The Time Hopper

The Great Escape

Riley hurried off, not even meeting my eye, because he knew I would be telling him to go. Who knew what Consequences would do if they all came back. My mind was racing. The other's couldn't well refuse to come back, because Riley wouldn't go with them and they needed one of us with them, which meant that they were about to come back here. Consequences wouldn't kill them, I hoped, but any chance of escape would be dashed now. I had to figure something out, come up with some sort of plan to let me get away. But he was holding my arm tightly, and he had made my book disappear. Come on, Sadie, think about this. There has to be a way out. 

"Where's my book?" I asked him. I had to get it back. It was my only way out of this, my only way to keep Riley safe no matter what happened. 

"Perfectly safe, in a pocket dimension. Obsivian isn't the only one who has developed his own branch of magic in the millennia we have been alive." He told me. I had never even heard of a mage using that sort of magic, which meant that my book was truly out of reach. Okay. Rethink the plan to include that. If anything, I had gotten ahead, because I didn't even have a plan to rethink. 

"Why are you doing this?" I asked him quietly, studying his face. It had changed, somehow. The softness and kindness seemed to have been erased, made hard and unrelenting. It was colder on the docks than it ever had been before. 

"I could well ask you the same thing, Sadie. Stealing the others away as you are. I presume you're taking them to Obsivian." He assumed. I nodded, more than willing to lie. 

"Yeah. He's my grandfather, you know, and he's told me everything about you. About the war, and how you're dragging us into it." I told him. Maybe I could learn something here, or at least give myself enough time to come up with a way out of here. 

"The bonds of family, eh? How ironic." He murmured. I looked at him sharply. 

"Can't say I see the irony." 

"Obsivian is your grandfather, that's true enough, but I'm your family too." He pointed out. I paused, and then snorted and shook my head. 

"Yeah, you took me in to turn me into a soldier for you! I don't think that makes you my family." I snapped. I didn't consider Obsivian family either, but he didn't need to know that. 

"No, we're blood related. Distantly, very far back. While Obsivian is your paternal grandfather, I am your maternal great, great, great and so forth grandfather." He told me. My head snapped to stare at him, studying his face, trying to see if he was telling me the truth. "Before you ask, I have no proof. My line of descendants is long and branches off a lot, and any features have long since been diluted to nothing. However, your mother was my most direct descendant, and so are you." He said. I paused, staring at the water as I took it in and ultimately decided that it didn't matter one bit. 

"And yet you were still going to send me after Obsivian, weren't you?" I asked. 

"Yes. I was. It was unfortunate that you were born the child of time, but it makes your fate inevitable. I assure you that Obsivian has the same plans for you as I do. It is simply how we fight this war of ours." He told me, his voice so nonchalant it made me boil with fury. 

"But it shouldn't be. We have nothing to do with any of this! Why don't you leave this damn valley and fight him yourself for once?" I demanded, trying and failing to pull my arm away. Not even so I could run off, but so I could pace around and wave my arms to let out the energy building inside. Consequences sighed. 

"Sadie, you are a child, and an ignorant one at that. You and the other children of time have been entrenched in this fight since the day it first started, you simply don't remember it. All myself and Obsivian do is hold you to promises you made in your first incarnations. And were I to leave the valley and fight him, it is more than possible that he would destroy me rather than the other way around, and if that happened this world would be doomed. You simply don't understand, Sadie." He told me, voice patient and patronizing as it always was, but with a hard edge that erased all the care and kindness he usually spoke with. I wanted to ask more, to figure out what he meant because only half of that made sense to me, but I was running out of time. Besides, I had a plan. In my pocket, I palmed my knife, flipping out the blade and stifling the wince as it nicked my skin. Riley always said it was just a matter of time before I did that. I took a breath, and twisted around, looking over his shoulder and into the woods to the other side of him.