Power.
He had once possessed great power. That much seemed undeniable.
He could not yet remember the individual workings of it, nor the countless hours that must have gone into acquiring it, but the shape of the knowledge remained.
It rested somewhere beneath the surface of thought, patient and waiting.
The supernatural arts.
That was perhaps the broadest description.
Once, he would simply have called it magic.
Now the word felt frustratingly inadequate.
Magic had merely been the common language. A convenient label for ordinary conversation.
In practice, it had encompassed far too many things to remain useful.
Some powers depended upon will. Others upon understanding. Still others upon precision.
They had all been called magic.
A simplification.
One might as well describe every form of scholarship as simply reading.
Yet he had done so anyway.
It was convenient.
He wondered whether he had been a master.
The question lingered for less time than he expected.
No. He would never have described himself that way.
Others might have.
But the title had always seemed premature.
A master implied completion, a sort of endpoint.
Someone who had reached the summit.
Even now, as he was, he didn't believe such a summit existed.
There had always been another lesson to learn.
He had known much. More than most, perhaps.
But knowledge had only increased his awareness of everything he did not know.
Mastery remained infinitely distant.
He remembered calling himself a master, an expert in certain things.
But only when it proved useful, for faint amusement, or to mock an enemy.
There had been occasions where introducing himself as a master had immediately altered the behavior of everyone present.
People listened, and they argued far less.
Sometimes they surrendered before any conflict had even begun.
At other times, he had done precisely the opposite.
He had deliberately understated himself and allowed others to underestimate him.
There was remarkable freedom in appearing merely competent, or even less than that.
Opponents became careless, and conversations became simpler.
People revealed far more when they believed themselves superior.
Neither approach had been deception in the malicious sense.
It was simply a way of presenting himself. Barely manipulation.
If someone believed him greater than he truly was, they often acted with unnecessary caution.
If they believed him lesser, they often exposed mistakes they would otherwise have concealed.
The truth remained unchanged.
Only its framing differed.
He had found that useful.
Perhaps a little unfair, but rarely cruel.
Those thoughts produced another.
Humility.
He had genuinely admired it, but not because he possessed an abundance of it.
He suspected, with growing certainty, that arrogance had been among his more visible qualities.
If he had accomplished something extraordinary, whether good or bad, people would know about it.
And he would have told them.
Pretending otherwise would have been dishonest.
Yet he also remembered speaking modestly about his own abilities.
Not from insecurity or false modesty, but because telling people the full extent of his power would have frightened them.
Confidence inspired rivals.
Humility invited teachers.
He had preferred to have neither unless he chose them.
There was arrogance that arose from believing oneself too complete, too competent.
And there was arrogance born from believing oneself capable of becoming too much.