Day 226 - Heart Story

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.