For the TES prompt list - 8. Willpower with Tara-Lei, because she sounds interesting. Plx n Thx <3
‘One of your greatest and most underestimated resources as a mage,’ Borissean would say, so often that it was becoming almost overestimated: ‘is your Willpower.’
He’d say it in lectures, or out of them: prompted by the word being mentioned, or the subject coming up, or merely by the wind blowing in the right direction: and there was a divide among the students, between those who believed that what Cyrodiil called ‘attributes’ were measurable things, and those who thought them as real as divining the future from the intestines of a sheep. – And there would be animated debates on attributes, sometimes, and Borissean’s words would come up, so oft repeated that everyone could recite them. One of their greatest and most underestimated attributes. So oft repeated it lost half of its meaning…
Trembling, in the floor: like a gathering storm. Trembling in the floor, shivering blankets, slow awakening. Tara-Lei can see little but a vase on the window-ledge, in deep moonlight. She is trembling: thinks something is wrong, wants it to be different, does not sit upright until she sees the vase shift. The vase shifts, the trembling exists, she springs from her bed –
‘Willpower,’ Borissean would say – and he’d say the same thing every time, like a mantra – ‘is the elder sibling of Endurance. Endurance is the capacity to continue. Willpower is the capacity to start. And once you know how to start, then everything will become easier. You will not tire so easily, and your magicka will be within easier reach. There is not that effort of scrabbling for it.’
‘What do you think of it?’ Tara-Lei said sometimes, to Julianne – who was no sceptic about the attributes, who often made potions, after all, which fortified one or the other of them. Or claimed to. And she claimed it worked. And Tara was never so sure.
‘I think Willpower is certainly important,’ Julianne would say; and with a gesture towards the chaos of papers on her desk: ‘I wish I possessed more of it… I envy you it, you know.’
Julianne is the next to awaken, and feeling the trembling runs to the window. Shouts something about the sky being red, as if it has been torn asunder. – ‘That is no moonlight. – Might it be a Blood-moon? – No…’
Tara-Lei, mage-steward of the Kvatch guildhall, scarcely hears the fading, shivering ‘No…’. She is already in the stairwell. The silence is broken when the vase upstairs falls: Julianne tries to catch it, does not, it shatters.
‘There is not that effort of scrabbling for it,’ Borissean always said, and all despite themselves remembered it: so that, in the moment, they wouldn’t be scrabbling for his mantra.
Tara-Lei has it written down in her lecture-notes: multiple times, for despite repeated material, she keeps the most meticulous notes. ‘Your notes might as well be bound and put in the Archives,’ Julianne would say. And then, self-deprecating, she would pull out her own sheaf of notes, lecture-transcript fragmented and blurring with ideas and sketches, and scratches where she ran out of ink without noticing.
Tara-Lei’s handwriting is immaculate – more legible than they pay scribes for, almost as legible as the press. And her notes are so eminently readable. And she reads them, over and over, and ponders them.
Kvatch is falling, and with it Julianne.
She goes after Tara, stumbles on the stairs, still thinking about the vase and the flowers she could not save, and the red sky, and the clouds asunder. Something is wrong, something must be done, but what is happening, what must she do? Her duty and her rambling thoughts tear her in all directions: and on opening the door she is entirely overcome, for there is smoke on the air and shouting in the streets and for all they know it might as well be the end of the world.
Something is wrong, something must be done, and Tara’s duty tells her to save the people of Kvatch. – ‘But how?’ cries Julianne, and looks about. – At which Tara does not reply. And Julianne scrabbles for the answer, there must be an answer. Tara at her side asks that she hold a ward around the guildhall.
‘What are we doing? –’ says Julianne.
‘Starting somewhere,’ says Tara, and is silent again.
‘Once you know how to start, then everything will become easier.’
‘If I only knew that,’ Julianne whispers to Tara, with another half-formed idea beneath her pen and in the mess of lecture-notes: ‘there is always so much to do, so much possibility.’
‘Ssh,’ says Tara, genially.
‘But we’ve heard this lecture before,’ murmurs Julianne: ‘or at least the rudimentaries. “You will not tire so easily, and your magicka will be within easier reach.”’
Borissean glances a little towards the whispers, and she is quiet, but wants to erupt. Tara chuckles to herself and pats Julianne’s knee. And later in the dormitory she and Julianne go over Tara’s lecture-notes together.
‘Starting somewhere,’ Tara said, in the chaos…
Borissean, back at the Arcane University, with his lectures and his mantra: it is his image and his voice which is on her mind, in the stairwell, when the vase falls, when she goes outside.
Willpower is not some mystical thing, something thought and rethought and debated. That is why Borissean said the same thing, over and over: that is why he bade them remember it. Willpower is the capacity to start. And once one gets the hang of it, then – even at the end of the world – it is as simple as that.
