Page 1537

((The 14 pages of Valentine's Day + Double Wednesday -- Page 5 of 16))
‘Are you okay?’ said Garovel. ‘Did the scarf do something?’

‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ said Hector. ‘But I don’t know if it--ah. Just. Gimme a second. I have to concentrate.’

‘Alright...’

Hector refocused. He fixed his armor first, then tried to understand what this new sensation was. Whatever it was, it made everything around him feel different. It was almost like being underwater. Or in a windstorm, maybe.

Yeah. That was it.

Air.

He could feel air breaking against him, almost as if he were standing at the top of a skyscraper, being buffeted by wind. Or maybe... maybe it was more like he was the skyscraper. Because the wind, even as strongly as he could feel it, didn’t cause him to flinch or move at all.

Where was it coming from, this wind? It wasn’t making any sound.

He stood up again to look around.

Whoa.

He felt the entire chamber shift. Like a somehow stationary earthquake.

But no. That wasn’t right, he realized. The room hadn’t shifted. It had just become clear to him. The room itself had. He could practically see it now, the entire space that filled the room.

It was the air again. Specifically, the air’s movement. He could sense it, the flowing lines of it.

What a strange room. Entirely encapsulated in rock and a couple pools of magma. There was nowhere for the air to escape to, but it was still being slowly and perpetually pushed upward, probably by heat. And when it reached the ceiling, it had to stop and be pushed aside by the air below it, which created a new kind of air current around the walls of the chamber. A cyclical flow.

Hector took a step, and the air became even clearer to him. Crisper in his mind.

The scarf. It was behind him, but he could see its movements because of the air, too. In fact, that was where the movement was clearest, he realized.

He was beginning to get the picture.

‘I think... ah...’ How to explain? Hector took a deep breath and noticed that he could sense that, too, escaping through the crevices in his helmet.

Holy crap, this was all a little overwhelming.

‘You think what?’ said Garovel.

‘Ah... I think this scarf is like a... a kind of “air pressure sensor” or something.’

‘Air pressure sensor?’ the reaper echoed. ‘You can sense air pressure now?’

‘I... guess so? Or, uh... maybe that’s not quite right. I can sense “airflow,” I think.’

‘Hmm. Interesting.’

Hector tried taking another step, and indeed, his sense of the whole room became clearer again.

Oh, wait, but it was also getting slowly duller again, too. Each passing second, his sense of the air in the room weakened slightly.

Why? Because of his own movement?

He lifted a hand.

Yep. Mystery solved.

‘Seems like I can sense the movement of the air best when I myself am moving,’ said Hector. ‘It’s like a... a domino effect or something.’

‘Domino effect?’