Chapter 3

  When adversity strikes will you be ready? When the world tries to weigh you down and mold you into something you would forever regret will you resist? When those around you take everything from you because of their prejudices will you keep going? I wasn't ready but I survived, so you will too.

 The week before my 18th birthday, I was so excited. I could finally start the weeklong process of awakening my core. A few days in my enthusiasm started to wane because it was a monotonous task to pull the death affinity essence into my core. Even though we were in the Deadlands there was still many different essences in the world around me. 

--Day 5 of meditating--

 "Make sure to take in only death essence Therion." My dad was the one to speak as he and my mother entered my room. "Stop repeating that whenever you see him meditating." My mom said as she elbowed him and glared at him. "He will enter deep meditation soon, if you interrupt him out of habit like that it could hurt him." They had been checking up on me every day of this week to see my progress. When I say see I mean literally. It is highly advised to create a perception-based card for your first core slot.

 The thought of them just casually looking at my core made me jealous. if I was a few years older, which my soul technically was, I could already be at the first tier. Unfortunately, both my mother and father forbid me from trying until my body had caught up. The past two years were a little awkward at first due to me needing time to reconcile the fact that this is my second life. After a few stern talking to situations my parents dispelled my doubts as only those close to you can. 

 "Have you thought about the path you will take?" My father asked. After a quizzical look my father held my shoulders and looked into my eyes. "The path you will take to gain your power. We won't be beside you forever." The question was one I had avoided thinking about in the past years because of a few things. First was my affinity, how will it affect how I gain my power? After that was the fact that if I made a mistake there would be no one to catch me besides my parents and as my father just said they would not always be there. There wasn't even some text on death builds that could give me an idea. Those had all been burned by the Holy Order after the deadlands were formed, or so my father said. With those thoughts in mind, I fended off my parents with the excuse of not knowing until I awakened my core cards.

 --Day 6 of meditation--

 I could feel it, my body is almost saturated with essence, and I could slip into the awakening trance at any moment. 'The suspense is killing me.' I thought for the fourth time this hour. 'When I wake up is when my metaphorical training arc would start which honestly would actually be a lot of creating and memorizing the card patterns.' I glumly thought. 'Depending on what I get for my core cards, that could get boring fast.' I honestly hoped I wouldn't get a useless card like dead forest or a haunted house. I want something epic, something with massive potential that I can use to protect everyone I care about.

 --Day 7 of meditation--

 "I just feel uncomfortable now." I complained while sitting on a mat in the living area of our house. "When your essence starts to compress inside your body is when the process will start. If you feel bloated that just means you are almost there." My dad who was reclining on a chair replied. "Honestly, it should have started sometime this morning. If you don't hurry up the food we have prepared for after your awakening will go to waste." My dad nervously chuckled. Both he and my mother have been on edge for the past day. 'They probably aren't telling me something.' I thought. There were a few times in the past that my father disappeared or left suddenly and all I would get from my mom was he is handling things. 

 Before I could finish that thought It felt as if something in me had opened and my essence and mind are being sucked somewhere. The last thing I heard before getting sucked away was, "It's happening, Elizabeth get ready. They might..." then darkness.

 --Inside of Therion's mindscape--

 When I could sense something, I realized I had entered my mindscape. This was something my mother and father had talked about many times. This space separates you from your senses and offers greatly increased control over your essence. Normally you would have to practice meditating till you enter it yourself but there are special times you can be forced to enter it like when you formed your core.

 In front of me was a sea of essence with two huge blank cards floating in the middle of it. These are my core cards that I need to awaken to form my core. Looking around there is a barrier shaped like me surrounding and limiting the essence, gently brushing my senses against it I saw a multicolored world of essence around me. 'This must be my barrier that my mother told me about.' My mother was the one that taught me how to grab the correct essence and feed it into my core. During that lesson she told me how I was supposed to form my core.

 I am supposed to take control of this barrier and condense it into a sphere around my core cards which would in turn awaken them. After that I have to connect it to my energy card in a way that won't force my field card out of my newly formed card. If I failed during the process of compressing my barrier it would snap back into place causing all the gathered essence to be expelled and damaging my blank core cards. The only problem with that happening is that I would have to wait for my blank cards to heal before I start to try again. If I fail after awakening my cards, I will risk a partial awakening or a card expulsion. A card expulsion would kill me and there is no way to continue cultivating even if I survive.

 First, I have to get control over my barrier so that I can use it to form my core. Next, I have to fix the image of my core in my mind and force my barrier to replicate it. Lastly, I will have to connect my energy core card to it and ensure everything is stable. That should be easy right? Except I'm going to put my own spin on it quite literally. For the image you are supposed to imagine a sphere that has a sort of collection membrane on it that connects to the energy card. Instead, I am going to imagine a ball that is full of evenly spaced holes that are filled with a dense collection membrane. Not too much of a change, until I decided it must spin.

 First, I have to get control of my barrier. When I try to 'grab' the barrier it just seems to slip out of my grasp. 'That is going to be annoying.' I thought as I tried again. After a few more tries I stopped and thought about it. 'The barrier is made by my subconscious to keep essence that I can't handle out, at least that is how it sounded when my mom explained it.' That is when it hit me, 'The barrier is mine I already have control over it I just don't realize it. In that case I just have to will it in place and connect the energy card. This will be easy.' 

 It was not easy and every time I thought I had it I was just accidently controlling my essence. After what felt like 4-5 hours, I finally figured it out. If I compressed my essence as far as it would go, I felt a sort of strain. Because of the empty space between my essence and the barrier it was having a hard time holding itself up. Following the feeling that strain provided allowed me, after a few attempts of course, to gain control over my barrier to a decent degree. 

 Then it was a matter of simultaneously compressing my essence and barrier while I 'spun' my barrier around it. One thing I noticed was how my essence seemed to want to spin with it. With a major force of will I started to slowly spin the essence and barrier around my core cards. As I did this my core cards slowly came to life and started to greedily suck up my essence. As this happened, I noticed that I might run out of essence before this finished. If that happened everything I had going for me here would grind to a screeching halt.

 'I have at most a few minutes before that happens.' I thought. I looked at my core trying to figure something out. 'I might be able to get my energy card to awaken first if I divert most of the essence to it first. Then when it awakens I can connect it to my core and gather the rest of the essence my field card would need.' With a plan in mind, I started to funnel as much essence as I could into my energy card. When it reached capacity and awoke, I hurriedly connected it to the gathering fields in my core.

 With bated breath I watched as the essence in my surroundings slowly started to gather to me. When the first one hit my field, I watched as my core card absorbed it and started to produce my essence. A trickle turned into a drip then a stream and my field card started to absorb it quickly. As that happened my core sped up and aligned itself with my energy card as its axis. At a high speed it stopped accelerating and stabilized into the core I imagined. At this point I didn't need to keep it together and knew I had succeeded. As soon as my field card awoke, I would finally be able to cultivate my cards. 

 As I looked at my core, a sickly dark green sphere in the middle of my chest about where my heart would be, it my field card awoke. Before I let go of my state of deep meditation, I noticed that it quickly filled up and starts to gather a cloud of the dark green essence around it. As I watched the cloud quickly started to exit my body and leak into my surroundings. 'I should ask my mom about that. I thought a core is supposed to keep all the essence inside it.' With that I exited my deep meditation hoping my mom and dad would be there when I awoke.