The Tale of Tarrance

Tarrance's Lessons

So, turns out this magic thing is harder than I thought, Tarrance sighed to himself as yet another attempt to channel the magic in the crystal failed.

Despite his drive and willingness to help all that he could, Tarrance had hit a wall with the actual ability to do anything, or at least that's what it felt like at the worst of times.

I don't really have the first idea about what I'm doing, he shouted at himself in frustration as the days grew into a week of his grandmother attempting to teach him how to use his magic and his utter failure each time. Turns out his grandmother was right that his ability while powerful was still raw and unharnessed.

"You can't force it," she advised him as he tried to learn the simplest, but also the most fundamental, skill needed to cast spells. The crystal in his hand, one of the few his grandmother had, bit into his skin as his grip around it tightened in frustration.

"Gently Tarance, gently," his grandmother tried to soothe him as she took the crystal from his hand. "You must remember that magic is a force like any other. We do not command the wind to blow, the rivers to flow, or rains to fall but we learn to harness them, to use those forces to ease our lives."

In principle, he understood what his grandmother was trying to say. To reach out for the magics he needed and use them but to Tarrance, his power didn't feel like that. His power was different more contained, more bound to his will despite it refusing to do as he asked of it.

He tried once again to follow her instruction and relax to coax the mana out of the crystal and out into the world around him, but nothing was answering him. He tried harder and harder straining whatever he thought might help but still nothing. The strain, physical and mental, eventually became too much for him to bear and he collapsed in on himself; yet another failure on top of hundreds more.

"I think we should leave it there for the day," Maria suggested gently but Tarrance bristled at her appeasing tone.

The sickness was still running rampant throughout the village. The source hadn't yet been identified and more people were falling to the illness each day. Thankfully, with Maria almost fully recovered, the prospects of the others who had fallen ill were now looking far better.

After verbally putting Willem on his ass yet again she had regained access to the sick house. Well, sick houses now, another needed as the number of sick grew. Her efforts had some effect in holding the progression of the sickness but with so many ill now she had to spread herself thinner than she had before she fell ill herself.

Tarrance worried that she might fall to it again with how she was both pushing herself and how much she was exposed to the sickness.

"I've never been caught out by the same thing twice," she reassured him when he shared these fears with her. And the absolute certainty in her voice allayed his fears for the time being. Even though a part of him wanted to shout at her that she was just out of her own sick bed.

But as each day passed, as the number of sick grew, and no one had yet to recover from the illness, bar his grandmother and a couple of the younger farmhands whose health was robust in and of itself, the dark cloud over the village grew more imposing and ominous.

He knew it must be grating on his grandmother, the thought that she couldn't do more to help making her sullener and quieter as the day passed. Their lessons, which had started with such hope, had quickly become more like a chore to both of them. Something they needed to do, to check off the list for the day, the fact that something good might come out of it on the other side didn't change anything for the moment. After all, tending to the fields was still a chore and the prospect of getting food from them was far more of a certainty than Tarrance ever learning to control his power seemed to be.