Heart Story
Matthew Ryan Fischer
The Heart of Hearts kept beating when it shouldn’t. It was strong.
It spread life where there was none. The Heart of Hearts kept pumping even
though it wasn’t attached to anything. Its muscles pumped and worked and
inspired greatness and love and admiration. The heart had always been beating
and it was believed that it always would.
The Heart of Hearts had been worshiped and revered since ancient
times. The Heart of Hearts had needlessly been fed the blood of sacrifice by
cultures that did not understand it needed no such sustenance. It had been
eaten by the cannibals that wished to gain an ounce of its power, unaware that
that wasn’t how power was transferred. The Heart of Hearts reanimated and out-survived
them all.
Once it had been put on a pedestal and the people gathered and
prayed. It had been stolen and hidden by those that hoped it would grant them eternal
life, unaware this was an impossible wish. The heart was stolen back, but that
didn’t prevent future attempts on its ownership. There were three particular
families that had traded the heart back and forth over the course of a couple
of centuries. Each family wanted it for the bragging rights, even though they
didn’t know what to do with it once they reacquired it.
There was an order that some considered a cult. The order had used
thievery, but currently held possession of the heart and had for close to a
decade. It was rumored that the order kept the heart in a glass jar like it was
a sort of display case. No one was sure what purpose the jar would serve, as
the heart was not susceptible to the elements or to disease, but some theorized
it was for appearance sake only. There were those that couldn’t stand to look
at a heart out in the open, beating and pumping away. The glass jar served some
cosmetic purpose that allowed it to look more scientific and medical.
The Heart of Hearts was the center stone of existence. It began
pumping when life began. It didn’t control existence or determine it, but it kept
it alive. It was a symbol, an abstract in concrete form. As long as life had
been, the heart had been beating. It would beat until the last life lived its
last moment. The Heart of Hearts couldn’t control when that would be, but it
would do its job.
Beyond that, the Heart of Heart had no power, no magic spell to
grant, or ability to give. The heart had its worshipers and its detractors. All
of them felt they were important to the process, but none of them mattered to
the heart. The Heart of Hearts couldn’t think or feel at all. It knew nothing
of those that considered it. It knew nothing at all. All it did was keep
beating.
The Spirit of Entropy was believed to be the one thing that could
pierce the Heart of Hearts and destroy it. No one knew if the Spirit of Entropy
existed, but there was a belief that once something had been conceived, then it
had to exist somewhere in some fashion. This offshoot chance of possibility created
a great amount of chaos of its own. Several interested parties fought to
discover the Spirit of Entropy and possess it. It wasn’t exactly clear what it
would be, but many people hoped it would be something pointy. The idea of stabbing
the Heart of Hearts with the Spirit of Entropy was just too appealing to
imagine anything else. Why someone would want to stab the Heart of Hearts and
end existence is a different matter altogether, but certainly there would be
someone that would want to do such a thing.
The order created a suborder whose purpose would be to try to find
the Spirit of Entropy and discover a way to destroy it. There has been no word
on whether or not they have made any progress. A different suborder did have several
theoretical ways to protect the heart in case the spirit could not be destroyed.
Seeing as no one actually knows what form the spirit will take, most of their
efforts have been rather futile. Still, it’s best to be prepared. Not that the heart
knew anyone was on the case. All the Heart of Hearts knew how to do was keep
beating.
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