Hello readers! Thanks for clicking your way to my story, I hope you enjoy it. This is the sequal to the first fanfiction that I wrote, called (obviously) The Noble Heart. Once agian the main OC is one that I use in my comics, and I am using this fanfic to help me write about him. Funny thing is, I planned the NHII before the first story, and I've got SO many plans for this story. Check my profile for links to pictures of the characters (once I get them up...). Please review, or not, or whatever. I hope you like it!
Prologue
The sun was out, but the air was defiantly cold. Halvi walked along the edge of a great forest, a bundle of bags in her arms and a distant look on her youthful face. Her long pale blond hair rippled out behind her as she stepped lightly over the small rocks and roots on her path. She had traveled this same road so many times in the last few years that she probably knew every turn, dip and rise on it by heart. She didn't even have to look to know where she was going.
Her mind wandered. Many uneasy thoughts had been plaguing her lately, but unfortunatly most of her problems were out of her control. Her greatest concern was for one person in particular: a young soldier who appeared much older than he really was, and whose life was destined for trials and hardship. He was a hero to everyone in the country, the man who began the end of the war, but to Halvi he was something completely different.
Roren Agnellus, former captain of the 5th division of the southern Nelvin army, was the chosen bearer of the power of The Noble Heart. It was a great force for light that drew its strength from compassion, and the sorrow of one who loves deeply. Four years earlier Halvi had been entrusted with the responsibility of watching over Roren, should his power ever be used. King Mickey had told her to call if there was any trouble, but so far Halvi had chosen to be on her own.
Though there seemed to be no end of trouble for Roren, Halvi had decided that they were issues that even The King could not resolve. They were problems of the heart, and of the world as a whole: war, death, betrayal and choice. Roren had faced the worst of all of them over the last few years, and their effect on him was painfully evident.
But now things were different. The problems that Halvi once thought she could handle had quickly gone out of her control. The heartless were threatening to destroy the very life of this world, and as she looked to the horizon all she could see were omens of danger. She had finaly called for help, and she could only hope that it would come in time.
Halvi threw these thoughts to the back of her mind. She had spotted something farther up ahead of her that required her attention. A black mass was weaving in and out of the trees off to her side, slipping through the leafy darkness around the forest floor. Through the shade Halvi could just make out its form. It was little more than a shapeless mass of darkness, a rolling puddle of black emptiness.
Her gaze was impassive. She felt no fear of the creature, though it was likely the most formidable heartless that this world would ever know. As she watched it, the formless creature slithered out of the trees and out onto the grass. It slunk over her path, moving like a shallow wave across a puddle. She watched it, coldly urging it on with repulsing thoughts. The heartless hardly slowed, but continued its confident rolling over the worn path, and then up over a small rise onto an open felid.
Halvi shifted the bags she carried. To the heartless she was invisible, and all of them ignored her, which she supposed was a good thing. But for once she wondered what it would have been like to be recognized by such a creature, to have the simple quality that they were seeking.
They terrify people, she thought to herself. Why would I want to feel that? I should just be glad that they can't hurt me.
The bright sun bore down through the cold air as Halvi stared after the traveling creature. Only when it became little more than a black smudge in the distance did she break her gaze from it. She sighed and her fingers tightened on the bags. She looked up to the grey sky, her eyes searching back and forth helplessly. Nothing.
She swallowed. "Please hurry," she whispered. "Sora, we need you here. Hurry."