The camp is barely up. Gustav, Rask, and Ca’armine are out after food. Alexis works the jet-black ring off his finger and sits down across from Ethelred with it in his palm.
“Red. I want to test this one properly.” Alexis clearly wants to do more than they’ve done before.
“You remember the story on it? The crone at the trading post in the Westlands.”
Alexis waits for the answer before he goes on.
“Here’s what I’ve been sitting on. We’ve been calling it the jet-black ring. That’s a color. Nobody has ever put a name to what it’s actually made of.”
“So we start there. If it comes back jet, great. If it comes back something else, that’s the first thing of consequence we’ll have gotten.”
Alexis gives a slight shrug combined with a nod to the side with his head.
“Then light. I try to put Raiden’s light onto it. Then possibly into it.”
“Then the next parts.”
“Whether it hides anything besides itself. We set it next to something we already understand and see if that thing gets harder to read with it sitting there. If it does, a ring that does nothing has just done something.”
“Whether it changes me. It comes off for a full day, and you watch me and not the ring.”
“Whether it does anything for a body in a bad spot, which means putting me in one. Water to stand on. A short drop onto something soft with a rope on me. A wall to try. A candle before anything hotter. Small first, and you pick how small.”
“I realized I never checked it for certain kinds of secrets. I’ll try those next. Mostly of the invisible kind, but also checking to see if it has alignment to the greater powers that isn’t more-easily determined.”
“And I want to see if you can wear it, and what might happen if you do.”
Alexis turns the ring over in his palm.
“Anything I’ve forgotten? Anything else to add? Other effects I might not be thinking about?”