GuNNhead

Fighting through the cold and knee-high snow, I make it back to the museum, and see a figure inside. I fire two shots at it through the large bay window before jumping through the window itself. The alarms go off, and the figure vanishes. By morning, the RCMP arrive and attempt to question me. My badge and the security video answer all they want to know.

“Geeze, I thought I asked you to help, not trash the place.”
“I am helping. I caught your thief off guard, but if what I found out was true, we have a much bigger problem on our hands now. These stones each hold a great, other-worldly power, but there are not five, there are six, and your thief now has it almost completed. Where are those lenses?”
“I had them on me, here.” He hands them to me, I hold both up to my eyes, and look at the first stone. Then, the past is revealed to me…

“The undead!” Events of the past and future tore through his mind as he stabbed his wife in the chest, and kicked her off the final snowy precipice of the cliff face. Stopping more than one heart in the process.

I saw it all, thousands of years in an instant within that stone. A long-since forgotten group of our people who discovered the stones in the ice, fallen from out of space, appearing from holes in the sky and clouds. Unlocking their power, they were able to prosper over many generations. One day, an elder misguided by his own hubris and heartbreak sought the power for himself. He rose the dead as an army, but was thwarted by one man, who shattered the stone being used to channel these powers, breaking the elder’s control over the dead. However, with the stone now destroyed, he could not lay them back to rest, and fled with his wife and the rest of the stones. When the sun his his face upon reaching the top of the cliff, the stones spoke to him, and told him of his wife’s sudden but inevitable betrayal. He hid the remainder of the misused shards in a false-bottom of the unused cradleboard he had brought with him, and triggered an avalanche, burying all traces of the event and his peoples, never to return.

“We got a big problem here, a big problem.”
“What do you mean, like, moreso than what’s already happening?”
“Much more; how much do you know about these stones?”
“Only that they hold a great, mysterious power, whose power is only eclipsed by its mystery.”
“Wonderful. Call the RCMP, tell them to meet me at the graveyard.”
“Do you have a plan?”
“No. No I do not.”

“Nephew, I’ve come to you with this because you’re family and I can trust you, but more pertinently, from what I’ve heard, you’re an outstanding government agent and I need your expertise on something important.”
“Well, then, lets not beat around the bush with pleasantries.”
“Right, as you may know from holidays, I work as the manager to this museum for our people’s artifacts and treasures, what you may not know-”
“You’ve recently had a theft.”
“Right, but more than that, the thief left more here than the one object he left with, a tattered old cloth containing two rectangular lenses. This purple one, and this clear one. We’re not sure of his motives yet, but-”
“The stones. The most valuable things in here, not just by our people, but any one in the world. They’re a complete enigma.” I grab the purple lens of his desk, and go to the old false fireplace mantle with the five ancient multi-colored translucent stones. I hold the lens up to my eye, peering through at the stones.
“Dammit, nothing.”
“Be careful with that, it’s still RCMP evidence. Besides, we’ve already tried that.”
“Any luck?”
“None.”
“Then let me do my job. Pass me the other lens.” I look at each stone individually; on the final one, I notice a reflection on the lens, behind me. I turn around and look out the bay windows, but see nothing. I look again, checking amongst all the stones, only the last one offers the reflection.
“I’m going outside to investigate,” I hand him back the lenses, “these are safe here for now.”
“What did you see?”
“Nothing, I just have a hunch.”

Outside, I walk the path of the reflection, and before long, I arrive at a flattened clearing of snow, nothing around it. Getting a closer look, my foot catches a hidden patch of ice, and I slide into the clearing, breaking through and falling 10 feet onto cold, hard dirt.

When I awaken, I’m tied down by my hands, kneeling, buried up to my neck in snow. Luckily whoever did this didn’t bother to search me at all. My combat knife is still in my belt-holster behind me. I cut my bindings, and dig my way out. Unluckily, it’s night now, which means the lenses are no longer safe.

I think back to the security footage I saw earlier of the robbery, this thief wasn’t nimble, but they got in and out mostly undetected, until the alarm went off at the display for the stones. What they took was seemingly worthless, but I wonder… Taking out my flashlight, I see see handmade desks, with scattered parchments, mortars, pestles, retorts, calcinators, and alembics.

“Alchemy.”