At the Dawn of Time There Were Four.
Of the age's oldest order of kings, of royal rulers majesty, there rains four most elite of all these few of time honored blood. They are renowned as Ace of Spades, Jack of Clubs, King of Diamonds, and Queen of Hearts. All four majesties were praised and feared by all worlds, their power craved by all men, and their hearts wondered by all souls. But as time goes and comes and goes and comes once more, some things are lost and some never found again. The age's oldest order of kings was forgotten, their existence given to myth and legend. Centuries and centuries drizzled on and the order was finally never remembered, even in fairytale. The most powerful, regal, and mighty of kings were vanished to the space of time and dimension.
And now, millenniums later, a boy dreams restlessly.
All that we see and seem is but a dream within a dream.
-Edgar Allan Poe
Chapter One
"Hello?" Axel called into the darkness. His voice came back at him again and again; an endless, vast echo in the shadows. He could see nothing around him. Everything was black as midnight evil. He stepped forward in no particular direction. All sense of navigation and presence was lost to the endless black field, yet he continued to walk forward, knowing that he would find his way soon. And there was a light, then. A glowing beam that chased the shadows away with its vibrancy. He advanced toward it, the only sign that there was something else besides darkness.
"Axel," she called to him. The queen sat on the ground, her dress fanned about her like a deep ocean. She looked up into his soul and cocked her head slightly to one side, as if she were confused. "Ace Axel of Spades."
"What?" he asked in a confused tone. He couldn't understand what she'd meant by these strange words.
"Ace Axel, where is the Jack? Do you know?"
Axel simply shook his head, though he knew nothing of the words she spoke.
"Well, do you know me?"
Once more, he shook his head.
"I am Queen Hinata of Hearts," she smiled slightly. "And I'm sure you know yourself, though perhaps not."
"Who am I?" he asked.
"You are nobody." She said calmly. And then she was gone, swallowed by the shadows, her pure white light faded to nothing.
Axel awoke from the dream once again. That same dream that haunted his sleep had come without rest or falter for fifty nights. Fifty times he saw her and fifty he had lost her to the darkness. What did this all mean? He couldn't understand it, though he thought of it constantly. Still, no matter how he tried to decipher it's cryptic dialogue it came out nonsensical, always. Perhaps that was all it was. Simply nonsense.
The city below the roof on which he'd slept seemed dead in its hours of darkness, though the town was as unchanged as it was unchangeable. He looked up to where the crescent moon hung lonely in the sky, its pale glow barely enough to give him solace in the night. He thought of the queen, and if she was real, if the dream held some hidden meaning that he was destined to understand, how she would be under the same sky. In all the worlds of the universe there is only one sky, it goes on forever, eternally in all directions of the cosmos. It is known that all souls are connected by this same sky. He hoped that wherever she slept, the sky was bright with stars.