In a dark room a young girl lies in her bed, sweat covering her entire body. Her body violently spasms in a rhythmic pattern. Her pained gasps are followed by quiet sobs in the short breaks in between her seizures. Weakness and pain spreads through her frail body. Hurried footsteps can be heard down the hall, the door to the girls room swings open and an older woman rushes into the room hurrying to the bed. Gently she sits down on the bed and pulls the girl into a hug.

  “Momma it hurts. It hurts so much.”

  “I know honey, I know. It’s going to be alright. You're going to be alright.”

  Closing her eyes Mara sinks into a shallow meditation, diving into her spiritual body. A large representation of a human stands in a void; some of its parts are dim and lifeless, but a good 70% of it is still glowing with a bright silver light. She grabs for a mote of light of her spiritual body and tears it out. Soul rending pain makes Mara gasp in the outside world. Opening her eyes Mara's eyes glow with a bright silver light that quickly leaves her body and infuses into the crying girl. She feels a suction force that wants to drag out even more of her, but she resists and after a while the suction gives up; content with the scraps it has gotten.

  The girl breathes out in relief and with a last grateful look from her bright green eyes falls into a deep slumber.

  “Sleep well my Jade, I will always watch over you.” She gently lies her back down into the bed and sits there for a couple more minutes, looking at the peaceful expression on her daughter's sleeping face.

  After closing the door quietly behind herself, Mara clenches her fists and rushes back into her workroom; a small chamber filled with a variety of alchemical tools, some modern and some traditional. Beakers sit next to mortar and pestle, in the corner on a shelf rests a small centrifuge next to an arcane-lense. On the Wall a large whiteboard displays complicated equations and sketches of mana-circuitry. She sits down in front of the desk and takes a couple deep breaths. There must be a way for her to amplify the effect the bound mana has on Jade’s condition, if only she could find the right combination of reagents. Mara went back to her work checking the latest equations for the prototype again and again. There was a way to save Jade and she would find it no matter what.

  Four years later

  Jade was sitting at her desk, her laptop playing a recording of one of her lectures.

  “To cultivate means to defy the world. To take mana from the world and make it your own. We call this process cultivation but a more accurate term would be binding. Since you must take Mana that exists in many forms outside of yourself and bind it to your spiritual body; refining it in the process. After this integration and refinement one's vessel and capacity to accept more bound mana will expand. The bound Mana then creates what we call free Mana, this is what most people refer to when they use the word mana in a daily context. This free Mana is what allows Cultivators to accomplish their extraordinary deeds.

  At the beginning of this process stands the Conceptual awakening, to flood the body with mana forcing it to create a connection to its spiritual equivalent. This will establish the connection between you and your concept allowing you to embark on the road of cultivation. In the past this process was brutal and often even fatal for the aspiring practitioner. Luckily the empire has found techniques and methods to ease the process. And with the advancement of the mana sciences and mana engineering of today we can use machines instead of Cultivators to awaken our young. Guaranteeing a very low fatality rate and an overall smoother process.”

  Jade closed the educational video, she knew all this already. After all, there was not much to do inside her apartment besides browse the internet or play some games. Jade looked over to the Machine that stood next to her bed. It basically looked like one of those death lasers you see in the really old TV shows. But instead of light it emitted concentrated Mana in a focused beam at the occupant of the bed. It could not substitute whatever mom did whenever she treated her condition but it alleviated the symptoms and stabilized her long enough, so that Mara had enough time to rush over and treat her. Jade knew that mom was working herself to death to find a more permanent solution. She hadn’t found one yet.

  Jade sighed and went back to her educational videos. The least she could do to help was study well so her mom didn’t have one more thing to worry about.

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  After another hour of slogging through some of her course work she decided she needed a break. Heading over to the corner of the room that was reserved for physical training she started by doing some light stretches. After that she went into the beginning stance of the kata her mother had taught her. It was supposed to be an active meditation technique to accompany one's cultivation. She couldn’t do the cultivation part of it yet since she hadn’t awakened yet but it helped her to keep her muscles mass up and made her much more flexible. It also let her relax her thoughts from the constant worrying. The flowing excruciatingly slow movements had a way of sucking you into a zen state. So she went through stance by Stance focusing on the smallest movements. On the second to last Stance she heard the door to the apartment open. She stopped for a second which was a mistake as she stopped in a bad spot which immediately made her cramp up and flop to the ground awkwardly. She cursed under her breath and started to massage her cramping leg. “Jade you okay, honey? I heard you fall.” Her mom stood in the open door with a worried look. Jade didn’t even see her coming, the disadvantages of having a cultivator as a mother.

  “Yes mom, just a cramp from bad form.”

  “You still get too distracted by outside influences while doing your Katas. No matter, you will get it eventually. Now come and help me put the groceries away.”

  Jade got up slowly testing her leg, it didn’t cramp up any longer so she headed into the kitchen to help her mom. When she saw the massive amount of food piled in bags on the floor she gave her mom a quizzical look. “What's all this? Are we celebrating something? Last time we had this much food was when you got promoted to independent researcher.”

  Mara turned to her with a big smile on her face. “Well we do have something to celebrate don’t we.” Jade looked at her without comprehension. Mara sighed exasperatedly. “It's your Birthday, silly.”

  Jade looked at her dumbly. “Oh. OH, OH, OH MY GOD. I forgot my own birthday.” Jade was up and sprinting to the groceries looking inside and finding exactly what she wished for, all the ingredients needed to make her favorite dish. A wide variety of different meats, a shit load of vegtables and a big bag filled with different kinds of peppers and chillies. “Yesssss, you are making your super hot Skewers.”

  “And I am going to bake a chocolate cake, so go ahead and turn on the oven please.” A full evening of cooking, baking and indulging in extremely spicy skewers later Jade was lounging back in her chair at the dining table happy and content.

  “So, there is only one more thing we need to do to finish this evening.”

  Jade looked at her mother with a glint in her eyes. “Presents.”

  “Yes exactly.” Mara pulled out a present out of her daily work bag. It wasn’t really big, maybe the size of a shoe box. But Jade did not need new shoes since she hardly left the apartment. Hmmm could be anything, Jade shrugged and reached for it. Mara handed it over to her with a big smile. Thinking of it, Mara had been smiling a lot more today than she usually did. It must be a pretty good present then. Jade went to carefully open the present making sure not to rip the paper or damage the contents. Once open she saw that there were two things inside the box, a relatively big leather case and a letter. She went for the letter first, opening it expecting a nice birthday card. Instead she saw a formal letterhead addressed to her. Then she read the first sentence and dropped the letter on the table, her eyes wide mouth agape. It read “Congratulations Jade Salee, you have been accepted into Muto City Prep School for promising cultivation talents.”

  She read the line again but it did not change. She looked up at her mother wondering what cruel joke this was. She couldn’t go to school, hell she couldn’t even go outside alone in fear of her condition.

  "Why?”, she yelled, “Is this some kind of joke?”

  Her mothers smile did not waver.

  “No it is no joke. It has to do with the other gift.”

  Jade looked at the leather case, she grabbed it and opened it. Inside were two rows of vials each filled with a shining silver liquid.

  “What, What is this?” Jade dared not hope for what she was thinking.

  Mara's smile got even bigger. “I finally made progress, I managed to put my treatment into a potion.”

  Jade’s eyes started watering and tears streamed down her face. In between sobs she managed to say: “No, don’t do this. Don't give me hope.”

  Mara rushed to her, crushing her in a hug, but careful not to damage the vials she started crying too. “They are real, Jade. I did it. You can finally be a normal girl. I did it.”

  The rest of the night was spent in tears and with cake, a lot of cake.