A Lack of Heart: A Kingdom for One: Chapter 1 – Broken and Scattered

Chapter 1 – Broken and Scattered

Where am I? Who am I? I’ve just fallen from the sky after being launched from the top of the inactive volcano that has a ruined city on it. How do I know what it is? What about this barrier of hundreds of thousands of white and black spirits that reaches up to the sky?

Where am I? Who am I? In my chest, I feel a pull to answer these questions first so I can know what I should be doing, but first, where should I go? The tug in my heart tells me to go in a direction and I go to it. In this direction, I find the black and white spirits gnawing at bones and fighting amongst each other. The ones that aren’t fighting appear to be stuck in their thoughts and aren’t aware of what’s happening around them. These people are most likely the ones responsible for what’s happening here.

“It’s all my fault, it’s all my fault.”

“Where’s my family? Has anyone seen my wife? Has anyone seen my daughter? What about my son?”

“Rally with me and we’ll make the world a better peaceful place without wars! If you won’t be with me, you are against me and will pay the price for doing so!”

“Kill me. Can someone kill me or put me in prison? I deserve worse than Hell. I deserve worse than being forgotten forever.”

What is this insanity that’s going around? These spirits are so fractured and keep repeating the same things over and over. I guess everyone here is like that including me. Coming across a broken mirror, I find that I’m fractured as well. My scarred chest in the shape of a heart is the only body part that I have. Besides it, I have three big light grey eyes, what seems to be a crown on my head, grey wings, grey claws, and a grey flowing robe. All of it is grey. Why is every part of me like this? Who or what am I?

The answer to my questions is close. My heart is magnetized to it as it’s a servant to a kind master. I now stand in front of a small house with many weapons and shields in front of it. This must be the home of a blacksmith by the looks of it. Going into it, a find a small child playing with makeshift figures of knights, princesses, and horned spirits.

“I’ll be the protector! When they need help, they need only call and I’ll be there to lend a hand or my sword!”

What a fascinating boy. His face seems to glow like the sun. When I reach my arm out to him, his essence enters me and everything around me changes. I am in the place of the boy and the world around me is no longer grey.

“Absalom,” I hear a woman call out.

Absalom. Is that me? My body moves and gets up at the woman’s call and goes outside to the woman who called me.

“Yes, mother?” I say to her excitedly without intentionally meaning to speak.

So, my name is Absalom and this is my mother. She’s a woman that seems like the sun is always shining on her. Her clothes are made of some kind of beast and look like they have chainmail in them. A colorful crown that’s made of paper and grass sits on her head. Looking at it makes me proud, which means I must’ve made it for her.

“Father is going to be home soon from hunting. Get the table ready for him,” my mother says.

“There’s no need,” I hear a man’s voice.

Turning around, I see the man who is presumably my father. He’s a large muscular man covered in heavy armor and blood. On one of his shoulders sits a deer and on his other shoulder sits a wolf. He carries an unsheathed knife and sword on his hips and on his back is a chipped shield. A crown of chainmail sits on his head and he seems to shine like the sun because of his armor.

“Are you okay?!” my mother asks.

“I am. Are you worried about the blood? Don’t worry, this is mostly their blood. I’ve only been scratched thanks to my armor,” my father says before laughing.

“Of course he’s okay. My father is the master blacksmith of the world!” I say.

“That’s right! Speaking of my works, where is your brother?”

“Still trying to replicate your work.”

“I’ve told that boy that he needs to stop trying to replicate what I do and make his own. The Absolute has gifted us all with unique gifts and I expect him to make better work than I can.”

“And I’ll be a great protector of you, mother, and brother!”

“Of course you will! You’ll become a great hero that many will sing stories of! I can see it already as if the Absolute has granted me a vision of the future.”

I’ll make you proud. Huh? What’s that noise? I hear silent cries and screaming. Who could be making that noise? It doesn’t matter to me right now. I want to see my older brother, listen to his stories, and watch him work. Before I know it, we’re out hunting together.

“If father can kill a deer and the wolf hunting it, we can do the same or even better,” my brother says.

“Yes, we can!” I say.

We stalk through the forests looking for prey and watching out for predators. My older brother looks like he blends into the forest with the many leaves on his armor and his green and brown face paint. Eventually, we hear the sounds of something in the forest, get excited, and go to it to find a pack of wolves eating the remains of a rival pack of wolves. They turn their attention to us before my brother grabs me and tells me to run.

“I’ll hold them off for you!” he says while pushing me ahead of him.

Since he knows best, I run away, but I have second thoughts when I see that he’s surrounded. I go back running to him while reaching out to him. This is when specters in the form of legless knights appear and fight off the wolves with swords, spears, and shields.

“You have…you have your Heart Absolute ability! That’s amazing, Absalom,” my brother says.

There’s a slight hint of jealousy in his voice that I ignore since I’m confident that my brother should be getting his Heart Absolute ability soon enough if he doesn’t have it already. Hearing about this ability reminds me of it. People obtain it at certain times some earlier than others. The ability is also different ranging from being good at basic jobs to more amazing abilities like mine. Every factor of it is based on our heart made by the Absolute and when we aren’t ourselves, we become conceited and our abilities become an inversion of our real one or a pale imitation of what we want our talents to be.

Now that I have my Heart Absolute ability, I daydream of what I could do with them. Immediately, these daydreams transition to me helping people and then to a small group of royal soldiers arriving at my home. With them are clergy that are dressed in such a way that makes me doubt their vows of poverty with their ornamental outfits designed with hearts on it similar to the armor of the royal soldiers. They’ve heard of my abilities and want me to go with them so I can hone my heart’s ability and protect even more people. I immediately accept the offer without question. Turning around I say goodbye to my family who are proud of me, but before heading out, I hear the same screaming and crying from before, but it’s a bit louder this time.

The change of scenery reveals the source of this screaming and crying as I am now fighting on a battlefield or rather, I’m hardly fighting while my specters do the work for me. When they take damage, I feel their pain, however, even though they are stabbed through the chest and head, burned, and blown up, I don’t suffer any major injuries. In battle, I can summon seven specters, but this never feels like it’s enough, so I push myself to summon three more. Doing this takes its toll on the other specters who aren’t as strong as they were. Still, I am told that I am one of the Absolute’s most valued soldiers and am crowned and celebrated as such.

Huh? What’s going on? I can see hear the screaming and crying, and it’s louder this time. At this celebration, everyone but one woman stops in place as if time has affected everyone but us. We look into each other’s eyes and soon after, I’m transported to us getting married, having children, and then…I’m alone in a burning forest. Where’s my family? Huh…there are heads of my family in the dirt and body parts buried as well. My son…my wife…my father, mother, and brother…The screaming and crying are even louder than it was before.

Wait! Hold on! Stop! I’m in battle again, but this time I feel a sense of unquenchable rage. These people are responsible for the deaths of my family and friends. No matter how many I bring to justice and how many honors I get at the celebration after, I feel a chasm in my heart that can’t be filled that is until I see another woman, however, I come back to the same scene with my family buried in the ground, this time with her and my daughter being among the bodies, and again the screaming and crying gets louder until I finally realize the tears coming down my face and that the screaming and crying is coming from me.

“Please…stop…not again,” I say.

“This is not even your worst failure,” a disembodied voice says.

“Don’t remind me of it!”

I feel like I know what the voice is talking about and am struggling to keep it out of my head and forget what I just remembered.

“Twice you lost your family. Twice there wasn’t enough for you to bury. Twice your friends, leaders, and the Church promised you they would be protected from the conceited, and twice they failed. Twice you prayed to the Absolute for their protection and many times over your prayers fell on deaf ears.”

“Shut up! I’ll kill you if you say another word.”

Manifesting out of thin air, a man with green and grey eyes appears in front of me. This man has half a face, and half a body, and floats in the air like the specters I’ve seen. Something about him reminds me of myself even though none of his features are like the faces of myself that I’ve seen in reflections so far. There’s something unnatural about him.

“I wish I could kill myself as well. Regardless, I will tell you what you need to hear. You went mad after the death of your second wife and first daughter, especially since you decided to marry again and have another child, a baby boy. In your mind, there was no cost too high to pay for their protection. Darkened by the temptations of the vainglory, you sacrificed your arms and people who you decided were guilty so that you could spawn an army of specters to protect the world with. You recruited many people. Many people also were damned to the Land of the Forgotten as a result including your new family.”

Hearing this gives me flashes of when it happened. When a servant of the Absolute made me feel the cold and forgotten fates of my family and when I was brought to justice.

“What is this then? Am I dead? Is this the Land of Purification before I am sent to the Land of the True or am I in the Land of the Forgotten?”

“Neither though you deserve to be forgotten forever for your crimes and failures. You’re a failure of a brother, son, friend, father, and husband, especially for leading two of your family members and your supporters to eternal damnation. Who can live with a sin like that on their soul?”

He's right. How can I live with this much failure? Remembering it all puts a weight on my heart that feels like it can crush it any second now.

“Just because you fail, it doesn't mean that you can't get up again,” the voice of my mother says as I remember it.

“Failure is not the end. The Absolute gives us as many second chances as we need,” my father's voice rings in my ears.

“I fail all the time,” my brother says, “We'll never be perfect in this life, but we can always get better.”

I remember that. It's hard to believe, yet I still remember it and believe it to some extent.

“I may have failed, but I'm still alive, which means it's not over yet,” I say.

“So what? Can you live with your failures for the rest of your life? Can you do enough penance to pay for what you've done?”

“To be honest, I don't feel like I can, but the Absolute has judged that I stay alive to try. I may have failed my family with my recent actions. Not again. I will never fail them again from this moment on.”

As I speak, the other me is absorbed into my body until I am one with my other self. The scenery around me has changed back to the blacksmith's house. I'm back in the city that sits on the inactive volcano, the place I wanted to start my empire peace at. Turning around, I look into my reflection in a shield and see my half face and half of my torso with half a heart shape cut out of it. It's an ugly sight to behold not just because most of me is missing, but because it's my face, the face of a vile sinner. Nevertheless, I embrace it and will have to live with it. There's much work to do to put myself back together and right my wrongs.