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((The Wednesday Triple: page 2 of 3))
Another question was forming in Hector’s head, but he wasn’t quite able to articulate it to himself yet.

He decided to do one more test. He formed another hovering cube, but this time, he purposely made it float into the wall.

Nothing happened. But perhaps that wasn’t strange. Perhaps it needed to float faster. He swung the cube around and increased the speed.

Again, nothing happened. He tried one more time, increasing the speed even further, and sure enough, nothing happened. Not even a sound.

Which seemed strange to him. At that speed, the cube definitely should have made a noise when it collided with the wall. Moreover, the previous two cubes certainly had made noises.

So what was going on here?

Well, there was only one discernible difference that he could see. The first two cubes were distorted, while the third was not. They’d both changed into long, vaguely conical shapes--not identical to each other but still similar enough that it didn’t seem coincidental.

Hector blinked as he realized what had been bothering him. Yes. The reason that third cube hadn’t made a noise when it collided with the wall was because it hadn’t actually collided with it.

That was the way that “growing” his iron was supposed to work. Materialization could not occur within a solid object. He’d learned that very early on. So the cubes shouldn’t have been able to grow into a wall and thereby pierce it, because he had been using this growing technique in order to make them move. Regardless of their speed, they should have simply reached the wall and stopped, not even colliding with it or making any noise, which was what the third cube did.

And yet they had.

Because their shape had changed. Because he’d lost control over their growth. The part of the distorted cubes which ended up colliding with the walls must have not been “growing” anymore. They must’ve simply been regular iron at that point.