, launching exploding balls of infernal black flames over the wall while hellhounds used pack tactics to try and take down Heaven’s larger lions, but Heaven was gaining a clear advantage. Once they reached the wall of pigs and debris, the Nephilim gathered together to create their own barrier rather than pushing straight through. Using their shield to protect the floodtusks stomping forward, Harvey watched as a torrent of water began racing through the narrow streets of the city. The wave was quickly followed by the crack of three deafening lightning bolts striking down from above. Each fried over a dozen demons at once, creating pockets of steaming corpses that got washed away with the flood.

Hell had spent the last month lording over them, but now they were fighting on their own terms. Tactical superiority was turning an even battle into a massacre, and Harvey couldn’t wipe the smile off his face. They were taking their own losses, with lions and giants falling every moment, but the demons were dying faster.

Celeste was in her element. Expertly commanding the troops and beasts at her disposal to dismantle any coordination the floundering demons managed to muster. Her sword wasn’t helpful this far away from the front lines, but her commands were twice as lethal. Harvey could see demon Captains trying to do the same, but the soldiers at their command were slow to execute their orders.

Chancing a quick peek over the wall with Booster, Harvey flew up and saw Death galloping through the water, scythe in hand. The horseman had retreated after finishing his ritual during the last battle, saving his necromantic powers to fight another day. Harvey worried for a moment that the infernal army might all be resurrected again, but Death clearly couldn’t animate so many without all the essence Famine had stolen for him. A handful of demons and Helltaurs rose from the bloody water, but in the end it was just another drop in the bucket. Pulling out Cataclysm, Harvey poured essence into Innovator’s Arsenal and conjured a massive spectral projection of his shotgun. Racking a Heaven’s Wrath slug into the chamber, he unleashed a silver spear coated in golden runes towards the centaur. The herald of the apocalypse met it with his scythe, trying to redirect the projectile into the ground beside him. Instead, the attack detonated the runes, causing an eruption of heavenly flames. When they cleared, Harvey saw that the scythe had actually managed to cut through his slug, leading to two holes in the centaur’s chest instead of one. The horseman leaned on his scythe for support, but wavered when a bolt of lightning hit him right in the chest. Harvey turned to see his brother falling back to the ground beside him, static still radiating off his bat after his use of Fulmination. Harvey shot four more slugs into the densest packs of infernal monsters, the slug coming from his gun usually killing one while the copy shot by Innovator’s Arsenal blasted away a handful. He could’ve kept firing, but fell back under the cover of his father’s shield before letting the projection dissipate. He needed to save some of his essence for the lieutenant.

Seeing their strongest ally fall, the demons began to retreat, leaving the sinners and their conjured monsters to continue the fight while they left to protect their lieutenant. Left to their own devices, Heaven made quick work of what remained. As the fighting came to an end, Harvey found that almost a quarter of their army remained to assault the node protected by the second lieutenant. One of the Phoenixes had succumbed to the concentrated fire of Hell’s guns, and Celeste put the corpse into her spatial ring.

“For you, Tyler. Just in case Brutus starts second-guessing our deal.”

“Thanks,” he said, nodding, catching his breath after fighting off the handful of creatures that had broken through their defensive line.

Exultant cheers echoed through the streets as angels cheered. Celeste walked towards the closest Nephilim and stood on its palm, letting herself be carried high into the air.

“They ran! They cowered in fear before us! They know they cannot withstand Heaven’s wrath!” she screamed. Other Captains were trying to rally their troops all the same, but most gathered around Celeste and her group, who had fared the best against Hell’s defenses. As if the beasts were also showing their support, both remaining Fulgur Phoenixes came to perch atop the helmets of the Nephilim standing beside her, screeching in triumph.

“They have climbed into the coffin for us. Now it is time to put a nail in the lid. We will not rest until their second lieutenant is dead. We will make them feel the fear we have felt. Hell will feel the pain of our boots upon their necks!”