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((The 17 pages of St. Patrick's Day + Triple Saturday -- Page 19 of 20))
‘Which way?’ Hector asked.

Garovel pointed to his left, and Hector grew the platform forward and then curved it around so that they would all be facing the direction that they were going.

He’d never used such a large volume of iron as method of transportation before. It was a bit strange but not difficult. In fact, the Scarf of Amordiin was making it rather easy.

Due to its ability to help him sense the movement of air all around him, Hector had a very clear picture of even the densest parts of the forest. He could sense where all the tree trunks were, where the leaves were, the underbrush, the rocks, and even the animals. A snake here, a rabbit there, a couple bears, a wolf, a group of monkeys, and tons of insects--though those were perhaps too small to sense individually. Maybe if he concentrated on them, but now wasn’t the time for that.

He focused on his platform. Because the open air was telling him so much, Hector could see all the gaps in the forest--and therefore, all the places in which he could materialize iron without crushing anything. Well, except maybe a couple shrubs here and there. They’d probably be fine, though.

It was helpful, because he didn’t want to obliterate the ecosystem. The area of the forest immediately around Rathmore’s Gate was still plenty ruined already. Hell, even now that he’d carried them some distance away from it, he could still sense entire trees that had been uprooted or splintered in half. He noticed one tree that wasn’t touching the ground. Instead, it was lodged horizontally in the canopy, dangling in midair. Some birds had made a nest on it.

All in all, it made for a type of training that he had never done before. Navigating the forest with a building-sized block of iron, creating and destroying his work around every single object and leaving it all unscathed--it certainly demanded attention to detail. And without the Scarf of Amordiin, he didn’t think he would have been able to do this, not without simply flattening everything in their path.

But after a while, Hector started to get the hang of it a little too well, he felt. Even as he increased the speed to accommodate Zeff, Hector found himself thinking that this wasn’t really challenging enough.

Even without his most recent emergence, he felt like he could have pulled this off as long as he had the Scarf. That was what really made this feel trivially easy. He could simply conceptualize his iron as if it were squeezing its way through all the holes in the forest, like a wave of iron jelly. Or iron sludge, perhaps.

Hmm.

Maybe that fight with the worm had more of an effect on his perception than he’d thought. He could visualize the beast’s movements pretty damn well now, after having followed it so attentively over such an extended battle.