"Ged Garrison, now!" came the order.
They convened as one in Raphael's office, despite having been scattered across both the heavenly and earthly realms only moments before.
Castiel stepped to the front and center as the commander, kneeling before the archangel. The remainder of the group bowed behind him.
"The Righteous Man has broken the first seal." Raphael announced, pacing across the front of the room. "He must be retrieved from the Pit to prepare for his destiny on Earth." He stopped directly in front of Castiel, meeting the eyes of the garrison captain. "This mission must not fail."
"I understand," Castiel nodded solemnly.
"Be certain that you do." Raphael began pacing again. "The fate of not only the human race, but of our kind as well, hangs in the balance. We must retrieve the Righteous Man to serve as Michael's true vessel."
A flash of light, blinding by even Heavenly standards, lit the room.
Michael himself stood beside Raphael.
The garrison all immediately prostrated themselves face down on the floor in reverence to the second most powerful being in existence. Most of them had never even seen him from a distance before.
"Brethren," Michael addressed them. "And sister." He smiled at Hester. "I have chosen this garrison for the most important mission of all time. You will not fail. I believe in you. All of you." He looked Castiel in the eye. "You will not leave Hell without Dean Winchester."
Castiel nodded again, feeling the weight of the burden on his shoulders. "I will not leave Hell without the Righteous Man."
"Can you be ready within the hour?" Raphael asked.
Castiel looked at his soldiers. "We can be ready in five minutes."
Michael nodded.
Raphael folded his arms. "Go then. And may God be with you."
Castiel did not waste time taking the garrison to a briefing room. He simply gathered them in the hall just outside Raphael's door.
"We will take a team of seven into Hell," he addressed the group. "Inias, Talmon, and Samandriel, I want the three of you to remain here, but monitor our transmissions so that you can evacuate the wounded. The others will come with me."
In a flash, all ten angels stood at the shore of the crystal sea.
Castiel turned to his garrison. "Uriel and Ophaniel first. Elias and Ezekiel, bring up the rear. If anyone goes down, call one of our backup and keep fighting. Aira," he called out to the Angel of Healing. "Be ready for our wounded."
She did not answer aloud, but he felt the hum through the angel connection that told him his message was received and acknowledged.
He looked around at his team, who all stood ready, unafraid, although they were certainly about to walk into the most difficult, dangerous, and critical battle of their millenia of existence.
"I will not leave Hell without the Righteous Man." he repeated.
The rest of the garrison remained silent.
"It's time to go." he nodded.
A blink of an eye later, seven angels kicked open the gates of Hell.
Uriel and Ophaniel charged ahead, smiting demons faster than Castiel could count, even as more poured from nearly every crevice in the rocky passageway.
Castiel pressed forward, Hester at his left hand and Camael at his right, smiting whatever demons got past his four infantrymen.
Ophaniel was the first to fall, struck by a Knight of Hell while he battled three lesser demons. Castiel called for assistance, but knew that by the time Inias returned Ophaniel to Heaven, it would be too late for Aira to help him.
The rest of the garrison forced their way toward the lower levels, to the dungeon, where the Righteous Man was held.
Demons continued to swarm around them, and Castiel briefly wondered just how many there were.
He did not have time to dwell on the question, because for every cubit closer the angels got to the Righteous Man, the number of demons attacking seemed to increase exponentially.
By the time they reached the torture chamber, Uriel and Elias had been wounded and evacuated, Camael was nowhere to be seen and not answering when called, and Ezekiel was bleeding but refused to leave.
The three remaining angels shoved their way into the room. Hester closed the door behind them and sealed it with a press of her hand.
"Help me!" dozens of souls shouted to them.
Some reached out and touched the angels, their hands burning the angels where they made contact. Castiel pulsed a wave of celestial energy to push the souls away before they truly injured one of the angels.
The last horde of demons, only a dozen or so in the room, but led by Alastair himself, attacked the angels, biting and gouging and pulling out feathers.
The three angels, having fought together for thousands of human years, fell into a defensive stance without communication. They pressed their backs together, protecting one another.
"Which one is the Righteous Man?" Ezekiel shouted over the screams of the demons and shrieks of the souls.
Castiel looked around the room for a moment before spotting one soul that shone brighter than all the others standing beside the rack.
"That one," he indicated.
Half the demons now lay on the ground, which made the remainder fight even harder.
Castiel smote two demons, while Hester killed another and Ezekiel managed to knock down two more, although Castiel did not look long enough to tell whether they were dead or wounded.
Only Alastair remained.
"Hold him off!" Castiel ordered. "I will get the Righteous Man."
The other two angels, swaying on their feet, lunged together toward the demonic captain while Castiel launched himself across the room.
Once Castiel stood in front of the Righteous Man, to his surprise, the man did not cower, or attack. He stood firm, looking from Castiel, to Hester and Ezekiel, to Alastair, as if trying to decide whose side he should be on.
"We have come to rescue you." Castiel announced.
The Righteous Man punched the angel in the jaw. "No!" he shouted. "If I break the deal, they're going to kill Sammy!"
"You're not breaking the deal. I am." the angel asserted.
Castiel looked over his shoulder to where his soldiers had gained an advantage over Alastair.
"Come!" he commanded.
The two angels were at his sides immediately. They placed their hands on Castiel's back as he reached for the Righteous Man.
The Righteous Man shrank back, screaming "No! No!"
Castiel started to speak again, to assure the Righteous Man that they meant him no harm, but Hester spoke first.
"Alastair is getting up. We've got to get out of here, Castiel!"
Castiel surged forward, grasping the Righteous Man by the shoulder.
At once, he was overwhelmed by the power of this soul. Castiel, who had touched humans and angels and demons and any number of other creatures, was momentarily stunned by the colors and light and music that flowed through him at the slight contact with this battered and flayed soul.
It took a moment, but Castiel understood why this was the Righteous Man.
This soul was full of the most unselfish love Castiel had ever encountered in a human.
This soul had given not just his life, but his eternity, for another, and would do so again a thousand times over.
His Father had called these flawed, emotional, fragile, tempestuous, flightless creatures his greatest creation.
Castiel never understood why, until now.
He still didn't understand why his Father was so enamored of the human race, but this one, yes, this one, Castiel knew was beautiful and perfect even in its flaws and weaknesses.
A hand clenched against his back, and Castiel remembered that he had two angels behind him, awaiting his orders.
"Go!" he shouted.
The three of angels and Righteous Man blinked out of Hell as Alastair dove at them and landed in a copse of trees just outside Pontiac, Illinois. They collapsed to the ground in a heap in front of a crude wooden cross.
Ezekiel didn't move.
"Get him to Aira." Castiel gasped to Hester.
She raised her head, and he saw that she wasn't in much better shape. Her wings were singed, blood dripped into her eyes, and she didn't seem to be capable of speaking. She nodded, and the two of them were gone.
Castiel cradled the beautiful soul for one last moment, and then shoved it through the ground, into the shredded and decomposing body. With a thought, he repaired and restored the soul's vessel, healing not only the fatal wounds from the hellhounds, but the scars and damage left by a lifetime of injuries inflicted by humans and supernatural creatures alike.
The instant he finished, Castiel realized he had made a mistake.
Much of the beauty of this soul came from its flaws, in how the soul had never allowed itself to become overwhelmed by stressors that would have broken a lesser man, in how through all the horrors this soul had faced, the unselfish love had remained its driving force.
He placed one scar back on the perfect body. A print of his hand, to remind the Righteous Man that he had been the only soul in all of creation that Heaven had deemed worthy to rescue from Hell.
He blew onto the surface of the grave, and six feet below, the Righteous Man gasped and shuddered as his body took its first breath of air in four months.
Castiel sank to the ground, allowing himself to give in to his own injuries and exhaustion at last.
Before he called for one of his garrison to bring him home, he opened the communication lines to Heaven to speak the words he knew Raphael and Michael awaited.
"Dean Winchester is saved."