Kingdom Hearts: Literary Hearts

Dive to the Heart

Aster was dreaming. He stood on a pedestal whose surface was solid, but appeared to be a stained glass window. The bottom of the column sank so far down that it disappeared into the blackness that surrounded Aster's vision. The top where he stood, however, was well-lit, though no light source was immediately obvious.

The stained glass image showed two men who seemed very much overdressed to Aster. They wore heavy-looking coats and bore serious expressions on their faces. The larger man was behind the thin one and bore a large hand-bag, like the traveling salesmen who occasionally came through Aster's town. The man in the foreground had a preoccupied look on his face, as though his image was taken while he was working a particularly difficult crossword in the Sunday paper.

"So much to do, so little time."

Aster whirled around to meet the speaker, but no one appeared. The platform and the darkness surrounding it were as empty as before.

"Take your time. Don't be afraid. The door is still shut."

The voice was not sound, but rather energy, energy that spoke directly to Aster, and Aster somehow understood the meaning.

In the center of the platform, a circle of light appeared, brighter than the light around it. Aster gazed upwards, but the source of the spotlight was so far up that he could not see it.

"Now, step forward. Can you do it?"

The energy voice was empowering. It filled Aster with the confidence and will to step into the light. He expected an immediate reaction once he had entered the light, but a long pause met him instead. Aster was just about to enter a deeper sleep and end the dream when the unknown speaker returned, this time a hint of sternness entering its voice.

"Your path has been set." And the stained glass floor shattered.

Aster plunged through what should have been the center of the column; no sign that there had ever been a column remained, save the glass shards that filled the air around him. Aster fell for hours before his feet landed on something solid.

Another pedestal. Exactly as before, but the window that Aster stood on bore a different image. This time, four figures stood in opposite corners of the picture. All four bore crowns on their heads; two kings and two queens. The royal figures were dressed in mail armor, just like in the fairy tales Aster used to read. The center of the glass was dominated by a great sandy-colored face that filled the entire window, making it impossible for Aster to make out its shape. Not a single shard of glass from the previous window had landed with Aster on the new one.

"You have been granted the power to fight." And a sword unlike any Aster had ever imagined was suddenly in his hand. It had appeared in a flash of light. The handle was a rectangle, with his right hand gripping a cylinder of metal through the center. Aster realized that if the rectangle were filled in, it would look exactly like a book bound in aged green leather. It was, however, composed of metal, as was the blue steel shaft that extended from the book shaped part forward, where the blade should have been. But the shaft was round, not sharp. At the end of the shaft, and at a right angle to the book-like pommel, were three extensions of blue metal, arranged in a pattern resembling the teeth of a key.

"Use this power to protect others, as well as yourself. There will be times you will have to fight."

As the voice continued speaking, motes of the surrounding black space seemed to coalesce into solid shadows on the glass floor. Then the shadows rose from the floor and took on solid forms. Each was identical. They shared a stooped, stunted body, like a horribly bent old man; sharp claws on the ends of weak-looking arms; and an entirely black coloration, only broken by a pair of glowing yellow eyes staring out mournfully from pin points on the round, exaggerated heads.

Aster might have considered them comical if they weren't slowly slipping towards him with a look of greedy hunger in those eyes. He instinctively placed the sword in front of him and grabbed the round shaft with his left hand. The shadows reached him, and began slashing at Aster with furtive swipes of their arms. Aster—or perhaps the sword itself—moved to impede each slash, keeping the shadows away from him. Aster cried out in his sleep when a sharp pain raked his ankle. He spun around just in time to see that a shadow—which had scratched his leg—was sinking back into the ground. Angrily, Aster brought the weapon down on the creature—and the sword bounced uselessly off the ground. Thinking they were retreating, Aster turned back to the main group to see them all sinking into two dimensions again. Aster sighed in relief.

His relief ended when the shadows began to walk around in this flat state and surround him.

Realizing they would keep this up forever, Aster chose one shadow that was just beginning to rise from the glass and struck it.

Although the sword appeared terribly blunt, the key teeth swiped through the shadow, breaking apart whatever body it had had. The black form dissipated, leaving six more rising up to meet Aster.

Aster, quickly understanding the shadows' attack pattern, hit three more in quick succession. Each vanished as completely as the first. Aster watched the remaining shadows disappear into the ground and congeal into a mass of darkness, which began to spread throughout the floor. Aster backed up, but the black pool spread too quickly. Aster was engulfed and vanished through the floor, into the calm warmth…

And regained himself on yet a third stained glass floor. This time, their were no people in the image at all, only a gold ring with letters inscribed across it, but Aster did not recognize the language.

"The closer you get to light, the greater your shadow becomes."

Aster did not understand. There was no light here, no more than had appeared at the other pedestals, the same ambient ability to see, only dream logic. He looked over his shoulder and saw

himself

as though one of the shadows had been stretched to fit over Aster's frame, the beady yellow eyes and the cruel talons.

And Aster's own darkness.

He could see it now, glaring at him from the solemn figure, and he knew what it meant he was screaming, screaming, backing away from the shadow, slipping off, falling…

"No?" asked the voice, both disappointed and unsurprised at once. "You prefer to run? To shy from the light? You are making him—all of them—stronger. Very well. You will approach the light from a distance. Yet you will approach it. And always remember—"

Aster was crying, in the dream and in real life. The air was close, too thin somehow, and Aster wanted to tear away his ears, or tell the voice it was wrong…

"You cannot run from your own heart."

Aster awoke in a closet.