Red felt the tightness continue to grow within him. He could likely only hold this much mist for a few more minutes before he lost control. Not being sure what would happen, he was concerned.
"Alright. Now you need to learn how to allow your mist to shape itself. Allow your mist to float out of you as if summoning a light source. The mist should be given control to do as it pleases, and you just need to allow it passage."
Frowning, Red tried to imagine how he could do such a thing. The problem with working with mist, especially inside one's body, was that it all sounded abstract. There were general ideas for using mist, but for the most part, each person had to figure out the quirks unique to them.
Red was also a bit concerned about the color of his mist. If he allowed his mist to float free, would the color red show? What would happen? He'd changed its color before, but never within himself. Still, he allowed himself to try. Had it been just Derrin and himself, he might have stuck with the red. However, there were now other people out and about, and he did not want them to know.
The process of changing color was quite simple and mostly just involved concentration. One thing he had learned was that concentrating on what you wanted was important. So he concentrated on changing his mist to teal. With it all in one place, it was simultaneously harder and easier to do. Having such a large pool made him need to focus more. However, with it all in one spot, it seemed to affect everything immediately.
Red sighed. He could only really hope that he had succeeded with the color change. There was no way to know for sure until he tried.
So, he began trying.
Derrin had explained that he needed to give control to the mist while still setting some sort of ground rules. That was hard to do with mist as chaotic as his own. It was made worse by the growing tension within his heart.
Still, he had grown used to messing with the chaotic stuff, and after a minute or so, he felt the mist beginning to evaporate. It wasn't truly evaporating; instead, he was allowing it to flow out of himself. Red prevented it from fully escaping but still allowed it to leave on its own.
The mist did just that. It flickered outwards. Each passing moment, Red felt his heart grow emptier. A few moments later, the overflowing mist began to reenter his heart. With the aching somewhat eased, the remaining process was rather simple. Mist continued to channel outwards, and he used his will to keep it from completely dissipating.
There was clapping, and Derrin said, "Good job. That was fairly quick. Make sure you remain concentrating. Losing contraction now would essentially doom your attempt for the rest of the day."
"Now, Red, now comes the hardest part. So far, you have fully taken control of your mist and then fully released control of the mist. Now you need to combine both things. You need to get your mist to concentrate itself in the air outside your body. You need to do it without taking total control, or it loses its proper form. You need to get your mist to concentrate in on itself without forcing it to."
Red frowned, but held his concentration. Derrin was starting to sound like Ayjax with all of his weird jargon. Trying to understand him was like trying to read a textbook. Still, he had some ideas. He had been doing things like this for a long time. Escaping the gearborn ship had revolved around his ability to concentrate his mist. While he had been unable to do it in the open air, he had still learned a lot about manipulation.
The idea was for him to complete what he had been trying to do aboard the Gearborn ship. Concentrate his mist in thin air. He had tried to force it to do so already, and that had failed. Instead, he needed to somehow get the mist to do it itself.
Once again, that was easier said than done. He was coming into this exercise with preconceived notions on how his weapon should look. That would not work. His mist needed to embody itself. It needed to do the forming and not him. The problem was that when he thought about the act of concentration, it often came in the form of a shape. This in itself would ruin the entire process. Any ideas on what the concentrated mist should look like would end in failure.
When Derrin said this step was the hardest, he wasn't kidding. Despite the experience that he had already had, it was still nearly impossible. He didn't want to take too extreme of actions because that would cause everything to fail. However, that severely limited how much he could actually do.
"Red, breathe. You don't need to be so tense. Allow your mist life. Give it the freedom it wants. Give it the choices it wants."
He let out a shaky breath. That was easier to think about than to actually do. It was like trying to teach himself to pump his heart manually. That was simply strange and didn't make sense. His heart was meant to act on its own accord. His taking control of it was just wrong; that didn't mean it was impossible.
In the same way, he had control over his mist. Giving his mist control of itself felt strange and foreign. It was like giving up a part of himself. How could he just let something else take control of such an integral part of himself? That wasn't exactly right, because that integral part was simply taking control of itself.
Despite all of the problems, he knew that it was possible. He just needed to step away. So he did just that. Any attempt to control the mist within him, he released. Everything that was under his control, he banished. That would only hinder his efforts.
It felt immediately wrong. The mist began to swirl around without a care in the world. For a moment, Red thought it was all going to dissipate. He nearly panicked, but remembered himself. Instead of focusing on the mist, he concentrated on the idea of a mistblade. He couldn't articulate what he wanted. Instead, the word itself. It was as if he was praying to his mist to give him what he wanted. Strangely enough, it seemed to work.
Red felt the mist begin to coalesce through his closed eyelids. He could only guess what it looked like with his eyes closed. But even so, he could feel the presence growing in front of him with each passing moment. Even as he sat, he felt something begin to glow behind his eyelids.
"Well done, Red. Well done… You should be able to open your eyes."
He did just that. Opening his eyes, he saw what he had been hoping for. There, floating in front of him, coalesced in teal light, was his mistblade.