Six Steel

Prologue: The Lone Traveler And A Dying Man [OLD]

Light filtered in vaguely through a covered window at the other end of the shack. The hum of winged insects wisped through the air. Jed rubbed his eyes, thirsty. He sat up in the rickety mess of cloth that might have been a bed once and reached down to grab his flask. What was it? There was a glimpse of a notion that maybe alcohol first thing in the morning wasn't the best choice, but Jed really didn't have any water on him, and there was nothing wrong with trying new things. What the hell was it? The brown liquor with a name that he barely cared to remember washed down his parched throat as Jed grabbed his hat, his bag, and his gun. It's gonna bug me all day if I can't remember what it was that I needed to do. Jed opened the shack door, stepped into the blazing hot sun that scalded the Frodir Desert, and tripped. That's what it was! Jed regained his balance to rediscover the source of the flies he'd left outside last night.

"You... bastard..." Spat the once man, now pile of meat.

"You... aren't dead?" Replied Jed.

It all came back to Jed. The night before, Jed was exhausted from wandering the desert and had happened upon this shack. Much to his surprise, a man jumped at him. There might have been a glint of steel from the rapid draw of Jed's Crimson, had it not been the middle of the night. There was, however, a glow from the bullet leaving the chamber. The bullet found its mark, and the man fell. Jed - assuming the effects of his Crimson would finish the man - entered the shack and put his things down, thoughts of how he should do something about the dead body in the morning passing through his mind as he fell asleep. Now, the flies had surrounded the significant amount of blood that spilled from the victim. This was such a quantity of blood it led Jed to be very confused as to how this man had survived the night without dying. Jed didn't spend a lot of time wondering and started to walk away as a hand quickly reached out, grabbing Jed's ankle. This was when Jed no longer needed to worry about how the heap was alive. Slowly, the grip of the anemic victim loosened. Jed thought it was interesting how, as the hand weakened, it wasn't the whole hand at once. It was one finger at a time. It was as if the brain were dismissing each part of the body individually, giving each finger a final goodbye as it knew these were its last moments. After the thumb released Jed's leg, Jed looked for a shovel, finding one behind the shack, and began digging.

After about an hour, Jed walked back over to the body, dragging it through the sand until he could push it into the hole, and began shoveling sand back over the hole. After the hole was covered, Jed began making his way toward the large dead tree in the distance, aptly named, Deadtree.