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((The 14 pages of Valentine's Day + Double Wednesday -- Page 4 of 16))
Still, Hector didn’t feel any different, until he remembered to make sure the scarf was touching his skin. He nestled it in between his helmet and his breastplate, wincing against more burning pain from the heated iron around his own fingers.

But even that didn’t--

Wait.

No.

Something was different. Very different. But he couldn’t quite tell how just yet because of the pain still being there. It was making it much more difficult to focus, and he still had to keep renewing his armor, as well.

That was three things, all wanting attention from him simultaneously. The armor, the pain, and this still undefined sensation.

Stubbornly, perhaps, he didn’t want to ask Garovel to numb his pain. He wanted to compartmentalize it in his own head, cordon it off with nothing but his own ability to concentrate. He’d already been treating his armor this way while he’d been carrying on conversations with Garovel and everyone else, so why couldn’t he extend it a step further?

It was difficult. He felt his armor waver as his concentration did, and traces of heat started leaking in, adding a fresh dose of pain to the still lingering quantity.

He just had to think about three things at once. Or rather, he had to not think about them. That seemed to be the real trick of it, he’d come to realize back in Himmekel. It wasn’t about trying to divide his attention between them. It was about treating each thing as if it didn’t necessarily need his attention. Just letting it exist there in his head. Like a growing plant. It didn’t require constant attention. Just every now and then. Attention was like water. The idea could take root in the soil of his mind on its own, if he would just allow it to.

That was his theory, at least.

It wasn’t panning out very well for him, though. Physical pain was a different kind of demanding, as far as attention was concerned, and Hector couldn’t figure out how to just let it sit there in his head like the other two things--not before all of his concentration began crumbling around him.

He staggered forward a couple steps and hunched over.

Time to admit failure, he knew.

“Okay,” he muttered between groans and strained breaths, “please numb my pain, Garovel.”

‘You have to make an opening in your armor for me.’

He growled and annihilated one of his pauldrons. Relief arrived a second later, spreading instantly from the reaper’s grip on his shoulder.

Hector took a haggard breath and sat back down on the trunk. “I guess three is too many...” He wondered if that number was a hard limit, or if he might be able to eventually overcome it with more training.

‘Three?’ said Garovel.

‘Oh, uh. It’s just, ah... well, I’ll tell you later.’ He hadn’t really been explaining the details of his training to Garovel, lately. The reaper probably thought he’d just been meditating normally and working on materialization. This probably wasn’t the time or the place to go into it, though, he felt.