Saturday, February 1, 2014

Page 544

They’d crossed the border into Rendon a while ago, and Roman could see the edge of the forest, giving way to flat grasslands that extended all the way into the horizon. He stuck close to the plane as it landed, prepared to help in case the unideal terrain caused something to go horribly awry, but to the pilot’s credit, nothing did.

Roman touched down as well, choosing to simply stand still while his body fixed itself. There was nothing that took a great amount of time to regenerate--just some snapped bones, torn muscles, and likely a bit of internal hemorrhaging. All things he could more or less shrug off. He would certainly feel it later, though.

Hanjir didn’t even bother to turn off the engines. He pulled the door open and jumped out into the grass, wasting no time in throwing another wave of destruction.

It wasn’t exactly slow, but it certainly wasn’t fast enough to hit Roman. He propelled himself out of the way, bounding across the ground in leaping strides. Hanjir tried to cut him off, but Roman just zagged away from the next attack, getting Hanjir to pursue him. He needed the Abolisher to move away from the plane so that he could capitalize on the open environment as much as possible.

Roman circled around Hanjir and engulfed the man in an invisible cage of crushing pressure. More precisely, it was a spherical, inward-facing shock wave, the very same thing he had once used to temporarily suppress an explosion from Desmond.

Hanjir gave it little consideration, however, and merely punched through. He attacked again, forcing Roman left.

Roman readied his fire. The trick of it was to set his own flesh ablaze. By invigorating particles at a concentrated point, natural heat would increase, dry out his skin, and subsequently ignite it. He found it easiest to make a tiny flame and help it spread, rather than trying to set his whole hand alight at once. And after the flames grew large enough, he could project them out with a shock wave, effectively shooting fire at the enemy.