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It was a long-held dream, one that he'd gone back and forth on over the last twenty or so years. Sometimes, it seemed entirely achievable. Other times, he chastised himself for not staying focused on more realistic goals.

Just creating the prototype suit had been so incredibly laborious. And it still wasn't even done. Rather, it felt like a constant project, always tweaking, always refining. A slow crawl toward strength.

He may have achieved victory over Ivan, but he knew only too well how close it had been. That was a victory with an asterisk next to it.

Obviously, not every suit needed to be as powerful as this one, but at the end of the day, what was more important? Creating the Mudarra'un or continuing to improve upon the prototype?

Ideally, he would be able to do both. Pragmatically, he knew that to be impossible.

He had hoped that perhaps this Forge would be able to change that, but now he was more uncertain than ever about that possibility. Given its apparent age, there was absolutely zero chance that the creator had intended for it to be used on machinery.

That might be a problem.

Or it might not.

And worrying about it was making his stomach turn.

He took a moment to steady his mind, to quell his emotions. That's all anxiety was, ultimately. An emotion. A persistent one, perhaps, but an emotion, nonetheless.

First and foremost, he was a man of rationality. To calmly assess every situation, to think everything through as much as time allowed--that was the ideal that he had always striven to achieve.

That was another lesson that he had taken from Dolf--though not by Dolf's design. That man, in so very many ways, had been the furthest thing from rational. True, he did have his moments of it--and Abbas had been supremely relieved whenever they occurred--but those who knew Dolf would have certainly characterized his life as one of constant, fiery passion.

Until it had been snuffed out, that was.