I am willing to share him

[Kiara point-of-view]

“Darx is a guy out of a million, I have no intention of letting him go.” I tell Amelia, who quickly sighs in defeat. “However, there is an issue Darx and I are struggling with. I don’t think he has realized it already, but he will eventually.”

I turn my head to the right and reach with my hands into my hood. First, I push my hair aside so it covers my face. Then I pull the hood back and reveal my pointy ear to Amelia.

“You … you’re an elf?” Amelia asks. “By the goddess. I always imagined you to be human.”

“Yeah, I get that a lot.” I say as I put the hood and hair back. “Darx first thought that as well. The thing is, with me being an elf, my lifespan is far longer than that of Darx. So, by the time I am ready to start having children, Darx will either be near the end of his life, or will have already passed on. That means, if I keep Darx for myself, I will be denying him a chance at fatherhood, and I am not comfortable with doing that to him. But you, Amelia, are human, just like him. You will likely be ready to start a family at the same time as him. So, while I love him and want to keep him, I also have something that I can’t offer him, but you can. And in that regard … I am willing to share him with you.”

This time, Amelia is looking very hopeful at me. Her face is lighting up, realizing her dead dream has been given life again. “R-really?”

I sternly raise my index finger between us and tell Amelia, “I do demand that I am his first wife! Yes, you knew him first, and you COULD have been his girlfriend first. But you blew it. So, I became his girlfriend first. You are also only becoming his girlfriend because of my blessing. So, you will respect that by coming second to me. Is that clear?”

Amelia lowers her head and agrees to my terms.

“You will also only have sex with him when I am present.” I tell Amelia.

Amelia’s mouth falls open from the shock.

“Excuse me?” She asks.

“You just admitted you wanted to steal Darx from me. That means I will have to keep an eye on you.” I explain. “If you are not comfortable with that, then I will not allow you to be with Darx.”

Amelia begrudgingly agrees.

“Finally, I will need you to become a member of the Dark Dragon guild.”

Amelia blinks in surprise and asks, “Why?”

“I have a lot of duties in the Dark Dragon guild, and ever since Darx won the B rank tournament, he has a difficult time appearing on the streets without drawing a crowd. And it would not be fair for you to run between guilds every day. It is simply much better for you to quit the Celestial Unicorns and join Dark Dragon.”

Amelia agrees again. This time with a faint smile.

“Right then.” I say as I reach out my hand. “Welcome on board, sister-wife.”

Amelia smiles and shakes my hand. As we shake on it, I stand up and pull her up as well.

“So, I guess that means you will have a cheap wedding.” Amelia tells me. “But what about me? Marrying a second woman has quite a tax on it.”

“The three of us can work towards that by doing quests and earning money.” I answer. I turn to face the rubies lying on the ground and say, “Also, there still are valuables to be had from this quest. Like gems that count Lomalet has no idea are even here. I’m sure he won’t be missing them if we take them for ourselves.”

“Oh yeah, that’s a great idea.” Amelia says as she notices the rubies herself. “I’ll start collecting them.”

Amelia grabs the bag with rubies that was dropped on the ground and starts picking up the gems that had spilled from it. In the meantime, I check out the table closest to the door. With the room illuminated by my light magic and not one single torch, it is now much easier to see what’s on here. I see a pouch with a rolled up note nearby, as well as several stones. About 20 of them. But I don’t recognize any of them. Lorenzo’s notes? I unroll the scroll and see what’s written on it.

Ryan keeps telling me people are asking for more diversity. They want more colors. I had him travel to the dwarven capital, like I did back when I was with the Knights of Fortune. He needs to find some different colors of gems over there. Hopefully the money from selling the fake topaz is enough to buy enough real ones.

Ryan came back with some new gems. He got a good diversity in colors.

Clear red = eudialyte
Clear yellow = mimetite
Opaque dark green to black = Wiluite
Clear orange = tellurite
Opague orange = ptilolite
Clear light blue = cyprine

Going to keep these real ones in a bag as I try to make fakes of them.

I see. So, the gems in the pouch should be the real deal, while the one on the table are the fakes. I pick up the real mimetite as well as one of the fakes and compare the two. They are practically identical. Better not get them mixed up. I place the real one back into the pouch and put it in my bag of holding, together with the note.

“Amelia? Did you collect all the rubies?” I ask.

“I just finished.” She replies. “What did you find?”

“Some fake gems.” I answer. “We might want to bring those to the crafter’s guild and let them know those are fake. I don’t think we’ll get much for them, but it would be better than doing the same as Lorenzo and selling them pretending they are real.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” Amelia nods. “I will add them to the bag.”

I raise my hand and stop her from doing so.

“Better to keep the real and fake gems separate. I’ll take the rubies in my bag, you can put the fake ones in yours. We will divide the loot between the three of us when we get back.”

Amelia then gives the rubies to me and starts dumping the fake ones in her bag. We also find some small bits of metal. Was Lorenzo mixing metal into his crystals? Odd. I didn’t know crystals had metal inside them. Anyways, maybe we can get some coin for them when selling it to the crafter’s guild, so we put those in Amelia’s back as well.

Next is the other table. The main desk where Lorenzo did all his writing. It is noticeable by the pen and vial of ink on the table. There is another pouch with a note there as well. Let’s see what this not has to say.

I am getting quite tired of constantly faking the same gems over and over. I thought there would be enough differentiation with topaz, ruby, sapphire and emerald. Those are the gems everybody knows. I need more variation. Something people don’t often hear about. Something that makes them want to pay much simply for the novelty. I remember being shown a few by the dwarves when I visited their capital city, but I have a hard time seeing them in my mind. I will have to ask Ryan to ask the dwarves in the crafter’s guild about it and buy me a few.

Ryan came back with the gems. Once Ryan showed them, I immediately recognized them. Amazing how vague my memory was at first, but the second I see them, my memory sharpens. I did mix their names up, however. So, maybe my memory is not that great. Better write them down lest I forget them again

Opaque light green = Jadeite
Opaque dark green = nephrite
Opaque green and purple mix = zoisite
Clear purple = kunzite
Opaque aquamarine = beryl

I will keep these real ones around. That way I can easily model the fake ones after these. At least now I have more diversity.

Hmm, looks like this note was written before the first one I picked up. So, the stones in the pouch are the real ones. But there are no fakes nearby. Odd. I thought I heard one of them say there was a bag of fake emeralds here and when they tried to leave, they offered us the bag of sapphires while they took the rubies. Did they take the bag of fake emeralds too? I guess that’s our loss then.

I place the second pouch in my bag as well. This time Amelia and I search the desk’s drawers. Amelia finds one that is locked. I use my [Shadow Manipulation] to break the lock and open the drawer. There is a book in there. I check out the pages and quickly notice this is a research journal. I flip through the pages and get to the last entries.

For some reason I just can’t do Emeralds. Every time I try, I end up with beryl instead. So fine, at least I am making real beryl. But I’m not trying to make beryl. I’m trying to make real emerald, goddammit!

Am I not adding enough pressure? It’s the only thing I can think of. Either that, or I got the composition wrong. But every time I disassembled real emeralds, I got aluminum and beryllium out of them. But when put them back together, all of a sudden, it’s beryl instead. What am I missing!?

Maybe I should just accept I can’t do emeralds and move on to topaz for now.

“Looks like this is Lorenzo’s research notes.” Amelia says, which lets me know she’s been reading along with me from behind my shoulder.

“Research notes on how to make real gems.” I repeat. “Aelbrecht is going to want to have this. He is a sucker for everything that has to deal with knowledge. I am sure he will pay us some good money for this.”

“Well yeah. The knowledge to make real rubies and sapphires should be in here. If the Dark Dragons could copy Lorenzo’s work on those, it should make the guild quite wealthy in a short time.”

“We certainly could. We have 2 crystal mages.” I let Amelia know. “But both of them focus their skill on combat, not crystal production. Maybe this book could convince them to put some time into gem making research.”

I then hear someone entering the room. I look up and notice it is Darx.