ic [ToV] The Angel of Death (IC)

[trollthumper]

This wasn't the first time Nick had been thrown into someone's memories. Some ghosts were nothing but that - memories, divorced from the soul, wandering freely. At first, he was surprised by the choice of arena... but then a few things clicked. 

 

"Ah, I get it." He walked forward, past the echoes of the nervous men - who likely had reason to be nervous. "Back in the day when respectable men like you threw scraps and expected people with nowhere else to go to dance. It wasn't about doing good; you just saw it as another vice. No different than prostitution or heroin. You did something... but if you're anything like the other gangsters, you did it while shaking your head, wondering why you had to."

 

He walked right up to Roman, noticing the frown on his face. "See, now... usually, when I hear those words, it's maniacal gloating. 'It's too late.' Maybe it is, for some of us. But there's a whole lot of other people out there who never made our mistakes, and never got put down the path we did. Show me how to break this, and I can at least make sure you go off with one less burden. And in some cases, that one can feel like Sisyphus pushing his rock over the cliff. What do you say?" 

[Avenger Assembled]

Fast-Forward squeezed his hands open and closed, the vivid memories of this day - which he did indeed remember in detail, surging back unpleasantly. "I know you screwed my ma, Roman. But I'm not a fourteen-year-old kid anymore. You can't scare me off by showing me old stories."  He took a step forward, ignoring the illusion of his mother with her costume half-undone, and focused directly on the reflection of the old man. "C'mon, is that all you've got? Just some time you used your power to take something you wanted? I know you did worse than this. Anything you did with my ma, she did because she wanted me to have a home and a roof over my head. So c'mon, you can either keep up the spook show in here, or we can talk about this like men of respect."

[angrydurf]

Peeling open the doors Phalanx stepped into the shaft and dropped to the top of the Elevator car.  He flung open the hatch on top and peered in with a confident nod to the trapped occupants, "I'm going to get you all out of here, get on the floor and hold on."  he warned before rising to take the thick steel cables in hand.  The elevator creaked ominously as he raised it a scant few inches as he gathered the cables and took the weight of the car and occupants himself.  Squinting his eyes a thin needle of energy lanced forward slicing clean through the steel freeing car from the rest of the apparatus in one precise sweep.  

 

Flying up the shaft with growing speed he burst forth from the roof with elevator in tow and sped toward the line of rescue vehicles and first responders that gathered on the perimeter.  "These fine people will take good care of you all."  he assured his charges as he lowered them gently to the ground and turned to speed off back to the growing miasma and launched himself into the hospital doors on the heels of his cohorts.

[Avenger Assembled]

Phalanx felt the nuclear bomb, specially modified to target his entropically-enhanced cell, rip him apart. 

 

When the dust cleared, he was standing in front of a long, long memorial wall that stretched nearly as far on both side as his vision could make out. He knew the names well enough - the names of everyone in Freedom City, the members of the Freedom League, and all the rest... 

 

When he turned his head again, Mr. Infamy was there at his side. "You know this is your future, Phalanx. You and your friends will die failing to save the population of this city - and you know the people will turn on the Terminus mutants afterwards. Your child will become a vagabond in time, the last scion of a dead dynasty." The final question seemed not taunting - but genuinely curious as Infamy, looking for all the world like a man in mourner's black, held his hat to his chest and studied Mike frankly. "What does all this matter to you?" 

 

-

 

"Oh, jeez!" When the illusion faded, the heroes were on the second floor of the hospice, facing a particular closed door with the name "I.M. Perator" written on the name plate. Fast-Forward, taking immediate stock of the situation, reached out to Hologram through their psychic link, taking stock of their situation. The grey serpentine curls of power were gone now, but all the mystics nearby could feel the power inside that room, power to shake the world if it burst its seams. Hologram could feel a living mind there - and something else as well, the malignant power she'd felt the moment they'd arrived in the city. Roman was inside - and so was something far worse than an angel. 

 

You okay, hon? She caught a quick flash of his memories from the touch, the very personal one that Roman - or somebody, anyway, had used against him. It was bad - but they both had plenty worse memories. 

 

"Everybody all right?"

[alderwitch]

Renegade took a slow, steadying breath as the illusion faded and the force of power pressed in on the knot of heroes. He ignored the question and instead shifted to turn his attention to the assembled heroes. "I... am not a very powerful angel as such things are measured, but I am here." Some of his affected drawl fell away, leaving his words almost formal and accent-less, as if he were too focused on the emergency at hand to adjust the nomenclature he chose. "I imagine that I will draw the bulk of its attention and shall do my best to do so, providing time for the rest of you to strike and forestall it striking."

 

He turned towards Paige, holding out one hand to her with the Enochian tattoos glowing. "The weak link might be Roman. Mine is the Abrahamic faiths, daughter of Ruth, - if you ask a blessing of me, I shall do my best to grant it." It wasn't normally Ray's bailiwick but he was an angel and despite his problems with dogma, he had faith that he would not be forsaken here and now in his asking.

[trollthumper]

Nick barely stumbled as he was hurled out of the memory. Guess I made my point. He looked to the door. He knew throwing it open might draw the attention of whoever - or, at this point, whatever - lay on the other side. His sense of ghosts and magic was strong, but it couldn't quite look through doors. His death awareness, on the other hand... the plus side was that nothing was dead yet. The minus side was, he wasn't sure he wanted to have it active if somebody set this thing off. 

 

"All right," he said. "If there's any death magic on the other side of this door - which, big surprise, there probably will be - I can try to subvert it. Keep it hampered and focused so that somebody can take a swing at the anchor without getting a big blast of death in the face. Of course, destroying the anchor --" 

 

Keep calling it "the anchor." Calling him "Roman" will just make it worse.

 

"--might cause this thing to fully blossom, in which case, we're going full 'Don't look, Miriam.' So... let's hope I can keep it subdued."

[angrydurf]

Reaching out Phalanx ran his fingers over the wall and let out a short sad sigh before turning to face infamy, "Then we'll have died trying."  he said plainly and looked down remorsefully on the ancient agent of corruption.  "And that matters to me."  he shook his head, "I'm so sorry."  he intoned quietly voice full of honest pity, "You can't even begin to understand us can you?"  Phalanx met Infamy's eyes, "Trying matters."

 

As the fog lifted from his mind and Phalanx found himself among the the heroes once more he nodded slowly, "I'm sure you will be equal the task."  the tall paragon replied with a confident smile, "August Roman has bargained for great power but even now he has limits.  We can stop him."  His piece said Phalanx peered through the door trying to make out the scene beyond.

[Electra]

Paige stared at the door, almost as though she were looking through it, the entropic energy now seemingly content to coat her hands and arms like impossibly slick opera gloves. "He's in there," she murmured, "he's conscious, but the thing that is with him..." She trailed off, did her best to regroup. "It's like if you tried to imagine the goodness of God, and then you inverted it." She shuddered, then looked to Ray with a slight, rueful smile. "If you've got a blessing to give, I'll take it gladly," she told him. "We get our powers for such times as these, right?" One of Paige's hands reached automatically for Richard's before she pulled it back, not wanting to touch him with her tainted skin. "And I guess this isn't going to get any easier if we keep waiting." 

[alderwitch]

There were many prayers, in many languages, and it was safe to say that of the Abrahamic prayers, Ray knew all of them. But instead of picking a more esoteric verse, or one more typically used in Judiac blessings, he simply put one hand on Paige's brow and began as plans were made in a low, resonate tone, "Sh'ma Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Eḥad..." 

 

Choosing the Shema might have been because it was one of the most repeated prayers: even a largely non-practicing Jew would be familiar with the centerpiece prayer. Or, and more likely given Ray's own theological leanings, he chose it because it was the prayer most often recited in the face of death. It had a certain resonance in Ray's mind as it proceeded the Emet Vayatziv. The words were familiar, comforting, to the angel but all her could think was simply, please. Of all the prayers he'd ever uttered since his exile, Ray wanted this one to reach the ears of the Almighty.

 

The hand on Paige's brow was warm, and the only outward sign that the blessing had an effect was the light that traveled from the angel's palm into the telepath. "I do not think the answer to this lies in Roman's death, but his salvation." The angel said gravely. 

[Avenger Assembled]

Fast-Forward watched as the divine magic flowed into his wife's mind - feeling an absurd moment of spousal satisfaction amid all the stress of the world-devouring demon beyond the hospital room door. He didn't know Phalanx hardly at all, or the wizard Nick Cimiterie for that matter - but the news that his wife was the one among them who deserved a divine blessing came as no surprise to him. Paige had always been better than him - and most people he knew. "We beat demons before," he said, more for the sake of the younger heroes in the room than Paige, "this one's just bigger. Let's go kick his ass." 

But on the way in, he squeezed her hand, just for a moment. It had been a long, long time since they were both cocky kids, convinced of their own immortality. 

 

- 

 

Inside the hospital room, August Roman lay in his hospital bed, a pale shadow of wrinkled pale skin and bleached white hair, looking like death warmed over beneath the terrible light of the thing that had formed at his bedside. Roman fixed his eyes on the heroes, the only mobile things in his slack old face, and whispered in a cracked voice, "It's too late for me." 

 

The thing by the side of the bed turned to them, ash caked on a bloody face, ash and blood and bone that nonethless glowed with a white light of almost blasphemous purity. The cold, terrible beauty in its form and voice was like entering a shining, perfect cathedral blasphemed with human sacrifice and infernal markings. Ash was passing from its form to Roman's, his skin slowly but definitely beginning to turn grey and ashy to match the demon-angel before them. At the sight of the heroes, it spread raven-black wings and spoke - 

 

"You come among me at last. Phalanx, Hologram, Fast-Forward, Cimiterie - and the Renegade. We need not be adversaries. When Roman's body dies, I will be free to choose a new host. And then we can-" 

 

And Phalanx saw power enough to bathe the world in a fire that burned away hate and fear

And Renegade saw power enough to guard the soul of every human on Earth

And Nick Cimiterie saw power enough to end every unfairness in death 

And Hologram saw power enough to rip her father's soul from her nephew's body and restore her family name

And Fast-Forward saw power enough to make sure he would never see another hair on his wife's head turn grey 

 

 

[trollthumper]

He had been here before. 

 

Sitting on the Pale Horse. Not the one in his garage. The Pale Horse. Once, Nick Cimitiere had been in Heaven, asked to fulfill the duties of the Horseman of Death. To stop the first one - one who had fallen not to Hell, but stranger places still - from reclaiming the mantle and wreaking havoc on the structure of reality. He hadn't been alone, but it had been one hell of a responsibility. To sit astride the office of Death and oversee the process of a thousand lives. For one brief moment, he had the ability to ensure a balance of the books - an end to stupid accidents and random maladies, a world of near misses and through-and-throughs, a place where death had a purpose in every instance. 

 

But it couldn't last. 

 

Even after years doing this, he didn't know why death, as a principle, operated like this. The many hands holding the reins could explain that. The separation of the worthy, the unworthy, and the damned by Hel. The vigilance of Azrael. The cruel reaping of Thanatos. Everyone tried to make death what they wanted to be. Maybe, one day, he'd be one of those people.

 

But not today. Not like this. 

 

"Sorry, Roman," he said. "I've got a feeling we'd be going into the thread-cutting business as equal partners. And if there's one set of hands I don't want on that loom, it's yours." 

[angrydurf]

Phalanx recoiled at the image presented to his mind shaking his head to clear the offer, or threat from his hijacked vision.  With a deep breath he slowly drew himself up and declared boldly, "No."  Squaring himself against the thing at the old crime lords bedside the powerful young paragon shook his head solemnly, "We are here to put a stop to this, you'll not take another life today."  he looked to those at his sides, "This farce ends here and it ends now."  Phalanx intoned with confidence determination and took a step forward, "Stop this or we will be forced to stop you."  Even now his steely tone offered a final peaceful solution, "You can end this."  he said firmly, believing somewhere there might be a part of this creature that desired redemption while prepared to put a stop to it if given no choice.

[alderwitch]

Renegade shook off the temptation. He, after all, had seen Power in many and varied forms over the year. Tempting an angel was hard, after all, even one on an enforced sabbatical. "But are you going to pay my mortgage? My APR is bloody highway robbery, I tell you."

 

Despite the snark, he stepped forward once the vision had released its hold, kneeling down at the side of the aging Roman's bed. He took one greying hand in his own, the wings of fire and light folded back and tight along his bare back. He held no love for the villain on his death bed - nor did Ray have the power to halt death entirely should he so wish it. Especially not crippled and hampered as he was. With his fingertips against the thready pulse, that same warm glow that had bathed Hologram now rippled down Ray's skin and into the dying man. 

 

"I won't hold you up too long," he promised the old man, before he turned his gaze on the antithesis of Azarael, "Besides, we both know I'm not in your league anyways. I'm just a lowly out of favor scribe. Think you might have maybe underestimated the mortals, though. Your lot's fatal flaw."

[Electra]

Paige closed her eyes and murmured the blessing along with Ray, and for a few moments, the entropic energy that covered her body slid back under her skin and away, leaving her clean. Opening her eyes, she gave Ray a small smile. "I hope you're right." Turning to the door, she raised the hand joined with Richard's long enough to plant a quick kiss on his fingers, then walked in with everyone else. 

 

The sight of August Roman's withered form was shocking; even in old age he'd always had a vitality and strength to him that was entirely missing now. Whatever had happened to him, she wasn't at all sure he was wrong in his assessment of his own chances. But being negative wasn't going to help them now. She squeezed Richard's hand a little tighter as the demonic entity tempted all of them, feeling first the pain in her own heart at the thought of her nieces and nephews, left unprotected too long, unprotected and endangered still. Letting herself go back down a villainous road wasn't going to do a damn thing to help them now. She'd find another way. She felt Richard's anguish in all the unspoken fear that lay behind his superficial wish: the loss of his father to age and time, the passing of decades that had changed his self-perception from exciting young man to out-of-touch dad type, the fear that the slow march of time, so much slower for him than anyone else, would bring nothing but more pain and loss. And still she felt him reject the bargain, and she was proud, with no words ever having been spoken. 

 

"You have nothing for us," she told the demon. "And your time here is very limited. It'll be better for you if you leave now, while you can." In her mind, she reached out to the frail husk of villain on the bed, sending him hope and resolve to wash out the fear. ~It's not too late. You're August Roman, and you can't let this thing get the better of you. It's not too late!~

[Avenger Assembled]

Its offer rejected, the Angel rose in the air, power gathering around like a divine fist clenching. "Then you will be the first to fall at my Lord's-" The Angel of Death stopped dead in its tracks, mystic power fluttering in the air around it, whirling snakes of ash and fire frozen stock-still as if frozen-solid. Or rather - as if put on pause. 

 

"Oh, jeez!" said Fast-Forward, zipping around from where he'd run to hit the angel from behind, his face white with shock. "I can't believe it forgot about me! What a bastard!" Paigey - I will love you till the day I die, and that's maybe not today if we nail this guy! 

 

Inside his jacket pocket, he could feel the Tome of Theurgy burning hot, a sign of the profound magical energies he'd just touched. "Get it out of the building," he said, his voice urgent as he called to the other heroes. "That thing'll crush us like ants if we try and fight it up close!" He pointed to the observation window in the room, far enough away that broken glass wouldn't go cascading down on August Roman - or any of them, for that matter. 

[alderwitch]

Time was of the essence, paused though the demon might be it wouldn't last for very long, not with that sort of unholy power. Renegade straightened from where he'd bolstered Roman for hopefully just long enough. Reaching up towards the tattoos that writhed along his bare shoulders, the angel pulled brilliant chains from his own flesh and flung them outward towards the frozen demon. The speedster's plan was sound and Ray wasted no time in acting on it. 

 

Tightening around the false angel, Renegade ignored the way the chains popped and sizzled as holy and unholy energies came into direct content. The mystic chains moved under his direction, still connected to Renegades back and shoulders, and the blonde angel heaved with everything he had. 

 

"Keep him out," Ray's words were almost drowned under the crash as he flung the Angel of Death out the window in a shower of glass.

[angrydurf]

Phalanx took a reflexive half step forward to place himself between the creatures swirling power as it began its threat eyes narrowing as it froze in place, briefly surprised before he recognized the time manipulators handiwork.  "Not today."  he intoned firmly as the angels radiant chains enveloped the demon flinging it from the building to the parking lot below.  "We'll keep it in the lot, it shouldn't be able to do too much damage there if we keep the pressure on."  he shouted as he shot through the window after the plummeting demon.  He slammed into the deadly creature with earth shattering force as he unleashed a powerful blow to the demons midsection.  He hoped at least that with the fight true and well joined the entity could not strike as far as the citizens in the city beyond or further afield.

[trollthumper]

Nick didn't really have the means to get down from here. Well, he did, but they would likely end messily. His jacket did a good job of absorbing impact, but he never wanted to test it by skydiving without a parachute. Fortunately, with what he was planning, he didn't really need to. 

 

He walked to the window. Even at a distance, the thing that was - and might still be - August Roman burned like a black sun before his senses. Necrotic energy poured off of him like a geyser, causing the very essence of the world around him to roil. It would be a hell of a thing to try and control.

 

To cut off, on the other hand...

 

Nick lashed out, extending his will. He felt it reach towards the bulk of the Angel's power, trying to grasp on like grabbing a greased pole. As he tried to make contact, he poured his will into the shell, trying to contest the pretender's influence. 

 

"Sorry, Roman. If you want to play with fire, make sure you're not using gasoline for cologne." 

[Electra]

Hologram didn't move far from her initial position, even as the battle was joined in earnest, merely stepping aside so she was shielded by some of the rooms equipment. All her attention was focused on the frail and debilitated form of August Roman. Her gaze locked onto him, her eyes going from their normal soft brown to a lambent black as she moved her lips silently. ~No fear,~  she murmured inside August's head, spreading her influence like oil poured over water. ~No pain, no doubt. Hope and strength. So much strength. Enough to take your mind back. Enough to save yourself.~ Roman began to twitch a little, the corners of his mouth turning upwards in a small and ghastly smile. 

[Avenger Assembled]

Fast-Forward ran right out the window after the Angel of Death, already planning ahead to his next move. Careful not to get too close to the bizarre creature (which was now all ashy tentacles and bone, as if one of those multi-limbed Bible angels had been burned away but the ashes still remained), he ran around it in an intricate arcane pattern, tracing a complex mystical spell in the space of just a few seconds. He didn't get the chance to use the magic of the Tome of Theurgy much - the divine light of the Behenian stars generally burned far too bright for Freedom City. But here, with the big parking lot cleansed and an unholy monster that posed a threat to the entire world on the loose - he could. He ran and he ran, chanting faster than the mystics in the group could follow, until he finished some hundred feet from the whirling fiend. 

 

"...Sirius!" He finished, and a bolt of brilliant white light rocketed down from the sky, enveloping the mighty angel in a brilliant nova of searing stellar light. It was a palpable hit, though perhaps not as great as Phalanx's, leaving the ashy body of the creature smoldering and writhing as divine magic tore apart unholy flesh. Richard felt a surge of pride - and then a sudden terror as one of those tentacles lashed out, impossibly fast, and enveloped him before he could evade it! Too slow! he thought in a moment of sick panic before thinking desperately in Paige's direction I love you, don't worry, just get it-

 

The creature picked him up and smashed him directly into the concrete, head-first. It should have been a fatal blow - but the Tome of Theurgy, still in Richard's hands, put out a faint glowing sphere of protective magical energy, the wards that protected the book itself from damage guarding the man as well. He was hurt, rolling away and bleeding, but what should have instantly snapped his neck had been merely a serious blow. 

[alderwitch]

Renegade had been in movement the moment that the entity had gone flying through the window, following after the faster speedsters with grim intent. Though he'd been wracking his brain for what spell might spend this monstrosity out of this realm and back where it belonged, the wet crack of skull against stone caught his attention. In a blur of fiery wings and a burst of speed that Renegade hadn't thought his fleshy prison possessed; the angel dove towards the fallen hero. That he was moving, that was good, but they needed everyone in this fight; and they didn't need Hologram distracted from her battle above. 

 

Renegade's wings mantled out as he landed hard next to the speedster and he reached out carefully. The enochian tattoos flared to life along his tattooed skin and although the hands were very gentle on Fast-Forward's battered flesh, the rush of energy that flowed from angel to man was almost searing in its intensity and for a moment superimposed over the blonde man was the angel bound inside his body; burning and bright and ancient.

 

Renegade was well aware that he was pushing the tattoos tapping into his divine energy to the utmost limits and there would probably be a price to pay for this day - if he survived it at all. "// Mend //," the creature commanded Fast-Forward's body in its native language; and it did.

[angrydurf]

Landing just beyond the dark angel after his strike Phalanx turned just in time to see the light of the speedsters ritual unleash its fury on the creature, and the barely fazed entities brutal rejoinder.  They couldn't last long against that kind of power, even with the Angel on their own side countering where he could.  They had to end this and end it before the creature wore them down enough to escape or finish what it had started with Roman.

 

Bounding to cut off any attempts to escape Phalanx surged forward with a reckless swing hoping to at least keep the creature focused on him as the blow swung wide, "You won't stop us."  the tall paragon intoned firmly, "You don't scare us."  

[trollthumper]

It was time for Nick to consider his options. Up here, he was safe... but no one else was up here anymore. It would take some effort to get outside and to the ground, and while the jacket offered him a lot of protection from the blunt forces of this world, he was still fairly squishy underneath. It wasn't cowardice; it was practicality. But "practical" left the fact that, if that thing struck again, someone would need help to keep the reaper at bay. And he couldn't do that from up here.

 

It took a small incantation to shift some of his magic into his jacket. But as he leapt from the window, gravity didn't seem like such a harsh mistress. He needed to drag his fingers against the wall to maintain some proper decline - which resulted in some awful scrapes - but as he touched down on the pavement, he was glad he was doing so without any breaks. He turned his attention towards the hideous undead bulk in the middle of the lot, once again trying to cut its legs out from under it. 

 

"This isn't yours to use. Not yours to command. Not yours to decide." 

[Avenger Assembled]

Her pink Cyndi Lauper hair ruffling in the breeze, Paige's studded denim jacket kept her warm as she stepped inside the room that lay at the innermost sanctuary of August Roman's mind. 

 

It was a grim scene. The room was like a hospital room, but one pulled from a time even before her birth, with a steel-frame bed, bedpan beside it, radiator against the wall, and other furnishings that belonged to a bygone age. The walls were covered with images, some of which she knew, some of which she didn't - superheroes whose names she didn't recall, villains and criminals and civilians too, Saturnalia Roman and a figure she distinctly recognized as a younger Anna Cline, the pictures themselves (like clippings from a magazine) smeared with filth and dirt. At the very center of the far wall, directly opposite the bed, was a clear, perfect image of the Centurion as the Man of Adamant had looked just before his death in the early 1990s. That image was perfectly clean. 

 

August Roman lay on the bed, withered and pained, but with his eyes burning as he stared up at Paige. His mental voice had far more power than his physical one. "There is nothing left for me. Why should I help you?" Outside the windows of the room, Paige could see the swirling ashy clouds of the Angel of Death. 

 

- 

 

Fast-Forward was hurt - he tasted blood in his mouth and the aches and scrapes of torn skin and bruises across his body where he'd been thrown headfirst into the concrete - but thanks to the protection of his little charm, he was still alive. And still in the fight. "You shouldn't have let go, asshole!" he yelled at the Angel of Death, running around the now shattered parking lot with blinding speed, his feet tracing complicated geometric patterns on the ground that glowed with an arcane light that should have taken hours to summon. He passed Renegade on the way and felt the healing magic wash over him and smiled, feeling a renewed sense of confidence along with the renewed sensation in his body. Maybe they had this guy licked yet! When he'd finished his spell, he didn't stop to look behind him - instead he ran all the way, taking shelter behind the ground floor of the hospice as a bolt of lightning came streaking down from the sky and blasted the Angel of Death square in the center of the back! 

 

But the blast had little effect - except to outrage the monster! "Your fear is irrelevant," it informed Phalanx, "only your deaths matter!" And with that, fiery chains erupted from, no, _through_ the parking lot as like the fingers of Hell itself, lashing upwards to grab and rip at even super-tough flesh. The creature, now flying impossibly fast, erupted past the forest of burning chains and grabbed Phalanx by the sides of the head, bony claws digging deep right through his super-tough flesh, and squeezed with impossible force! 

 

[alderwitch]

"Let. The boy. GO." Ray's voice echoed into registers that the human voice was not meant to drop into. He stood up from his crouch and pivoted. There were no spells, no incantations, no magic swirling through his tattoos as his fist flew through the air. Angels were not the sort of creatures easily regressed to their primal natures and even for angels, Ray was a creature of civilization; of knowledge and learning. But at his core, he had been made for point and purpose. To protect humanity from things like this. 

 

As he struck the Angel of Death, the flaming wings on his back ghosted out, superimposed in multiple as the creature Ray had been flexed against its mortal shell. When his fist struck the creatures back, light rippled out from the impact of Ray's fist. Ray felt that blow echo back up his arm, making even his teeth rattle as his energy collided with its antithesis.