“Stop fidgeting with that thing and pay attention to me”. Des pulled Dena into his arms, shaded beneath a tall oak tree which had tangled itself in the brickwork of a forgotten tower. As Dena moved toward him her hands were pushed between them, laying flat against Des’s chest save for a small bump in her left hand. Even over his red tunic, Des could feel the chill of the black stone. Dena’s fingers gently stroked at Des’s chest as she turned to look up at him.

“I can’t help it, it’s such a pretty little thing,” she said.

“Prettier than me?” Des replied, feigning an exaggerated outrage.

“Well…” Des kissed at Dena’s auburn hair as she nestled herself into his lap. The dirt beneath his legs was dry and coarse in the blistering sun of the old fields, but he was sure he couldn’t have been more comfortable if he tried.

“You can keep it if you like,” Des said, absentmindedly fiddling with a strand of Dena’s hair. “I tried to sell it but no-one would take it, I don’t think it’s worth very much”.

“Oh, why thank-you then,” Dena said sarcastically. “-I appreciate the extravagant gift”. She thumbed the black stone between her fingers for a moment before pressing it back into Des’s open hand. As it touched his skin he felt a spark of relief. The feeling surprised him.

“No, it probably has power - power you could use”. Des bristled at the comment, feeling the hair on his neck rise.

She didn’t mean it like that, Des reminded himself. He had to stop jumping to the worst conclusions.

“Well, yeah, I guess-” he mumbled. Dena shifted in his lap.

“What does it do?” she asked. All virtue gems did something, imparted some kind of knowledge to the bearer; for all his investigations, however, Des had been unable to glean the simplest of functions from the black stone.

“Nothing, as far as I can tell,” he said. “I can’t even socket it properly”. Virtue gems had power, but it came with a caveat. Each had to be bound to a thaumaturgical artefact, and then, only then, would the bearer of the artefact be able to utilise the power of the socketed virtue gem. Different artefacts had a varying capacity for recesses and bindings, but all were capable of supporting at least a single virtue gem.

“I have a chromatic here,” Dena said, grabbing the small buckler shield at her side. She passed it over to Des, three recesses plain on the centre of the shield; all three were connected by a thaumaturgical link, and all were marked by a different colour. Red, blue, and green, one for each of the three thaumaturgical ways.

“It’s not my gear-” Des said, lifting his hatchet up to show Dena the markings present on its hilt. “-it’s the gem, it doesn’t fit any of the sockets”. To demonstrate he took the buckler from Dena’s outstretched hand and in turn tried to place the black stone into each socket, first the red, then the blue, and then the green. Each time it slipped into place and then fell free the moment Des moved the shield, lacking the magics that should have made it one with the artefact. He shook his head and passed the shield back to Dena.

“Are you absolutely sure it’s a virtue gem?” Dena asked, staring at the smooth black stone.

“Look at the markings, and the cut,” Des said. “It has to be”. In truth he’d already considered the possibility that it was some convincing fake, even asked Yeena, the seer at the forest encampment, to look over it. She’d given him only an Azmeri proverb as an answer, but she’d turned it back over to him quickly enough that he’d assumed it held little interest to her. It was when he was alone, when he held the stone in his hand and rubbed at the smooth edges with his thumb, that Des was convinced he could feel the faintest spark of thaumaturgical energy inside it.

“Well nothing we’ve got can support it, so I don’t know how you can know either way,” Dena said.

“How about a Vaalish artefact?” Des broached. Ancient thaumaturgical artefacts sometimes held socket bindings which could support a virtue gem of any colour, of any of the ways. Dena laughed, snorting as she did.

“Oh well unless you’ve just found the eternal emperor’s crown on one of those hunting trips of yours, I don’t see how you’d afford that”. She paused for a moment. “-but-”

“What?”

“Well there are other ways,” Dena said, drawing the words out slowly and shyly. The reference to the eternal empire was enough for Des to make the mental leap.

“That’s madness,” he said, staring at Dena with concern. “There’s a reason people stopped doing that, and a reason the eternal empire fell-”

“You don’t know that’s why the empire fell,” Dena replied. Rumour and fable surrounded the fall of the empire, some several hundred years ago. The only truly knowable part of it was that the cataclysm had occurred at the same time, and the corruption had been present in Wraeclast ever since.

“It’s not healthy,” Des said.

“I’m not recommending you do it,” Dena replied. “I’m just mentioning it as an option”. She frowned and the mood between them soured. A few moments passed before Des spoke again.

“Sorry,” he murmured, whispering into Dena’s ear. “You were trying to help, I overreacted,” he said. Dena smiled demurely and kissed him on the neck.

“Well don’t you go ruining that lovely body of yours my champion,” she said, as she turned toward him and fell forward.