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((The Monday Triple: page 1 of 3))
Hector had the distinct feeling that things were going to start moving very quickly very soon, so he wanted to make use of this downtime while it lasted. He tried contacting Emiliana again with the Shard in his pocket, but when he received no response, he decided to work on his materialization skills.

He wanted to attempt the “binding” technique that Zeff and Asad had shown him earlier. He figured that would be more useful than simply meditating. And besides, he couldn’t very well close his eyes when he was supposed to be watching the captives.

First, however, he had to think of how to attempt the technique. The whole idea behind binding--as he recalled Asad and Garovel explaining it--was to convert a task that required active concentration into a task that did not.

That was about all the information he had to go on, though. He considered asking Garovel for more details, but the reaper was in the middle of a conversation with Atalim and Ezura.

Hmm.

Something that required active concentration...

What about making his iron move through the air? It was one thing to add velocity to a created object and be done with it, but could he possibly make that object fly according to his will? Against gravity, even?

No, strictly speaking. From everything he’d been told, as well as his own experimentation, such a feat was flatly impossible.

But Hector wondered if he could at least make it look like it was happening.

Certainly, he couldn’t control his iron once it was created. That seemed to be the First Law of Materialization, if such labels existed. But even so, he could always grow more iron out of his already-created pieces. And growth was a kind of movement, wasn’t it? And that other technique that Zeff and Asad had taught him earlier... the perpetually falling object...

Ideas swirled through his head, even though he couldn’t quite imagine any practical applications just yet.

Maybe, instead of keeping the falling object perfectly still, he could add on to it in a different direction while also annihilating it from the opposite direction. Wouldn’t that give the object the appearance of movement?