The Wandering Fairy Chapter 20: The Echo of Mind

It felt like eternity since the last ti they had seen the sun. The rain which had persisted for much longer than it should have had finally ended. Still, the forest had not yet dried, the wet grass made it hard for the carriage to navigate.

Myrin leaned against the carriage and looked at Soren, who was sitting calmly on a log with his eyes closed. He sighed. 30 minutes… No reaction.

“Is he going to be okay?” Tina interrupted his thoughts.

He smiled at her. “You don’t have to worry about him. From the ti I spent with him so far, he is by far the most competent person I’ve ever seen. I’m sure he has already considered everything before taking this risk.”

She glanced at Soren and sighed. “I sure do hope so… I wonder why he is in such a hurry? I know it must be stressful to know you only have a week and a half to live, but this is too risky… If he had waited until we went back to Celestine, our mistress could have easily helped him unlock his Soul Realm… There are countless magitech contraptions available that make the process easier.”

Myrin chuckled. “I think I do have a clue as to why that is.”

“What do you an,” she lifted her brow.

“Judging by recent actions, I think he fully understands what his role in this new world is. He understands that now that he has obtained a Soul Weapon, he is a part of the Mysterious World. He knows that he will need to gain strength as soon as possible if he wants any chance to survive. And unlocking a Soul Realm is the first step he must take on that path.”

Tina thought about it for a second, then her eyes widened. “You don’t an…”

Myrin smirked. “You finally get it. Yes, his goal isn’t just to delay his death. He wants to beco a magus, and as quickly as possible to protect himself. It doesn’t take a Soul Realm like mine to know—just one look at his eyes is enough to tell what he’s thinking. But that’s not the full story either, I think he desires sothing else as well.”

“A connection,” Tina filled in. “He wants to showcase his abilities to us so we can recruit him into our Star Fate Guild.”

“Bingo,” Myrin smirked.

“But… Wouldn’t it all be for nothing if he fails? It's just so incredibly risky to try and unlock a Soul Realm with only a day or two of practice…”

“Trust the process, Tina. Don’t you rember what our Mistress divined? A person desperate for our help will lead us toward Yadria, and Soren is that person. If Soren fails here, then that would an our mistress’ prophecy was wrong. And I don’t believe that to be the case.”

Tina pondered for a few seconds before speaking again. “It's all just so weird to … I know Mistress Sienna has finally found a clue into Yarian’s Celestial Fate, but for it to suddenly be tied to a stranger from beyond the Endless Sea? What machinations are driving such events forward…

“Is what we are doing even… Good? Do the gods approve? I wonder if the Mother of Silver will permanently shun after all of this is said and done,” she chuckled to herself, self deprecatingly.

Myrin had no answer. He couldn’t answer. Even with being Mistress Sienna’s first disciple, there were many things he didn’t know about his master. Even so, he trusted her with his life. Nothing she had ever told him was misleading or untruthful. Without her support, he would still be….

“Rember what the mistress always says, Tina.”

She answered for him, “The world spins, but destiny remains still.”

“Indeed,” he replied. “There can never be too many oddities when it cos to fate. And it is these oddities that push our world forward. At least, that should be the case until that dreaded event occurred a thousand years ago.”

Tina turned around and walked toward Soren. Gracefully, she sat next to him on the log, making sure not to disrupt his ditation.

“The recent discovery of those Malevolent Hexes also troubles . Could they be what our mistress was talking about?”

“The Naless Mist,” Myrin crossed his arms. “This anima—it is most likely the cause behind the recent Feylith Forest incidents we have been hearing about. That was also one of our goals for going on this mission, after all… We need to et up with the Court of Roses and let them know about the situation.”

Tina sighed—she decided to shift the conversation. “Do you think Soren can do it? Forming a Soul Realm.”

Myrin chuckled. “I doubt it. All I can really hope is that he can at least surpass the Veil of Perception. If he can’t do that, he dies—it’s as simple as that. As for the other two…” He pondered over it for a few seconds. “I can see him maybe passing the Echo of Mind. His innate talent when it cos to focus is unmatched in these Lands of Fantasia.

“It's a different story if we talk about the Heart’s Shroud though… That is an entirely different beast to tackle…”

Tina sighed. “I agree, it took countless tries before I could surpass that layer…”

“I believe it might be even worse for Soren. He may look fairly normal on the outside—a bit too friendly as well, but… His eyes are that of a person who's been through a lot.”

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Just as Tina was about to respond, Tyrel appeared from behind the carriage.

“Get yourselves ready. There are roughly a hundred mory Void Husks crawling toward our direction at this mont. And It seems like the magitech detector is finally working—15 mory Void Spirits… At the very least.”

“By Her Silver Grace…”

It seed even with good weather, the forest still wanted to dampen their moods.

Soren starred up into the sky. Unlike when he first entered the Echo of Mind, it had changed drastically. It had gone from completely clear skies to thunderous clouds, and in the distance—what looks to be typhoons and tornadoes. All of this was going on at the sa ti as his blaring thoughts echoed out for the entire world to hear.

Except, the only one in that world was him.

Colossal waves continued to surge, one larger than the one before it. It was a miracle he hadn’t fallen yet. The wind zipped past him, carrying the sound of his own thoughts with it.

I can’t go on like this, He thought.

“I can’t go on like this…”

“I can’t go on like this…”

“I can’t go on like this…”

The echoes grew more and more chaotic. He realized, as his thoughts played out to him, that even after they had been said, they would continue to linger. This ant that any new thought he imagined would continue to echo alongside every previous thought he had.

Eventually, this will reach a breaking point.

“̷E̴ven̷t̸ua̴ll̵y̵,̴ ̶t̴h̵i̶s ̸w̸i̵ll̵ ̷re̷ach̴ ̴a̷ ̶br̵e̶ak̶i̸n̷g ̷p̴o̶int̵.̷”̵

“̴̱̋E̶̽ͅv̵̖̈ḛ̷̍n̸̮͝t̶͎̆u̴̪͗a̵̮͑l̶̹͋l̸͈̈ỹ̴̳,̶͚̑ ̷̠͊ţ̶̓h̶̤͌i̵̡̋s̵̱̀ ̸́ͅw̷̦̃į̵͝l̵̗͊l̷͖͌ ̶̥̿r̴̤̾e̵̗͝a̵͉̍c̷̟̑h̸̻̄ ̴̬̆ả̵̩ ̴̤̄b̸͂ͅr̷͐ͅê̸̹ạ̴͑k̵̜̉i̴̩̚n̷̛͇g̸̛̳ ̷̒͜p̸͙̊ó̸̦í̵̟ṋ̷̍ť̵̖.̷̫͗”̷̂͜

It was as if every thought he ever had was overlapping one on top of the other. And the more he heard, the worse it got. An infinite positive feedback loop that will end in his own insanity. Even experiencing a million life tis in the Veil of Perception was better than this…

Soren took a deep breath and sat down on the tumultuous ocean floor—feet crossed. He closed his eyes and imagined a completely still void. If thoughts were currently harming him, then he had no issue with using the sa thing against them. Fighting fire with fire—fighting thoughts with thoughts.

Thoughts of stillness and calm.

He quickly rembered the technique Myrin had taught him—Bubble Visualization.

All of a sudden, the storms raging across the darkened skies began to shrink. The once enormous dark gray clouds were slowly compressed by an unseen force—each of them turning into gaseous marbles the size of a car. The skies were now littered with thousands of cloud orbs, just as he imagined them to be.

Soren was observing all of this from his mind’s eye. It was as if he was a spectator to his own thoughts. Slowly, he ordered the orb clouds to pop, one by one. The skies slowly began to clear, and the waves soothed with every cloud burst.

It worked!

“It worked!”

“It worked!”

“It worked!”

.

.

.

Even though he was slowly getting rid of his thoughts, new ones were also being created at the sa ti. It was a race—on one side was creation, on the other, destruction. By this point, Soren had realized sothing.

His thoughts ford in waves only seconds after he deleted a batch of cloud bubbles. It was as if they were being created simply to fill the empty space being left behind. And there was the problem: The skies couldn’t remain empty. His mind wasn’t used to stillness—it feared it, needed to fill it.

Why can I not keep this space clear?.. Soren wondered as another batch of cloud bubbles condensed into shape. He popped them effortlessly, yet he knew more were already being ford, waiting just above the ones he had just dismissed.

It was frustrating. Each ti Soren popped a thought bubble, another erged to take its place, a seemingly endless cycle. Anxiety was bound to happen, and it only caused more bubbles to form—their rate of creation out-paced his destruction. It was as if the harder he fought to maintain emptiness, the more the thoughts surged in retaliation.

He rembered his ti back on Earth, sitting at the subway with his eyes closed, imagining countless chess gas being played out simultaneously. He enjoyed that ti the most—more so than even eting other players face-to-face. How did he do it back then? How was he able to remove all the clutter in his mind and focus his attention on just the chess matches?

That’s when a thought appeared unlike all the previous ones—a thought that held imnse value to his current dilemma: his thoughts weren’t ant to be conquered by force.They were ant to be accepted.

At that ti, his focus wasn’t on just eliminating the clutter in his mind, he was also replacing it with sothing—Chess. Even his usage of [Eyes of the Fairy] was another form of this ‘Replacent’. No matter what he focused on, whether it was chess or his ability to perceive The Beyond—he was still focusing on sothing. At no point in his life had ever used his ability to eliminate all his thoughts completely. Even his practice sessions with Myrin—he was imagining a void to remove the clutter, but that too was a form of filling the mind.

Instead of frantically popping the bubbles, Soren began to slow down. He let the bubbles float down for a mont, watching them drift across the clear blue skies. Within each bubble was a miniature storm—he could spot lightning strikes zipping by and winds racing to escape the binding holding these rogue thoughts together. Instead of destroying them, he let them float freely above the ocean, contained within their own bindings that isolated them from the rest of the Echo of Mind.

The next wave of thoughts ca, smaller this ti, but Soren didn’t react. He simply compressed them into bubbles once more and watched them drift randomly across the skies. The thoughts, which once seed so urgent, now felt aningless. He was no longer trying to destroy them as soon as they appeared. Instead, he welcod the space between each bubble, letting it stretch longer and longer. It was in these gaps between the waves that Soren found the real quiet—the stillness he had been chasing all along.