Chapter 195 - Wake Up Call

Celeste led them to the teleporter, where the guards initially moved to block them before bowing once they finally recognized who she was.

“Captain. I’m sorry, I didn’t recognize you with your feathers,” he stated, clearly hoping for an explanation despite being unwilling to ask for one. Harvey didn’t know if bleaching their wings would work after coating them in box after box of black hair dye the day before, but they had to do something if they wanted to avoid any accidents on the battlefield.

“I don’t like them any more than you do, but we did what had to be done to assassinate the lieutenant,” she answered.

“That was you?” the guard asked with shock clear in his voice.

“Well… kind of,” she hesitated, turning towards Harvey. She’d gotten the killing blow, but Harvey was arguably the one who made such a clean kill possible. “News is already spreading then?”

“We all got a notification when the quest updated, but it didn’t provide any details.”

“Well, I’d be happy to provide them straight to the ears of the Commander. Can you adjust the portal to his private courtyard?” she asked.

“Certainly,” the guard said, imprinting his aura on the crystalline mirror until the view on the other side showed a beautiful garden full of white orchids and a gazebo overlooking a small pond rather than the streets of Elysium that Harvey had seen before. The five of them stepped through and found themselves surrounded by what he could only describe as a small mansion. Heaven already had a clean, refreshing scent, but the garden smelled like a mix of a fruit smoothie and rain on a summer day. Harvey saw white fish darting around in the pond and heard birds rustling in the trees above. It was the middle of the night, so he wouldn’t be graced with their songs, but they put their ornate feathers on full display whenever he looked at them.

While the humans all marveled at their surroundings, the angels both moved right towards a set of French doors and started knocking. Gently at first, then pounding when nobody came to let them in. Eventually, the doors swung open, and Cash stayed his hand just in time not to accidentally knock on the man's skull as he rubbed the sleep away from his eyes.

“What! What! What!” the Commander complained. “Celeste? Cash? What are you doing in my courtyard? And why have you brought three humans with you?”

Harvey still had a hard time distinguishing the older cohort of angels from the younger ones, but he was starting to notice the differences. The commander was tall, with perfect porcelain skin and golden blonde hair that still managed to look decent despite the raging case of bedhead he had going.

“Nice to see you, Brutie,” Cash smiled, pushing past the man to grab one of the apples piled high in a bowl atop a table just inside the door and crunching into it.

“Commander, Cash,” he corrected.

Harvey walked up and extended his hand to the man, and was surprised to find him accept the handshake without any questions. “Harvey. Nice to meet you.”

“Commander Brutus Caelis,” he introduced. “Now why are the five of you pounding on my door at…” he paused, looking towards the clock on the wall. “Midnight? And what happened to your wings?”

“To celebrate!” Cash exclaimed. “We just killed one of Hell’s lieutenants!”

Anger flashed across Brutus’ face, then shock, then disbelief. Clearly, he hadn’t checked his notifications after waking up, but the proof was right there for him to see. “You… What? How?”

“Well, Cash introduced me to the most insane man I’ve ever met who somehow convinced me to spend the sabbath blowing up a casino,” Celeste smiled.

The Commander’s eyes darted back and forth between his Captain and Harvey. He didn’t know if he liked being called the most insane man she’d ever met, but he chalked it up to her not having met many men who weren’t angels with silver sticks shoved up their ass.

“Blow up? A casino? Wait, you’re saying the five of you walked right in, killed a lieutenant, and made it out alive?”

“It was actually a lot easier than we thought it would be. They never thought Heaven would try something like that in a thousand years, so all it took for us to slip inside was some clothes we looted off some dead demons and rings to mask their auras,” Harvey explained.

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“I… never would've thought of that,” he admitted. “I’d never expect something like that to work.”

“Neither did I, but it seems we’ve got a lot to learn from the faithful,” Cash laughed, finishing his apple and shooting the core into a trashcan across the room like it was a basketball.

“Then why would you go? If you didn’t expect to succeed, why take the risk?” Brutus asked.

“We had to do something,” Celeste answered. “We all know things haven’t exactly been going our way for a while now. Heaven’s way wasn’t working, so we took a shot at Earth’s.”

That elicited a flash of anger from the man. “Heaven’s path has built a faction spanning thousands of planets and united trillions of souls under the Lord’s light. You might have gotten lucky once, but don’t disparage the principles our Father has laid down for us.”

When Harvey saw Celeste getting ready to vent some of her pent-up frustration with the man who’d gotten them into this mess, he stepped in and tried calming her down for once. “That’s not what we’re saying. This might’ve worked once, but there’s no way it works a second time. That’s why we came to talk to you. Hell is reeling, and we saw firsthand just how drunk and disorderly they are. Their soldiers haven’t been forced to fight for weeks, making them dull instruments compared to Heaven’s well-sharpened war machine.”

“How did you even escape?” Brutus probed, still baffled that they were standing in front of them if the story he was hearing was true.

“Like I said, they were wasted,” Harvey repeated. “We were able to get them fighting each other with a handful of attacks.”

“How many of their soldiers were there?” Brutus pressed.

“All of them. Or at least the vast majority. They were partying like they’d already won it all.”

“Exactly. Now we have to press our advantage. Tomorrow morning, I want you to call every angel we have to join in on an assault of the next node,” Celeste urged.

“They’ve been pushed to their limits. With a lieutenant dead, we can finally give our army time to rest,” Brutus retorted.

“We can rest when we’re dead,” Cash rebuked. “Which will be sooner than any of us would like unless we press the advantage while we have it. You don’t let your enemy catch their breath when their backs are against the wall. You keep pushing until you can bury them beneath it.”

“I’ll need some time to think…” he began.

“No! No more thinking. No more waiting. This is happening. Tomorrow,” Celeste growled.

Brutus scoffed, throwing his hands in the air and walking back towards his large bed. “What happened to the chain of command? Do you think you’re going to force me to listen to you just because your unauthorized raid didn’t get you killed? Because you got lucky?”

“We’re not trying to force you. We’re trying to help you,” Cash interjected, trying to calm everyone down. “I know you don’t want any more angels to die. None of us do, but one more day of risk will give us weeks to whittle Hell down the same way they did to us.”

Brutus didn’t answer, but hopped back into bed and pulled the covers over his head. Eventually, his muffled voice came through the blanket and said, “We can talk in the morning. I’ll let you guys in on the planning meeting where we can at least thank you publicly. Feel free to sleep in the guest wing.”

Not wanting to press their luck, Celeste and Cash led them out of the room and into a hallway where they found a guest suite with three bedrooms, each with an attached bathroom. Celeste took one, quickly saying goodnight before closing the door behind her. Steve and Tyler took another, happy to share the king-size bed instead of making one of them sleep on the floor.

“Rock, Paper, Scissors?” Harvey asked, pointing to the last bedroom.

“I’ll take the couch,” Cash laughed. “Just let me shower first.”

“Are you sure?” Harvey asked.

“Positive. We’ve all been too tired and busy to say it, but we’d all be in a pretty bad place right now if it weren’t for you.”

“It might’ve been my idea, but I couldn’t have done it without you.”

“True. Still, I think courage like that deserves a real bed,” Cash smiled.

Harvey stripped off his armor while Cash hopped into the shower. By the time Harvey was folding his Under Armor and putting it back into his spatial ring, the angel walked out with his black hair plastered to his forehead.

“Goodnight,” Cash waved as he walked out the door to the plush couch in the living room.

“Night,” Harvey replied as he walked into the steam-filled bathroom. Letting the warm water rinse off all the sweat and soot from the many explosions he’d caused, he relished in the sensation of victory. He’d been too stunned by Julian’s death and the destruction of the Hell Hotel to really appreciate the feeling of walking into impossible odds and coming out on top back in his own trial. It was infectious, and he couldn’t stop himself from smiling even as he planned on killing another lieutenant tomorrow. Part of him wondered if souls had gotten too cheap in the last few months, but he didn’t reprimand himself for doing what had to be done.

[We can worry about ethics when we don’t have multiversal invaders breathing down our necks,] Julius agreed.

Stepping out of the shower, Harvey found disposable toiletries in a cabinet and went through his normal night routine. Clean from head to toe, he turned off the lights and climbed into bed. The plush mattress felt like a cloud enveloping him as he sank into its depths, way better than the ones the faithful had in their own homes.

Oh, what it is to be king, Harvey mused as he luxuriated in the silk sheets, stretching deep from his head to his toes.

[Commander,] Julius corrected.

Same difference, Harvey remarked. Maybe we should be commanders someday.