In order to harness whatever energy I was seeing, I felt like the best start I had was to try expanding my sphere. While last time had not ended up particularly well, I resolved to keep better control of myself. While meditating, I might also have a chance to examine the energy when it was leaving my core.

And so, I sank back into the trance that had ended so poorly last time. I could still vividly remember the sharp crack that had occurred before. However, this time I didn't fall as far into meditation as last time. Feeling inward, I was beginning to sense something seeping out – the same sensation as last time – and I decided that I would attempt to 'follow' whatever it was that was seeping out. Attempting to grasp the feeling, I began to slowly be able to 'catch', as if with an intangible, invisible hand, the (at least presumably) energy at the middle of my core. Slowly, I tried manipulating what I had grasped. Slowly, but surely, I was able to move the strand.

Interestingly, there was some resistance in certain places as I controlled the amber. It seemed to want to flow, like water, along certain paths. As I moved further away from my centre, the paths began to multiply and also become smaller, thinner. Yet the strand stayed the same length. Moving further, the difficulty of manipulating the energy began to grow harder and harder as the resistance grew; but I persevered. I had no better ideas and this had gotten results. Therefore, I would see it through to the end.

When I neared the outside of my core, the resistance had grown to such a point, that I started feeling pain. I knew that something had to give, and between losing results and possibly losing the fragile looking ball that was my core, I made the obvious choice. Slowly, I let go of small slivers of the strand, gently releasing my grip. As I did so, I noticed that the strand fell apart into multiple smaller threads that wove like sand through an increasingly fine mesh. As they went, they became smaller and somehow seemingly more refined. Unfortunately, my control over them disappeared as the original strand split.

Undaunted, I kept slowly relaxing my grasp while moving the strand forward, watching as it diminished like melting wax. When it had become a tiny speck, it reached the edge of my core and with a non-auditory 'pop' it went through. As it did so, it joined back with seemingly countless grains of energy emanating in a stream from my amber sphere. The grains were not all the same colour; some were red, others green, a few were white. But the most overwhelming colour... was amber. This had confirmed it. The amber colour that I had seen in my core, was this energy. And I could manipulate it.

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But, at this point I had only managed to control one tiny speck in a massive rainbow ocean. Would it even be possible to manipulate more than one? Even this one had taken all my mental focus. That said, did I even have enough energy? I quickly checked my core and saw that its glow was barely even dented. And so, I tried again. This time however, I didn't try to strongarm my way through. Rather, I let the energy move as it wished, dividing constantly as it found different paths through my core. While watching, I also noticed that some bits of the energy stayed behind, too large to pass through the sieve. These bits were then destroyed by passing strands being broken down into smaller impurities – if you will. These were then carried forwards until they became stuck at which point they clogged the smaller paths being battered again and broken and carried forward. All the way to the edge of my core where they were so small, that they acted as the sieve to smaller and more refined energy. Furthermore, they seemed to stay stuck, like layers of sediment on the outside of the core, making me wonder if eventually, I would grow.

This discover only added to the idea that it was best to let the strands 'dissolve' and fall apart. Yet I had also completely failed at my original task of controlling multiple strands. And so, I set back to the laborious task of multitasking. Checking my energy levels, paranoid, I was relieved to see they weren't diminished at all. Apparantly, only when I released large amounts of the energy could I overexert myself and cause damage. Thus having done my checkup, I settled back and began to meditate. This time, when controlling the strand, I grabbed the next strand to come away from it. This, I could do easily. The next two, and the next four after that were also surprisingly easy. The difficulty came as they started multiplying into the 50's and the hundreds, doubling every time until they were millions, exhausting my mental strength and letting the remaining strands out of my control.

Knowing that I couldn't maintain that many, I let go of roughly half of the coils I had, focusing on manipulating the few remaining. Also, I decided not to attempt to capture more coils as they fell apart but kept the numbers the same. This time, when the energy pierced through the core, I was nearly overwhelmed by the sensation of having so many tiny specks of energy everywhere. In fact, I was able to manipulate them here as well! With that in mind, I attempted to gather what I had left. It all amounted to a measly speck of dust, not quite enough for what I had planned, but I had time.