Forged Legacy

What was left of the army rampaged through the streets, making a beeline for the location of the second node. Heaven and Hell being a perfect mirror of each other made it easy to find, and got Harvey thinking about the other similarities between the two sides. In almost every way, it seemed like the factions were opposite sides of the same coin. Where Heaven was governed by hierarchy and faithful adherence to a set of governing principles, Hell was more self-deterministic. Adherence to rules was replaced by indulgence of your own wants and desires. That was the same for the resonances themselves, which explained why they could both restrain and overpower one another depending on the strength and purity of their application. Even the bodies of Angels and Demons were similar, with only their wings helping him tell each side apart. It made him wonder how many of the stories he’d heard growing up were true, and whether Angels and Demons really did share a common ancestor.

They occasionally took fire from pockets of sinners stationed in the buildings above, but their mundane weaponry struggled to kill even the unarmored angels before a healer was able to save them. It was another example of why guns weren’t the end-all, be-all when it came to weaponry in the multiverse. They helped give anyone a baseline level of strength, but without deep pockets or a skill like Harvey’s to create powerful bullets, they weren’t always as effective as a sword or a bow. Sure, there had to be skills related to hot-weaponry just like the ones Hannah used for her bow, but he’d yet to see many of them put to as good a use as she had.

A horrid stench began filling the air as they ran further into Hell, and Harvey blanched as he realized they were running straight towards it. It was a strange mix of pungent perfume and rotting flesh, a nonsensical combination that only became clear as the node came into sight. Mountains of dead beasts were piled high surrounding a complex of factories, warehouses, and barns. The center of the complex was dominated by an enormous farmhouse with demons rushing inside as fast as they could. Through the open doors, Harvey could smell the sickly-sweet scent of decadent desserts, barbecued meats, and overripe fruits.

“Are those… cows?” Tyler asked, pointing through the open door of a barn where beasts too fat to walk had been stuffed into tiny pens. They could be mistaken for cows that had bred with the satanic Mortarhorn goats, but Harvey expected they were something else entirely. Pained bleating bled out of the barns, reminding him of the sound he made whenever he ate so much it hurt on Thanksgiving. It provided an eerie contrast to the panicked shouts coming from inside the main house, and Harvey felt his hairs standing on end as he took it all in.

He didn’t know if the seven deadly sins were part of the paths available to demonkind, but Varek and the Golden Calf Casino had leaned into Greed pretty hard. Taking in the surroundings, it looked like they’d stumbled upon Hell’s den of Gluttony.

“Attack the structure! Even if the lieutenant tries to run, we’ll still break open the node!” Celeste commanded.

The floodtusks made the first move, condensing their streams of water into razor-thin jets that carved right through the wooden walls. Pillars holding up the second-story deck that wrapped around the building were cut down one by one, collapsing debris that covered all the first-floor doors and windows. Once the demons were properly trapped inside, the elephants turned to soaking every square inch of wood their trunks could reach. The only thing worse than a mountain of rotting carcasses was a wet mountain of rotting carcasses, and they all struggled to cover their noses while the floodtusks emptied what remained of their reservoirs. When the complex was thoroughly soaked, the Phoenixes blasted it over and over again, causing a billowing column of steam and smoke to rise high into the night sky above. Harvey didn’t know how many demons this strategy was actually killing, but it cost them next to nothing.

Finally, when a bolt of lightning blasted a hole right through the front wall, the fattest man Harvey had ever seen staggered out from the wreckage. Like most of the demons he’d met so far, he wore a suit, but his was covered in sauce stains and breadcrumbs. His chubby face was red like a tomato, and a massive white cowboy hat really pulled the look of an angry Texas plantation owner together. It would be funny if Harvey didn’t feel the ground shudder with every step, and if he didn’t have a four-foot-long, bloody meat cleaver slung over his shoulder. A stream of demon warriors ran out behind him, each carrying their own weapons with various skills at the ready.

With a roar, he screamed, “You steamed all my sausages! What kind of savages steam sausages?!” His words were followed by a billowing cloud of noxious smoke that washed over the floodtusks and lions guarding them. The angel warriors stayed close to the back, letting their summoned creatures take the vanguard. Watching creatures stagger as the smoke invaded their lungs proved just how toxic it was, and he was grateful that he could only smell it from his place at the back.

Fireballs, bullets, and more eclectic weapons like meathooks and harpoons burst out of the smoke, ravaging the Nephilim struggling to hold the line. Heaven responded in kind, shooting beams of searing light and their own array of skills back at the smaller horde of demons. Steve had conjured his own sword with his Devotion skill, using the essence stored in the golden crystal embedded in the hilt to shoot bolts of divine wrath into the smoke. His aura skill imbued with his Hallowed Protector Imprint helped to repel the noxious cloud from floating any closer, but it wasn’t strong enough to filter out the poison itself. Luckily, they had real Ophanim to keep the lieutenant’s attack at bay, along with dozens of angels using their own auras to help hold it back.

“Don’t charge into the smoke! Surround the node and make them come to us!” Celeste shouted, instructing nearby Captains to take a group of beasts with them as they encircled the complex. Based on the number of demons Harvey had seen charging out of the building, any of the squads should be able to hold their own against any escape attempts long enough for backup to arrive. His real concern was their own squad getting surrounded by the rest of Hell’s army. They’d taken care of almost all of their summoned beasts, but they hadn’t taken the time to stand and fight with the real army. Punching their force through a single hole in the line left them vulnerable if the lieutenant managed to drag out the fight, so Harvey looked around for a solution.

“Celeste, can I borrow some Nephilim?” he asked.

“What?” she asked, incredulous. Before he could explain, she added, “You know what? Sure. Take two.”

With a thought, two of the shield-bearing giants broke off from the line and stumbled his way. The line between a sapient creature and humanoid beast was blurry with these creatures, and he had no idea how he was supposed to talk to them. He clearly didn’t have access to whatever telepathic command system the angels used, so all he could do was try shouting over the chaos happening all around them.

“We need to push some buildings over and create a wall!”

The pair grunted back, but he didn’t know if that meant they understood what he said or were simply acknowledging his presence.

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“Push!” Harvey tried again, pointing at the side of a nearby apartment building. When they both started scratching their heads, he went over and started pressing against the wall. Seeing a demonstration, the pair stomped over and helped him topple the building into the next one, causing a cascade of concrete to fall like dominoes. The rebar holding the concrete in place groaned ominously before snapping. He’d gotten used to the sounds of battle over the last few weeks, but the snap made him wince as he rushed out of harm's way. It reminded him of snapping bones and sent a shiver down his spine. Windows exploded as walls crashed together, raining glass shards down onto the street. Harvey thought he heard people screaming inside, and prayed they were soldiers sent to stop them and not families who called the apartments home. The Nephilim’s undeniable strength toppled one block after another until they’d built a wall of debris, leaving only the street leading back to Heaven’s gates clear. To ensure Hell’s army couldn’t just climb over the rubble, Harvey ignited the ruins as best he could with his Fireball skill.

“Thanks, guys!” Harvey shouted as the Nephilim trundled back to the others. Harvey ran back to his father and brother’s side, only to stop in his tracks when he saw the lieutenant. Through the thinning smoke, Harvey could see gluttony dangling the lifeless corpse of a dead Mortarhorn over his mouth. His jaw seemed to dislocate, letting his mouth open wide enough to fit the entire goat head in at once. With a sickening crunch, he ripped the head away from the body, taking a chunk of spine with it that dangled from the side of his lips like a piece of spaghetti. The glutton didn’t even chew as he swallowed the head whole, then burped out a ball of abyssal flames just like the ones the artillery goats used. The flames hurtled into a Nephilim’s shield, exploding with enough force to knock the giant onto its back, crushing a lion who couldn’t get out of the way fast enough.

“Ha, ha, ha! Tasty!” the lieutenant chortled as he took another bite. When the Nephilim didn’t get up, Tyler sprinted towards it and leaped onto its chest. A second burst of Hellfire shot towards him, but a combination of Fast Break and Contact Hitter gave Tyler the speed to knock the fireball back at the farmhouse Hell was trying to protect. The arrays inscribed on his bat weren’t enough to fully transmute the infernal resonance inside the blast, but the dose of holy it injected made the explosion a chaotic mix of black and gold. In the blink of an eye, Tyler was back at Harvey’s side, his place atop the Nephilim taken by their father who protected the injured creature with a shield of golden light.

“He has to stop doing that!” Harvey complained as he flew over to support. The barrier Steve conjured could only block an attack or two at most, but it bought enough time for Cash to heal the injured giant enough to retake his place in the shield wall.

“Swap places with me!” Harvey screamed. When the tendril of aura his father used to initiate his teleportation skill didn’t come, Harvey yelled again, this time using his own aura to clamp down on Steve’s much weaker G-Grade one. That was enough for his dad to take the hint, moving Harvey to the front lines where he dashed out in front of the Nephilim and conjured his Legacy’s Redoubt, immediately infusing it with his Guardian of the Gilded Return Imprint to try and keep the lingering toxic fog away from his bunker. Standing inside while skills and bullets rained down on the steel reminded him of sitting inside a car during a hailstorm, but he ignored it as he infused his revolver with Awakened Armament, bringing Julius out into the fight. The second the weapon floated into the air, it fired a Heaven’s Wrath bullet into the head of a conjured flame serpent that was slithering in through the window, causing it to burst into flame that leaked through the gaps in his armor and roasted his flesh.

Agh! Seriously! Harvey complained.

[Would you rather I let it bite you first?] Julius responded before shooting his four remaining bullets out of the same window. [Don’t answer that. Reload!]

Frantic knocking came on the back side of his bunker, and Harvey opened the door to let Steve, Cash, and a contingent of angels in with him. They said nothing before joining him in shooting every demon they could see, including the lieutenant who had traded his half-eaten goat for a brimfiend. Instead of snacking on a wing, the beast stuffed the entire child-sized imp down his throat, rapidly sprouting his own set of fleshy wings behind his usual feathered ones that miraculously carried him into the air. Every bird Harvey had ever seen, even the rotting Carrionwings back in Veils End, flew with a similar sort of grace and poise. What the lieutenant did was anything but, yet he still managed to bob over the wall of Nephilim and start spewing his toxic mist over their army. Harvey flooded Legacy’s Redoubt with as much of his healing Imprint as he could before dashing out and taking to the sky as well. He didn’t want to waste too much essence flying, but needed to distract the lieutenant before he could dose them all up.

Staying just out of harm’s reach, he blasted one shotgun shell after another into the demon’s chest, alternating between his Heaven’s Wrath and Prophet’s Suffering slugs to make the most out of the tainted vitality brimming within him. The constant spray of poison ended as the man began coughing up blood. When a desperate lunge to gore Harvey with his cleaver was intercepted by a Fangburner shield exploding in the demon’s face, the lieutenant dove for the closest mountain of demon corpses. Harvey landed on the roof of one of the nearby warehouses, watching as the demon started tearing into the closest beasts he could find. Harvey could see the life-devouring thanefire ravaging the demon’s flesh, only for new meat to replace it as he devoured fallen monsters. Harvey assumed one of his skills let him heal as he ate the monster meat, not just copy the skills of whatever he stuffed down his throat. All that would really do was prolong the suffering wrought by the Thanefire, so Harvey decided to help the lieutenant along. Flying behind the small tunnel being dug into the mountain, Harvey used Innovator’s Arsenal to conjure a copy of Cataclysm, racked a Prophet’s Suffering shell into the chamber of both guns, and fired. The mound of corpses collapsed under the pressure, burying the dead lieutenant with the rest of his soldiers.

A notification that their quest had been updated proved the man was really dead, and Celeste shouted for everyone to retreat. Demon soldiers were still spewing out of the now wrecked farmhouse, but killing them only gave the rest of the army more time to get around Harvey’s walls of toppled buildings. A handful of demon and sinner firing squads were already waiting to ambush them on their sole path back home, but they were nowhere near enough to handle what remained of Heaven’s forces. They were quickly overwhelmed, some with holes in their heads and others pulled from open windows by war eagles that dropped them into the waiting mouths of the few remaining lions waiting below. Occasionally, they passed larger groups of soldiers walking towards them through the maze that was Hell’s city, but Harvey used Shattersmite cores to collapse the closest buildings while everyone else continued to flee. When that wasn’t enough, Heaven’s conjured beasts sacrificed themselves to cover the angels' retreat, allowing them to reach the open battlefield with most of the angels having survived. They didn’t stop until they reached Heaven’s gates, releasing their primal cries of victory once they were safe inside home territory.

“That feel good?” Celeste shouted as she had a Nephilim carry her onto its shoulder.

The crowd roared back at her, causing the ground to shudder beneath them as everyone jumped up and down despite their tired legs.

“Feel good to put another sick bastard into the ground? Two days! It only took two days to turn this war around. Two days for two of Hell’s ugliest heads to roll! Who wants to see a third?”

Harvey worried he might go deaf from all the screaming, but he didn’t care. His hoarse voice joined in all the same. This was what he wanted all along. Heaven making a stand. Fighting for their own destiny instead of waiting for a lucky break to save them. It might have taken him putting his life on the line the night before to get the ball rolling, but the rest had charged right beside him once they’d been shown that winning was possible.

Steve wrapped his arms around both of his sons, smiling wide as he pulled them in close.

“We did it, boys!”

“Let’s not forget to tell Mom this time,” Harvey laughed.