Forged Legacy

Chapter 127 - Heaven's Gate

“A bunker? What path did you choose?” Tyler asked.

“The Harvey path,” he smiled.

“Oh, I get it. You need somewhere to hide after people get tired of you being a smart-ass,” Tyler joked.

[I like this kid,] Julius chuckled.

Then go live in his head. He could use the extra brain.

“No. I build things. Weapons. Armor. Traps. My path is making the right tool for the job and adding the magic that makes it work,” Harvey responded.

“Sounds boring. I want to become a Templar,” Tyler said.

“Of course you do.”

“Every day I wonder when you boys are gonna grow up,” Steve groaned. “Let’s get out of here before you start wrestling in the chapel.”

Slipping his gauntlets back on, the trio ran outside. Screeching gargoyles and the rumbling toll of bells still filled the air, and he followed their father to the neighborhood entrance, where Harvey finally got a look at their army.

Lions, stags, horned rams, and 20-foot-tall humanoid giants marched down the three-lane road, escorted by a line of angels holding golden chains on either side. None of the beasts were shackled, but something about the chains kept them from storming off into the neighborhoods.

“Wow,” Tyler gasped.

“They’re beautiful,” Steve agreed.

A soft, silvery glow exuded from each creature, giving them all an ethereal, holy aura. The lions’ manes shimmered like molten gold, hanging so perfectly they looked sculpted rather than alive. A screech from above made him turn to the sky, where massive eagles soared over the procession, with golden blades covering both their talons and wingtips. The giants only wore simple leather armor, but the silver shields in their hands could form a wall stronger than anything they’d built around the Hell Hotel.

“And you think we’re losing,” Tyler chuckled.

“Hey! What are you humans doing out here!” an armored angel holding the chain barked. “You need to get to shelter right now!”

“We’re joining the fight!” Harvey countered.

“Like hell you are! I’m giving you one more chance before I feed you to…”

“They’re with me!” Cash shouted from behind.

“Eight dead humans ain’t enough for one day? You trying to break a record, Cash?”

“Nah, don’t worry. Your title is safe!”

“Shut up and finish your ritual!” the angel grumbled.

Harvey couldn’t find his angel friend until he saw a hand waving from a cloud of white smoke near the back of the procession. Running over, he found the smoke smelled rich and sweet. It exuded from a small brazier swinging on a silver chain. The censer rocked in step with Cash as he muttered prayers under his breath.

“Cash?” Harvey asked.

“Shhh, he’s praying,” his dad scolded.

The angel didn’t respond, so the trio fell in step beside him. One by one, various sigils appeared on the angel's skin, the weave surrounding them becoming visible as the prayers he repeated changed. For each sigil, Cash exchanged the vial in his hands for a new one before adding a few drops to the censer. White smoke was replaced with an earthy brown, then regal purple, and finally a radiant gold. They all smelled divine, and Harvey could feel his body drinking in the smoke as they walked.

“Sorry about that. I needed to finish up before we reach the front,” Cash apologized.

“Were those all Profession skills?” Harvey asked.

“Yep. Prayers to bless our army with the strength we need to survive what comes next,” Cash confirmed.

“Which is what, exactly?” Harvey asked.

“Hell’s army was spotted leaving the city not too long ago. We’d hoped they’d wait until after the sabbath so we’d have time to weave a bigger army, but it looks like we won’t be so lucky.”

“These creatures,” Harvey began. “Were they all just roaming around the neighbourhoods, or are you breeding them somewhere? I haven’t seen a single monster since I got here.”

“Neither. They were created in foundries at the heart of the capital from raw divine essence.”

“You can create fully grown creatures like this from essence?”

“We can’t, but the System can. The trial is set up where heaven and hell can extract a certain amount of divine and infernal essence every day to create creatures like these to fight for us. The lieutenants guard nodes that can be broken open to release more, while the Commanders control the foundries themselves.”

Harvey remembered the quest and realized the angels might be in an even worse situation than he thought. “So, the two dead angel lieutenants?”

“Yep. Every day, we’re at a disadvantage, and it’s only getting worse as more of the warriors supplementing our weaker army die. That’s part of the reason we started training a few of the faithful early, but you’ve seen how that’s going,” Cash sighed.

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“Well, I’m going to be taking over the training for these two. Cash, this is my father, Steve, and my brother, Tyler. Family, this is Cash.”

“Nice to meet you guys. Your brother really saved my hide earlier.”

“Is this the only group?” Tyler asked. “Don’t get me wrong, these things are scary as hell, but there’s gotta be more than a dozen giants and a few hundred animals.”

“Oh, trust me, hell can be a lot scarier,” Cash sighed. “But no, there are groups like this marching all over heaven.”

“When you say heaven, what are we talking about exactly? How many humans are here?” Harvey asked.

“Heaven is everything under our Father’s control, and I’d say the current population is just over 200 million.”

“What!” Harvey could barely fathom the number, but Cash just shrugged.

“Your world had a lot of believers. Not all ended up in this trial since their legacies were more in line with a different one, but from what I hear, it’s a decent chunk of your planet’s population.”

“How many people were in your trial, Harvey?” Steve asked.

“I don’t know. It was everyone who died 24 hours before the integration, so maybe 100,000? Most of us died within the first few days, so there were only a couple thousand left when the Ossari arrived.”

The scale was completely different from his own, making Harvey wonder how any of the humans were supposed to level up on their own. Even if they charged into the front lines from day one, were there even enough monsters to go around?

“What about the sinners? How many of them do you think there are?” Harvey asked.

“Much less, probably around 50 million,” Cash explained. “Their numbers are smaller. To end up here, you have to both believe in Heaven and turn against it. Most people plagued by simple lust or greed end up in another trial. Only the guilty consciences end up here.”

“If we outnumber them by that much, why don’t we just walk over there and end this thing?” Tyler asked.

“A single demon could kill hundreds of faithful, and the only reason they’d stop is that they ran out of essence. This is a war between angels and demons, not faithful and sinners,” Cash laughed.

“Not anymore,” Harvey said as their procession reached the silver gates he’d marched through hours earlier. He hadn’t bothered looking before, too consumed with finding his family, but the gates stretched hundreds of miles in either direction. A perfect line separating the pristine neighborhoods and their burned counterparts outside.

“We’ll take all the help we can get,” Cash admitted. “The sinners all seem to be a bit more bloodthirsty than our humans, and they’re already turning the tide on us. Stay close to me. I can help keep the two of them safe.”

“The two of us?” Tyler asked.

“I can handle myself,” Harvey snickered.

Marching through the gates, their army of conjured beasts dispersed, forming ranks with their kin. The giants formed the vanguard, with rams taking positions between their feet. Packs of lions prowled close behind, followed by stags with glowing horns that reminded him of Buttercup.

[Hannah would love this.]

Yeah, she’d go nuts around this many powerful beasts.

[I don’t miss the baby talk, though. Buttercup has to get tired of that eventually, right?]

The angels formed the last line of defense, and Cash pulled their group to cover behind a waist-high wall of sandbags. It was hard to see through the wall of flesh that was the giants and their shields, but that didn’t save them from hearing the demons marching their way. A deep, thunderous roar rumbled towards them as the ground began to shake. It was joined by the hiss of snakes and hundreds of barking dogs begging to be let off their leash.

“Oh no.” Cash said.

“What?” Steve panicked. “What do you mean, oh no?”

“It’s mostly hellhounds and Nahashim. Oh, those are the fire-spitting serpents,” Cash explained when they all looked confused. “Those are relatively cheap, meaning they must’ve created something big like…”

“A dragon,” Harvey groaned, seeing red wings slowly beating in the distant dusk. It was hard to see its black scales in the gloomy night of demon territory, but its mythical form was soon illuminated by heavenly dawn.

Harvey opened his status screen and dumped the 6 unassigned Free Points from his last Class level into Endurance. It wasn’t much, but he needed his bunker as strong as possible if he was going to protect his family from another dragon.

“Cash, I’m going to conjure a bunker for us. Either huddle in close or back up a step.” The angel hesitated before moving towards Harvey. Essence poured into the sigil on his back, greedily drinking more and more until steely light exploded out of his body before coalescing into the sturdy redoubt.

In seconds, pure energy hardened into thick metal plates that surrounded them on all sides. A door faced the gates behind them, and three narrow windows formed a shooting platform looking towards either side of the battlefield.

“Impressive,” Cash said. “Must be pretty expensive without any physical matter helping out. Have you thought about building one of these to store in your spatial ring and infusing it later?”

“Honestly, I didn’t think of that. I wouldn’t have had time to do that, though. I made this skill half an hour ago,” Harvey said.

“We should talk later. You’ve obviously done well on your own, but you still have a lot to learn.”

Harvey desperately wanted to start asking all the questions that had built up over the past months, but a searing heat leaking through the window interrupted his thoughts. Fifty feet ahead, a giant writhed as molten silver dripped onto flesh from its shield rapidly melting above. Two massive wings pushed the adjacent giants to their knees, crushing the rams that had taken shelter beneath them. The jet of flames from its mouth seemed endless, completely melting the shield before it chomped down on the massive head. A shiver shot down his spine as he heard its skull snap, the sound cutting through the air despite the cacophony of barks and bellows.

“Not the nephilim,” Cash groaned as a golden desert eagle appeared in his hand.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Shots rang out all down the line, causing sparks and shallow wounds to appear all over the dragon’s flesh. Still chewing on the giant’s head, it took to the skies, seemingly unbothered by the bullets as it carried two rams in its massive claws.

“Can we even kill that thing?” Tyler asked, his hands fumbling wildly as he struggled to load his own weapon.

“It will die eventually. There should only be one, so let’s just pray it flies far away from our position,” Cash muttered.

The headless corpse collapsed forward, becoming the first hole in the line that was soon filled with a sea of vicious black hounds. Their eyes glowed like rubies, and black smoke leaked from their mouths. Globs of magma streamed over their backs, sticking to ram and lion alike until the smell of burnt hair permeated the entire battlefield.

The remaining giants slammed their shield into the ground, blocking as many projectiles as they could while stomping on the serpents slithering underfoot. Many were crushed into bloody paste, but a few began wrapping around their trunk like legs in search of vulnerable flesh to sink their fangs into.

Heaven’s army fought back. War eagles plucked snakes from the ground, using their bladed talons to rip them to shreds before letting snake meat fall like bloody rain. The rams’ horns gained a golden glow as they charged into hellhounds, releasing a burst of force that sent them soaring through the air with multiple fractured bones. Lions swiped, clawed, and bit until their fur was soaked in black blood, while the stags enveloped their injured brethren in healing splendor.

Every creature played its part, but the horde of hell was endless. In the end, it would fall upon the angels to defend the gates.

“Get ready! Save your shots until you know you’ll hit an enemy,” Harvey shouted.

Bang!

A flash erupted from his brother’s gun, ricocheting off the metal wall before slamming into Harvey’s armored knee.

“Tyler!” Steve shouted, moving out of the sights of his own weapon to stare daggers at his son.

“Sorry!”

Suddenly, his fortress in the heart of Armageddon didn’t feel quite so safe.