The Zombie Knight

With breath in his lungs and air all around him for his voice to carry, Hector spoke his first question. "Who are you?"

'A reasonable thing to ask, but perhaps we should both avoid answering that.'

What the--? Impulsively, Hector wanted to ask why, but then he took a moment to mull it over. This voice didn't wish to identify itself? Why might that be? One reason came immediately to mind.

Perhaps the voice belonged to someone with a lot of enemies, and they feared that Hector might unknowingly be one. So they were trying to be cautious in their approach.

Maybe.

He could still press a little more before just assuming that, he supposed. "Why? It's impolite not to introduce yourself, you know."

'Rudeness is the least of your concerns, I should think. Unless I am mistaken and you came to be in this place intentionally?'

"Well, let's just say I'm wary of strangers no matter where I go." It didn't help that he still couldn't see. As far as the Scarf was telling him, there were no physical bodies other than himself within this air bubble, so where exactly was this voice coming from? It felt very familiar to a reaper's voice in the way that it spoke directly into his mind, but it wasn't quite the same, either.

It felt more like a Sparrow's telepathic voice, though he wasn't sure.

"I never do look for fights," said Hector, "but they always seem to look for me."

'Hah. A problem I know well. Tell me, is this your first time in a Lower Realm?'

Is that what these things were called? Hmm. Hector didn't see any benefit in answering his question, though.

Wait, his? Yeah. The voice seemed masculine, somehow.

At his persistent silence, the voice continued on, 'Well, if it IS your first time, then allow me to proffer advice. As a general rule, anyone you meet in these places is not to be trifled with. I do not know your heart, but if it is that of a prankster or wicked man, then you should first be aware that any enemy you decide to make here will be no minor adversary.'

Huh. Sounded like Hector's guess had been right on the money. "Thanks for the warning."

So he spent even more time touching it up. And when he was finally satisfied with all of his practical concerns, he was left to consider his aesthetic ones. Should he add some embossed flourishes? Some tracing lines around the edges, maybe? A filigree ornamentation for the breastplate?

None of that felt particularly important, and given how goddamn stubborn the material had now become, even a simple flourish would likely take several extra passes in order to get right.

Ultimately, he decided against it. If he wanted to add fancy shit, he could try some other time. And if he couldn't work with it anymore once he got back to the real world, then so be it. He could always just add an extra layer of iron on top for that kind of thing.

So he finally allowed himself to relax. That was certainly tiring.

But he was wearing a full suit of armor now, and it sure was nice. It definitely wasn't vacuum sealed or anything like that, but when he sank to the ground and lay down on his back, Hector just started to feel... better.

Thus far, this place had felt like it was slowly sapping his strength, probably due to the combination of no oxygen and a deteriorating physical body. But now, in this armor, things were different. It would've been a stretch to say that he was recovering, but he at least felt stable. Comfortable.

Protected.

Then again, maybe that was just the afterglow of finishing a difficult project. The feeling of accomplishment sure was pleasant. He wanted to bask in it for a while longer.

He took a long, deep breath as he tried to regather his thoughts. He needed to get back to--

Wait a minute, what?

His eyes opened, but there was nothing to see. Only blackness. He took another breath, now even more confused.

The Scarf of Armordiin. He'd been wearing it the whole time he'd been here, but he'd nearly forgotten about it, since it wasn't giving him any information.

Until now.

He could sense it. A pocket of air enveloped him, a bubble no bigger than a closet. When had that happened? His ears popped, too, intensely though not painfully.

This wasn't the work of his armor, right? That would make no sense. And the bubble went beyond the suit, so--

'Pardon me,' arrived an unfamiliar voice. 'This atmosphere is helpful to you, no? If not, I can take it back.'

As he worked, he lost track of time. His focus was exclusively on the task. Helmet. Gorget. Pauldrons. Breastplate. Each piece needed refinement upon refinement. Rerebraces. Couters. Gauntlets. Faulds. Tasset. It was a good thing he had already spent so much time working on his normal iron armor and all its variants. Culet. Cuisses. Poleyns. Greaves. Lames. He had a perfect image of every piece in his mind.

It was just a matter of passing over each one, again and again and again. Until they were all done.

And it needed to be perfect, Hector felt. He didn't know if he would get the opportunity to do this again. If he made a mistake now, it might just last forever.

No pressure, though, right?

At length, he finally began to feel like it was almost done. The shapes were all correct, at least. So with his eyes still closed, he set about trying to link them all together. And the best way to do that was put them on.

But after all that work, he was a bit worried that annihilating and rematerializing them onto his body would somehow go awry. What if they resisted even being dematerialized. Or what if they wouldn't rematerialize correctly?

Shit. No helping it, though. The entire goal was to be able to materialize the armor as needed. If that didn't work, then it was better to know now, he supposed.

He would've taken a nervous breath if he could.

He annihilated the gorget. That was the best place to start, he felt. Then he tried to rematerialize it around his neck.

It appeared. He felt it there. Exactly as intended.

Oh, thank fuck. That was one worry down.

He annihilated all the rest and began donning them, making to test all the links. And it was a good thing he did, because they needed fixing. At this point, his iron had become quite comfortable to wear and even quite easy to move in, and he intended for the same to be true with this stuff.

Every link, every connector, every interlocking piece was refined further. Until they were all perfect. They had to be. If they weren't, then both mobility and resilience would be compromised. Maybe in only minor ways, but if this suit was going to be the difference between life and death, then Hector didn't think anything about it right now could be considered minor.

Even now, however, the metal was reluctant to listen to him. It melted back down, but only very slowly. Painfully slowly.

It was as if it had gotten too comfortable with its solid form and resented being made gooey again.

How weird. He had a sneaking suspicion that in the real world, it wouldn't listen to him at all. Maybe it was only malleable in this place.

Hmm. If that was the case, then he needed to make his time here count.

Which was a strange thing to think, he knew. He still had no real plan for escaping, other than causing a big ruckus.

But that was beside the point. He focused.

If he wanted it to become armor, then he needed to reshape it.

To reforge it.

Because that was what this process was starting to feel like. Difficult and slow, requiring full concentration. Thankfully, he could sense the full shape and volume of the goo in his mind now, giving him a clear, three-dimensional picture of it to work with. But actually making it do what he wanted was still so hard.

After a while, he managed to find a kind of rhythm. A grinding rhythm, but a rhythm, nonetheless.

He had to strain his mind, at max intensity, in short and sharp bursts. Not unlike hitting it with a hammer. With each pass, the goop barely budged at all, but that was enough. Because each time, it stayed. It didn't settle back into itself.

It seemed to be growing even more difficult over time, though. More rigid and unwilling to bend. Hector couldn't tell if that was because the metal itself was becoming more resistant to him or if he was just getting tired.

Ugh. This wasn't a normal exhaustion, either. He'd felt it before, many times. This was an almost purely mental exhaustion. His numb body still felt fine, even though it most certainly wasn't.

But he couldn't stop. Not yet. If he allowed himself to fall asleep in this realm, he had no idea if he would be able to wake up again. There was a better-than-fair chance that his body would just dissolve into nothingness, he felt.

And now he was being reminded of all the shit he'd been through before arriving here, too. That fight with Banda hadn't exactly been a relaxing experience, either.

He stayed determined. He had to finish this armor, no matter how difficult it became. He knew beyond doubt that he would have great need of it if he ever managed to get out of here.

Agh, he never felt very good at naming things. He supposed it didn't matter too much, though. This was just for himself, for his own ease of use when materializing. It wasn't like with the Candle, where picking a bad name might have negative consequences later.

...Or was it like that?

Oh fuck, now he was starting to worry. This place wasn't normal. This black metal wasn't normal. While he might've had a better sense of its nature, thanks to whatever the hell he was doing with his meditation right now, he still couldn't be entirely sure that something weird like that was out of the question.

Maybe he was overthinking. In fact, that was probably the case. He just needed to pick something that was fitting. And easy to remember. And short. It wouldn't do if he had to rattle off some long ass name in the middle of a fight.

Something like... Chaos? That was nice and short. Maybe not too fitting, though. The reason he'd thought of it was because the black stuff kinda seemed like it might be born from Chaos, like the Beast of Lorent supposedly had. So in that sense, it might've been fitting, but now that he was evaluating the name more... it seemed inappropriate for something that was supposed to protect him.

Hmm.

Well, maybe he could nail down the name later. There was still more to learn about the material itself, he felt. More to its nature.

It needed to be close to him. And it was strong. Difficult to move. Difficult to be moved. Stubborn, even.

Yeah. That was the word for it. Stubborn. It didn't want to give in to anyone or anything, even him. The only reason it made an exception for him at all was because...

Because it was him. Part of him.

Right.

He decided to make it move. To reshape both the pyramid and the cube.

He wanted to see if they could become goop again and "infect" more of the iron beneath them. It seemed as though, once they'd become solid, the infection had stopped spreading.

Maybe infection was the wrong term for it, though. That made it sound like a bad thing, and he was fairly sure that it wasn't. If it was increasing his volume limit with the Amir-9 metal like he hoped it was, then it would, in fact, be quite a good thing.

Ah... this was a matter of Domain, wasn't it? It had to be.

He'd been struggling for what felt like ages trying to figure out what the power of Domain truly entailed. He'd already come to the conclusion that aura was a major factor in it, if not THE factor, but considering everything he'd learned about aura from Pauline Gaolanet, it seemed to him that there had to be more to it. She told him that everyone had an aura, so if Domain was supposed to be some kind of super special blessing from Malast, then it stood to reason that aura wasn't the only thing involved. Otherwise, Malast would've just called it aura.

Right?

Well, maybe not. Malast had been quite the cryptic asshole, not entirely unlike Rasalased in that regard, though he might've differed greatly in execution.

Whatever the case, it struck Hector as logical now that Domain might also have to do with proximity. With the area immediately around him. Perhaps that, too, was just another component or incarnation of aura, but he felt it would make sense if they were independent of one another, too.

Maybe he was splitting hairs here.

What mattered was this metal. He felt deeply within himself that he needed to give it a distinguishing name, now.

Zeff had mentioned this to him once or twice. The naming of techniques helped to codify them in one's mind, making them even easier to perform.

Could this darker metal be considered a technique? Debatable. Would giving it a name help, anyway? Probably, Hector felt.

Calling it "darksteel" was certainly a temptation. It would've been both fitting and pretty cool, he thought.

But it would also be confusing, too. He was Darksteel. Increasingly, that was what people were calling him. Whether it was because Darksteel Soldier was too much of a mouthful or because Darksteel just sounded a bit cooler, that was the name that appeared to be sticking to him.

So calling himself Darksteel and the metal darksteel wouldn't be a good idea.

Plus, it wasn't steel. Or at least, not only steel. It was, as he recalled, a complex blend of steel, titanium, and tungsten carbide.

Though, it may not have even been those things, anymore. It had appeared here as goop, after all. And it felt so similar to his normal iron, now. He couldn't be sure that this place hadn't altered it dramatically.

So rather than naming the material, maybe it would indeed be better to name the techniques that he created with it.

The armor that he created with it.

For that was what this stuff was most suited to, Hector felt.

It was almost like the world itself was speaking to him. Trying to tell him all about itself.

And he wanted to listen. Despite everything else going through his head, all the concerns about what was happening back in the real world or how he was ever going to get out of this place, his foremost thought right now was to listen.

If the iron wanted to talk, then he needed to let it.

It was just so difficult, though. Like a whisper that he couldn't quite make out or a picture that he couldn't quite comprehend, Hector kept struggling there in his mind.

Man, he sure wished he could breathe. Controlling his breath was one of the best ways of controlling his focus, so without it, he felt like a key ingredient was missing.

Nothing for it, though. He had to push through. Learn something new, perhaps. A previously untried method of training. Of meditation.

Yes. That was the correct mindset. This wasn't a problem. It was an opportunity. For growth.

And besides, he'd experienced similar things before. Disembodied forms where breathing wasn't a factor, either. The only thing that made this different was that he wasn't technically disembodied, this time.

In fact, that may have been the difficulty here. The bodily senses were a distraction, in their own way. Meditating in Rasalased's pocket dimension had actually been quite easy, compared to this.

Agh, he was getting distracted.

A clear mind would help him listen. Meditation wasn't always about having a clear mind, but in this instance, it most certainly was.

He felt himself sit down. A smooth and easy motion. Right next to the cube and pyramid. They were both there. He could feel their presence.

Waiting for attention from him.

But they were formless. They didn't really have minds of their own, desires of their own. He could tell that much for certain, now. It was more like... they were a detached part of himself.

He was beginning to understand. They didn't need commands. They just were. If he tried to treat them like his normal iron, it wouldn't work very well. Ever. It would be a slow, difficult process, not unlike how his own body required consistent effort and exercise in order to slowly and difficultly change.

And they needed to be close to him. He could tell that, too. It was imprinted into their very nature. The farther away they were, the weaker his connection to them would become.

Disappointed, Hector decided to try other things. Temperature manipulation was the first on his list.

That proved flatly impossible. With the iron, he could make it glow white hot without even remaking it. But this goop just stayed pitch black. He supposed that made sense, though. He'd had a lot more trouble learning temperature manipulation back in the real world than he had with velocity states.

What about something easier, then?

Simple shapes.

He wanted it to become a box. He concentrated hard, envisioning the exact form in his mind.

And it took a little while, but it did it. The goop gathered itself up and turned itself into a box with sharp, pristine edges. The sheen was even more pronounced now with its perfectly flat sides.

Heh. Cool. Hector couldn't help feeling pleased with himself.

Then he noticed the ground again. The goop had compacted itself so much that the ground that had previously been beneath it was now much more visible.

And it was changed. Darker like the goop. At first, he'd thought it was just a shadow, but no, upon a more thorough inspection, the iron itself had indeed gotten darker.

Had the Amir-9's goop... infected it? Transformed it?

Hector wasn't sure what to think.

Could this be... a good thing?

He tried to move the darker iron and found it similarly difficult.

Equally difficult, in fact.

Just as with the goop, he could manipulate its shape, but not without effort. He made this one a pyramid.

Then his vision flickered.

Uh-oh.

His eyes still didn't hurt at all, but they were probably not going to last much longer. And without any idea of how to get out of here or to help them, he wanted to start panicking.

But he didn't.

This place, it had a weirdly comforting presence to it. All this iron, all his iron--it felt too warm and welcoming. And besides, he'd already panicked earlier. It hadn't achieved anything before, and it wouldn't do so now.

So instead, he just closed his eyes, as if to ready himself for the darkness. Maybe that would protect them. Maybe it wouldn't. Either way was fine.

He was calm.

He was concentrating.

He was reaching out, trying to listen to all of his senses. No air for sound. No tactile feeling for touch. No eyes for vision.

And yet he was not without faculty. He could still sense the iron all around him. And the black stuff, too, actually. It was similar, yet distinct.

Something did indeed materialize. However, it was not a shield.

Instead, a blob appeared, dark and metallic in its sheen. It glooped onto the ground and began to slowly spread out like spilled pudding.

Very thick, black pudding.

...Huh.

That didn't seem right.

For a while, he just kind of stared at it, scratching his head and trying to understand what was happening. He crouched down for a closer look.

He was momentarily fearful that this black goop was not even his own material, that it was something else. It reminded him of not just the giant worms in the Undercrust but also those weird things he'd seen in his vision within the Candle. And maybe the Beast of Lorent, too.

But no. This wasn't any of those things, thankfully. The metallic shimmer was a very noticeable difference, for one thing.

And for another, he could just tell. He could sense it. As with his iron, it felt like it belonged to him. It had a familiarity to it.

Something was obviously wrong, though, if it was showing up like this. Why hadn't it materialized into its normal form?

In fact, this was doubly strange because he'd never even been able to make the metal of the Amir-9 into any other shape. But now he did it unintentionally?

Certainly, this place must have been the cause. How weird.

After a moment of deliberation, Hector wondered if perhaps his concentration was the issue. When it came to the Amir-9, he never had to think about it. At this point, the thing was so easy and immutable in his mind that it almost made itself, sometimes. Perhaps he'd just gotten it into his head that, because it couldn't even be changed, there was nothing even to think about.

In a way, he supposed the shield had come to feel more like an extension of his own body than an actual skill within materialization.

Hmm.

As he was about to annihilate the flattening blob and try again, however, he noticed something else.

The iron ground beneath the blob looked a little different. Maybe it was weird lighting or his own dissolving eyeballs, but it looked different.

Instead of annihilating the blob, he tried instead to move it around like he could with the iron here.

The blob just sloshed a little to the left and right, sluggish and not quite as he had imagined it to in his mind. But it had moved, at least.

Strange.

He tried again, more forceful this time, trying to push it far away from himself, to send it flying, even.

It hardly budged.

An earthquake arrived. An ironquake. And he felt everything shift, more violently than expected, as if the iron was eager to listen.

A mountain shot up in the distance, cracking the world apart and sending visible chunks of iron spiraling into the black sky like a volcanic eruption.

At the sight of all that, he fell on his ass and lost his concentration. He hadn't expected it to be so easy, and even the ground beneath him was still trembling for a long while after being allowed to set itself back down.

Hector was in awe.

Was his power really unlimited in this place? It sure felt like it.

He'd been so determined to create chaos only a moment ago, but now, as he lay there, feeling the lingering vibrations in the ground, he found himself questioning many things about his ability again.

If he wasn't more careful, he might accidentally kill himself.

Wait a minute.

...There was no way that would send him back to reality, right?

Agh. It might. But could he risk it? If it didn't work, then he'd really be fucked.

Yeah. That had to be reserved for his last resort, once he was all out of other ideas. For the moment, at least, he still had plenty more he wanted to try.

The main thing that was coming to his mind now was a result of his gaze falling upon his left hand.

His melting left hand.

That didn't seem good. All in all, he still felt perfectly fine and numb. But he wondered for how much longer. Would he eventually just dissolve into nothingness if he stayed here? He rubbed his chin and found it just as bad, able to feel his bare chin bone there. Kind of. The numbness made him slightly unsure, but it definitely didn't feel right.

He erected a quick iron barricade for protection against the still-setting sun's punishing rays. He doubted it would do very much, but it was better than nothing, he supposed.

There was another reason he'd looked at his left hand, though. A reason related to his ability.

With his left hand, he could materialize Haqq's shield, the Amir-9.

Up to now, he'd only been thinking about his iron, but he was suddenly very curious. How did the shield work in this place? Could he even summon it, still?

He tested it at once.

He needed to gather his thoughts. What was his priority, right now?

Getting back to the real world? That did seem like the most important thing, but without having any idea of where to start working that problem, it did not strike him as a solvable one.

But hmm. How did he get here to begin with? By getting eaten? Did that even explain anything?

Well. Actually. Hmm.

Banda had obviously been able to eat way more than his own body weight. And as he recalled, Bloodeye was the same way. The guy had literally pulled missiles out of his stomach.

So... was this how they were doing it? Was this place their own, personal storage dimension or something?

That would explain things, but for one snag.

There was nothing here but iron. No missiles or acid or anything else.

Then, maybe... maybe instead, this was just one of many elemental worlds. And all the things they ate were broken down to said elements for the purpose of storage? Which would mean... that when they pulled things out of their stomach, those things were being reassembled from their base elements?

Huh. If that was the case, then maybe Banda could still yack him back up. In fact, that last part was almost certain to be true, Hector felt. He could've been mistaken about everything else, but Banda had to be able to retrieve him, just like those missiles from Bloodeye.

Problem was, Banda had control. If and when Hector ever returned, it would be at Banda's whim.

...Right?

Hmm. Could it be possible to force Banda to return him?

Looking around at the empty landscape one more time, he supposed there was no harm in trying. He just wished he could think up a better plan of action than trying to get himself puked back into reality.

So he set to work.

It was time to really test the limits of power in this place. If the goal was to make Banda barf, then the only thing to do was to start creating havoc here. He had no real reason to believe that Banda would actually be impacted by anything he did in this world of iron, but at this point, it felt like his only hope.

Hector brought all of his concentration to bear, wanting everything this world could give him. He aimed to lift the entire horizon. If it truly was iron all the way out there, then he intended to see it move.

And it did.

He ended up sitting down and mulling things over for a while. There were about a million things that he could concentrate on or worry about, right now, but he wanted to focus on only one or two at a time. Maybe if he could come to a better understanding of his iron, then he would also come to a better understanding of whatever the hell this place was. And how to get out of here, hopefully.

Yes. He was sure that the emergent response came from his iron. The more he thought back on those moments, the more certain he became. He remembered the feeling so vividly each time. Coursing through his whole body for a brilliant instant. A flash of realization amid an electric surge.

He’d always kind of assumed that, ultimately, the response came from within himself. That the emergent power had always been there and just needed to be brought forth. Or something along those lines.

But perhaps that was a wrong assumption. Or an oversimplification, at least. If this place was the true home of his iron, then maybe the response wasn’t coming from within. Maybe it was coming from here.

From this world of iron.

Or maybe this world was within him? Now there was a confusing idea. Did this world of iron exist within his own mind? Or his soul? And if that was the case, then how had he ended up here? Trapped in his own head? What sense did that make?

Hmm. Well, if he was in a realm of his own making, then it would logically follow that he wasn’t actually trapped here. He just had to figure out how to free himself.

Unless... this wasn't a world of his own making at all.

Perhaps, instead, this place had always existed, and materialization merely allowed him to tap into it. To borrow its strength.

That... was more believable to him, somehow. Moreso than being trapped in a pocket dimension of his own unconscious creation, at least.

He wanted to reach out to Rasalased, but when he opened his mouth, no words came out. Because there was no air, he remembered. Right. The sound of his voice had no medium through which to be carried.

It was weirdly easy to forget that.

He tried reaching out telepathically, instead. Still no luck, though.

Eh, maybe it was for the best. He had a feeling that Rasalased either wouldn't know much or would be his typically cryptic self. Though, in fairness, the Dry God did seem to be getting a bit better about that, recently.

He wasn’t just moving the iron around, either. He was breaking it away from the otherwise solid ground. Changing its shape. Its structure.

Could he still affect its temperature, too?

He gave the iron cube an emotional command, demanding it to become hot, and sure enough, it soon came alive with a fiery glow.

Wow.

Not only could he affect the temperature, he could do it in real time. He didn’t have to pick a new chunk of iron to “materialize,” first.

He continued messing around with the iron for a time, wanting to test various things.

This was just straight up manipulation, Hector decided after a while. Not iron materialization. Iron manipulation. He could move it all about as he pleased, change its shape or state of matter. He could even connect two separate chunks and have them blend seamlessly into one solid piece. That feat in particular was something that he’d only wished he could do with materialization.

He eventually started to wonder if there was anything he couldn’t do to it here.

This was utterly ridiculous to him. The kind of power that he could wield in this place... it boggled his mind, quite frankly. So many options. So much potential. Overwhelmingly so.

In a weird way, perhaps the limitations of the real world were kind of helpful. The restriction allowed him to problem solve more easily. With this, it was like... he didn't even know where to begin. 'Paralyzed with choice,' was what they called this type of thing, wasn't it?

Crazy.

The thought also crossed his mind that this might be some type of super emergence, but he just couldn’t convince himself of that. Emergence was only supposed to increase his volume limit and make difficult tasks easier. It wasn’t supposed to add completely new features like this. Plus, he hadn’t felt any kind of noticeable “response” from his iron like he usually did. And if this had been a “super” emergence, then surely the response should have been more pronounced than ever, no?

He stuck on those thoughts and questions for a while. Something in that line of reasoning was bothering him. Something that he felt like he was taking for granted.

The response. The emergent response.

He felt like he understood it, but... actually, that wasn’t true at all, was it?

What really was “the response” that he felt during emergence, anyway? It came from his iron? Did he know that for sure? How? And if so, why? Why did it come from his iron?

The cube had removed itself from the ground. It hadn’t materialized. It had already been there.

His brain needed time to process that. His materialized iron hadn’t materialized.

What in the world did that mean? If he wasn’t materializing, then what was he doing?

Wait, was this a dream? He did feel pretty numb, though that was probably because he was already dead.

And wait a second. He'd been horrifically wounded in that fight with Banda, hadn't he? Entire limbs missing, as he recalled. But he was looking at them now, and here they were, already having regenerated. When had that happened, exactly?

So many questions.

And before he got too much further into dwelling on them, he figured that he should probably try to contact Garovel again. He was fairly certain that he tried earlier when he was freaking out, but he decided to try again anyway, now that he was calmer.

'Garovel? You there?'

He waited. And kept waiting.

'Garovel?'

No response arrived.

That wasn't good. It wasn't entirely unprecedented for him, however. He'd bumbled his way into pocket dimensions before.

With surprising frequency, now that he was thinking about it.

There was the Shards, the Candle, and then whatever that weird dream state was where he'd been able to talk to Rasalased. Either way, he was pretty sure that he hadn't been able to talk to Garovel in any of those, either.

Though, maybe he just hadn't tried? He couldn't remember.

Whatever this place was, it was definitely different from those other ones. For one thing, he could actually see stuff. With his actual eyeballs. Which felt dry as hell and like they might have been slowly boiling out of his head, but for the moment, at least, they were still working. He was again thankful for his numbness.

Regardless, the rules here were clearly quite strange. Materialization was strange. So strange, in fact, that he felt like he couldn’t even call it materialization, anymore.

This felt more like telekinesis, Hector thought. Which was a peculiar thing to think, perhaps, because he wasn’t even sure that he understood how telekinesis even worked, really. He’d only glimpsed it in action because of the wrobels.

Hmm. If he had to articulate his thoughts more fully to himself, then telekinesis was simply the ability to make objects move with psychic force. Like levitating a book or turning its pages, as he’d seen Hanton do.

But as he kept thinking about it, Hector wondered if that was really what was going on here. It seemed more than a little weird that he would’ve suddenly developed psychic powers for no apparent reason.

He recalled being eaten. Devoured whole by the monstrous form of Banda Toro.

The sudden recollection hit him like a ton of bricks, and he became frantic. He had to get back. Warrenhold was unprotected. Banda was going to rip through it and kill everyone. He had to go back. Wherever the fuck this was didn't matter, right now. He just had to return.

It took him a while to settle down again. And when he finally did, it was mainly because he just didn't know what the hell to do.

No amount of freaking out about it was going to help his situation, it seemed. He was stuck.

He needed to think. Reassess.

So he'd been eaten. But this didn’t exactly look like the inside of a stomach, now did it? And why was there no air, either?

He stood up and looked across the landscape another time, inspecting it more carefully this time, searching for signs of something or someone or… anything at all. Anything for his eyes to latch onto.

But there really was nothing, he soon realized.

It was just flat ground out there, all the way to the horizon.

Well.

Flat iron.

The ground was iron.

Why was the ground iron? And why did it feel like materialized iron? Like his iron?

It was a supremely odd sensation. The familiarity was at once comforting and unsettling. There was SO much iron. Far more than his volume limit would ever allow him to materialize, surely. Even if he achieved emergence a dozen more times, he doubted he would ever be able to create this amount.

Did that mean he couldn’t materialize any more of it in this place? Because he was already capped out?

No harm in trying, he figured. Wasn't like he had any other leads to go on. He raised a hand and tried to summon a cube into it.

And for the second time, he was not prepared for what he saw. Not at all.

A cube did indeed appear, but not by materializing in his hand. Instead, a cube broke itself out of the flat ground in front of him and hovered over at a leisurely pace. As soon as his eyes locked onto it, though, it stopped dead in midair--or mid-space, rather.

It just floated there, suspended above the ground. Waiting.

On him?

For a while, Hector just kept staring at it, too confused to do or think anything else.

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