Shards of Felwyn

Resonance

Cosmo felt his body sway from side to side in the wind like a rotting tree clinging to life. Sitting atop a stump in the middle of a forest near Athro's dwelling, every muscle and bone in Cosmo's body begged him to get up and stretch his legs.

After swearing to Athro that he would train to be able to wield Dragon's Focus, she instructed him to walk through a long trail in the woods until he found himself in a small but open clearing. Then, he was told to sit upon a stump and not move until he felt the presence of the mana around him. After at least an hour of sitting upon the stump, Cosmo found the task to be impossible.

"I can't do it. There's no way." Cosmo muttered to himself as he got up. He heard his joints creak and pop, having not moved for so long. He stretched wide and headed towards the trailhead to leave when he heard the voice once again.

Stay. The voice echoed off of the dense forest and caused animals to stir and birds to take flight. Cosmo stared at the sky and then into the dense treeline. The large pines obstructed any view of what laid behind them.

"Why? Why should I stay? I clearly cannot complete the task that she wishes me to do. I need assistance with this arbitrary task!" Cosmo shouted at the sky and the treeline, receiving nothing in response but the prancing of a deer nearby. "Fine. Ignore my plea as usual." Cosmo turned his back on the clearing again, angry with the voice for always speaking in such a vague manner.

Leave now and abandon your fate. The voice said in a cautioning tone. Cosmo stopped in his tracks. As much as he wished not to trust the voice, it had saved him from death upon arrival on Hiӓen. Something inside of Cosmo also gave him the unexplainable notion to trust the voice regardless of his doubts. Succumbing to the voice, Cosmo returned to the stump, resuming his meditation, much to his joints' reluctance.

To prevent himself from falling asleep or getting bored, Cosmo opened his ears and listened to the beautiful noises present in the forest. Birds sang and flapped their wings, squirrels scampered up trees, scratching the bark with their claws, fish splashed in a nearby river. Cosmo continued to listen to these noises for over two hours, forgetting the sting of thirst or the pang of hunger. He quickly lost feeling in his legs and no longer felt the rough and splintery trunk below him. It was as though Cosmo were floating amongst the noises of the forest, silently observing them like a hawk to its prey.

All that was left were the same sounds of nature and the feel of the breeze upon his body. Behind these graceful sounds and sensations, a resonating hum rattled Cosmo's very bones and yet left no sensation for his skin to feel. Focusing on this resonance, he discovered that the hum felt both, unlike anything he had ever experienced before and like something he had always known was there. At that moment, Cosmo knew what he had found. Mana. Cosmo thought to himself.

For an amount of time that could have been a day or a year, Cosmo sat on the stump and felt the hum resonate through his body. It was like a breeze that carried no air or a color that he could feel brushing past his arms and his legs. With his mind, Cosmo attempted to reach out to the mysterious sensation. He sensed an unstoppable force of power flowing around him within the mana. It was as though all he would have to do to achieve limitless power was to reach out and grasp it. Tempted by this sensation, Cosmo pushed farther with his mind, trying to contain or grab hold of the flowing stream. He quickly found this to be impossible and gave up trying.

After sitting on the stump for a while longer, Cosmo pulled himself out of his meditative state and rose from the ground. Much too excited to wait for the blood to rush to his legs, he began to run back from whence he came. To Cosmo's surprise, warm orange rays of sunlight now washed over the dense forest, cloaking the world in a comforting and yet melancholy light.