A Union of Hearts: Repairing the Familial Pillar: Chapter 3 –Worthy Successor and the Power of Familial Love

*concept art of Mia and her specters

Chapter 3 –Worthy Successor and the Power of One Heart

Inaction always makes me anxious and knowing that injustice is happening to the innocent with nothing being done to save them makes me even more anxious.

“Stop moving around, Mia. We must be patient,” my father, Absalom, whispers.

I do as he asks. He seems to be feeling the same way as I see him subtlety fidget a bit every now and then, especially when he sees some injustice happening such as people being worked to death or cruelly beaten and being chained to a spot as a live example to the others. The hearts of a family are connected and I know for certain that he and my mother feel the same way I do. For the past five or so hours, we’ve been scouting out this town that’s been remade into a city and trying to free as many people as we can before we attack its leaders. My father uses his specters to direct our smaller groups of allies while I use two hawks for surveillance to help them know what’s ahead of them.

We’re making progress, but there are hundreds of people here and someone will eventually notice that some are missing. Speaking of that, some of the more attentive guards have noticed this. Most of these guards we knocked out while converting some to our side with Leilani’s help. I’m still amazed that mother was able to convert her. I don’t know why I am though. My mother has always been able to change and uplift hearts with her singing and kind words. What I’m more confused about is when she feels sad about not being able to do anything when she goes above and beyond not only for her family but for others as well with her singing.

Perhaps this worry of not doing enough runs in the family and why the Absolute brought my mother and father together since they share the problem and need to get over it together. Eventually, the number of missing people becomes clear to too many guards to silence or convert and the alarm is raised forcing us to shift to the second part of our plan. Since I’m able to spawn specters where I’ve been or places I’ve seen and I’ve been and have seen most places in this city, I summon elephants that appear in certain places to cause chaos to break watch towers and injury as many guards and soldiers as I can. Along with my father’s specters, we make our forces seem bigger than they are by appearing and reappearing in many places causing lots of damage as we can while evacuating everyone that we can.

My mother and I sing to strengthen the hearts of the converted and allies though she tries to convert the hearts of our enemies by mostly by herself since I hardly know what to do. Still, she gets me to help her with this and say what I can to change hearts and aid them. The battle is going our way. I’m especially thankful for Leilani who teleports people to safety with her dark fog that also acts as a cover. We look like we’re going to win until we start hearing reports of people dropping dead in our area and reinforcements for the enemy’s arrival.

I black out for a second then come to my senses seemingly minutes later with my parents trying to get me up. They look like they’re trying not to cry, but they’re happy and hugging me now that I’ve woken up from whatever came over me. For some reason, we’re in a dark room that’s like a large prison cell with many people on the floor above us looking down at us as if we were animals in a zoo.

“What happened?” I ask.

“I’ll answer that for you,” a man cloaked in the dark says. “After all the chaos you caused, we decided to take matters into our own hands and take you ourselves. Because of your reputation, Absalom, we’ll give you the honor of giving you our names. Mine is Nixon. My fellow negotiators are Griffen who can bring you back to life and heal your wounds by breathing on you and Pasito who made you black out or rather put you in a near death state just by looking at you. Be thankful to your God that I find you useful. Otherwise, I’d have you feel the pain of the worse deaths possible. Speaking of that, you will experience some of the worse deaths possible if you do not agree to ally with us.”

“Do you really think-”

“Ab-”

Before I can blink, both of my parents drop to the ground. Their eyes are red and their mouths are frothing.

“Mother…father…” I say quivering and unable to move to check on them.

“Don’t worry about them. We’ll bring them back to life in just a second.”

Nixon snaps his fingers and Griffen blows his breath from the floor above us and brings father and mother gasping, crying, and screaming back to life. They try to stop to compose themselves, put a lid on their reactions, and hide their faces from me.

“Did you like that way of dying? Death by over a thousand cuts. It’s the one I have Pasito use first since it gets people on my side the quickest. I’ll have you know that Pasito can induce many forms of pain in you because he’s witnessed and felt the worst. So, what’s your answer now?” Nixon says.

“…we…that’s not going to be enough to stop us,” my father answers.

“We…won’t give in!” my mother adds.

My father then tries using one of his specters to attack the people above us, but then mother-I-I. I feel like I’m being eaten alive! Get these bugs off me! Get them out of me!

“Mia! Mia!” my father says while holding my shaking body.

I hold him and cry in his arms unable to cope with what just happened to me.

“Death by being eaten alive by special kinds of bugs. Horrifying to see which is why a person is buried alive in addition to being killed that way. How did it feel Absalom?” Nixon says.

My father doesn’t bother to look at him and instead tries to hold in his anger as he tries to think of something to do.

“You’re horrible people!” my mother says.

“We are, I admit, but it’s for a very good reason, and hopefully this can help convince you to ally with us. You already knew this reason, Absalom. You fell far from the glory that we aspire to. We were going to have you join us, but you changed before we had all our forces organized.”

“Spit it out already. Why are you doing this?” my father asks.

“To replace an aging truth. Face it, Absalom. The Church and her kingdoms are a relic of the past and may have once been invincible, but it is no longer as you have seen with its dwindling territories. Your God has abandoned you and is no longer the truth. Our truth is better anyway. People are freer and happier than they were before. I know you’ve seen the ugly side of it, but it's a necessary evil so that people in the future will enjoy the works of today.”

“You enslave and kill those that disagree.”

“Haven’t you?”

“I kill only when I’m forced to.”

“We do the same. As far as I’m concerned, killing is always done in self-defense. You’re either defending yourself physically or defending whatever god, love, or truth has hold of our hearts. I think even your prince admitted to the fact that we live in a world that’s always filled with war.”

“You don’t understand anything,” my mother says.

“What don’t I understand?”

“You don’t understand reality, love, truth, or the Absolute, which is love and truth itself-”

My mother drops to the ground.

“Don’t try using your ability. Pasito can feel hearts and know when you are using it.”

I black out soon after and feel like my entire body is on fire. Waking up again, I can’t help but cry and puke.

“You’re lucky that I have enough respect for you that I told Pasito not to let you imagine dying by having you defecate yourself,” Nixon says as he begins to sound impatient.

“You won’t get away with this,” my father says.

“Says who? Think about it one last time. Absolute freedom. That’s what I’m fighting for. Being free from the Absolute, defining yourself, and doing what you want to do with your life is the definition of absolute freedom rather than being a slave to a truth or what you call love.”

“I’d rather be a slave to truth and love than to be a slave to your false truth,” I manage to say while holding back my tears.

“Our daughter is right,” my father and mother say.

I think for a second that we’re going to combine our hearts together to use a combined ability, however, we aren’t able to. We continuously die over and over again while feeling the worst ways to die. Nixon keeps telling us to join him in different ways and single sentences as to why his freedom is the right way. My father, mother, and I keep denying him and keep dying. Is this it? Are we going to keep suffering like this until we break and give in? Has the Absolute abandoned us to this? Maybe if we give in, we can find a way out after?

Don’t think that way, Mia. Father? There’s another way to overcome them. Violence isn’t always the answer. Do you remember what the truest act of love is? To suffer for another? Yes, that’s it. Unite your heart with ours and offer up your suffering to the Absolute as penance for our sins, the sins of the faithful, and the sins of the people that oppress us. Mother, I don’t think I can do it for them. I feel so much hatred for the people doing this to us. It’s okay, Mia. I feel it too, but love is more than a feeling. It’s action. That’s right.

Continuously, we keep dying, however, in the suffering, I can feel peace. Pain keeps trying to drag me away from it, but I persist with the help of my parents. I understand now. We understand. We’ve always known. The Absolute has already shown us by His example. Even in the midst of defeat and the darkest times, truth and love will always exist and prevail. Our victories are His. Our failures are ours. We let go of our worries and embrace this truth. We embrace the suffering of one another and love those who hate us for this is real truth and love.

“Please, get up,” one of Nixon’s men says to us.

It’s Griffen who is helping us up. People around us are fighting and on the floor near us is Nixon who appears to have died a death by defecation. Next to Griffen is Pasito who is making others that he looks at drop dead.

“We’re sorry,” Griffen says.

“Wha-what happened?” I ask with my head spinning from all the pain.

“The love gushing forth from your hearts touched everyone in the room. We were hearing…whispers. Voices telling us to stop and reasons for doing so. The reason that surprised us the most was that you were suffering for us. Is this true?”

“We were,” my father says.

“Why? It doesn’t make sense for you to,” Pasito says.

“It does if you know what it means to truly love,” my mother says.

“I think I know what you mean even though I can hardly begin to explain it,” Griffen says.

“The answer still puzzles me,” Pasito says.

“But you know it otherwise you wouldn’t have acted the way you did.”

“I did it because the voices compelled me to and I didn’t want to be a slave to Nixon and the other masters anymore.”

“We’ll find the answer together later. First, we must get out of here.”

“We should bring Nixon and the others with us and they should be alive,” my father says.

“Why should we do that to those scum?” Pasito says.

“Because I was once scum and now, I am a real man. Give them a second chance even though they don’t seem to deserve it. That is part of what true love is.”

Pasito and Griffen look at each other before Griffen shrugs his shoulders and agrees, but first, we secure the facility we are in, tie up Nixon, and his supporters before bringing them back to life.

“What…how am I…Why did you?” Nixon asks.

“The Absolute will answer those questions for you in due time,” my father says.

We ascend from the facility to the surface to see that we were in some kind of castle with a large underground portion to it. When we exit it, we’re surprised to find the prince and princess with an army behind them breaking through the gates.

The prince approaches us and says to my father, “You really had to steal all the glory? What are you doing here? How did you capture the enemy leaders?”

My father wraps his arms around my mother and me and then says, “My family was the key to victory.”

“That’s obvious. Explain everything to me.”

“That’s going to take a while.”

“Of course. Soldiers, take the prisoners away. Absalom, we have a long journey to our new home so you’ll have plenty of time to tell me the whole story.”

“Yes, sir.”

Even though this ended in a way that I didn’t expect and I’m sure that we’ll have more enemies to face later, I’m glad that it’s over. The enemy disregarded the Absolute and the family that are the cause of their defeat and main supports of society and hearts, and now suffer the consequences for it. I’m glad for everything that my father and mother have done for me because we would be lost without the truth and love that they taught and showed me through their example. They showed me that through true love for each other and with all our hearts combined as one family, anything is possible and that nothing can overcome true love.

 

The End