WILL, WE WERE TAUGHT OVER and over at the academy, is a gift. Not just in the sense that it is something good and wondrous, but that it is literally a gift: it can only ever be given, never taken. Another of the great lies of the Hierarchy. Possibly their greatest. And yet, perhaps, also their greatest truth. Like any power, it can be coerced. Fought for. Demanded. Requested under false pretences. But in the end, it is always the giving that is the important part. It can be reluctant. It can be because it is expected, pressured. It can even be a last resort against death itself.
