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What convinced Lucian wasn't, ultimately, that Lianelle couldn't remember her past. Sure, it was suspicious how all of her connections to anyone besides May had been cut or weakened, but that was only enough to push Lianelle so far. What convinced him that May was mind controlling his friend was Lianelle's lack of interest in being anywhere but by May's side. Lianelle didn't do that for anyone. She loved Katia with an intensity Lucian had hardly seen in any marriage, but she'd only visit Quiteria for a week at a time - never staying unless it was urgently required. When armies had been raised to fight the Magyar Lianelle had been there, but even then she'd ride off alone often, returning with news about how one village or another was now free. Seeing her relegated to a bodyguard and lover of someone she'd just met, with no apparent intention to ever leave, was... wrong. It wasn't Lianelle.
And so, this is how Lucian finds himself digging a hole in an unremarkable forest in west Austria. Well, digging several holes - the landscape's changed enough in the last 1200 years that it's difficult to locate the exact spot where he and his men, victorious but weary, buried the Magyar's artifacts that they could not understand the purpose of.
Lucian hands over the stone - the two remaining rubies are both quite small, and there's an obvious indent where a third could go.
"You can buy most things that are for sale on the internet, and we can make rubies artificially these days so they aren't that expensive."
"They've actually been around since my time - though I guess that's still the future for you. The main way people can tell that something is a synthetic ruby is that it's too flawless. I actually have one somewhere, give me a minute."
Lifeline returns from his room a minute later with a ruby the size of a toddler's fist.
"I had one back in the past and bought a new one once I started making esper money. It's a bit silly, I know, but I thought it was just such a neat technology and missed my old one."
"We can see if this one gets along with the magical thingamabob. It's probably too big, so I shouldn't cancel my order if it's not, but -" Will the thing react interestingly to the giant ruby at all?
"The correctly sized ruby won't appear till Monday, and our most promising avenues for accomplishing anything once we've traveled to your world that we've thought of so far probably route through the psions picking up new powers over the next several months to years. I think you should probably not spend the entire intervening time in emergency mode, though of course if there is more you want to tell us about the evil mage or more questions you have about the resources at our disposal go right ahead."