The Blackest Virtue (A Path of Exile Short Story)

Knives flew through the air, blacker than the night sky and sharper than a rhoa’s bite. The bone-cruncher dropped as the blades made a pincushion of its hide, the bear-beast’s head colliding with the cobblestone path before its legs even stopped moving; it slid to a satisfying stop just a few feet in front of Des, grinding dust and rock from the ground and causing him to cough at the unwelcome cloud.
“That-” He sneezed twice, the furious motion causing a sharp pain in his chest. “That was my kill you templar-fucking cur”.
“Whatever,” Ash replied, stalking out of the undergrowth. He flicked his hand, the virtue gem in his glove glowed brightly with a rapturous green as it activated again, and the black knives embedded beneath the creature’s thick brown fur vanished, winking out of existence before Des’s eyes. A split-second later Ash’s belt lit up, a flurry of starlight announcing the return of the knives to their individual sheaths. “If you had any sort of real power if you could swing a sword or cast a spell, then maybe you’d get to the bounties before I did”. Des clenched his fists. He’d been following the trail of the bone-cruncher for days, and Ash had beaten him to it by inches. More than anything he wanted to turn away and get as much distance as possible between him and the wretched trickster. He was about to do just that until he felt yet another pang of pain from his stomach.

“Come on Ash, we’ve both got to eat. Just split it,” Des offered. The pang became a groan which became a protest, loud enough that he was sure Ash could hear it. Ash hummed loudly.
“Hmm. Pass up the opportunity to feast like a king, so that we can both eat like poorly misers? I think not”. He smiled, the same wickedly infuriating smile that made Des question why he hadn’t yet punched the sod’s teeth in. Ash sat down cross-legged, setting his pack down beside the fallen bear-beast as he did. A second later he upended the entire pack and dumped out a coil of rope that must’ve been twenty or even thirty feet long.
“You’re going to hogtie that thing-” Des gestured at the dead bear-beast dramatically. It was twice as long as a man laying down, and half a head taller than the same man standing up. “-and drag it all the way back to the encampment alone?” he asked. “Wouldn’t that part go easier with just a bit of help?”

Ash stopped uncoiling the rope for a moment, staring at the deceased bear-beast, the much feared ‘bone-cruncher’. It was the only bounty on offer this week, and as such the exiles of the forest camp had been hunting it to the exclusion of everything else. For a moment Des wondered if Ash was simply pretending to entertain the suggestion, looking to get a rise out of him, but then Ash spoke again, reluctance seeping through his words.
“Give you an eighth for the assist,” he murmured.
“Half - I found the bloody thing,” Des protested.
“A quarter or I carry it myself”.
“Fine”. Des glared at Ash for a second before striding over to help bind the beast’s body. The two made slow work of the binding, and by the time they had finished securing the beast into a draggable harness the first of the rot-flies had begun to probe the air surrounding the beast’s body.

“Corruption everywhere,” Des whistled. “Every time I see it, it still gives me the heebies”.
“Uh-huh,” Ash said, hoisting one of the longer ends of the rope over his shoulder.
“Don’t it for you?”
“It’s just how it is. You gonna grab that?” Ash nodded toward the second of the long-ropes, a scowl on his face. Des huffed and grabbed the rope, pulling it taut over his shoulder. With a combined heave, the two managed to shift the bear-beast’s corpse, pulling it behind them as they marched slowly down the stone path leading to the forest encampment.
“You know it wouldn’t kill you to have a conversation, make a friend,” Des grumbled. He huffed and exhaled loudly, his voice already heavy from the exertion of pulling the bone-cruncher.
“Got enough friends”.
“Fuck have you,” Des replied, laughing as the trickster scowled at him and then the ground a moment later. “Years and I ain’t never seen you get to know anyone. Look at me, I at least got Dena.”
“Friends-” Ash spat on the ground. “A friend will get you killed out here”.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Des declared, feeling the sweat on his brow building. “People gotta look out for each other out here, it’s the only way to get by”.
“Quie-”
“No, really man, if you don’t-”
“Quiet” Ash snapped. “Listen”.

Des stopped, letting the rope fall slack. A man was yelling in the distance somewhere on the road ahead of them, though he was too far away to make out his calls.
“What’s that?” Des asked, turning to face Ash. The trickster’s face had lost its colour, a paleness settling over him.
“Blooddrinker,” Ash whispered. Des swallowed, suddenly hearing the man’s cries as clearly as he had heard the trickster standing next to him.

“Blooddrinker-help me! Blooddrinker!” The stranger's voice was growing, headed in their direction. Des could only presume the man was fleeing from the Blooddrinker, the worst of the exiles that had lost their mind, mad rogues, that helped make the Phrecian forest more merciless than it already was. The marauder stalked the forest and killed anyone who was unlucky enough to be caught alone.
“We have to help him,” Des said, turning to Ash.
“What!?” Ash yelled, his eyes wide. “N-no, we need to get away from here, now!”
“We can help him-” Des replied. “-we have to do something!” In the distance he could vaguely make out the shadow of a man running down the same stone-brick path they’d been travelling.
“No,” Ash said, his voice firm. “I’m hiding, you do whatever you want”. He turned toward a thicket of trees and tall bushes that crested the edge of a nearby river, dashing into them without a moment’s hesitation.

The figure on the horizon was growing in size. A second, taller, figure had appeared further behind it. Des hesitated. He was no match for the Blooddrinker, certainly not alone. He glanced toward the thicket that Ash had run into and felt his feet spur him away from the road.
Solaris forgive me. As he pushed his way through the nest of tangled branches and foliage he found Ash crouched between a thick copse of trees.
“Saw sense then,” Ash murmured.

“Quiet,” Des said, his voice sharp. Shame burnt a hole in his chest. Hidden within the trees Des could see a small sliver of the road, the bone-cruncher’s corpse standing out at its edge. The two exiles hid in silence as the bellowing man drew closer, and as his cries became more frantic. When at last Des thought the man’s howls would break his spirit and drive him mad, the man staggered into view, an old man with a knotted grey beard and bare feet, dressed in only a white long-shirt marred with streaks of vibrant red blood. He took a few haggard steps, stopping just short of the bone-cruncher’s corpse, and turned, wheezing and sobbing all at once.
“No-” he croaked, his words barely audible from the road. A monstrously tall Karui man followed him, taking slow and methodical steps.

The marauding exile towered over his victim, the top of the old man’s head barely reaching the bottom of Blooddrinker’s throat. His bare muscular chest was marked with blood-red tribal tattoos that spiralled from his neck to his waist, obscured only by a macabre collection of burnt bones fixed into some mocking imitation of a man’s ribcage. Around his neck hung yet more blackened bones, arranged into a framework of pauldrons that stretched over his shoulders, and a similar arrangement of skeletal remains dangled from a bloodied cord strung around his waist, though in no particular shape. He only wore two pieces of clothing, if you could call them such; on his legs a pair of ragged and torn charcoal breeches, and on his head a hollowed rhoa skull with inwardly-curved horns.
“Please-” the old man begged, his voice rasping with exhaustion. The Blooddrinker’s eyes answered him, vacant and uncaring behind the rhoa’s visage. He threw his great-hammer into the air and brought it down on the old man, caving his skull in and scattering blood and brain matter over the dusty stone path.

Des looked away, unwilling to find out if the exile’s name was a literal moniker. To his left, he noticed Ash had his eyes closed. He listened for a moment, hearing only Ash’s murmured prayers to Innocence, waiting to see if the Blooddrinker was headed for the pair of them next. When the Karui’s thunderous footsteps began to fade away, Des risked a glance. The marauding exile had turned to travel back in the same direction he had come from, Des exhaled; his chest suddenly burning in pain as he took a breath, the air striking his lungs with urgency. He hadn’t realised he was holding his breath.

The old man’s body lay still in the middle of the road, his face a misshapen mockery of what it once was.
“We could have helped him,” Des said accusingly, turning toward Ash.
“Didn’t see you out on the road either,” the trickster replied scornfully. He leant around the nearby tree to double-check the Blooddrinker was gone, and then strode from the thicket.
“I couldn’t have helped him alone,” Des mumbled. He followed Ash out of the thicket and toward the road, where Ash stamped his feet in front of the bone-cruncher, a fit of exasperation whirling around the trickster.
“Look at this, there’s black-blood all over it!” Ash spat on the floor as he drew a knife from his belt. The bone-cruncher was drenched in the old man’s blood, a splatter of dark red that had sprayed the beast from head to hind leg. As Des glanced toward the beast’s corpse he grimaced. The blood was quickly darkening even further in the sunlight, a tell-tale sign of the sickness that had obviously plagued the man, that plagued all of Wraeclast; the corruption. “No-one is going to want meat drenched in black-blood. The whole thing is ruined,” Ash muttered. He took his knife and knelt, driving the spectral relic into the old man’s neck angrily. He gripped the corpse’s long beard, pulling it out of the way with one hand, and started to saw at the dead man’s neck.

“This is your fault,” Des said. “If you hadn’t been such a coward-”
“If I hadn’t been such a coward I’d be dead. What use is bravery to the dead?” Ash snapped. The old man’s neck began to rip in two, pulling from his body; Ash’s starlight knife reflected the rays of the midday sun as it made slower progress through the bone. “You’re a fool,” he muttered, loud enough for Des to hear. The dead man began to stir, a soft death rattle echoing out inside his chest as his eyelids opened to a hollow white pupil beneath; Ash didn’t hesitate, drawing his knife back forcefully. He made two powerful cuts, breaking the dead man’s spine beneath his blade and severing the rest of the neck. The reanimated ghoul expired immediately, its eyelids falling shut again as Ash held the head aloft proudly.
Just in time, Des thought. The corruption did wicked things.

“What do you say, old-timer? Would a few friends on the other side of Sin’s river have made you feel better about this whole thing?” Ash turned the head toward himself as he spoke and then twisted it toward Des. “Tell the stupid exile how you feel,” he mocked. Des scowled back at him, ignoring his taunts as he knelt down beside the old man’s body. “Oh!” Ash cried, dropping the head at his feet. “Letting a stranger die is bad but rifling through his pockets once he’s dead is just dandy?”
“He’s not going to use it,” Des replied.
“Whatever. You’re not half the hero you pretend to be Desmarais,” Ash scoffed. “You can keep that blood-stained bear if you like-” he said, nodding toward the bone-cruncher. “-I’ve got to go find dinner now. Again”. Neither exchanged a farewell as Ash turned down the road to leave.

Des found himself muttering under his breath as the trickster left. The gall of that man; he was one step from turning rogue himself.
How will we ever survive Wraeclast if we can’t help one and another? He turned the headless body toward him, exposing a pocket in the man’s long shirt. A few transmuter’s shards, a diviner’s card. Trinkets mostly, junk. He doubted that any of it was worth much but he pocketed it anyway; maybe he’d get lucky when he got back to camp and be able to trade it for something to sate his stomach. Des was about to turn away from the body as he noticed a strange lump in the long-shirt, about halfway up his abdomen. Ignoring the dead man’s dignity Des pulled the shirt up, revealing a pair of threadbare briefs and a drawstring purse tied around his waist.

Here we go, Des thought. He pulled his hatchet from his belt and cut the purse away from the man. No-one went to the lengths of hiding something from pickpockets unless it was something important. He pulled the purse open greedily to reveal a polished black stone inside. Is that it? It was a virtue gem, a thaumaturgical cache of experience and superhuman capability which could grant the bearer many strange abilities if properly harnessed from inside a thaumaturgical relic. Des tipped it into his palm, thoroughly unimpressed. A wondrous invention, to be sure, one that gave the exiles of Wraeclast the means with which to fight back against the deadly wilderness, but hardly an uncommon sight. He had three others recessed into the hilt of his hatchet even now.

He would have thrown the stone away, but its colour gave him pause. Virtue gems were usually a distinct shade of one of three colours: red, green or blue. The colours corresponded to the ancient thaumaturgical ways; rarely a gem might draw from two of the ways at once, sharing a mix of both colours, and rarer still a gem might draw from all three of the ways, reflecting no colour strongly and holding a clear see-through appearance. A black gem, however… Des couldn’t recall anyone ever coming across a similarly-coloured virtue gem. He pocketed the stone, feeling its sleek surface in his fingers. Perhaps a collector would want it; he was always hearing rumours of wealthy eccentrics who dabbled in one-of-a-kind and unusual items. Maybe he’d just found something to turn his luck after all.

“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.

- - - - - - - - - -

A third restless night brought Des to his breaking point. Every time he tried to sleep he was woken by horrible spectres, shadows that danced in his dreams and threatened him, never drawing up close to him but never retreating either; every rest was punctuated by a few minutes sleep, and an eternity spent inside the nightmare, before he would jar himself awake and begin the cycle again.

It was here he found himself standing in front of the Chamber of Sins.

Aptly named, for it was one of the greatest sins of the eternal empire, the chamber was home to a veritable treasure trove of thaumaturgical artefacts and tools guarded by the corruption-borne dead, and creatures warped by the cataclysm. It was a place where only the foolish dared to tread, but Des found his feet leading him, rather than his mind. It was a place that his dreams beckoned him to. He couldn’t be sure that the dreams were the product of the black stone, but he felt a whispering at the back of his head which grew stronger when the stone was pressed up against his hand. There was something about it, virtue gem or not, and stripped of his sleep Des could only press forward in search of answers.

Dena had suggested it, even though she hadn’t spoken the words. The Chamber of Sins had been the temple and laboratory of the great thaumaturgist Maligaro, one of the most powerful servants of the eternal empire; it was perhaps the solitary place in all of Phrecia where still existed the means to surgically implant a virtue gem into oneself. It was a deeply unsafe practice and one that had fallen out of favour since the eternal empire had withered and decayed, but it was a means to access a greater deal of power from an individual virtue gem. To bypass the conduit in between, to ignore the thaumaturgical relic, was to remove all limitations from the magic within.

Few lights still burned inside the chamber.
Who could still be leaving torches burning here? That someone would frequent the chamber enough to keep it lit unsettled Des’s stomach, and his eyes darted from pillar to pillar as he warily watched for whomever, or whatever, could be the chamber’s caretaker. It was no secret that the chamber was filled with monstrous creatures of every sort, the corruption had long ago settled heavily on the chamber, and Des wondered what wicked intelligence lurked in the darkness beyond.

The halls and corridors stank, a rottenness that both hung on the air and pervaded the very being of the temple. Even as Des glanced past the brickwork he realised there was an unsettling quality to it, and try as he might convince himself of the brick’s ordinariness he instead quickly hurried his gaze onward. The creatures of the chamber served only to amplify his unease, hanging back and observing him from safe distances instead of moving to attack him. Twice he thought he might have caught sight of the same giant arach spider, an instinctive but cunning beast the size of a man’s torso, watching him, stalking him from behind the pillars of the temple, but he pushed down his paranoia as imagination. Its starving yellow eyes were all that Des could make out in the gloom, but the third time he witnessed the stalking spider he was sure of his worries. The creature was hunting him.

In the darkness, Des couldn’t be sure where the monster was hidden, and his thoughts grew more agitated as he crept from room to room within the chamber. His hatchet was firm within his grasp, his finger touching the tip of the nearest virtue gem set upon its hilt; as Des held his hand to his hatchet he could feel the tale of a different warrior, a powerful Maraketh gladiator of Sarn who had died nameless and destitute in service to those who would buy and sell his people. The gladiator’s memories flooded Des’s own mind, regaling him willingly and eagerly the knowledge of a particularly flashy, but effective, strike which could lacerate the flesh of his foes. As the memories mingled with his own Des felt an impulse to move, an instinct that was not his own; he twisted, bending backwards as the gloom in front of him was suddenly cut by a razor-sharp claw. The spider lunged back, trying to retreat into the darkness, but it was already too late - Des could see the beast in its entirety.

The spider was perhaps three feet tall, with eight sharp arms that were each at least that. Its limbs and carapace were bone, the beast being some cruel mockery of an arach, not truly alive. Des wondered whether it was a remnant of Maligaro or a patchwork beast of bone assembled by the ambient corruption present everywhere. Perhaps ivory-white beneath stains, dirt, and muck, the creature’s body was now dirtied by years of living within the forgotten chamber, and it moved with twitching juddery motions which served only to make it seem more unnatural. The spider let loose a shrill screech as it watched Des, a screech which echoed from inside the creature and seemed to be borne of wicked magics rather than its empty husk.

Backed up against the wall the bone-spider now raised its front two arms, a three-pronged claw sitting at the edge of each. It skittered from side to side, trapped in a recessed alcove and unwilling to try advance past Des as he moved toward it. His hatchet at his side Des closed his eyes, trusting in his silent companion. The monster shrieked again. It swiped with its claws, so fiercely that Des could hear the air rushing out of the way, so swiftly that suddenly he could feel it, feel the air shifting as the bone claw carved its own breeze; he stepped to his right and the claw narrowly missed him, passing by so closely that he knew instinctively, without even opening his eyes, where it had missed him. Des lunged forward, delivering two quick slashes and projecting an energy through the twist of his blade, the magic channelled via the virtue gem in his hatchet’s hilt. The empowered force carried beyond the tip of his axehead and through the bone-spider’s carapace, cleaving it in twain, until the thaumaturgical wave of energy struck the wall behind the monster. It fell apart immediately, whatever necromantic force that animated it quickly dissipating along with the blow.

Des breathed a little easier, feeling the satisfaction of the invisible gladiator at the back of his mind.
What ally waits in the black stone? he wondered. Each virtue gem stored memories and magic both, sometimes the teachings or skills of multiple long-dead warriors. Almost every virtue gem had a mystical quality to the skill it could provide, a work of thaumaturgy which elevated it above simple physical training. In his dreams had been voices, voices begging to offer their aid. He wondered if they were the voices of the black stone’s occupants.

The chamber’s corridors were narrow, often filled with creatures as unsightly as the bone-spider, but they were also numerous, and Des consistently managed to find a path around the monsters, through the overgrown vines and long-fallen debris. Each time he thought himself lost, stuck, or even cornered, a new avenue revealed itself to him: a collapsed wall, a twist of vines and branches that he could break through, discarded and broken furniture that he could use to vault a gap or other obstacle. It was as if the chamber itself was an unspoken guide, always offering a route further into its dark corridors, never deterring him, even for a moment. Soon Des found himself at a great spiralling staircase which led deeper into the chamber; a moment’s hesitation stayed his feet, as he considered that the further he delved the more difficult it would be to retreat, that no exile of Phrecia had dared dive so far into the chamber, but then the whispering started once more. Except, not a whispering, a crowing, a singularly satisfied cry delighted at the progress he had thus far made and bellowing an eager encouragement to go further still. Its honeyed words began to ply him with fantasies and ideas of what riches might dwell within the chamber below, and Des’s feet began to move once more.

The air hung a little thicker the deeper Des moved into the chamber, the few outlines and shadows he could see vanishing into the gloom as the darkness grew stronger. The sconces on the walls of the second floor were bare; someone had already removed the torches from the deeper chamber. As he moved Des could hear the screech of circular blades whirring around, forgotten traps that still functioned centuries later, and he felt the cold sickly corruption upon his cheek. A monstrous roar sounded out as he neared one particularly long passage, warning him away from Maligaro’s central laboratory, but he had no desire to follow the bend of the main corridor toward whatever creature lurked behind it; the voice inside him simply pushed forward, driving him down a shoulder-wide gap and toward a forgotten small room with a broken wooden door.

Inside the room lay a thaumaturgist’s workshop, spilled solutions and broken furniture betraying the owner’s frustrations. Alchemical musks and burning sulphur stung Des’s nose the moment he crossed the threshold, the long-abandoned works of a madman searching for an answer to a question only he could see. The voice pointed him toward a long spike that lay discarded beside a blackened alembic and cracked mortar, and Des moved across the chamber without consideration to the potential hazards that decorated the floor. The voice alone guided him now. It lifted his hand as he removed the black stone from his pocket and it braced his arm as he positioned the thaumaturgist’s spike against his underarm. The whispering become crowing was now frantic commanding, leaving little room for Des to resist its instruction. The sound of the second voice pushing for his obedience was all at once dominating, overwhelming the fore of his mind, and insidious, slipping to the back of his mind to hide whenever he tried to oppose it. Des grappled with the voice, trying to get a grip on its snaking tendrils before they could compel him further, but the voice was far more experienced in this sort of combat than he. The thaumaturgist’s spike slid through the black stone and pushed it beneath his skin.

Des grabbed an apple from the grocer’s cart, handing over the very last of his coins as payment. The crisp skin crunched beneath his teeth, the fruit juices running down his chin as he bit into it, but despite the apple’s sweetness, he felt just as hungry and fatigue-stricken as he had the past week. He chewed for a moment, trying his best to find any kind of joy in the meal. Whatever existed eluded him, and he spat the apple pieces from his mouth. The grocer scowled at him and turned to another customer, mumbling a curse in Des’s direction loudly enough that he could hear her. Since he’d found the black stone his sleep had been elusive, and now, since the Chamber of Sins, he was unable to take any pleasure from eating; yet however long he went without sleeping, despite the long days where he couldn’t bring himself to enjoy any meal, he didn’t tire. The gem was miserly with its secrets so far, but he didn’t doubt some of his supernatural vigour, as well as the two-part curse to his vitality, to be the product of the blackened virtue gem.

His head throbbed, another residue from his tangle with the stone and the thaumaturgist’s spike. Where his arm would suddenly strike him with a sharp pain, an uncommon thing that visited him without warning once or twice a day, his skull was seemingly always alive with a displeasurable dull throbbing since his sinful expedition. Almost on cue the pain in his arm flared up, causing Des to grab at it and squeeze at the sore spot where the black virtue gem was buried beneath his skin. It stung, Solaris above did it sting, but neither it nor the constant companion of his headache were any match for the pain that had followed his use of the thaumaturgist’s spike. He still recalled the hideous sensation that had rocketed around his body, the simultaneous freezing and burning that had made its home inside his veins whilst he cried in agony for all-too-long minutes, minutes which had very much seemed like hours at the time.

Des gripped his arm tightly once more, pinching at the pain with his forefinger and thumb, feeling the sting dull, to his immense satisfaction. He’d stumbled from the chamber without any further conflict from the creatures inside, almost as though they’d been avoiding him. Whilst in the grip of his agony, he was so eager to leave the chamber, to never return, that he’d barely noticed; in his flight, he’d abandoned even the thaumaturgist’s spike, discarded it somewhere on the chamber’s upper floor. The wicked tool had felt far too ill to bring outside that place. Des tried to put it out of his mind. Remembering it always seemed to aggravate the wound where the stone had entered his body, and remembering it was certainly something he didn’t feel like making a habit of. He glanced around, eager to focus on anything else. The camp was busy, much busier than usual, full of merchants come to visit with the people of Phrecia, come to trade what excess they had for useful road supplies. There had to be some distraction amongst their tables.

He ambled around the trader stalls, squeezing through the crowd and eyeing what little was on offer. The traders usually came once a month to the forest encampment, treading the road from Lioneye’s Watch to the outskirts of Sarn, but their visits were becoming rarer and rarer with the seasons. He walked straight past the camp’s seer, Yeena, and towards the gaggle of stalls where the travellers had set up their wares. A nearby merchant, peddling curios and eccentricities, caught his eye and tried to usher Des over towards the peculiar trinkets he was selling.
“Come, come look, my friend, buy something interesting yes?” the man cooed, his voice practically taking on a desperate quality. His tunic was well-worn, his face haggard, almost gaunt, and his hair was patchy, large swathes of it missing past his forehead. A thick moustache made up the majority of the hair on his face - the trader was a man who looked like tough times had set upon him long ago. Des shook his head slightly, eager to try and offload the odds and ends in his pocket, not purchase more. As he glanced down he caught a glimpse of a small wedding band on the table. The sight of the ring brought a smile to his lips, and Dena to his mind, but no sooner than Des’s bottom lip had begun to curl, the man spotted his wandering eye. “Ah you’ve fine taste sir, that is a fine band, belonged to a Redblade marauder for-”
“I’m not interested in buying,” Des said, cutting him off. The trader’s temperament shifted quickly, his shoulders dropping and a frown breaking out across his face.

“What can I do for you then?” The merchant looked past Des as he spoke, glancing around to see if anyone else in the vicinity was more worth his time.
“What would you give me for these?” Des said. He removed from his pocket a few transmuter’s shards, and a diviner’s card, all of which he had taken from the Blooddrinker’s victim. He eyed Des’s handful with a dry indifferent stare.
“That’s mostly junk,” he said. “Got anything more exotic?”
“Well actually-” As Des went to hand the man what small trinkets he had, his thoughts turned to the virtue gem in his arm. As if it was controlled by a mind of its own, Des’s bicep suddenly contracted, closing his hand on the various pieces in his grip. The skin stretched over the black stone throbbed, the gem beneath announcing its presence with sudden sharp pulses that made his arm shudder slightly. The trader raised an eyebrow as Des forced his hand open again. “No-” Des wheezed. “Nothing else”. His bicep burned, the angry bite lingering on the surface of his skin as though he’d pressed his arm up against a brazier.
“I can give you some scroll scraps, maybe an alteration orb for the card”. The moustached merchant glanced down at his table. “Perhaps we can make a trade? Your card for my band?” He smiled, an open-mouth smile than revealed his crooked teeth, several of which were so lopsided they looked likely to fall out any second.

Des frowned as he looked down at the wedding band on the trader’s table.
“Just the scraps and the orb will do”. The man let off a gruff sigh, muttering something under his breath as he began to fumble with the purse tied to his belt.
At least I can trade these bits for my own food, Des thought. Sharing Dena’s kills the past two nights had left a poor taste in his mouth. The merchant handed over a blue sphere, an alteration orb which held value to amateur thaumaturgists, and a handful of inscribed pages, likely from some kind of magic scroll. All the travellers seemed to solely barter in artefacts from either of the long-dead empires, Vaal or Eternal; it had become a de-facto currency now that the corruption had made food so scarce.
“Tell you the truth, the band’s junk,” the man said, his voice a whisper so that no-one else would hear him. “Very specific measurements, doubt it’d even be wearable for most folk,” he said. Des looked up at the man, surprised by his sudden candour. The merchant took his stare as encouragement to continue. “-been trying to flog it for years, I guess that makes you a smart man for seeing through my patter-”
The trader’s compliments were overshadowed by a loud booming voice from behind, a man disagreeing firmly and vehemently with a pleading woman.

“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.

“Stay”. The word was a whisper, barely audible even to Des’s own ears, but the deer, previously springing through the underbrush, drew to an abrupt halt. It stood still, facing the same direction it had been fleeing until Dena’s red-feathered arrow pierced its neck.

“There’s no fun to hunting like this,” Des said. He was becoming much more adept at utilising the new power he possessed, and it seldom drained or disoriented him as it had in the first instance. He broke branches underfoot and clumsily parsed his way across the forest floor toward the deer’s now fallen corpse.

“Speak for yourself,” Dena replied. “I’m saving so much not having to buy ten arrows for every kill I chase”.
“You could just buy a wand, you’d never have to buy another arrow”.
“Ha, a wand-” Dena laughed at the idea for a moment, before her face became lost in thought. “Well, actually, maybe if we can get through the season like this… who knows?” Des sighed.

His aptitude with the stone was certainly growing. He hadn’t shared with Dena his encounter with the butcher, only the nature of the black stone's power, but each time he called upon its magic it got a little easier. When he called upon it he felt more of it; he could see the webs and cracks beneath its surface, the tell-tale roots of thaumaturgical energy that wove themselves deep inside, far beyond the space he could perceive from the outside. The stone’s interior was a pocket that defied its container.

From the very first moment Des had called upon the force inside it had fascinated him. The rush electrified his body, let the energy flow like no other virtue gem ever had before. It was a feeling that the primal part of his mind wanted to feel always, constantly, and it was a feeling that he had quickly become wary of.

He didn’t understand the force he was wielding, not entirely. Only that he could command another living thing and that it would obey, unquestioningly, for as long as Des could maintain his concentration. The how and the why of it eluded him; it was a magic quite unlike any other, virtue gems didn’t typically contain powers that were so imperceptible. He’d certainly never heard of one that could influence the mind of another living creature.

There were gems which could subtly enhance the bearer, and there were gems that could create followers, even at least one which could cause confusion as to friend and foe - but mind control? Such a broad and terrible power? It was a unique thing, to the best of his knowledge, and it scared him. As far as he understood it, there were only a few limitations. He had to speak an instruction, and he had to lock eyes with the subject; he couldn’t just call out and have any listener obey. It was still too soon for him to know what else the stone was capable of, aside from longevity and influence, and he didn’t know how else to find out.

If there existed an anchoring spirit in the gem, a person whose memories made up the source of the virtue gem’s capabilities, like the gladiator who had granted him the lacerating attack inside the Chamber of SIns, then Des had yet to find them, though not for lack of trying. All his mental probing had ended without discovery. Where he had always been able to touch minds and communicate telepathically with those that dwelled within other gems, fractured existences as they were, this one was different.

It refused to speak to him, never acknowledging him except for when he commanded the gem’s power. Even a few out-loud conversations, episodes which had made Des feel quite foolish in their aftermath, had not enticed the spirit to answer him.

Des and Dena reached the deer together, stopping just short of its body. It had fallen beside a particularly muddy ditch, but the carcass itself seemed unspoiled by the ground. Better still, the deer lacked any tell-tale sign of the corruption; such a creature was quickly becoming a rarity. It was the fifth deer they’d found today, but the first unmarred by the corruption’s touch. Only with Des’s new ability had they been able to hunt five animals so quickly.

As Des looked down he couldn’t bring himself to look at the deer, its eyes locked open in an expression of alarm, almost frightened, and fixed in his direction. Dena didn’t notice the deer’s stare or was otherwise unphased by it, and she stooped beside it quickly, lifting the body with one hand and hefting it onto her shoulders.

“I should take this back to be cleaned and carved - it’s a good buck, it’d be nice to have it prepared properly for once.” Dena’s face was half-hidden by the shade of the canopy, her familiar and soft voice reaching out from seemingly nowhere. Des stepped closer so that he could see her lips, and so that he could put a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“Will you meet me later?” he asked. Even in the gloom of the mid-afternoon forest, her smile was obvious; a quick flutter that broke moments before she could control her expression.
“Of course,” she nodded. Dena leaned towards him, brushing her lips against Des’s. The deer carcass stopped him from embracing her and kissing her fully, and instead, he settled for a whispered goodbye.

“Usual spot?” he asked, thinking of the tower winding beneath the great tree.
“Usual spot,” she murmured. A silent longing glance passed between them, leaping from her eyes to his before Dena turned her head and started to walk away. Des watched her make her way between the trees, admiring her deft movements and eternal grace, keeping an eye fixed on her form until she had, at last, passed through enough of the undergrowth that he could hardly make her out.

- - - - - - - - - -

The animals seemed to keep a wary distance from him as he made his way across the Phrecian forest, though Des had no designs on hunting any more of them. In the past two days, he’d had more than enough of his fill, hollow as it was, sharing Dena’s camp and helping to keep it in order. He kept eating, though since he’d first implanted the stone the act hadn’t been enjoyable, and he kept hunting to satiate that need. She hadn’t said as such, but Des knew Dena appreciated his being able to contribute. The black gem had granted him the means to do a great deal more than he had previously aspired to.

He wandered for a time, with nothing to do now that he had already finished hunting for the day.
I should take up a hobby, he thought, wondering what he’d do with himself now that hunting was becoming easier. He seemed to have nothing but time the past few days. The past night he’d tossed and turned for hours until Dena had asked him to leave her sleeping bag; walking around, until morning, had been all he could think to do. Along with finding any joy from his food, sleep was still elusive.

“Help us, please!”
“Someone help!” The twin cries called out a fraction of a second apart, the first distinctly male and the second unmistakably female. Des leapt forward, sprinting through the bushes and between a gap in the trees as he headed for the nearby road, where the voices had come from.

As he rounded a tall oak he came upon the sight of two cowering travellers, a man in a brown tunic, and a woman in a tan dress, standing in front of an armoured middle-aged man, clad in chainmail and wielding a mace made of a blue-and-silver metal; the mace head’s colour shifted as it caught the dying afternoon sun, warping from one to the other as the wielder raised it above his head. All around the man stood magically-birthed pillars of ice, interspersed without order, each as tall as a man. As Des came across the scene another rose in front of him, growing from beneath the forest earth as though the world below was entirely made of frost and rime.

“Stop!” Des yelled, hoping his voice could carry far enough. His body answered him, a storm swirling inside and swelling his chest, coursing beneath his arms as an invisible energy rushed between him and the attacker; the blue-and-silver mace drew to an abrupt halt, hovering above the head of the woman, and the pillars of ice that decorated the road began to shrink and melt, small pieces breaking off rapidly as the armoured man’s concentration was shaken.

The travellers' confusion was palpable. They turned from their attacker to Des, and back again, each time trying to make sense of the scene in front of them. The armoured man stood rigid, his eyes glazed over and his expression muted. The travellers bowed toward Des as he approached.
“I don’t know what you did, but thank you sir - thank you for saving my wife and me from that brute,” the man said. Des simply nodded back at the man.
“Anyone would’ve,” he lied. As Des’s concentration was momentarily broken, the armoured man twitched. He was pulling away from the black stone’s magic.

Des stepped in front of the man, between him and the travellers; standing closer he could see him as someone he knew, a storyteller who had once lived in the forest encampment.
Eoin… A heaviness settled upon Des’s chest. Another exile lost to the corruption. Even behind the glassy stare of the armoured man, he could see only anger; Eoin shuddered again, trying to break through the hold Des had him under. Hatred streaked plainly across his face as he spat and struggled.

“What are you waiting for?” the travelling woman asked. “Kill him! He tried to kill us!”
“I’m not a murderer,” Des replied, shaking his head. Eoin’s eyes were a mask of fury - not a word of their conversation was reaching his ears.
Once the corruption takes root…

“Then I’ll do it-” her husband said, kneeling to pick up a pointed rock from beside the road.
“No, don’t-” Des said calmly. The virtue gem inside his arm bristled, begging to be let loose, to exert his will over the travellers as he had the exile in front of him. Breathing heavily Des ignored the virtue gem's needling.

The travelling man hesitated, his hand already clenched around the rock. His wife spat on the ground.
“If you don’t kill that monster, then you’ve murdered his next victim”.
True enough, Des reflected, but still, he couldn’t bring himself to execute a helpless man. The black gem pressed up against his consciousness, whispering.
Power - you have power. Use me. A voice… the black stone didn’t seem to care what for, only that he would call upon it again.

“Go,” Des murmured. Eoin wavered. His arm fell, the blue-silver mace cleaving through the empty air as the spell of holding was broken; he stood still as a new magic rooted him to the ground, as indecision in Des’s command manifested as indecision in Eoin’s actions. “Run, now!” Des’s voice rose in concert with the thaumaturgical energy inside of him, and Eoin immediately turned on the spot, running into the forest.

“What did you do that for?” the travelling man said as he stood. Beside him, his wife sighed deeply and put a hand on the man’s arm.
“Save it Tarke, at least we have our lives”. The woman shot a scowl toward Des as the two began down the road again.
You’re welcome, Des thought.

- - - - - - - - - -

Beneath the tall tower, intertwined with an oak tree just as old, if not older, Des sat waiting for Dena, eager to tell her about his day. The minutes seemed to stretch into hours, badgered as he was by the constant demands of the black virtue gem.

A few times during his wait Des caught sight of an animal passing through the trees: a rabbit or three, several deer, once even an oversized arach spider that had him reaching for his hatchet before it scurried away. Each time the black stone in his arm called to him, begged to be let loose.
Use the power - use me. Gripping his bicep seemed to help control the urges, massaging his arm as though troubled by an ache or pain.

He heard Dena before he saw her. Her footfall fell upon his ear uneasily, branches snapping beneath her feet. Had he not turned to see her a moment later, he could’ve imagined the sound to be someone else. Dena was rarely so careless with things. She stumbled slightly as she approached, glancing down as if she was surprised by the detris on the forest floor. She didn’t look up again, appearing to almost be in a daze.

“Dena? Are you alright?” Des hoisted himself to his feet as she came within arms-reach. He went to place a worried hand upon her shoulder but the second that his fingers grazed her vest strap she pulled away, flinching from him. Her eyes snapped towards Des, looking at him as if she was seeing him for the first time. “What’s wrong?” Des drew back, bewildered by Dena’s reaction.
“It’s-” Dena looked him from head to toe. “-it’s nothing,” she said, her voice quivering slightly.

Is she frightened of me? Sickened by me? Guilt rushed over Des, guilt that had sat at the bottom of his stomach for days, waiting to be disturbed. He’d let a man die to save his own hide. He’d stolen from the dead. His arm was defiled by the old ways, by a virtue gem of obvious malevolence. A wave of possible explanations for Dena’s apparent disgust struck his head, battering the walls of his conscience.

“Whatever it is, we can talk about it,” Des said. She didn’t meet his eyes. He reached out for her hand and she shrank away again. “Dena-”
“I’m okay,” she said, unconvincingly. “H-how are you?”
“Something is clearly wrong,” he murmured, stepping toward her.
“I’m fine,” she hissed, a sharp tone puncturing Des’s ears. She stepped away, continuing their dance, as her face flared with anger.

Is she angry with me? Indignation took its turn to wash over him. He was doing his best. Better than most. He’d fed the weaver’s son with the butcher’s meats. He’d saved the travellers from the rogue exile.
The stone is giving me power to help people. The thought wasn’t his own.

“Tell me!” Des yelled, his voice rising louder in his anger than he meant it to. At that moment a familiar sensation flashed on his mind’s periphery, a stirring.
Gods no- I didn’t mean- With an inkling of what was forming in his chest at that moment, Des tried to swallow the thaumaturgical energy, tried to force it back down, but it was too late; his anger had opened the gate.

Dena froze, her body rigid as Des’s words struck her. Her face contorted for a moment, shock transforming into a dull vacant gaze.
“I heard from the seer what you did to the butcher.” Her words were lifeless, pointed and matter-of-fact. “You used that evil gem against a human being”.
“Dena I’m s-sorry-” Des stammered, for the deed which had shaken her, and for the mental spell he had cast over her. Speaking the words shook the magic’s resolve, and Dena’s face warped again. She wore the same fear and disgust that Des had imagined only moments ago.

“Dena…” His once-companion stood staring at him, petrified. “Dena- please-” He leant toward her, hoping, praying, that she would whisper that she understood, that it had been an accident and she knew, knew, he hadn’t meant to use the stone against her. She blanched the second he tried to move in her direction.
“Stay back!” she snarled, her eyes wide and her hands already at the sheath where her hunting dagger lay.
Unforgivable.
“Dena-”
“Stay away from me!”
Flee.

Des turned and ran.

He could’ve run forever. Happy to fuel him forever, the black stone begged for Des to flee, to run and run and never look back; only the furious pounding of his thin-soled sandals against the brickwork slowed his pace, the ache growing unbearable after the fifth hour spent sprinting down the road. His foot suddenly shuddered, his ankle twisting beneath him; Des landed on his hands and knees as he fell, the pain rocketing through his body. The pain was loud, powerful, but it was nothing in comparison to the agony already inside of him.

Dena. What had he done? Could it be undone? A foolish hope, naive, clung to the edges of his imagination as he conjured up imagery of his apologies, some grand in scale, and some small and intimate, but all heartfelt. A darkness began to creep around his mind as the pictures became more and more muddled. He was drunk on his longings, a fool; nothing could right the wrong he had committed.

The darkness grew and grew in size, swallowing up entire pages of his imagination. He saw the butcher, the burly man of the forest encampment, and the look on the man’s face as Des’s spell of control broke. He saw the exile, the storyteller, and the hatred that had infected his once-friend, the hate that had driven him to the same madness as all rogues. He saw Dena. He saw her eyes, the feeling of betrayal behind them.

No. A whisper at first, but then suddenly a fire; the word grew in its intensity until the tiny flickering light became a beacon, a prayer for him to cling to. Des could feel the black stone clinging to the edges of his conscious mind, demanding that he open the gate again and let it in.

No. Des straightened up, first kneeling, and then staggering into a crouch, before he again stood tall. The dying afternoon sun gave the evening a dour disposition, and the dismal light fought to push his mood back into the dirt, but Des managed to grip himself tight enough to halt the spiral. It was a tiny flame, a light so minute that it was almost burnt to its end, but it was enough to keep him moving.

He lurched forward, hoping he was at least headed in the direction of the forest encampment. Since leaving the underbrush the road looked unfamiliar, and only a marker or milestone would serve to orient him. The fields were soundless; the air stank of lethargy and felt so stale that Des could hardly believe himself outside.

No animals braved the old fields, and in the growing gloom, Des could see no other traveller. Once or twice an unseen insect braved the fetid ambience, announcing its presence noisily, only to be snatched up and vanish at the behest of whatever ill wished to keep the dusk a bleak thing.

“Desmarais!” A familiar voice called from behind, echoing from the distance. Fleet footsteps, the first that Des had heard since leaving the forest, resounded on the stone brickwork - a fur jacket suddenly flashed on his peripheral.

“Ash,” Des murmured, as his once-friend stepped in front of him. He didn’t raise a hand in greeting, barely raised his eyes from the road as he noticed the trickster.
“Come to hunt that Farric bounty?” Ash asked. “I’ve no intention of sharing that one, so don’t get any noble-brained ideas in your head”.

“What do you want Ash?” Des asked, frowning and wishing the man away. A new ache throbbed at the back of his skull and the world began to blur, just a little, enough so that the forest and the grass muddied into one verdant confusion.
“Came to warn you off, y’surly bastard. That bounty is mine,” the trickster said. The new pain in Des’s head trembled, his heart beating more and more rapidly as the soreness began to spread throughout his body.

“You be careful anyway,” Ash murmured, as Des trudged onward without responding. “The Blooddrinker has been sighted again,” he said.

The Blooddrinker, Des thought. A handful of hurried images, memories of a day he had been trying to forget, rushed through his head.
Right it, thought a different mind, a separate voice to his own. You have power now.

Des stopped in the middle of the stone-brick road and turned to face Ash; Ash Lessard, the trickster and coward who had fled and abandoned a man to death. He saw a mirror, a man that could’ve been him but for a few separate steps. He dared not to look into it too closely, instead choosing to drink from the well of power inside him.

The flame inside his chest flickered, dangerously close to going out, but Des didn’t hesitate as he raised his arm and once more summoned the wicked thaumaturgical power inside of him.
“Together, we will kill the Blooddrinker”.

----- ----- ----- ----- -----

First, he commanded Ash to tell him where he’d heard the rogue exile was hunting. Then he told the trickster to march, to walk until his feet bled and until his throat was dry; Des followed along behind, his eyes fixated on the horizon as he measured his journey in rhythmic methodical steps.

They passed by a milestone, a marker, and then another. They passed over the bridge that marked them as heading away from the forest encampment. They passed by the copse of trees where the pair had left the old man to die; where a gnarled mess of bones were the sole remains of the bone-cruncher, and a sickly stain of dried blood the only remains of the human corpse. Where the cadaver had gone, Des didn’t know.

After an hour spent travelling down the path and, whenever the road broke, hiking across the forest, Des could feel his power beginning to waver.
Even now it isn’t enough, he cursed. Even with all his practice, for all that he had given the virtue gem, there were limits.

“D-Des…” The trickster’s voice croaked out in front of him, parched and starved of water throughout the journey. The sun had dwindled away until it vanished entirely, but in its last few minutes it had blazed with defiance; the last of the sun had scorched the air and dried Des’s throat though he still drank from his waterskin. He dared not imagine Ash’s discomfort.

“Desmarais- please-” The trickster complained again, able to speak though he couldn’t break the spell fully. Des grappled with the ache at the back of his skull, listening to the corrupt whispers that spoke to him.

Feed me. Use the power. At the reaches of his mind he could feel the channel, a gate holding back the well of his consciousness, and it was sealed tight; against all his better judgement, Des opened that gate, just enough to let a trickle of his sanity flow forward, and to swell the black stone’s influence over him.

“Des-” The trickster’s voice croaked out once more, and then fell silent, his body falling rigid with it; Ash continued to walk without further protest. Des too felt his weariness fade - his fatigue began to bleed away as the energy infused him. Even as he tried not to consider the source of his increasingly unnatural stamina, he found himself addicted to the sensation.

The horizon bent over a hill some five miles from where they’d met. As the two of them crested the hill and looked down into the valley below, Des spotted the Blooddrinker for the first time since the day he’d taken the black stone. Bones and remains were scattered from the tip of the hill, all across the road and into the dell, a grisly trail that led directly to the monster below. The marauding Karui himself was stalking between a copse of foul and twisted trees, ash-marred and corruption-spoilt; the dying forest gave way to a wide and charred glade, a soot-ridden clearing that mirrored the grim soul who had laid claim to it.

“Finally,” Des said aloud. Ash, the colour drained from his face and a chill pallor set upon his skin, said nothing; his body, a vessel for Des’s will, wavered from side to side in the dusk winds. Des turned to the trickster, though he needn’t have voiced his instructions aloud. “The Blooddrinker dies”.

The pair charged down the hill, crashing over the underbrush lacking any subtlety or guile. Ash led the assault, curved steel skean in-hand and spurred on by Des’s mental orders, but Des only fell a few steps behind, his hatchet raised above his head as he let loose the most frenzied scream to ever live upon his chest.

The Blooddrinker looked up from the ugly warp of gnarled branches, a dangerous curiosity alive behind his eyes. As Des and Ash sprinted toward him, each fuelled with wicked magic and crossing the distance without pause, the rogue exile took only a single step out of the surrounding thicket. His grip tightened around the cumbersome Karui chopper in his hands - a sharpened stone axe-head lashed by animal intestine to a meticulously carved hardwood shaft - and he watched the two warriors approach with an impatient and ghoulish smile.

Forty feet from his quarry, Ash swept his arm forward and summoned a burst of thaumaturgical magic. The five starlight-hued knives pinned to his belt vanished; in an instant they appeared at the tip of his hand, shimmering and ghostly, one for each of his fingers and thumb but outstretched and pointed towards the marauder. The ethereal knives hung in the air for a moment, maintaining their position relative to Ash’s hand as he ran until they propelled themselves forward magically. They flew through the night so swiftly that it briefly appeared as though they had vanished.

The Blooddrinker swung his chopper and brought its hilt up - a totemic carving fashioned in the likeness of Tukohama, the Karui father of war - using it to bat away the oncoming knives. He did so with an effortless speed and precision, one dwarfing that of most mortals.

The trickster was undeterred and he closed the remaining distance in a matter of seconds. Ash lunged forward with his skean, only for the monstrous man to purposefully catch the blow in his chest. He didn’t so much as flinch whilst the dagger buried itself hilt-deep into his muscular torso. Ash’s momentum carried him forward and he crashed into the man without slowing, crumpling to the ground.

Blast! Des swung wildly with his hatchet, summoning tides of thaumaturgical power from the gems socketed in the bindings of his axe’s hilt. Twisting his body to project the magic, Des unleashed a lacerating wave towards his foe. The intangible burst of energy cut a bloody scar into the Karui’s chest, sending droplets of red in every direction; the marauder stumbled backwards, his fingers slipping up the chopper in his hands as his grip loosened.

“Get up!” Des growled. Ash wavered, stunned and disoriented from his impact with the monstrous rogue exile. Des didn’t consider the consequences as let the gate in his consciousness open a scant bit wider. “Get. Up”. Ash stood to his feet immediately, buoyed by a new surge of energy courtesy of the virtue gem in Des’s arm, and drew a second steel skean from his belt of knives.

Des glanced toward the Karui with a newfound aura of clarity and determination. He could end this fight now.
“Stop”. He focused his eyes upon the Blooddrinker, letting the black stone pour its power through him, channelling the magic and demanding the marauder stand still, demanding that he let himself be cut down where he stood.

The Blooddrinker howled.
“Witch… dark magic…” His voice, a deep and growling sound that Des had never heard before, echoed out across the burnt fields.
It’s not working! The man was still moving, advancing again towards them. Adjusting his hands he lifted the chopper above his shoulders and charged; whatever macabre curiosity he’d held for his attackers was gone. His face was flush with a cruel and merciless anger.

The three joined battle again, blades and axes whirling in a rage-ridden dance of death. Without having to instruct him, through an unspoken channel of mental commands, Ash was an echo to Des’s movements; together they would join to hold fast against a heavy strike, then break apart to pirouette behind the Blooddrinker’s flank, always in contact with nary a word between them. Despite the monster’s savagery and indomitable resilience, he was slower than the pair of them combined; in unison, they could move to strike and then escape before his attacks began.

The stone- Though it couldn’t hold him, the black virtue gem had to be slowing the monster. His movements were becoming easy to avoid, his overwhelming cleaves loudly telegraphed, punctuated by explosive roars and the unmistakable fluctuation of his muscles each and every time he moved to attack.

We’re winning- Des’s confidence was hard-won but sincere. Though the Karui marauder was an impossibly fearsome combatant, his inability to respond to duo’s steel - their quick blows, and even quicker retreats - was fast proving his undoing. It was to be death by one thousand cuts.

Des advanced and ducked, delivering a stinging blow to his foe’s calf. As he tried to pull back his ankle suddenly buckled, and he stumbled. Immediately he found his footing again, but it was too late; the marauder noticed the slip and swung his chopper towards his adversary, the razor-sharp stone axe-head bearing down on Des’s neck without pause.

Ash lunged into Des, knocking him aside and to the ground. The Blooddrinker’s axe met the top of the trickster’s skull instead, scalping the man as though the bone and brain beneath were water for the Karui chopper to sunder effortlessly. Ash’s lifeless corpse fell to the ground before Des could even stand.

“No!” he cried.
I didn’t- I never- Des couldn’t tell whether he’d unconsciously commanded his once-friend to step into his place or not; had he ordered that death? Was he responsible? The bloodied and bruised marauder brought his chopper back and prepared to deliver a finishing blow to his second victim.

“N-no-” Des spluttered, coughing his words as quickly as he could. The black virtue gem in his arm tried to pull from the pool of energy it had available, but the pool, once a lake, was a puddle, dry and lifeless. Des only had an instant to look into the Blooddrinker’s eyes before he made his decision. He broke the door at the edge of his mind.

The gate now fallen, a rush of wicked magic and thaumaturgy crashed through into Des’s consciousness. The marauder hesitated, and then stopped entirely, losing interest in the fallen man.
No. The man was not for him. Lacking a reason to remain he quickly turned to leave, dragging his chopper against the bloodied stone and burnt earth beneath his feet.

Des tried to scream at the Karui monster, but the words didn’t form, on his lips or in his mind; he couldn’t even be sure if the mind wrapping itself around his being was his own. His vision quickly began to blur once more - the night sky falling darker still - as his thoughts became slippery, elusive, and difficult to grasp.

A consciousness, an ancient and terrible thing without name, finally reached out from beyond the walls of the black stone. It revealed itself only to grip him, and snuff out the last of the light that burned within Desmarais’s heart.

“Yes dear,” Tarke mumbled. The way that things were going he was beginning to wish the armoured man had gotten him after all. His wife continued to complain and snipe, as she had done the entire journey leading from the forest encampment so far. A week’s walk to, and now a week’s walk from, all the while returning almost-empty handed to Lioneye’s Watch. It was enough to drive a man mad.

“Tarke, Tarke-” his wife hissed. If not for the sudden panic in her voice he might have ignored her, or continuing to placate her with platitudes. He glanced up - a man in a darkened armour suit was walking towards them.
Not again... Did they have time to make their way to the brambles and hide? He spun around quickly, trying to plot at least his own escape; not a tree or bush in sight, open land, scorched bloody earth, in every direction.

Maybe the traveller was friendly. Gripping his wife’s hand tightly, Tarke prayed to the oldest gods he knew, to the Brine King and more, shunning the blessings of Oriath in his direst moment. His breath seemed to seize up as they walked the stone-brick road, headed towards the strange exile. His wife’s hand was so cold to the touch he almost thought her already dead.

“Greetings traveller!” Tarke offered, the moment the dark-suited man was close enough to hear. No reply. Not a good sign. His wife’s hand suddenly slipped from his hold and the sound of footsteps rang out - she was running, blast her!
How could she leave me? Tarke cursed, well aware he’d been plotting much the same just a second ago.

The traveller turned to face him. His suit of armour contoured to his body seamlessly, covering every part of him in a midnight-black leather and metal; his horned mask was a bloodied mess, dashes of red streaking across its sombre exterior, and a sinisterly-decorated mouthguard which had been painted with both crude teeth and a wicked smile. His eyes suddenly flicked open, visible behind the stretched leather of his mask.

The stranger unsheathed a hatchet from his back belt loops, pulling it free and swinging it in one swift motion - a thaumaturgical surge of energy was suddenly airborne, cutting through the air. Tarke flinched, waiting for death to take him, only to instead hear a scream from behind.

From the corner of his eye he could see the bloodied and torn remains of his wife, laid still and unmoving against the grass. The dark-armoured man stepped forward towards him, hatchet in hand.

----- ----- ----- ----- -----

The rogue exile continued down the road, leaving both husband and wife in his wake. He’d saved those lives - they were his to take.

As his feet struck the stone beneath him, the hollow in his arm began to ache.