Mitch had been training with the formation for a few days now; using it twice, sometimes thrice a day. He was getting very familiar with the sensations that came when the energy concentration exceeded his ability to handle it and had begun attempting to meditate again with the formation active.

At first, it had been what everyone, including himself, who doesn't meditate had expected: a lot of sitting still and being bored. After a handful of tries though he had stopped... thinking actively; for lack of a better term. It was almost like those last few moments before sleep stretched out to minutes and hours. He actually found this very relaxing; certainly not boring.

Currently, Mitch is once again sitting within the formation breathing slowly and deeply. This time something different has happened.

After a while of letting his thoughts just run as they would eventually his thoughts had run out. He had been overcome with a quiescent sensation. If he were to describe it to someone, he would have them imagine sitting on a boat on a crystalline, moonlit night. There is not a hint of a breeze, and the water is as still as glass. It is early morning; after the nocturnal life has settled down and before the diurnal creatures have begun to stir. The world at it's most calm.

In that stillness, he began to feel motion from within himself. Seemingly of its own volition, his consciousness moved down from his head into his body where, amidst his organs and bones, he finds narrow channels; both translucent and emitting a soft glow tinged slightly orange. Contained by the channels, there is what seems to be a fluid flowing in counterpoint to his heartbeat: when his heart beats, the fluid slows; when his heart relaxes the fluid flows more rapidly.

Curious, his mind stretches out and touches one of the channels: immediately his consciousness is sucked into the channel and flung along with the fluid. He finds himself detached and does not feel fear; merely consternation. Touching the inside of the channel does not pull him back out of the channel, so for the moment, he is stuck inside. Having established that there was no immediate solution, and not feeling any pain or anything that indicated imminent danger, he began to evaluate what was going on around him.

He was moving at a pretty solid clip, or at least it seemed so from his perspective. At first, he had felt as though he were tumbling around, but after a moment or two he had settled in and was flowing smoothly with the fluid around him. Every so often there would be a moderate jolt or judder which was somewhat uncomfortable but didn't seem dangerous.

Mitch rode along not resisting for a while longer before hitting another one of those bumps. His curiosity got the better of him and with a mental effort managed to stop himself and then slowly move back to the area where the disturbance had been. He didn't notice anything at first, but after looking around for a while, he noted a barely perceptible swirl within the fluid; similar in appearance to the heatwaves one might see rising from asphalt on a summers day. An invisible ripple only sensed through its effects on things around it.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

It is a constant swirl; the flows within move in a regular fashion and the whole anomaly itself does not change its position in the conduit. Mitch reaches out, and the portion of his mind that touches the phenomenon is buffeted violently. Uncertain, he withdraws the tendril of his psyche. Not being sure what to make of this he decides to move on and resumes following the motion of the fluid.

After a while longer he sees ahead what appears to be something of a chamber. He can also see several other openings into and out of this cavern. That is all he can notice before he reaches and is shoved into the grotto.

Immediately he slows. The flows here are much calmer than in the tubes outside. He notices a slight lateral motion and realizes that he is spinning around this space. He looks around. The area is, with the exception of the inlets and outlets, a perfect sphere. The shell of the sphere is much closer to transparent than the walls of the channels, and he can see portions of his organs at work. After a full circuit, he gets close to an outlet and is pulled from the chamber.

It isn't long before he encounters another batch of turbulence and again he heads back to investigate. Once more he finds a barely perceptible disturbance in the flow of fluid, this time with two others nearby.

Bracing himself more firmly this time, his mind reaches out into the aberration. The same kind of buffeting as before happens, but with effort, he is able to hold firm. Passing deeper and deeper into the abnormality he finally reaches the center. At the heart of the intense flow, there is a minuscule kernel of something solid. Mitch examines it for a while, resisting the currents.

It is a smooth off-white ovoid barely big enough to see under close inspection. To Mitch's current perception, it seems to be about one third the size of a grain of rice. It is spinning rapidly.

This tiny thing can't be the source of this (relatively) massive whirlpool, can it? He reaches out again; attempting to touch it. The instant he makes the slightest contact the object shatters and then dissolves into nothing. Immediately the surrounding fluid smooths out. As this disturbance vanishes suddenly the other whirlpools destabilize and collapse. Those were eddies then, dependent upon the changes the first had created in the flow.

He proceeds onwards, finding a few more of these events and each time collapsing them in the same way. One had had almost ten nearby eddies that had also destabilized.

Suddenly there is a tremble in everything around him. Mitch barely has time to be surprised before his consciousness is violently yanked back into its usual location in his head. His perception expands to encompass his the whole of his person again and immediately he is beset by a sharp, almost burning, pain. There is a layer of mist surrounding him within the circle, and his entire body is trembling.

Somewhat unsteadily he rushes as quickly as he can manage out of the formation. As the ethereal circle shatters, the mist rushes out filling the room. Mitch hurries to the fire escape through the closest window, but when he gets outside, he notices there is still mist trailing him through the window. He sprints up the steps, following that tree-dwelling animal's instinct "the treetops are safe, get higher!"

When he reaches the roof, he rushes to the far side before turning around. There is a vaporous trail following precisely his path from the top of the escape to here. He looks down and sees more mist pooling at his feet, and just in time to be able to see that the mist is coming out of him.