Disclaimer: SM owns Twilight and all characters therein. Terry Pratchett owns "thief of time", from which I borrowed certain components for my own skewed version of events.
The loud peals from the humongous bells in the temple's tower disturbed Cardea's meditation. She opened her eyes with her final exhalation and looked around, somewhat disoriented. The echoes from the bells were finally dying out when she started back on the path to the hill temple, leaving the secluded, peaceful garden behind her. Her curiosity grew as she spotted the many scarlet-robed monks congregating in front of the temple. Cardea approached the group with some trepidation, knowing that only the direst situations would require her presence among the time monks. Her only clue would be the presence of the only brown robed man among the group, a watcher. Something must have happened to dislodge the time-line from its proper place. The watcher would be required to find the problem and report to the time monks, and she would only be called in to ensure that the circumstances are forced back into being, for the proper events in a particular time-line to unfold. She hurried the last few feet to join the group.
Cardea recognized a couple of the monks in her travels around the many foreign lands she had visited in fulfilling her tasks. She saw the watcher from the Asia regions, the watcher from the Northern lands, and even the watchers from the isolated areas of the steppes in Outer Mongolia and Russia. She knew this gathering means the historical event in question has gone wrong and would have cataclysmic results. Studying the monk wearing brown robes, she recognized Eran, from the Northern Americas. The last time she had seen him was her brief stop in what was known as "the New World", when she was a male sailor in one of three ships traveling together to reach India. Her main task was to ensure the ships sailed a certain route, which she accomplished quickly by spilling food on the ships charts when she visited the captain, causing him to quickly redo his maps and re-chart a course. This is often her way of dealing with mishaps, by doing very small and insignificant acts that will cascade and result in the proper events. She often amused herself by whispering small ideas to sleeping humans, one of whom had come up with ideas dubbed "the Chaos Theory". Cardea laughed when she realized the humans are quickly catching on to such realities. She was in no way bothered that the humans would know of their plane of existence, but it suited her to reveal bits and pieces to them along the way. But currently, she was very curious as to why Eran is alerting the rest of the time-monks, and what would be such a great problem that it calls for a meeting of all the time monks guarding the entire world, for that is the only conclusion she can draw.
Eran smiled appreciatively as Cardea joined the group. He was happy to see her show up to the summoning bells. He knew that the current problem now faced would benefit from her quick mind, efficient decisions, and expert finesse. He greeted his other fellow watchers and addressed the assembly.
"As you are aware of by now, every one of you has seen a slight disturbance in the timeline. Such a disturbance would be slight, but I have taken the liberty of looking further ahead. The line I have been looking at is becoming more and more distorted, with the major historical events on my direct line now being diminished and some even outright disappearing. The alternate that is appearing will signal the end of mankind, and as guardians of the time-line, we would be irresponsible to stand by and allow it. The alternate time-line must not happen. I beg the other watchers to take look now to their respective time-lines and see what I have seen. For them, they must look further than I have to see what I have seen. I am here to ask the assembly for a consensus to allow the fates to intervene and restore the original time-line."
There was a long drawn out silence, as each watcher in the group complied with Eran's request and looked at his own time-line. No one really knew how long it took as time does not exist in this reality, but shocked murmuring started to circulate among the crowd. One by one, the watchers paled as they saw the events of their guarded histories unfold. Great wars were fought and ended, resulting in the ending of races and species. The world itself started to cave in on itself, as a result of many linked decisions, happening simultaneously in all parts of the world.
The main guardian of the temple was one of the first to voice his confusion.
"Eran, what has happened? Where and when does it start? And why are you the only one who has noticed this? We have seen the patterns here at the temple, but have not seen any foreshadowing in the time-loops that we have stored there."
"My brothers, I have knowledge because the single key event that I have been looking forward to would have happened on my time-line, and I have seen that it would not happen. I have studied the patterns myself, and the "Unification" which would happen soon as a result of that key event is now in the process of being erased from the time-line, and this new alternate time is replacing it. We need to have the "Unification" happen, to continue the balance of all life on earth and the golden age for all species. Time would continue for all creatures. The new realities being ushered in spells the end of all things, including Time. My fellow watchers, as guardian of that key event, I ask for assistance from fate to return the time-line."
Cardea spoke up, "Brothers, I volunteer myself to help Eran in this endeavor. I trust in his judgment of the situation, and I willingly will work to alter the timeline again to ensure that all that is supposed to happen will happen in his timeline. Are we in agreement?"
The assembly assented, with everyone bowing their heads in a unanimous vote.
Eran quickly crossed to where Cardea was standing and took her hand.
"Thank you, my dear, but we have to act quickly. We will need to go immediately to North America and I will fill you in on the specifics when we get there."
"Eran, I will go with you at this time, but you still need to let me know a lot more if you want me to help you effectively. There are still a lot of details you have omitted from the discussion. I know that all watchers have to keep their time-line in secrecy, but you must share all with me if you want my help. Now, where are we going?"
Eran replied as they are fading out of reality, "To a small town in the United States. Forks, Washington."
The time watcher and fate maiden suddenly appeared on an empty expanse of rocky beach. Cardea immediately turned to Eran, "Where are we?"
Eran replied, "I've set us on first beach at La Push. It is an Indian reservation near the town of Forks. I brought us here for privacy."
Cardea looked around and spotted a couple of good sized rocks near the shore, so she quickly went and sat down on one, making herself comfortable. Eran copied her, took a deep breath, and started.
"I should tell you first about the people involved, and there are a lot of them. We are currently in La Push, and the Quileutes have lived here for almost a millennium. These people have a gift of animal shifting, the wolf being their chosen totem. They have shifted for as long as there is need for extra protection for the tribe. Recently, within the last few hundred years, they have focused their negative energy on the vampires, especially those that have ventured to come to these parts."
Cardea interrupted, "So they have emulated the actual werewolves, Children of the Moon, and declared vampires their enemies?"
Eran beamed, "That, my dear, is one of the problems we have to fix. They have declared vampires enemies. This brings us to the others. There is a certain group of vampires who have been refraining from drinking human blood and have opted for animal blood. The teetotalers of the vampire world. They call themselves 'vegetarians', for obvious reasons. The biggest of this coven reside here in the area and call themselves a family with the surname 'Cullen'. The marked difference between them and other vegetarian vamps and regular vampires are eye color. The have gold or amber eyes and they live and interact with humans. This particular 'family' are all paired up, except one. And our task is to ensure that this lone vampire gets his mate. It should be one of the easiest task, as that has not changed all that much. It is their interaction which we must make easier. The overall result of their mating is the direct cause of the alterations to the timeline."
Cardea was thinking intently on what she had heard. "Eran, I'm pretty sure I would need to look through each event personally. I think we should remain outside of time and look into each detail directly before entering into regular time-stream again. We would need direct contact with some of the people involved. Who would you recommend?"
Eran thought long and hard before replying, "I'm pretty sure we can get one of the vampires, a woman named Alice, to work directly for our aims and under our direction. She is gifted with foresight, and with our help, we can directly manipulate the events better than leaving her to work blind, and possibly make decisions that would work against us."
"Are you sure we can trust this person? I have never had to work directly with someone in the millennia that I have existed."
"I'm confident in her abilities, and besides, I have these books." Eran smirked as he produced four thickset books.
The books were unremarkable and bound plainly, with no writing on the cover.
"What are those?" Cardea asked.
"I had these books written by dream-touching a mortal to write them to help us with this task. Don't worry, though, she thinks it's a dream and I caused her to forget about them as soon as they were finished. If left by herself, she would've had them published. I will bring this Alice here to us now and we can go over the books and decide on how and where we will make changes. Do you agree?"
"Agreed."
Eran handed the books to Cardea, and stood up. He thought for a moment before closing his eyes concentrating. After perhaps a few minutes, he opened his eyes and announced, "Here she is. Be careful, she might be disoriented and prone to act violently at first."
Almost before he finished speaking, a very short, tiny girl appeared in front of them. Her very dark hair was cut very short and spiked, and she was wearing designer jeans with understated plain blouse. Her gold hued eyes narrowed and she snarled at them before crouching and getting ready to spring. "Who are you?" she spat at them.
"Easy, young immortal, we are here to help you." Eran quickly spoke up to calm her down. "My name is Eran, and I am a watcher of history. The woman next to me is Cardea, and she is a maiden of fate. We know you, Alice, and we know what you are. We have brought you here for a very special reason."
Alice quickly looked and found to her great shock that her own future was black, as if there was a curtain dropped in front of her. She carefully examined the two persons in front of her and speedily came to the conclusion that they mean no harm and somehow, she knew deep down that they are trustworthy.
"What does this mean? Who are you and what are you here to help with?"
Eran quickly explained the reasons that brought himself and Cardea to Forks, and explained that with the help of the four books, they will literally remake change the future to remake history.
Alice quickly agreed and the trio sat down to read all four books. The books were quickly read through and finally Eran agreed to bring them all back into real time.
Cardea gave her first instructions. "Alice, when we go back to real time, you will have a month before this girl, Isabella, will move to Forks. Therefore, you have a month to prepare and for us to refine the plans we are tentatively putting in place. I sincerely hope you can block your brother's gifts in the meantime. No one must know of our existence or the plans we are making."
"I agree, Cardea, I know my brother, and he will be stubborn and hardheaded. We will have to be subtle in putting everything in place."
The three conspirators went over every detail of the plan, and agreed on specifics of what should be done. Finally, Eran transported Alice back to where she was and the exact moment he had taken her – in the middle of a hunt. Smiling at each other in relief and with both of them feeling hopeful, Eran and Cardea finally disappeared from the beach.
AN: I previously posted the first part of this prologue in order to see if there would be any interest, and there were none. I am thankful at this point for any reviews, even flames, and I hope to get some feedback from other readers on whether the premise so far looks good or should I just scrap this one. Any help from a beta would also be very much appreciated.