Prologue

Prologue

 

When the Company comes to the door, they only have to tell you three things to change everything about your life.  First, they tell you that you are a Weaver, one of many who can travel back in time at will.  Second, they tell you there is a school you can attend where all of the students will be like you, and you will learn how to control and hone your skills.  Third, they tell you there is a millennia-old war with another group of time travelers, and you can work to protect the world as you know it. 

 

They take you and train you and prepare you to work within the Company one day.  It’s not nearly as restrictive as it sounds, because the Company isn’t just some office building in a city somewhere.  It’s a worldwide underground society, functioning in every major city and then some.  Want to be a doctor?  They need those.  Want to be a chef, teacher, stock broker or scientist?  They need those.  Want to be a time-traveling special agent who fends off bad guys to save the world as you know it?  Yep, they need those, too.  All you have to be is a Weaver, and they’ll take care of the rest.

 

There is just one catch: you can’t tell anyone �" ever.  A very, very long time ago, Weavers weren’t nearly as secretive about their abilities.  Groups of people here and there were aware of at least some of what they could do, but that quickly turned sour.  Some people were fearful of what they could do, and others wanted to use their abilities to gain power, so the Weavers withdrew from society completely and eventually formed the Company to mask their activities.  To this day, no one else knows the true purpose of the Company or the Weavers that work for it, not even the families of the Weavers.  No one can ever know. 

 

There is just one flaw in the Company’s plan to keep time travel a secret: the Stealers.  That’s a rather derogatory name the Company gave to a large group of people who can also travel through time, though not at will.  Thousands of years ago, before the Company even existed, the Weavers and Stealers had worked together, and it was the Weavers who created the wand technology that allows them to move through time. 

 

Unfortunately, the Stealers could not respect the frailty of the fabric as they became drunk on the power it provided.  Their thoughtless consumption of ripple energy caused enough damage to nearly obliterate certain times in certain places.  As the effects of their destruction began to spread, the Weavers broke with the Stealers and did their best to make sure they would never visit the past again, but enough of the Stealers escaped and rebuilt in secret.  When they finally revealed themselves and began Stealing power from the fabric again, they were a force unlike any the Weavers had ever seen. 

 

That was when the Company’s true mission came to light: defend the fabric of time. 

 

And so it has been for thousands of years.  The Company comes to your door, invites you into this world and asks you to fight a war no one else will ever know about.  Every Weaver is asked, and every Weaver answers, one way or another.  Every Weaver, except for one. 

 

© 2012 Padfoot101