Seekers

Sun bleached sands swell up like a burning sea. The only safe paths are those of cracked earth promising a sprained ankle in place of drowning in fire. Clopping metamorphoses from a perfect rhythm into an uneven chorus of exhaustion.

A Seeker seeks.

That’s the proverb which plays through the man’s head. A man as tan as the sands are bleached slumps gracefully atop his lumbering steed.

A Seeker seeks.

Clop, clop clop, clop. Flat lands break the horizon only for the occasional resilient flora or dune. Yet, the horse knows the way. On broken paths of shattered dirt, beneath a sun boiling a blue sky, the man moves toward that which he seeks.

“Good girl,” he can’t speak or pat her now. It’s too much strain. Every molecule of moisture is coveted. Stretching out one’s hand must have purpose. It must be necessary. Every move requires precision. Such a man does not stray from the shattered path.

It is neither arrogance nor the blistering heat. His posture keeps the brim of his hat shielding the edge of his stubbled chin. The conflict between his dirtied blonde hair falling over his face and the expertly cleaned revolvers at his side is jolting. It is the practiced hand that designates the proper priorities.

The hours have clopped by. It’s been days since a homestead or wanderer broke the monotony.

Occasionally, the squawk of some flying shadow will call the man to look toward the sun. Still, he keeps his eyes on the dusty-browns of his horse’s unkempt neck. If the sound were closer, perhaps a single round would provide the man dinner. The distance of the scavenger’s sickly song is disappointing, yet a song he hopes to continue hearing.

“There,” a phasing oasis on the horizon. “Just a bit more, Ero.” He speaks to keep their spirits high. The man sways only for a moment to release the tension gathering at his tailbone. “Bit more.”

Another hour, and the man enters what could be considered the border of a town. Buildings rise like rotting ships planted in the drowning sands and cracked earth. Perhaps, in the time lost, these buildings once floated. No one stands outside, but the man knows that eyes have fallen upon him—since the initial clop within their borders.

No crops survive about the shacks and twisted flotsam, yet the number of abodes is evidence to the contrary. The man’s eyes forgo all else at the sight of troughs lining the wooden walkways about the apparent saloon. A three-story structure of lopsided walls and closed shutters. Without concern for food or the number of eyes on him, he allows Ero to tromps as she will.

Her nose leads the way. When dried like salted meats, water acquires a scent like honey and lavender. Once Ero’s head is safe within the airless trough of dirtied water, the man dismounts. Tying the reins seems a silly precaution, as the horse would prefer drowning to the scorching sun.

Still, the man does as he’s done thousands of times. He taps the toes of his boots against the trough. The filth cares as little for his intentions as the horse minds the ripples that rise up to her eyes.

“You stay here.” He pats her neck in genuine compassion; disgusted by his inability to keep what is his pristine. Checking his belt and right boot, the shining of each eases his distress.

Where any man might mimic a horse when walking across the wooden ways, his first steps are muted as if wearing cotton soles. A set of swinging doors awaits those compassionate hands; though, they are shown little tenderness.

A similar warmth greets the man. Eight men and two women look toward the stranger; all conversation and distraction cease for a moment. As quick as they’d welcomed the man with their silent gazes, they’ve returned to their cards, discussions, and hopes of earnings.

Just as the countless settlements or homesteads before, priorities must be seen to. Up to the bar, the man tips back his hat to expose eyes bluer than any sea these townsfolk could imagine. Dirtied fingers peel the strands of hair, somewhere between blonde and mud, away from his face.

“Afternoon,” the man nods once in a sign of respect—a simple gesture for simple folk.

“Speak and be heard.” A man with a tall hat, dulled black and tattered, nods back while twisting his oiled mustache. The bartender’s green eyes, like frosted grass, drop to the belt. “I’d wager you a whiskey man.”

“If you have it,” the traveling man begins to remove the pouch from over his shoulder. “Two rounds and a tall glass of water.” Searching through the contents of the aged-leather bag, he removes three items. While the bartender waits for the trade, the man prepares his second priority. Tobacco, thin leaves, and a small wooden box of green matches breathe life into one of the few pleasures of this weary traveler.

Waiting patiently for his payment, the man behind the bar clears his throat. “And for the drinks?”

“I’m sure there’s work to be done.”

“We don’t require a Seeker.”

After a long draw on the cigarette, savoring the flavor like Ero drowning herself outside, the man smiles through a thin stream of white, “Everyone needs a Seeker. Ya’ll just don’t know it.”

“Hm,” the man with the twirled mustache purses his lips as he examines the rest of the saloon. A wide room with several round tables set for more groups than have attended. Columns rise to support the risen floors which wrap around the outer walls. In this room of employees and locals, he seems to wait for another voice to confirm his assertion. When none come, he returns his attention to the newcomer. “Perhaps someone may, but I prefer something of value.”

“Name your needs, and I’ll see them filled.” Spoken with valor, one of many teachings his tutor had instilled in him. A soul, lost or secure, may require something it neither has nor knows. Seek it and see them fulfilled. The rattling voice of Galhid, like a stone in a brass can, plays through his memories.

“Seeds? Cloth?” The bartender glances over his newest patron again.

“I’ve neither.” Speaking through one side of his mouth, he draws in the smoke. “I’d been told of massics this way. You say you’ve no need for Seekers. Must mean I heard wrong.”

Simple folk would see the smacked lips and quick rise of the eyebrows as the man responds. A Seeker notices how the eyes drop to the left and the head cocks to hear a distant sound. “’Fraid so.” He turns toward the wall of shelves behind him—mostly containing vials and bottles of liquids all sharing similar hues. “Two whiskeys. Water. Find something worth my hooch, and I’ll accept a Seeker’s plight for rest.”

“Kind as right.”

Pouring two dense drinks of ghastly browns, the bartender speaks without glancing up. “Have Seekers names? Heard once of your kind from my pa before he’d been shown to the crossroads. Can’t say he knew much as I know now.”

“We’ve names.” Crackling tobacco shines with a breath. “Urile.” He takes the first of two glasses and throws it back. Once swallowed, the smoke drifts from his nose. “If you’ve questions, I’ve answers.”

Finishing his delivery of three drinks, the bartender takes his eyes from the gun belt. “I’d not pry.”

“You’d not, yet all consider.” Urile glances about the room. Eyes return from whence they came. “Nothing different but the faces.”

“Then tell me, Seeker,” the bartender takes a step back into the alley of his domain. “Are they real?”

A quiet grunt is his reply. Nothing different but the faces.

“You say you needn’t a Seeker,” Urile takes his second whiskey before sliding both dirty shot glasses back over the splintered wood. “I find a town claiming no unsavories or injustices often overflows with both.”

“Shriton has few resources,” the bartender pours a third whiskey into one of the dirtied glasses, but he swigs down the brown himself. “Bandits avoid us, and the people comfortable or broken enough to stay cause no trouble.”

“And what might I call ye?”

“Arnold,” he thinks a moment before pouring another shot. His eyes open wide again, if only for a moment. “No need for a surname. Pappy took it to the crossroads with ‘im. I’ve done just fine with the one.”

Urile takes his water, a cracked glass with swirling bits trapped inside the murky liquid, and downs the entirety. “Might I get another? And this filled?” He lays out the waterskin that’s as dry as the lands surrounding this creaking shack of a saloon.

“I’d be glad to, but I’m ‘fraid I’d need to see what payment’s offered.”

Arnold says it with confidence, yet his expression is that of a boy who’s broken his father’s favorite pipe. Waiting for the response of the dirtied Seeker, his eyes dance from the stone expression of the newcomer to his glimmering firearms. After a moment of unblinking judgment, Urile’s lips peel into a thin grin with the end of the cigarette flickering out its final moments.

“Of course.” Fidgeting through his pockets and sacks, the Seeker draws out something he’s sure these folk have lost memory of. Setting it on the bar is sure to draw attention—and it does. In the dim light entering through the closed shutters, the small, shiny coin drowns out all conversation. Be it the metallic sound of it clicking against wood or the smell of fortune chumming the atmosphere, all eyes are again on the Seeker. “Now,” he says with a finger firmly planted into the center of the coin, “ye understand I’ll be wantin’ this back. Consider it a loan for my stay and nourishments. When the jobs done, I’ll be collectin’ what’s mine.”

Flabbergasted, Arnold can’t help but twirl that greased mustache. “T-that can’t be real.”

“Tis.”

“Dinner’ll be made up right away. Room three up the stairs is yours.” Arnold’s mouth makes moisture for what seems the first time in his life. Unable to resist, he licks his lips to coat them with a healthy sheen. “B-but as I said, we’ve no need or job for a Seeker.” His fingers move toward the bar like twitching worms trying to avoid the birds. “This’ll do just fine—”

“I said I’d be wantin’ it back.” The voice freezes the wriggling fingers and any body that thought of moving in toward the fortune. Glancing over his shoulder, Urile sees two men have already eased their chairs from beneath the table. Always the same. “Good as any, I guess.” The men both settle themselves back in; clearing their throats or dropping their eyes to avoid the shame.

“What would you want for it?” Arnold’s voice is low and filled with that sin which drives all men. When Urile returns to their haggling, Arnold’s eyes are fixated on what could be his instead of what stands before him. “There ain’t no jobs for you, but I’ll give what I can.”

“We’ll see ‘bout that, I reckon.” Urile taps the coin and points toward the bartender. “Promise this, that a Seeker’s payment will see the coin returned.”

“If that’s all, I’d promise it seven times seventy and again.” Arnold can’t help but drool. As if this one coin, when eaten, would sate him for four lifetimes. Perhaps, he thinks it might taste just that splendid. “I promise.”

“Then take it.”

The room’s cold. Likely, those of Shriton are unaccustomed to anything but blistering heat. Now, as if a storm’s carried in the winds of the North, far beyond Urile’s experience and study, the saloon endures the opposite extreme. Arnold’s fingers move gradually at first, but soon he snatches up the coin with a feverish grin.

“Anyone here heard of ‘She in Indigo’?”

Arnold is far too infatuated with his lovely coin to notice the question—his fingers trace about a woman’s face with the words ‘Lux Omnipotens’ surrounding her. The patrons; however, are now fully involved. They acknowledge the inquiry by dropping their eyes, sipping their drinks, or glancing toward the shutters.

Eight men and two women. One woman is an older wife, it seems, quietly nibbling on crumbs beside her equally dried husband. The two would be a convincing pair of massies, yet Urile can’t bring himself to deem them a threat. She seems liable to break in the heated breeze outside while her husband might transform into a pile of dust.

The man beside the piano, a battered relic of mankind’s past glory, smokes a pipe colored similarly to his teeth. His eyes are wild; something numbing within the bowl. A massie might damper his mind in recreation, but what foolishness to continue when faced with he that means brings the promise of the crossroads.

If deserved.

Three men sit about a round table with cards that guarantee a clever man a filled purse. If there was a chance that the ante was more than teeth and fleas, perhaps the Seeker would’ve tossed his hat into the mix. Instead, he waits for any of them to make a move, but the collective merely holds to their cards as if glancing from the soiled paper proved their guilt.

One man stood as a blockade to a woman in clothes that would be considered fancy in Shriton. The holes along the ochre dress were like natural tears in a bloomed flower that’s grown too heavy for its stem. A generous coating of powder hides whatever blemishes might attenuate her advertisements. Though she’s trapped between the stairwell and the man’s arm, she seems perfectly positioned to retain her lifestyle.

A finer hat and coat than the rest of the gathered present the man as cultured. Urile contemplates the nobles of Ome; the prestigious cloths of feeble souls. The posture and expression of the man travel down roads his attire cannot follow. Cleaner than the rest in attendance, this man pays no attention to anything other than the sullied product he intends to purchase.

Two men nearest the shutters beside the door had been discussing trivial things. Now, they whisper their conversation in hopes of gleaning the story of this wayward Seeker. Their muddied hands and sober attitudes would suggest an early end to their work. With sweat already merging with clay to solidify their fabrics, safe to bet neither is a massie.

“Fine folk.”

Arnold cannot answer with his tongue swollen in avarice.

“Get many travelers?” When no one answers his inquiry to the lot, he speaks a tad louder. “Traders? Snake oils and mechanisms? Trappers?”

None answer him. Merely coughing through dried throats—either due to the weather or fear, Urile wasn’t sure which gripped them more. Omertà is common amongst the folk of these lands. As with all lands. Strangers and law share a familiar expression of locals, and each receives as warm a welcome as any snowflake resting atop a stove.

A room full of social titans. Yet, truth is hidden in every soul. Urile knows better than to assume tattered clothes or dirtied hands securing an alibi. It takes a bit of twisting.

He scans over them again, “Anyone?” His practiced hands are rolling another cigarette. “Desert stole the tongues from your heads?”

“Excuse me, sir.” The singular noble of Shriton turns from his quarry of blistered flesh with a tinge of annoyance. “I believe I’d heard the good Arnold say there was no work to be found. Have a drink and quit digging a dry well.”

His voice is that of a swollen tongue and fluent falsehoods. Prestige is easily bought; apparent when faced with the drawl of the salacious “noble.”

“No work,” a match is struck to light the dried leaves—though they hold more moisture than most here. “Shame to chase the sun,” a slow draw before he turns back to the murky water, “find only a lamp.”

“Damn shame,” Arnold speaks between flipping the coin over and over between sweaty fingers. The woman’s face changes into a soaring eagle and back again.

“’Course it is.” The Seeker taps the counter, and the bartender simply slides him the bottle of brown alcohol. “Kind as right.” Drawing straight from the bottle fills his belly with the weight of years. How the taste of swill has burned the layers of his tongue so that the finest spirits of Ome skitter about as if sands in his memory. Still, a drink is a drink. No Seeker would forsake himself the occasional numbness it brings. No destination is ever reached without first taking the journey.

And no journey can be done without rest.

Once satisfied that the quantity of booze will begin its noble work, he returns to the bartender. “I’d take that meal.”

“Right away,” if that wasn’t a lie. Arnold’s fingers continue to check over the coin. Urile simply smokes in silence as he waits for the man to find enough sense to do his job.

Occasionally drinking and sparingly partaking of his leaves, the Seeker waits in silent observation of the crowd. Cards are played at a pace which causes his fingers to twitch. The dapper man spends more time bolstering than simply opening his purse. No music is played upon the piano—no more than a stool to rest one’s head against when the booze overtakes them.

This is a pitiful place, thinks the Seeker. It is not the condition of the town which survives within the Hell of the southern lands. No, it’s the atmosphere man creates himself.

Urile only counts three smiles.

One dotard in greed and another in flesh. The final grins with a mask preparing for both.

It’s thirty-four minutes and twenty seconds until Arnold returns with a plate for the Seeker. It’s plopped across the bar with a clang; still partially wobbling a welcoming dance for the newcomer as the bartender moves back toward the shelves of booze. Ogling his prize for nearly an hour, he hasn’t realized the emotionless examination of the Seeker.

No fork. No knife. Nothing but a grayish tin, dented and foggy, with a simply made meal. A slab of beef and potatoes.

Urile stares down as he takes another swig of the bottle.

The Seeker leans over on his stool to slip a fine silvery blade from inside his boot. Everyone’s glanced, at least three or four times, toward the shining guns at his side, and this draws a similar awe from the hushed folk—save Arnold.

Hidden snuggly between his pantleg and a compartment in the boot, a polished knife is drawn out and inspected. Not a speck of dust. Cared for as if it were born of his own loins.

Urile lets it turn in his hands a bit before sticking the tip of the bowie knife into a steaming, unseasoned potato. The black leather-bound handle and silver hilt were enough to drop jaws—seeing such an instrument used as dinnerware. However, it’s the length of the blade which causes some to nearly fall from their chairs.

One man, particularly bad at cards, can’t help but squeak out, “Slobbrin’ on dat gem?”

Urile ignores the rabble and whispered gasps as he blows over the impaled spud. One of the black runes inscribed along the length is buried past the skin, but his eyes stay fastened to the remaining two.

As he blows, he mouths the words for his relic to awaken. “Quaerite.”

With the gentlest of exhales, the blade hears his command. The blue eyes of Urile freeze over as he feeds Ore to the thirsting blade—for even the tools of man become starved and parched in such a place.

Purple light begins to fill the trenches of the first symbol; this etching nearest the hilt. A fine design made of masters long lost to the nations which remain outside the ruin of the world that spun without care. What remnants remain are for the living, and the Seeker grips his treasure tightly.

Focusing his vision again, the world comes into view. Quiet sighs of awe create a growing cacophony—one of many symphonies the Seeker has become accustomed to. It is surprise and wonder, then comes the denial or anger, and finally the frightened howls of the ignorant… or willingly submissive.

“What will it be today?” Urile whispers just loud enough that the blade and those closest to him can hear.

“Hm?” Arnold turns from his rack of distilled delights. From the golden coin to the glowing blade, the bartender’s expression morphs with the intensity of the dagger. When his eyes connect with the blade, purple overtakes much of the silver.

Urile’s eyes move to Arnold’s. Arnold’s to Urile’s.

Arnold lifts the coin to his breast pocket as he sighs, “Fuck.”

Throwing out his free hand, the bartender shouts a few guttural words. As if the air were drawn into a single point of his focus, there is a dull pop as the head of one of the drinking laborers snaps to the side. A massive hole relieves the man of the desert’s agony and the labor which awaits him tomorrow.

Urile’s body hits the floor. The dagger is already back into his boot, and the purple glow has begun to diminish as the blade returns to its slumber. In its stead, both guns are out and pointing toward the bar; Arnold out of sight behind it.

“Come on out ‘n’ join your pa at the crossroads.” Urile’s hands are steady as he lies on his back. The full field of the bar, and the exits to either side, are his to patrol. One gun drifts to the end, returns, and the other gun mirrors the movement.

Ignoring screams and the shuffling of the townsfolk, and one man’s pained cries over a lost friend, the Seeker tunes in for only the shuffles and breathing of his prey. There is a deafening silence as he waits. No massics being cast from what he hears. Only the obnoxious thumping of his own heart—that beat which demands he smile.

Then it happens, a series of hastened steps to the right. The Seeker slides back pushing off the metal pole under the bar. He aims with both barrels and fires three shots. A blur of black clothes flings itself from behind the bar toward the hallway beneath the steps. Only one bullet, Urile is confident, landed. Two splinter wooden walls easily; miniature cannonballs blasting the ship apart before the pirates overtake the deck.

One round hit. It was fast. It must’ve been painful. The roar of a wounded beast is a familiar call; one which makes the intensity of the Seeker’s heart speed with fervor.

A door is heard swinging, and the Seeker launches himself to his feet with a quick twist and kick back with his right leg. Crouched, the man takes a moment to ensure the door wasn’t a ruse. He leaps to the bar and aims down the short hall. The door swings back and forth with dampened force; unable to resist its silent arrest. Crimson droplets lead from a smear to the door.

“Got ‘im.” The Seeker moves toward the door as the folk settle themselves in corners or behind a woman they’d been hoping to procure. Overturned tables and spilled drinks are another common scene; meaning a Seeker’s found a job. He moves toward the saloon’s entrance when he stops; the spurs on his boots ringing out with his sudden interest.

Nine cups have scattered across the floor in the open space beside the dead man. Urile pushes the brim of his hat up with the barrel of one gun and hisses through his teeth.

“If I didn’t have bad luck,” he continues toward the doors. Pushing his way into the safety of the overhang, he narrows his eyes down the left street, the right, and the alley beside the building. Couldn’t’ve gone far, Urile takes a whiff of the dry air and considers his guns.

A Seeker seeks.

Into the unyielding light of the desert sun, Urile steps with guns up to his shoulders. An unhallowed breath of Hell attempts to steal away the man’s hat, but he drops his chin to keep the elements at bay. He closes his icy eyes. Ears track this unsightly prey.

Grains of displaced earth grind over flesh and leather. A horse gurgles in a trough. Footsteps and whispers continue from the saloon behind him. Spurs ching and chang beneath him. Another voice, something farther off, is muttering with the uneven hills and depths of a sickly fish.

It’s echoing off the walls to his right, like a ball tossed down a hallway at an angle. Three… four times. Just a wounded animal making a last stand.

“Don’t make me come back there,” the Seeker gradually opens his eyes. Breathing in the acrid death of the desert, he stands at the opening to an alley built of wood too old and scorched to fully rot. “It’ll be quick if you come out.”

The mutterings continue. Behind a wall or the stacked crates, the Seeker has no clear shot. Both guns point toward the guarded target, but he stays his fingers.

Mutter, Urile cannot help but smile as the beat in his chest races, finish.

And so the massie does. He pours his Ore into it; intent and spirit alike. The man known as Arnold wills the massic into the world—creating something… anything to remove the dangers of an unremitting Seeker.

Finish.

The guns aim toward the inevitable conflict. Something in this moment…

Proof of the massie’s crimes. The truth in purpose. A devotion which overjoys the soul.

A Seeker seeks.

Finish!

Both hammers are drawn back as Arnold’s voice rises with the fury of a desperate rat. Another vermin. Another plague to put down one round at a time.

“Yithost Aroith Mano Wizranoshath!”

Whatever comes, there will be light. The Seeker’s eyes narrow as joy overtakes his chiseled expression. Bring me the light.

“Go to Hell!” The voice, struggling and exacerbated, provides the punctuation to his prepared speech. A practiced massic forced out of the cornered monster—one he has since been unwilling to unleash.

Yellow and purple lights overtake the sallow atmosphere; bolts of energy spread like the countless legs of some eldritch spider over the alley. It grows with the hatred and fear; a prospect the Seeker has waited for.

As the unyielding skies retreat from this unholy massic, the yellows and purples conquer the area. Reality cannot contain nor allow it, so it bends like the vaporous vision off the horizon of the desert. Warped in unfathomable cosmic dissonance, the world yields to the will of the massie…

Or rather, whatever patron he’s called upon in desperation.

Urile’s eyes narrow as the smell of ozone snaps in pockets around his face. Sand and astral rage bring about a heat that chills the bones yet sears the skin. Tanning him in hellish light, the eye of some dimension opens.

A hand made of stained leathers and sprouted obsidian intrudes into the world that spun without care. A world of man and all his endless mistakes.

One shot fired as the Seeker kicks off sand to the left. Sure of the hit, Urile sees no immediate reaction from the outstretched arm. This arm from another existence extends the twenty-foot distance to drive three fingers deep into the tired earth.

Rolling across a shoulder and planting a knee into the dirt, two more rounds are sent into beast. Crimson leather splits and frays as the elbow is blown inward. A dim flash of righteous light is enough to confirm. The horrid wails from beyond the portal are only a delightful perk.

This damned beast’s crippled arm continues to drag the whole. Just beyond the opening of the alley, something is drawing near. All thanks to the massie… always the same.

Urile takes a number of steps forward as the beast’s massive arm struggles to anchor itself. He can hear the ravenous creatures; a yearning for feasts and desolation. As Urile’s spurs clank with measured steps, he whistles a tune from the Tower of Ome. A tune more jovial in its pitch than the words he cares not to recall—a song of Wayward Stars by the virtuoso Elegrand Blake.

Urile walks about the hand of the creature. His shining guns swinging in his hands as he prepares himself for a better angle on the other side of the beast.

Ignoring the lyrics, he can’t help but sing in the recesses of his mind. The play of seven heads, ten horns, and seven crowns enacting their revenge upon the stars of the universe. As the song continues, the moans of the birthing beast interrupt at awkward moments—breaking the immersion of the Seeker’s favored tune.

“Those ain’t the words,” another round is blasted into the wrist of the creature; a mound of flesh popping like a hellish cyst as the light renders the limb nearly useless. Still, the dreadful thing will not cease. So, Urile walks with clanking spurs until he’s prepared and staring into the canal which births this unknown horror. “Get it movin’.”

Another blast of a revolver separates the thumb’s sinew from bone. One foot begins to pat out the rhythm of his song as he begins another verse in soft whistles—though it hastens as the song remains constant.

Into the world, born of desperation and sin, the abomination pokes its unsightly head through the womb. Roaring with all the fabled vehemence of the Fallen, the creature invades.

Three eyes, slanted toward the center of a leathery face, peer toward the only insect audacious enough to wound its divinely crafted flesh. A maw, like the portal to some incomprehensible realm of nightmares, peels back taut flesh. Endless rows of splintered teeth drip with the anticipation of collecting his promised treasures.

Two shimmering guns held by a delicacy this beast has never known. As the flailing hand continues its attempts at securing ground, the searing gold orbits narrow in on the Seeker as he taps and whistles. Screams from the bottom of its boiling lungs fill the air with brimstone.

“Big ‘n’ dumb.” The creature, still only a head and a crippled arm, strains to reach its head forward. Two stories tall, the cranium twists and stretches like strips of tanned hide; cracking with the movement. “Come on.”

The gap closes as earth breaks and disappears into the jaws—raking itself forward. A stray dog will paw and nip at any meat until the final breath leaves it for the buzzards. Incredible that the favored spawns have resorted to the antics of the feral; forsaken all which promised paradise for the tragedy of degradation.

“Pitiful lamb,” both guns rise toward the impending doom. “A devil for the crossroads.” A monster, which no man could hope of defeating alone, faces two puny pistols…

And he is stricken from this world of man.

Four shots, one for each eye and one into the forehead.

Blasts of light, the splendid radiance of something blessed, dazzle in the desert. Like fireflies floating over a bloated cow carcass. Sickening splats of a Seeker’s justice contort the echoing gunshots. Dampened into a combined silence as the final wails of the beast signify the completion of life’s cycle.

Collapsing, the beast has entered only to die. Leather, stained or burned indistinguishable, rests like a mummified titan of myth. His carcass an immovable trophy for the Seeker—another tale to be told when drinks are shared and legends immortalized within the walls of Ome. Eyeless and unlifeless, this being of creation slips away from its eternity.

“I don’t know your name,” Urile speaks as the rift between worlds closes gradually—the massic diminishing. Flickering blasts of purple and yellow slow and recede. It isn’t instant, but the unmoving horror shall succumb to the trans-dimensional guillotine. And now, the smile has disappeared from Urile. “Why do I suspect the Ranks have lost nothing?”

Tipping his guns in a flawless motion, twelve empty casings are cast into the dirt. Retrieving the rounds from his pouch, he begins to reload at a leisurely pace. Shaking his head like the fisherman finding only a single fish in his net.

“Have you traveled the crossroads as your patron?” He calls out to the alley behind the creature being gradually split by the portal. “Answer, bartender.” Exhaling with dropped eyes, he continues to methodically reload his weapons.

Silence is only broken by the metallic drag of rounds in the cylinder and the grainy winds howling. One gun loaded, Urile begins his second weapon.

Soon, the sounds of cracking bones and splitting flesh fill the void, yet no answer from Arnold.

Both weapons are ready, and the Seeker still waits.

“Run himself dry.” Urile takes a step toward the corpse of the mutilated devil. “Robs a man of his glory. No honor in such a death.” One silvery pistol rises to the brim of his hat. “No kind words to right.” Heavy footfalls pass the single droplet of spit he casts to boil on the ground. “Wasted spins and bitter bites.”

Yet, no Seeker accepts truth unverified. One must ascertain truth for oneself. Even the libraries of Ome require seekers to connect past voices to the present.

“Too big to even take a prize.”

Eyes pointed toward his prey, the Seeker peers beyond the alley. Present only in body, the front door to the saloon opens quicker than the wandering mind and tired body can rejoin.

“B-bastard.” An outstretched, bloodied hand tenses curled fingers. Arnold’s voice carries softly across the grainy waves of a burning street. It’s a voice like that of a lover finding a stranger in his place.

In that moment unforgotten to seasoned Seekers, the halted world of decisive action begins with the surprised response of a rabbit being ambushed by the wolf. It’s the rabbit that learns to be prepared—for even a rabbit might conquer the pack with the six-shooter at his side.

But complacency and the sun spin the world in odd directions. The Seeker, moving more as the virgin instead of the seasoned soldier, glances toward an unsuspecting offensive.

All at once, the air pulls in. A single moment of chill as the breeze comes from all directions. It’s not the ozone or the burning of flesh; a smell like the sea’s majesty surrounds Urile. Recalling the ships at the Nodens’s Bowl; to sail across the seas far away from these searing wastes.

Imploding, the air draws toward the center like a black hole. No care for what it takes. The massic obeys the practiced massie. Different massics, but always a path leading to the crossroads.

Always the same.

A Seeker seeks.

Crimson steals the left half of the world away—an unfeeling bandit that exists only to tear reality. It is this moment of unbelievable pain that the rabbit remembers what was left to him.

Raising the gun with a jerk, one round ends Arnold in an instant. Though, from anyone else that might’ve witnessed his execution, they might swear the life left his eyes the moment the last of his Ore failed to adequately power the massic. Now, a hole between the eyes will remain Arnold’s death—the story told to any that will hear it.

And to those that will know of Urile, they recall this rebirth. When a rabbit who slew packs of wolves and lions found himself marred by the fangs of a rat. They’ll hear how none seek the grinning Seeker with one eye—the one which the fates of massic gave ample warning.

Urile collapsed to the sun-bleached earth with tears and blood salting that which can never thrive again. His screams are like the thundering roar of the devil which took only a handful of breaths in this world; yet those within the saloon, who first bore these stories, will tell you they feared the former most.