Page 864

Sabas was certainly getting his share of hits in, but Asad was hardly budging at all. Even when a titanium fist--no doubt with enhanced strength behind it--connected with his bare skull, the Lord Najir barely even flinched. But it also made something else happen.

With each blow that Asad received, his tattoos flashed golden yellow, lighting up for an instant and then returning to black just as quickly. Hector wasn’t sure what he was seeing, but he didn’t get the chance for further observation.

‘She’s breaking out,’ warned Garovel, accompanied by the sound of cracking glass.

Hector went to work on a gigantic slab of iron high above Silvia’s head. He could see that Silvia had coated herself in cesium, which seemed to be reacting with and corroding the glass; and after a few more moments, the cracks grew, and she was finally able to break herself out of Asad’s glass, at the cost of having melted much of her skin via her own cesium.

At the very second she was free, the iron slab was right there to greet her. Having started its fall at only about eighty meters above the ground, Hector knew from his own practical studies that it didn’t have nearly enough altitude to achieve its terminal velocity.

But that didn’t mean it wouldn’t hurt.

The slab crushed her into the pavement. The impact force kicked up chunks of road all around the slab and sent them reeling into vehicles and buildings, even right past Hector.

‘Nicely done,’ said Garovel.

And Hector waited, wondering if that was really enough to keep the woman down. He seriously doubted it, though it did seem to have bought them some more time.

Jada walked up from behind. She didn’t say anything and instead offered him a nod of approval.

Asad seemed to be finishing up. He carried a helpless reaper in one hand while in the midst of extracting the other from Sabas’ glass-encased body. Fidel had been skewered in a dozen different places and no longer seemed to be regenerating, perhaps because his pan-forma had been forcibly ended. Hector was immensely curious how Asad had accomplished that and so paid close attention to him trying to extract Sabas’ reaper, but Sabas appeared to be making it impossible. Even Asad couldn’t pierce the man’s titanium flesh, which Hector intuited to be a necessary step in the procedure.