Liam began playing with the surrounding mist.
Most of it listened to him and wanted to help him. It twirled all around him when he wished for it to do so.
When his emotions fluctuated, they moved in accordance with him.
Sometimes, Liam combined the mists, and it didn't work out that well. They seemed to respond to his emotions more.
Like an untamed pet, that needed correction and listened only to his emotions or mental power.
Nevertheless, with their help, he reconstructed a shell of his house and created things that he never could.
A garden filled with life. While it couldn't grow anything like herbs, it became a pleasant change in the ever stagnant void.
Liam tried to recreate the library he once had as Morpheus. However, each time he tried to do so.
His body would tremble as if something held him back. Almost akin to fear of heights, even though a thick rope always makes sure that no one falls.
The outside didn't look so great either.
No signs of any connections so far and the mist lacked the ability to grant him vision to the outside world.
So, he became stuck.
Instead of wasting time, he played around with the mist more and learned various important things about it.
It followed his emotions with the least resistance.
Also, a steady flow from outside, which he assumed came from the world outside, gave him some doubts.
Did he reincarnate again?
He would be lying if he told himself that he didn't hope for such things to be true.
After all, having to fight never ends well. No matter how much power one has, it would change someone one way or another.
When playing with the mist. More mist he used at once, the greater the structures he could build.
However, at one point. Too much mist resulted in his lack of control, even with his own emotions and mental power.
A limit capacity of some sorts.
Then, one day, he wondered. If he could compress it into a liquid or even solid form, then he might be able to use more of its capabilities.
In short, it didn't work. At least he couldn't force the mist to just compress into itself.
After fumbling around for what he thought took days. He gave up and tried other venues.
The mist turned into a whirlpool as it grew a bit more dense. At some point, though, the whirlpool jumped out of his control and exploded into mist again.
The light green mist worked the best as a whirlpool, with the blue one as the close second.
Brown mist couldn't enter the form and red one could, albeit at the cost of the red mist over time.
He decided to call it mana, even when it acted differently from the mana he used to know.
If it behaved like mana, he knew. Then, there couldn't be ice like mana combined with fire in one place.
Especially in some kind of equilibrium. Unless he got transported into some kind of weird region.
Where opposing elements coexisted.
Liam didn't want that, though. The more weird and unpredictable the environment, the lower odds of finding intelligent beings like humans.
More time flew by with him, spending most of his time playing around with the mist.
He didn't find anything too special about it, though. Unless he reinforced the created items with his own mental power, which he used to create the library and his home before.
The items needed a constant supply of the mist. Sometimes, it just vanished outright.
More complex things took on a temporary vague shape before the mist collapsed.
At one point, he grew bored.
His ultimate achievement after trying out things became ice cream with a lot of flavours.
And that too depended on his emotions. Once, when he got angry at the lack of progress.
The blue mist grew turbulent, red mist exploded and even the brown mist trembled.
Least impact on the 'mana' worked when he grew calm.
That's when the mist just floated around. Light blue icy mist just passed the warm red mist without any kind of disruption.
They just seemed to not see each other. On the other hand, if some of his emotions peaked.
Some of the mist would clash against each other in subtle ways. At those times, he could combine them the best.
He tried to teach himself how to become angry or sad on command. However, the mist never got fooled.
Sincerity straight from his soul could move mana. Not some faked act.
Their unique traits gave him an idea. He tried to recreate nature.
Where, the green light mist like wind split into multiple portions. Some had a bit of red mist in it as they floated on the top.
Light blue mist fell to the bottom as he spread out blue mist all around.
Then he stirred it like a pot.
To his delight, in 4 attempts, he managed to create a small tornado. Though it required a lot of control and broke in just seconds.
The delight came from another fact. None of the mist got consumed, which meant that the only consumption came from him.
He tried to recreate the tornado again. The mental exhaustion proved to be too much, and he fell asleep.
As he did. The coloured mist returned to its calm state.
Unknown to him, the light green mist from the tornado. Now pushed other mist around when they came close.
All except the brown mist, which stubbornly held on.
...
Unknown amount of time passed as he woke up again. Feeling refreshed, he wanted to create different things.
Liam tried to make a volcano next. He used brown and red mist for it.
First, he encased the red mist in a brown one before he made a limited opening, which the red one couldn't pass through.
Then he pushed.
That day he grew corrected. Mana reacted to both extremes the most. Be it through powerful emotions or the lack thereof.
He liked it more when it listened to him under calm conditions, however, he often grew too happy or excited.
Then, it would be like a tug of war.
Who now controlled the mist, his emotions, or his rational side?
He called it dissonance. When he entered a dissonant state, the amount of mental energy at least tripled.
One bad dissonance always led to one ending. Him, knocked out, recovering before trying it again.
To be calm in a few tries would be a joke. Mana responded to the most pure part of Liam.
If he grew to a point where he could control the mana in a complete, serene state, he'd probably lose interest in the field all together.
A problem arose. Whenever Liam tried to force himself to not be interested in mana mist and see it as a normal thing that he would just filter out.
He could not play around with it at all. To achieve that state, he ignored it and treated like nothing.
At that point, it became useless. Although he used 0 of his mental power and it indeed moved around.
Liam didn't control it, nor did his emotions. He never considered it sentient either, as it revolved around him.
On the other hand, the emotional side didn't drain too much mental energy either, but the same problem came as well.
Lack of control.
Which he tried to fix or work around hundreds of times before he grew frustrated.
His mental energy also didn't just rise with repeated exhaustion and so he often spent time in the dreamland.
Liam postponed his fight over control as it led to nowhere.
So, he returned to the one thing that somewhat worked. Recreating natural phenomena.
Things like fake red mist Sun didn't work at all, or at least not the way he wanted it to.
The red mist just began flying everywhere once he made a star out of it.
He mixed light blue and brown mist to create some kind of weird ice.
Almost like a metal that soon lost its properties and vanished from the world.
When he tried to make it permanent, he got K.O. d in an instant.
Most of his success came from the light green mist and playing around it with.
He blamed affinity for it. Perhaps he had the greatest affinity with wind or something.
If wind green light mist had the greatest spiritual affinity with him, then the brown rock or ground like mist held the most natural affinity.
Almost like it belonged to him or he belonged to it.
While weird, he brushed it off for now and focused on other things. Like fire red mist.
It had the least affinity with him.
Or rather, he had the least control over it. When he wanted to do something tame and nice, it would cooperate better than even wind or ground mist.
But when he tried to create something like a volcano or a simple fire. Then, it would turn into a fighter.
Battling with all of its might against him.
One day, when Liam kept trying to control the fire mist in order to create something cool with it.
A long-lost sensation returned.
This time, the thread held a blue colour as his eyes gleamed.
Truth was about to come out. Foreign or old? World where he had nowhere to run or a place of peace?