“Please sir, my son, my son, he’ll starve-” she babbled. She was slighter than five feet and so thin that Des doubted she was getting regular meals herself; at first glance, he imagined the grey-haired woman to be fifty years old or more, until he caught sight of her face. Her eyes were wet with pain but lacked any tell-tale wrinkles or signs of age. She’d perhaps lived a hard life, that was evident from her fragile appearance, but she had not lived a particularly long one. Her voice broke with the sound of fresh tears as she brandished a simple rope net in her hands. “Please, my son, he’ll starve-” Her pleading seemed to circle round, hitting the same beats each time she started again, but the burly man in front of her was unmoved by the begging.

“I’ve no use for some weaver’s offal,” he said. The man, a butcher in a bloodstained apron, stood guard in front of a trader’s stall slathered in salted meat; he was at least two feet taller than her, a foot taller than Des himself, and older than either of them. His tunic and breeches were immaculate, clean and of fine quality, somehow entirely shielded from his work by the apron that covered his bulging belly. A perverse grin seemed to radiate across his face as he noticed the growing crowd of onlookers witnessing the woman’s distress.

“Please-” she began again before the butcher cut her off.

“Begone wastrel, else it’ll be the back of my knife on your skull,” the man threatened. In his hand hung a thick cleaver, the flat edge of which looked heavy enough to be the head of a mace in its own right. Shaken by his comment, she stood in stunned silence for a moment. A few members of the crowd whispered amongst themselves but for the most part, no-one reacted to his menacing statement. Des didn’t know the man, but he had heard tale of him by reputation. He was rich, as rich as anyone in Phrecia could be, and wealth-in-food amounted to wealth entirely these days. Nobody would dare cross him, no matter how boisterous or rude he became, for fear of ending up like the woman in front of the butcher, unable to make a trade when it really mattered.

“Just give her something”. Des stepped forward before he weighed his actions. The burly man turned to face him across the empty stall between them, incredulous that someone had dared involve themselves. “Anything. You’ve got plenty,” Des murmured, feeling his confidence evaporating as quickly as it had come. The familiar ache in his skull grew, a lightheadedness causing the edges of the man in front of him to seem slightly blurred. The crowd suddenly began to disperse, the air amongst the camp turning sour as everyone simultaneously decided they’d rather not be witness to the butcher’s response. The burly man scowled towards Des, looking down at him as though he was considering an ant or another insect.

“No goods, no trade,” he said. His voice was a low growl, hefted up by the sounds of a developing cough in his chest.

“She’s got a net, surely that’s worth something?” Previously content to watch the exchange in silence, the woman suddenly nodded furiously, pushing the net forward with both hands to punctuate Des’s point.

“Net’s worth less than a scrap, certainly not anything from my table,” the man replied. He pulled his sleeves back, revealing thick brown-hide leather gloves. Each was large enough that they could’ve been skinned and tanned from the bone-cruncher, or some relative beast, but certainly not both from the same bear. At the base of the wide-flared gloves lay a series of eldritch inscriptions, thaumaturgical links that wound themselves around four ruby-red virtue gems. The butcher snorted derisively as he revealed the gloves, his meaning plain to the camp. He was ready to fight.

“Have a heart!” Des cried. He drew a curious stare from a few of the men and women nearby, most of whom were pretending to busy themselves with the wares of other traders.

“My goods, my word”. He pushed himself up against the stall between the two of them, his belly coming to rest on the edge of the table. “Now step back unless you want to take out that hatchet boy”. He purposefully spat across the stall as he finished, the loose spittle landing beside Des’s feet as the butcher dared him to start something. The threat hung between the two of them for a moment before the man snorted again, and turned to his own stall.

“You feed her if it bothers you so much. She ain’t gettin’ anything from me and mine,” the butcher grunted, returning to work on his table with his cleaver. Des felt a powerful frustration boiling over in his stomach, pangs of anger and humiliation knotting together until they brokered a physical pain. He took a deep breath, willing the feelings to pass so that he could better control himself, but the rule of his own mind was already lost; suddenly thaumaturgical power began to course through his body, rushing from his arm, where the stone lay, and pushing itself around the rest of him, radiating outward. The world took on a sharp clarity, the small pains that hid in his body waning as his consciousness sharpened. He felt the familiar call and answer of a virtue gem drawing power; it emboldened him, made him feel invincible and unstoppable. The energy was no further than his chest as Des lifted his hand and spoke.

“No”. The word was thunderous on his lips, destructive to the tips of his ears, but he couldn’t tell if the strength of his speech was imagined, if the group in front of him were witnessing the same racket. Whether at the call of Des himself, or the storm he felt swirling around his words, the butcher turned to face him. “Trade her food,” Des said. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he was sure that he was saying the same thing as before, only louder, but he was buoyed by the spirit of whatever power lay inside the black stone.

The butcher nodded. His eyes were a glassy expression-less mirror as he scooped up a handful of meat into his arms: a string of sausages, several bear chops, some assorted mince. Without a word, he wrapped the lot in brown paper, tied it with a twine knot, and passed the package to the woman. She dropped her rope net at the man’s feet, unable to hold onto both it and the package at once, and beamed brightly with disbelief as she looked from the butcher back to Des and then the butcher again.

“T-th-thank you,” she stammered. For a moment she hovered in front of the burly man, his glassy-eyed stare looking out past her and towards the river beside the camp. As she realised the man had nothing else to say to her she took a few tentative steps and then slunk away, vanishing into the crowd as she disappeared out of the camp.

His head now faint, Des suddenly snapped back to consciousness, in control of his thoughts once more; whatever hold the black stone had on him was relinquished. The butcher’s fugue was similarly broken. He stood muttering to himself in bewilderment, looking across the salted meats on his stall as though a new accounting would reveal he had imagined recent events. Several members of the camp, who had previously been pretending they weren’t paying attention to the man, were now watching him like a hawk; a few of the bravest moved towards him to ask for their own boons. He glanced toward Des accusingly over a growing crowd, his eyes demanding an explanation. It was too late.

The growing crowd accosted the butcher, trying to trade him various baubles and junk for whatever meat he’d give them in exchange, but the man simply roared in response, his face a red and furious swell of confusion. He brandished his knife in a semi-circle around him, daring anyone to come closer. The mob began to edge away, and return to whichever stalls had occupied their attentions beforehand. Des watched from the parapets of the camp’s stone wall as the butcher yelled helplessly, for anyone nearby to tell him what had happened, for someone to tell him where the black-haired beguiling exile had gone. Des climbed down the other side of the wall and slunk away from the camp, as the woman had before him.