Whatever he needs, he has or doesn't have by now.

He is a haughty young man, perhaps as haughty as they come. He believes he has reason to be as he contemplates his reflection in the gold-plated mirror, which hangs on the wall of his dormitory. Quietly he examines the proud flare of his pointed chin, the angular prominence of his cheekbones and the pale, smooth skin stretched taut across them. His eyes are a piercing, steely gray, but they betray a faint flicker warmth beneath the cloudy pupils. Pale blonde hair swept straight back gives him a look much more mature than his true eighteen years.

He rubs his chin wearily and turns away from the mirror. He cannot stand to look at himself. Instead he slumps on his four-poster and perches with his elbows on his knees, thinking hard.

Whatever his arrogance can do it is doing to him.

I am arrogant, he thinks. I am vile and mocking and deceitful. I am a liar. I use women and then dispose of them when they are no longer of use to me. I am imperfect.

Whatever the world is going to do to him it has started to do.

He presses his face into his cold hands, feeling defeat surge upon him like a foaming wave. He knows it is only a matter of time before the salt stings his nostrils and burns his throat, and the powerful ocean swells over him, binds him, tugs him under while he screams for a rescue that will never come.

He knows that if he continues on this way, he will surely drown.

Whatever is stored in his heart, he can use, now.

Whatever he has laid up in his mind he can call on.

Crumpled visage still hidden by his trembling hands, the young man attempts to recall a moment in his life when he was… how could he describe it best… happy. A moment when the shadow of an impending mission, one that would surely alter the course of his life for all eternity, was merely something to anticipate. And now, now that he knew the acts he must perform in order to stay alive, in order to protect his family and his race from downfall, he wanted nothing more than to curl beneath the bedclothes and draw the velvet drapes on his four-poster.

He was ashamed to admit this, and therefore never would. But he was afraid. No, terrified. He knew that he did not possess even half of the magical abilities of his master. His master was perfect, and he was not. The young man feared this lack of perfection more than anything, more than death and humiliation and even failure to satisfy his master's wishes, and he knew that once he was faced with this mission, he would be perfect, or he would die trying.

What he does not have he can lack.