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Something did indeed materialize. However, it was not a shield.

Instead, a blob appeared, dark and metallic in its sheen. It glooped onto the ground and began to slowly spread out like spilled pudding.

Very thick, black pudding.

...Huh.

That didn't seem right.

For a while, he just kind of stared at it, scratching his head and trying to understand what was happening. He crouched down for a closer look.

He was momentarily fearful that this black goop was not even his own material, that it was something else. It reminded him of not just the giant worms in the Undercrust but also those weird things he'd seen in his vision within the Candle. And maybe the Beast of Lorent, too.

But no. This wasn't any of those things, thankfully. The metallic shimmer was a very noticeable difference, for one thing.

And for another, he could just tell. He could sense it. As with his iron, it felt like it belonged to him. It had a familiarity to it.

Something was obviously wrong, though, if it was showing up like this. Why hadn't it materialized into its normal form?

In fact, this was doubly strange because he'd never even been able to make the metal of the Amir-9 into any other shape. But now he did it unintentionally?

Certainly, this place must have been the cause. How weird.

After a moment of deliberation, Hector wondered if perhaps his concentration was the issue. When it came to the Amir-9, he never had to think about it. At this point, the thing was so easy and immutable in his mind that it almost made itself, sometimes. Perhaps he'd just gotten it into his head that, because it couldn't even be changed, there was nothing even to think about.

In a way, he supposed the shield had come to feel more like an extension of his own body than an actual skill within materialization.

Hmm.

As he was about to annihilate the flattening blob and try again, however, he noticed something else.

The iron ground beneath the blob looked a little different. Maybe it was weird lighting or his own dissolving eyeballs, but it looked different.

Instead of annihilating the blob, he tried instead to move it around like he could with the iron here.

The blob just sloshed a little to the left and right, sluggish and not quite as he had imagined it to in his mind. But it had moved, at least.

Strange.

He tried again, more forceful this time, trying to push it far away from himself, to send it flying, even.

It hardly budged.