129 CXXIX. | 'O, guardian of the Sun...!'

After receiving the distress call from Raml'hahl, he'd come to assess the situation personally. It was certainly not proper for the presiding head of the Qal'majilis to attend such a matter alone, but he could not abide waiting for everyone to catch up. In terms of first responders, none in Sair would best him, save perhaps Rayen Merlo, but by all accounts, that woman was quite possibly a traitor and now captive of the Vanguard.

And now that he'd seen the devastation--not just in Raml'hahl but all across Moaban--his mood had only worsened. The fact that he now sensed this overwhelming soul power was just icing on the cake, really.

Over the years, he and Haqq had tested the suit as intensely and exhaustively as they possibly could. In theory, he was prepared, but he held no illusions about it. No simulation could match a real fight with one of Eleg's juggernauts.

The Lord Abbas Saqqaf tapped his index finger and thumb together, holding them there for a second, and the suit answered him. Two drones deployed out of the shoulder mounts and began following closely behind him as the fusion-propulsion jets on his back carried him across the sky. The drones couldn't break the sound barrier under their own power like his suit could, but they could still take advantage of the small draft he created in his wake.

'Time until the others catch up?' thought Abbas in Valgan.

'You're about eighty minutes ahead of everyone,' said Worwal from all the way back in Kuros.

The number surprised him, somewhat. The suit was performing very well. Almost too well. Unless this fight somehow turned into siege warfare, eighty minutes was far too long to attempt holding out for reinforcements.

But that was fine. With all the trouble and foul rumors about Calthos, Abbas had left the Golden Fort knowing that he might meet one of Abolish's strongest today.

Already, he could see the Salesman in great detail. The ocular replacements were doing their job. Someone had gotten a good hit in, judging by the man's half-eaten face and smote clothing. And with the onboard computer drilled directly into his thalamus and cerebral cortex, he was able to get an easy targeting lock from more than two miles off.

Abbas tapped his little finger to his thumb and held it there. The suit responded by detaching the front chest piece, which immediately fell off behind him. But it would catch up soon enough. Once it transformed itself and repositioned its inner components, it would become a cruise missile, strengthened by his own soul.

The Salesman could sense him now, too, it seemed. Abbas saw him looking up in his direction.

Abbas veered up higher and let his twin drones go in first. Soul-strengthened bullets rained down on the Salesman from their customized submachine guns as they zig-zagged toward him. They didn't carry much ammunition, but that didn't matter, because their real purpose was only to serve as a distraction while trying to get in close and self-detonate.

Ivan didn't allow the latter to happen. Both drones exploded inside a blue cage before they got anywhere near him.

This was also as expected.

The suit's shoulder mounts began regenerating. In forty-five seconds, Abbas would have both drones back, complete with full ammunition and detonators.

It was fortunate that he'd found the Salesman all the way out here in these empty sand dunes. It meant he didn't have to worry about the citizens of Moaban. Because there would be no holding back in this fight.

First, he required his soul-empowered smokescreen. If the Salesman landed a solid hit, Abbas didn't know if even this suit would be able to withstand it. So that was what he'd been doing while Ivan was occupied with the drones. He'd only gained enough time to create a relatively small cloud to conceal himself within, but it would have to serve until--

In a blink, the cloud was gone, dissipated into nothingness. Abbas didn't get the opportunity to question it, either, as his sensors warned him of the Salesman's approach from below.

Abbas made two fists, and the suit answered. The jets bolted him straight up, tearing higher into the sky at maximized acceleration.

Then came the system alerts. Every component of the suit was experiencing rapid power loss and structural degradation.

It was that man's power, Abbas knew. The Salesman's control over atomic interactions meant that he could quite literally suck the energy out of anything.

Well. Almost anything.

Antimatter was another story.

Abbas didn't typically use his ability in combat. In fact, he didn't typically participate in combat. The Sunsmith had earned his name from the technological support he provided his more battle-oriented comrades. But in the end, his support wasn't enough to save any of them. In the end, Abbas outlived them all. Without ever holding such ambitions, he'd become the eldest Sandlord--and indeed, the eldest servant in all of Sair. Even Octavia Redwater was younger by a good thirty years or so.

And as such, he'd been working to change that part of himself. Because he had to. For the sake of his homeland, he had to.

Integration was not inherently powerful. Abbas had learned that lesson very early. But it did help him keep his brethren at the forefront of technological advancement.

As such, the most valuable--or at least, most difficult--piece of technology that he currently possessed was the fusion-propulsion system that powered the jets on his back, calves, and upper arms. Six, they numbered in total, and their thrust-to-weight ratio was unrivaled by anything else he'd ever made--probably, even, by any other currently existing technology.

But that was only half of it.

Their real secret--one Abbas hadn't even shared with Haqq--was their ability to create antimatter particles. He'd gotten the idea from the still-fairly-recent discovery that antimatter could be created by lightning storms. Needless to say, it was still an emerging technology, and unfortunately, even these jets couldn't withstand the combustion force that resulted from it. They would regenerate, but the antiparticles would interfere and slow the process to a crawl. Functionally speaking, that meant he had six and only six jets to work with.

Six chances to defeat the Salesman of Death, in other words.

And he had to use one right now, or the fight would already be over. He chose the one on his left calf. The whole section of the suit up to the knee ejected itself, leaving only its thin underlayer of rubber and cotton behind.

It detonated less than a second after ejection, but Abbas couldn't just leave it at that. He had to make a hard U-turn and catch the explosion's aftermath. Wind and sky and scorching sunlight all screamed past his vision as he curved back around.

He also needed to account for the missing jet. He could actually use the imbalance it created by working it into the U-turn, but as his course straightened out again, he had to adjust his right leg with delicate precision.

And then, of course, there was still the Salesman to account for. A head-on collision with the man was imminent.

He couldn't see the Salesman's translucent ability against the blue sky, but he could certainly feel it. The draining effect. Even this suit wouldn't be able to withstand it for long.

But Abbas had counted the seconds correctly. His cruise missile arrived in time to flank the Salesman for him. Ivan noticed it too late, only capable of giving the warhead a look of bug-eyed anger before impact.

The force of the explosion might have knocked Abbas off course if not for the suit's automated impact mitigation system. Far quicker than Abbas himself could have reacted, the suit calculated the path of least resistance and corrected his course for him in order to incur as little turbulence as possible. This meant that, rather than curving out and away from the explosion, the suit dove headfirst into it, keeping his body perpendicular to the blast's point of origin, like an arrow piercing a balloon.

He came through it, no worse for wear, and the Salesman was no longer in the way. Abbas knew that he only had precious few moments to press this fleeting advantage. He rocketed toward the smoke and radiation and lingering antiparticles of his expended jet and let his suit absorb their effects.

The result, as expected, was more explosions. But these were only physical, and his suit had soul-strengthening on its side. The antiparticle effects were not going to last long as they tried in vain to collide with their oppositely charged counterparts, so Abbas had to act immediately, even while wreathed in subatomic annihilation.

He curved around and pushed through the debris of his cruise missile. He saw the Salesman, a half-missing husk tumbling through the air. One might be forgiven for thinking that the man was no longer a threat in such a state, but Abbas knew better. This job was not yet done.

The gap between them closed within seconds, and Abbas reached out to grab him.

Ivan saw him. Half his face was gone. Only one eye, a few teeth, burned muscles and shattered bones remained. But the man was still able to fight back.

Abbas felt it. The sudden crushing weight all around him. Even with the antiparticles protecting him, a sea of pressure was trying to swallow him. And the debilitating effects, too. He could still feel them as well. Weakening his grip, blurring his vision, numbing his mind, sucking the very breath out of his lungs--the very life out of his body.

But he reached him. Abbas' armored hand found its target, and the suit still had enough power to clamp down on Ivan's neck. His other hand arrived to help, and suddenly he had the leverage he needed. He didn't need to think. His hands reacted on their own and tore the rest of the Salesman's head off his shoulders.

Immediately, the pressure lessened, and Abbas could sense himself again. His hands were still going to work, tearing the rest of the smote flesh from Ivan's head, leaving only the bloody-and-hairy skull with the still-living brain inside.

Abbas had to consciously stop them.

He lingered there in the air, floating in place, still struggling to come back to himself. A few more blinks and he realized.

He'd won. The Salesman was incapacitated.

He almost couldn't believe it. Theory was one thing, but to think that it had actually worked...

His whole body was trembling.

'...I have captured the Salesman,' Abbas reported in Valgan.

There came a long silence. Or at least, he thought there did. It might've been that he just didn't catch what Worwal said.

'Abbas...' That seemed to be all the reaper had to say.

The suit was warning him about a dozen different things, Abbas abruptly realized. He began his descent, having no real choice in the matter, and just tried to focus on not crashing. He managed it well enough, but the suit buckled around him, and he toppled down the side of a sand dune.

He could hardly breathe or feel any of his limbs, and these were problems, because his reaper wasn't around to invoke the regeneration. He ejected the chest piece in order to alleviate some of the pressure on his lungs. It felt like he'd broken a rib or two, though he wasn't sure at which point that might've happened. His grip had grown weak as well, and the Salesman's skull slipped out of his hands and rolled to the bottom of the dune.

Abbas tried to stand back up but found he could barely even crawl. The Salesman's ability had taken an even larger toll on both the suit and his own body than he'd realized.

He had to hurry, though. It was true that without a body, the Salesman had no conduit through which to channel the ability from his brain, but there was still the matter of severing communication. So long as Ivan's brain remained unfrozen, he would still be able to talk to his reaper.

Abbas was kicking himself for not freezing it as soon as he'd gotten his hands on it. Sure, it was a surprising victory, but that didn't excuse such amateurish work. He'd acted like he'd never captured an enemy combatant before. He grumbled Valgan curses into the sand as he crawled after the skull.

"Are you okay?!" came a sudden voice.

Abbas twitched. Who was that? There shouldn't have been anyone else out here. He wanted to check the suit's sensors, but they were down for the count, too.

Abbas reached the skull again, but he could hear stomping footsteps in the sand now. He extended all the fingers of his right hand and then touched them all together in unison.

The suit did not respond.

He tried the motion again.

Still nothing.

"Sir, can you hear me?!" The footsteps were louder. And the voice was speaking Mohssian, too, Abbas noticed.

He ignored it, though, and tried to run system diagnostics, but the information streaming into his brain was garbled and irritating, so he turned it back off. He would have to work on some kind of durability improvements for that feature, he decided.

Then he saw the dark figure appearing over the rise, kicking up sand as he rushed closer. "Sir, are you--?!" His words cut off as he saw Abbas staring right at him. A young boy, it seemed to be.

But appearances were not reliable. Abbas' grip on the skull tightened. "Identify yourself," he said in Mohssian. It had been a while since he'd needed to speak this language.

"Ah--I'm Hector Goffe. I'm--er--I'm a friend of Lord Asad. Are you--? "

"What are you doing out here?"

"Ah... oh... er, it's a long story. Do you, er--do you need help standing?"

"Stay where you are," Abbas said with as much authority as he could muster. "Answer my question." He could barely even move, at the moment, but this Hector didn't need to know that yet.

"Ah, well... I was... uh... I was trying to get the Salesman to leave without killing anyone else."

"...You were what?"

"I was trying to trick him. And it was... sort of working. But, uh, I'm pretty sure he would've hunted me down and killed me later. So, ah, th-thank you for showing up when you did. That was incredible."

This child was tricking the Salesman of Death? Abbas didn't quite understand.

"Oh," said Hector. "I should tell you, uh. Abolish is, er--they're using invisible soldiers. To harass your people. Trying to spread your forces thin."

Abbas just kind of squinted at him.

The boy trudged onward through explanations, though he seemed to grow increasingly worse at it. Mercifully, however, the boy's apparent reaper arrived, and things began to make a little more sense to Abbas. Hector pulled out a familiar crimson shard, and Garovel clarified numerous details, particularly about hailing from Atreya, as well as meeting Haqq, Asad, and... Rasalased?

Admittedly, that part was still rather confusing, but Abbas at least knew that there were more pressing matters to attend to right now.

He allowed Hector to assist him in finally freezing Ivan's skull so as to cease all brain activity. To do so meant venting one of the suit's supercoolant packs, but that was fine. In its current state, the suit wasn't about to be flying anywhere. The lingering effects of Ivan's power would take a few days to wear off, at the very least. Perhaps longer.

Hector had to help Abbas walk. The boy seemed to be having trouble using his own ability. Garovel said it was probably because of something Rasalased had done, but Abbas was too exhausted to ask for clarification on that subject, too.

Together, they dragged themselves back toward Moaban at a pace that would have rivaled a very determined tortoise.

'By the way,' said Garovel during the intervening period, 'I am terribly impressed that you were able to achieve victory over the Salesman of Death. As far as feats go, that is not one that the world is likely to forget anytime soon. Congratulations, Sunsmith.'

And maybe it was because he felt so battered and weak, but for whatever reason, Abbas wasn't in the mood to let such unwarranted praise stand.

"The only reason I won was because I took him by surprise," Abbas said. "His power could have countered mine quite easily, if he had known what he was facing."

Indeed, if that fight had not ended so quickly, Ivan would have surely won, Abbas knew. The Salesman would have soon figured out that Abbas was using antimatter against him. And sadly, antiparticles did not truly nullify the Salesman's control over weak interaction--they only required Ivan to use his power differently.

Naturally, this would become a problem if the Salesman was ever freed. And it was probably just a matter of time until someone came to Sair in order to do exactly that, Abbas figured.