The Ancient flew down into the fog.
One.
Two.
Three.
No one looked at the transmitted images; those were being recorded, could be gone over at will.
Four.
Five.
Antonicus should’ve emerged by now.
“He’s dead,” Neha said, not coldly but with the conviction of belief.
An arm erupted out of the fog, the fingers locked into a tight fist. It was followed by a head, then a torso, then wings, and suddenly, Antonicus hovered over the spot where he’d gone in. Raphael’s gut clenched against the hard punch of relief. If the Ancient could survive this, they had a chance against Lijuan if—when—she made war on the world.
Antonicus wobbled, his wings dipping this way then that.
“What is he doing?” Michaela asked, but Raphael was already lifting off.
Stay here, he told the others. He flew on wings of white fire across the short distance.
Antonicus was attempting to fly toward him, but his wings were listing heavily and he was halfway back inside the fog when Raphael reached him. Grabbing his visible arm, Raphael fought to stop Antonicus’s momentum from dragging them both down into the darkness.
44
Raphael’s arm jerked in his shoulder socket, and then he had control, Antonicus’s weight less than he’d expected. Raphael hauled him out. The Ancient’s face was skeletal, his eyes glistening orbs infected with lines of liquid black.
Raphael had been hit by the same energy once, had gone blind from it before the wildfire forced it out. Seeing Antonicus’s wings crumple, he shifted his hold so the other archangel was in his arms.
He was light. So light. His clothes hung off his frame, his dark brown hair thinning in the wind before Raphael’s eyes. “Hold on.”
The archangels gathered on the roof parted for them. Raphael landed in the center, placing Antonicus on a plush blue rug Neha must’ve had brought up. Kneeling down beside the other archangel, he placed his hand on Antonicus’s chest and said, “I am going to attempt to fight this infection.” He thrust wildfire into the Ancient.
Antonicus’s eyes burst with light from within before the black retreated to reveal the gray of his irises. “Death,” the injured archangel rasped. “It is pure death.”
The liquid black began to creep again. Raphael pulsed more wildfire into his system; Antonicus clutched at his hand as the bolt arced through his body. His eyes cleared once more.
“What did you see below the fog?” Neha asked from the fallen angel’s other side. “The recorded images are blurred by severe movement.” She closed her hand over Antonicus’s.
Raphael noted the contact, noted also that the infection—or whatever this was—didn’t seem to be crossing over. At the same instant, he saw that Antonicus’s wings were turning black from the edges in. The Ancient’s primaries began to curl inward. One detached to lie on the rug. Favashi had shown similar symptoms, though she hadn’t been as far along. He calculated rapidly as Antonicus began to speak.
“No life. No lights,” he rasped. “Death.” Liquid black crawled over his irises.
“Raphael.” Caliane’s hand on his shoulder.
Raphael spoke directly to Antonicus. “I could kill you. The wildfire is a blunt weapon designed to attack Lijuan’s power and you’re riddled with it.”
“It is killing me anyway.” Antonicus coughed and what came out was a thick black slime—his insides being liquefied in front of them.
Raphael thrust two more bolts of wildfire into the Ancient. The second surge crackled all over him in a violence of white-gold and electric blue, clearing his eyes and putting a shine back in his skin, and for a moment, Raphael thought they had defeated Lijuan’s brand of death.
Then the signs of Lijuan’s poisonous power surged back faster and more virulent than ever. It covered his irises, ran through his skin, blazed across his wings. Further jolts of wildfire had no effect.
Titus crouched by Antonicus’s head and put a hand on his shoulder in a grip that told the archangel he wasn’t alone. Raphael held on to Antonicus’s left hand as Neha held on to his right. The others all crouched down, their wings trailing on the dusty roof, and together, they watched the final breaths of an archangel who had lived millennia, only to be brought down by a death that was beyond anything this world had ever seen.
“He is gone,” Caliane murmured when Antonicus’s breath had ended, no sign of a heart beating in his chest, and his skin holding a putrid greenish cast. It was a decaying corpse that lay before them in place of a powerful Ancient who had blazed with life and arrogance only an hour ago.
“We must burn him—we do not know what he carries in his blood.” Neha’s words might’ve been harsh, but it was with a gentle touch that she reached out to close the Ancient’s staring eyes.
“Are we sure?” A soft question from Michaela, who had understandably kept her distance. “We do not need to breathe or have beating hearts to live.”
They all considered that. In front of them, the liquefaction process seemed to have stopped at the moment of Antonicus’s final breath. His wings were shreds of rotted tendon and blackened feathers, his chest sunken inward, but nothing new had been lost since his apparent death. Either the process had halted now there was no living flesh on which the infection could feast, or the archangel was somehow fighting back.
“We cannot have this body in any of our territories,” Titus said. “It pains me to reject a warrior so courageous, but we must care for our people. We cannot bring in a source of infection where it may leach from his body to poison the soil.”
Raphael thought of Naasir, of the ice and snow where he’d been born. “There are islands in the Antarctic ice that are peopled by no one. They are also small enough that we can erect high fences around and above our chosen island to stop animals from coming in and spreading any infection.”
“We will bury him deep,” Elijah murmured. “We have enough power to dig a hole so far into the earth that only a living archangel will be able to force his way out.”
Raphael and Titus began to roll Antonicus’s body up in the rug on which he’d died, their faces solemn and their actions as respectful as they could make them.
“I will contact one of my generals to find large plastic sheeting and tape,” Neha said, and went down to pick up the items herself, not wanting anyone less powerful than an archangel near the corpse. On her return, they sealed the rolled-up carpet in the sheeting, then locked it tight with the tape.
Three times.
No one argued or stated it was overkill. “I will carry him,” Raphael said afterward. “I am the only one who has any kind of an immunity.” That Neha and Titus had touched Antonicus in his dying moments was a testament to their heart and courage.