7, Dangers of Taming Wild Magic part 3

If you ever wondered how it feels to be a volcano before it erupts, I'd imagine it feels much like this.

There was immense pressure all throughout my insides.

It was like the worst gas pain ever, only this gas wasn't only in a small area.

It radiated all throughout my intestines pushing and pulling things trying to force its way out of its confinement in my body.

I was trying to calm my mind but panic was rising in my chest.

'How the heck was I supposed to control this?!'

The harder I tried to force it the harder it fought to escape my control.

It's like trying to contain smoke with my bare hands, or trying to forcibly stop the flow of a river with a toothbrush.

It's like being in the middle of a flood and trying to make the water flow up, it seemed absolutely impossible.

Just as I was about to give into despair as the pain and pressure was becoming too much, the memories of my past 2 lives flashed through my eyes.

I was filled with regret as I saw my parents in this life's smiling faces, knowing I let them down after making such big promises.

There was Lisa taking care of me when I was unable to move and consoling me when all felt hopeless.

Then a certain memory came to the surface, Lisa was comforting me on a particularly hard day.

I had been stuck in bed for the past 3 weeks and things weren't looking like they would get any better.

"Some things you just can't fight or change. The river flows downhill regardless of how we feel, you can dam it up and wait for it to overflow. Or you can let it flow and enjoy the journey no matter how horrible it is, water will always come back full circle."

At the end of her speech something clicked in my mind dragging me back to the present situation.

'You can't force water to flow uphill, you can only let it flow.'

'I can't force mana to go where it doesn't want to, I need to let it go where it wants.'

As I had this thought the pressure stopped increasing, and it stabilized.

I calmed my breathing and stopped trying to force and squeeze the mana to make it move where I wanted.

'Water flows down hill, so in order to make it flow where I want I need to raise the ground where I don't want it to go.'

I began to breathe in the calming rhythm my parents taught me, calming the mind and relaxing the body.

The mana began to act up chaotically again but instead of fighting against it I created pathways to guide it where I wanted.

I created a low point just below my belly button where I wanted mana to collect for the first core, while raising the other areas I didn't want the mana to go.

The remaining mana overflowed the small pit so I continued my creation of a pathway.

Whenever I encountered resistance I relaxed, allowing the mana to follow the path without resistance.

It traveled along a thin path moving counterclockwise up my body until it reached my lungs, then I created a second pocket to collect mana for the second core.

Once the second pocket was full I continued to coax the mana along the path until I reached the brain.

I was trying to make a pocket in my brain for the mana to settle but there was always extreme resistance causing the entire stream to act up.

To prevent catastrophe I backtracked slowly to find the highest place the mana would be willing to create the third pocket.

I had to go slightly further than I wanted originally, a few centimeters below the brain stem closer to the back of the throat.

I tried different areas around there but the mana didn't want to settle down any higher than that.

Getting anxious I tried to find the most welcoming spot for it and found that it wanted to settle on my spine at the area in line with the bottom of my jaw.

I created the space for the mana and I had to use the least amount of effort and concentration so far to get it to pool there.

With the areas for all of my cores settled I started to shrink the passageway linking the 3 pools of mana, forcing the small amount remaining to choose a center to settle in.

This was a slow exhausting process as until this point the mana was still one entity, only stretched across my entire body.

When I shrunk the path too fast the mana began to become chaotic again and fight to escape, when I released the constraint it became calm again; it did not seem to want to be split apart.

After several attempts going back and forth, eventually the mana finally settled into the 3 separated pools.

With the first steps completed I now needed to perfect the position of the cores and take the mana under my control.

The only issue was that my focus was close to ⅓ used, and I still had the most difficult part to do.

I started with the largest core, this would be the most difficult of the three.

The lungs were an organ that would need to expand and contract so the placement of the core would be extremely important as it could impede the organs function.

I was going to begin the condensing but my instincts pushed me to forgo traditional core and try to fundamentally change the organ.

I trusted my instincts as I knew my body was unique.

First I focused my attention on isolating the lungs from the rest of my body creating a barrier similar to the mana container, then I allowed the container holding the mana to dissipate; freeing the energy.

The energy flowed differently than previously, it did not fight to escape this time.

This time the freed energy seemed to collapse in on itself as though it wanted to form a core, but this was the opposite of what I wanted.

To prevent the mana from crystallizing I needed to keep it fluid.

The simplest way to do this in my mind was to force it to be in continual motion, this would keep it from crystallizing.

I imagined a salad spinner in motion, spinning incredibly fast creating a strong centrifugal force that would force parts of it to spray outwards like a sprinkler.

I took this spinning mental image and had it spin in a circle as if to coat everything around it.

I took this complex image and tried to superimpose it over top of the mana that was trying to crystallize, and it worked!

The mana stopped its crystallization and began to shoot off small droplets in all directions which began to coat the isolated lung, this continued until the organ was completely covered by the mana.

Seeing the effect of my visualization on the ethereal energy I began to drop the isolation barrier around the organ while imagining the coating saturating into the organ and merging with it to evolve it into something new.

There was a peculiar effect, there was a pressure similar but different to the rampant mana from earlier.

Only this time it wasn't quite painful but neither was it comfortable.

With the first core completed I still had 2 more to go but I was left with barely ⅔ of my mental strength remaining, I knew it was not possible to do such complex work again.

I focused on the pocket of mana near the jaw and decided to simply form a crystal for the last 2 cores.

Not knowing what the effects would be without a strong visualization I decided to go with a simple but powerful one that would lead to a dense core.

I chose to go with the image of a black hole because there is nothing denser and nothing more perfectly spherical than a black hole.

I pictured the collapse of our sun from back on earth, it would collapse again and again until nothing was left but a black pinprick.

I took this image and superimposed it onto the pocket containing mana while releasing the membrane containing it.

It took seconds for the mana to shrink and form a perfectly spherical clear core the size of half a fingernail.

There were no complications on the formation of the core and I knew that I had a small amount of energy left to spend on this final core.

With only one more to go and nothing else to focus on but this last core I refused to give up my plan for it.

This third core was supposed to be close to a dantian even though that didn't seem to be how this world cultivated strength.

But the issue was I was far too tired to create a new visualization to represent a dantian.

As a last ditch effort I added a barrier that was immune to the gravitational pull of the black hole and placed it around the black hole.

I superimposed the image for the last time as I released the mental membrane holding the mana.

Since I used the last of my mental energy, my consciousness began slipping away but before I passed out from the mental strain I felt the mana crystallize.

'I did it' I thought to myself 'It's all thanks to you Lisa, I couldn't have done it without you.'

Then the darkness consumed me as I passed out.