Prologue

A body lay still on the battlefield. Nothing particularly special in itself; many people had died on battlefields such as this and the site of the pitched battle that had taken place was no exception. Slowly though, the young man sat up. Looking around the battlefield, he saw corpses all around him, the once green fields now stained thickly with the blood of almost all that had met there. Rising to his feet, he looked all around him, knowing that something was wrong with it all. Finally he looked down and what he saw would have given him a heart attack if he still had a heart that is...

He stared down at his body, his clothing stained just like the grass field he stood... no, floated in. He could see a large tear in his flesh where a sword had obviously got through his defences and quite a few major organs as well... things weren't looking so good for him...

Suddenly, a bright light surrounded him and a voice rang out in his ears. Someone was here and they were comforting him! As he listened on, he saw the truth of what was to come and saw his part to play in it all. Slowly the light dragged him down, back into his body, life being breathed back into his corpse.

For a minute or two nothing happened until with a desperate gasp for breath, his eyes snapped open, seeing the world before him once again...

"Time. It's always around us but what is it? Is it the very essence of life or is it just a creation of humanity? Now, that is a question we can answer. Is it not true that we have time under control now? We can travel through time like walking through a corridor. We can stop it or speed it up; we can manipulate it, contain it and harness it. We precious few have time on a leash, and with possession of that leash comes a vast responsibility.

"Time is elastic, like a rubber band. You can stretch it, bend it, reshape it, but it will flip back to its original state. However, you pull on it too hard and it will simply snap. So, if time 'snaps', what does this mean to us? Well, to refer back to the rubber band analogy, it will become a line. Time currently functions in a loop; what has happened before will do so again. But with a line comes an end. The end. No more life, no more happiness or sorrow; no more anything. With the death of time comes the death of existence.

"So, this is our 'vast responsibility'. We protect time and thus existence. It is our duty to maintain this timeline for the sake of those who have lived, are living and will live..." Slowly the speaker ground to a halt, staring at the single slender hand raised in the small gathering before him. All attention focused on the young girl whose arm stood to attention.

"Yes Miss Morad? You have a question?"

As her arm slowly lowered itself, synapses fired in the young girls brain as she feebly tried to remember what she had been about to say until it finally hit her. "Y... you said time was a loop but then said we were on a timeline? How can loops have lines in them by what you're saying?"

Silence.
A glint of approval in his eyes.
"That is actually a rather intelligent question. It comes down to semantics really..." Realising who he was speaking to, he changed his tone a bit. "Semantics being what words actually mean. A loop is basically a circle right? And everyone knows a circle has one line, running all the way around it called the circumference. Well, the circumference of time is the timeline we exist on. You understand it now Destiny?"

A nod and a tight-lipped smile was all the response he got, but it was enough. Other members of the gathering had sneers on their faces, thinking she was a fool for asking that question, like it had been obvious to them...

"What Miss Morad just did was quite possibly the most sensible thing I've ever seen done by new intakes. If you're ever in doubt about anything, ask somebody about it. We cannot afford to make mistakes in this task so make sure you understand, one way or another...

"Now, where was I? Ah yes... We make a stand for all creation so that it can carry on. But what can we truly do to protect time? We must assert our will upon it, influence its path so that it follows what we decree to be the right way..."

The instructor's words slowly faded away as Destiny Morad glanced around the room. Sterile white walls surrounded her as she sat upon a sterile white stool, about two feet from the sterile white floor. Around her were other inductees, all the same age as her: fourteen. Quite how fourteen-year-old children were supposed to follow what was being said properly would have been a mystery if it were not for the fact that these children had all been especially picked. Time had been scoured to find new candidates; only the smartest would do for this job. They were to become Time Wardens, the saviours of everything.

It was ironic that a girl named Destiny was training to be a Time Warden; destiny cannot exist if time can change between different threads. And currently this little slice of Destiny was missing her home. Being wrenched away from your only life at the tender age of fourteen is bad enough but stress like that has a nasty habit of opening old wounds; decayed memories slipping into a persons unconscious that they'd rather not remember. This was the case with Destiny... the lithe fourteen-year-old girl with black hair sat there trying to pay attention to what was being said, but dark thoughts snatched at her constantly...