DUST & STATIC

SAGA 1: MISSOURI BORDER’S FALLING STAR.

There was no real name for the town, although some called it ‘Crossroads’. It sat on the Kansas Prairie, three miles south of Dodge City proper, where the railroad surveyors had been making their mark and the cattle drives still kicked up enough dust to turn the sunset red. It was the year of 1887, and the West was dying its slow death, though nobody in Crossroads really seemed to notice or care.

The buildings leaned into one another like drunks after a very long night. The saloon, the general store, the boarding house with its old sagging porch, the stable that smelled of hay and horse piss even from fifty yards away. Wooden sidewalks ran along the main street, worn out and splintered, and the dirt road between them was beaten in deep from wagon wheels and scored with hoof prints that filled with dust whenever the wind blew, which was always.

Hermen Helmsley stood outside the general store rubbing the leather of his notebook between his hands, pretending to sketch measurements and survey lines. He was a decently thin man, an angular nose among his other sharp features, with a clean shaven face and brown eyes. He wore a brown suit that wasn’t in the best of conditions, and a bowler hat that was tilted just enough to shade his face from the afternoon sun while his golden blonde hair fell down his back.

Nobody was watching, but even if they were nothing seemed off about the man. He looked the part that he played pretty well. A railroad surveyor, one of the many who’d passed through Kansas in recent years, doing a number of things including determining whether the iron rails would come through here or leave this small town in the dust entirely to prioritize better things.

But it was just a part after all, Hermen Helmsley was NOT a railroad surveyor.

The Historical Artifacts and Natural Treasures Administration, or HANTA as they were mostly known was the organization Hermen scouted for. The name was far from widespread, especially in the context of Crossroads citizens, and Hermen had every intention to keep it this way. It wasn’t complicated, all he had to do was pay attention and report. Watch for things that seemed unusual, keep track of the rumors, make sure nobody of interest passed through, and most importantly remain unknown.

Three weeks in and it was safe to say that he was already off to a good start.

The town’s routine was as predictable as sunrise. The saloon opened at noon and closed behind the last drunk at 4am. The general store had good business in regards to flour, coffee, tobacco, and ammunition. The boarding house rented rooms by the week to drifters and cowboys between jobs. The stable held around twenty horses at any given time, their owners came and went with the cattle drives and seasonal work.

The town was basically a spot for men to disappear for a while, earn a few dollars, and then leave. To drink away their past or their future or both. Nobody really questioned anything, and nothing was really focused on. If you looked at a map it would be easy to miss, it was there but it didn’t scream at you, nothing of true importance.

Hermen had been tracking rumors for months, talks of strange lights in the sky, objects falling from above, that sort of stuff. You heard a lot in a lot of different places, the reports were very inconsistent and due to that most people dismissed them as tall tales or the result of men who’d become delirious droning on and on. HANTA however, took these things seriously. VERY seriously.

And according to his bosses, along with his on calculations, the patterns Hermen followed all pointed towards something happening in this small town, very soon. Although the exact ‘something’ he wasn’t so sure of.

The afternoon was long and hot. A tumbleweed bounded past down the street, a dog lay in the shade of the saloon porch panting, and somewhere a baby cried, the sound clear in the dry air. Hermen closed his notebook and tucked it into his jacket pocket. Another boring day with nothing new, which was fine. Patience was a big part of a job like this, and Hermen was fine with that.

He had turned to head back to his room at the boarding house when an odd feeling hit him. He couldn’t shake the feeling, something in the air was different. It wasn’t just him either, the change seemed to even draw the attention of the dog, who had now stopped panting and sat with its nose in the air. Even the cries of the baby had stopped momentarily.

The only words that can describe what happened next, are that it was as if the sky itself split open. Everyone heard the sound first, deeper than the deepest thunder. It was bone shattering to say the least. The vibrations moved through Hermen’s entire body.

Building doors swung open with people pouring out of them while shading their eyes and squinting toward the horizon. Even the horses in the stable began to whine and kick at their stalls repeatedly. The next thing that could be seen, was light.

It streaked across the sky like a falling star; it was much brighter than that though, and was followed by trails of fire and smoke in colors that it would be hard to describe. There were hints of greenish gold and violet blue, these images were burned into the retinas of everyone who watched it. The arc it fell in was shallow and it was only in the sky for around ten seconds before it struck the earth with a bang that sent several people to the ground.

Hermen himself was stumbling and struggling before he caught himself against the stores wall. His heart beat as if it was a hammer trying to escape from his chest. He calmed himself, his thoughts racing. ′This is it… This is what I’ve been waiting for.′ Around him people were already shouting, throwing out a number of unanswerable questions at each other.

“What was that? Did you see it?”

“It sounded like an explosion my GOD is the world ending!?”

Hermen steadied his shaking hands, taking a deep breath in as he moved toward his horse, which was tied at the hitching post outside the boarding house. He NEEDED to get to the impact site. The only thing in his mind was seeing and confirming it before anyone else did.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t the only person with this idea. A number of men were already running for their horses. The stable was suddenly lively and erupting with noise as people saddled mounts and moved with excitement. Within a number of minutes more than half the town was mounted and riding, curiosity and the human need to witness the extraordinary drawing their attention.

Hermen swung into his saddle and wasn’t too far back in the growing crowd. They were sort of forced to move as a group, following the smoke trail in the air that was a stain against the blue sky. It was a ride of three miles, maybe even less, across the open prairie with scrub grass and the occasional stunted tree.

Hermen’s thoughts could finally organize themselves during the ride. If this was what he thought it was—if the reports were true, then a lot was about to change. The world was about to learn of the existence of unexplainable things, there was no telling what this would do to the nature of existence itself. Mythical Relics to be exact, that was the name given to these objects by HANTA. Hermen had never seen one of course, these were impossible objects and nobody knew the origin. They fell from the sky randomly across the frontier. The one thing constant among them was their undeniable danger.

The group was approaching quickly, and there it was… The crater was maybe fifty feet across, almost a perfect circle that resembled a giant’s fist beating into the prairie. The earth around it had been scorched black and the grass was burned away. Smoke rose from the edges and the heat could be felt from several feet away.

Awe spread through the crowd as everyone stopped in their tracks. Right in the middle of the crater laid the relic. It was deep in the crater, already half-buried in the earth with a glowing light coming from it. It cycled through colors from gold to green to blue to violet back again, a soft transition. It was sleek and small, resembling a single-bladed vajra. It had a thin dagger like shape on one side, with the center grip section being closed off on either side by a pair of flat hoops that looped into each other forming spherical shapes.

The crowd of townspeople stood at the crater’s edge in silence. Nobody moved or spoke, they were captivated by the small thing before them… how could THAT have created that loud of a sound?

Hermen dismounted slowly, trying his best to keep his composure. Nothing he studied could have prepared him for his first time really seeing a Mythical Relic, the presence of it was unsettling and it was as if it pulled at something deep inside of him, drawing him towards it. He took a step toward the craters edge and then…

Hoof-beats in quick succession disturbed the thoughts of every bystander. They came from the south, and as the people turned to look the rider continued approaching at a full gallop, his horse’s legs kicking up dust in his wake. It was surprise that nobody heard him until he was a hundred yards away, he was closing fast, low in the saddle as if he was one with the horse.

Things would become more and more visible as he got closer. He was a young black man, wearing a dust-stained tan duster over a dark vest, with a maroon bandana around his neck. He rode atop a mustang horse, smaller than the quarter horses most cowboys preferred, but fast and sure-footed.

The crowd was forced to part as the rider plunged down the crater’s slope, his horses hooves throwing up dirt as he galloped. The confusion of the crowd began to wear off, and it was replaced by angry shouts. To the rider, they didn’t even exist. His eyes were stuck on the relic and his young face was covered in nothing but determination.

He reached the bottom of the crater, and simply swung his hand down, not even allowing his horse to come to a stop as he reached out to grab the relic, the yells and protests getting louder.

“THE HELL DOES HE THINK HE’S DOING!?”

That brown-skinned hand closed around the relic and pulled it up in a smooth motion, tucking it inside his vest as the glow intensified, forcing many of those close enough to shield their eyes. By the time the light had faded, the young man was already halfway up the other side of the crater’s slope.

“DON’T LET HIM GET AWAY!”

The crowd scrambled, some men who had dismounted their horses forgetting to even do so and just running down the crater. By the time they made it down he was already out and galloping away. The men yelled curses and orders, running back for their horses while those who were still mounted chased after him.

Hermen was one of them, how the hell could he allow it to be stolen by some random drifter!? This wasn’t right, he could tell the rider was skilled by the way he controlled his horse, and his near perfect timing. This was only complimented by the truly exceptional horse, well-trained was an understatement. How could some laborer afford that…

Hermen was part of the loose posse of riders who chased after him. Things were spiraling out of control fast. Hermen kicked his horse harder, but he was already falling behind. His three weeks of work was escaping, riding away in a white blur.