A Thymely Arrival

"Koga, Help me" I heard Ana yelling from down the hall. I couldn't move. I was bound to a table with my arms and legs chained. A chuckle came from a darkened corner of the room. I looked over and the chuckling got louder.

"Oh, how the mighty Koga the Terrible has fallen. You know I almost feel bad for you, miserable stain of filth." I recognized the voice immediately and felt my lip snarl in anger. Mathios stepped away from the shadows and into the torch light.

"If you hurt her" I started.

"Or you'll do what? You're chained down and not going to do anything for a while." Mathios said, stepping closer to me. "I do think it's interesting that you of all people would protect her. You don't care about anyone but yourself. You didn't care about all those innocents you killed on your way to this very moment." I gritted my teeth. He was right and got me. When he got closer to me I spat in his face. Mathios frowned and punched me right in the face. I groaned from the pain shooting up through my nose. I could feel a warm liquid start flowing down my face from my nose.

"Uh uh uh, you better stop that or things might get worse for you." Mathios smiled at me.

"Do your worst cretin. I really don't care if you kill me anyway. At least then I won't have to deal with you peasant anymore." I growled.

"Oh, Koga. I'm not going to kill you. I don't even think I'm going to physically hurt you. No, I have much worse plans for you. They involve you watching."

For the first time in years I felt that familiar sensation start tugging at the back of my neck. Every arm hair started to stand up and a sinking feeling took hold in my stomach. "W-Watching what." I barely could get the words out.

"What I do to her," Mathios said, pointing to a shadow on the wall. I squinted and the sinking feeling in my stomach grew unbearable. I yelled and started pulling at my restraints trying to save her. I didn't care what happened to me but I would be damned if I would let him touch a single hair on her head. Mathios just smiled and brought a dagger up to the figure. I screamed again and pulled even harder.

I awoke from my nightmare with a gasp and a startle. I looked around me and saw that the fire had died down to just a few embers. Lise was sleeping peacefully with her back to me, I sighed in relief. We had to get moving soon, I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that I couldn't quite shake. I yawned and wished that we had coffee. I rubbed my eyes and started to stand up.

"You're awake?" I heard her say as I started wiping off the dirt and leaves from the ground.

"Yeah, we should start to head out. We don't know how long it'll take us to get to Greenwater."

"How bad was the nightmare? Pretty bad from the sound of it." She said sitting up.

"Did I wake you?" I said, offering my hand to her.

"Yeah, you were yelling about how you were going to kill him." She took my hand and I helped her to her feet. "Thanks."

"I was talking to Mathios in the nightmare."

"Oh…"

"We should get a drink of water and leave. My yelling might have attracted unwanted attention," I said walking over to the river. I knelt down, took a few deep sips and splash myself with the cool liquid to help wake me up. I started walking down stream.

Ana and I had been traveling through the woods for a while since we broke camp this morning following the river. I was hoping for any signs of life besides the animals. So far no luck, we needed to find someone so we can get to the main road and keep going towards our destination. I inwardly sighed trying not to alarm Lise of our situation. A peaceful silence had fallen between us as we traveled. She didn't ask me any more questions and I wasn't in the mood to talk. I was too busy trying to figure out how we were going to get out of this mess.

"So I was thinking, Koga," she said, breaking the silence.

"Well, this should be good. What were you thinking about?" I replied. I was open to anything right now.

"Well, for starters I'm pretty sure that you have no idea what you're doing." She said matter of fact like. I glanced away confirming her suspicions. I grumbled in response and she sighed.

"I knew it. Your plan to follow the river until we find someone is pretty much no plan at all. The upside is we won't die of lack of water so I'll forgive most of it. Well, I can't really think of anything else that would be a decent plan." She chuckled.

"Thanks for that, Lise telling me my plan sucks and you don't have anything to make it better. A real help." I muttered.

"Well, at least we're on the same page. Wait, hold on." She said running off deeper into the woods. I stopped dead and gave her a questioning look as she disappeared.

"Koga! Come over here. I found something." I heard her yell after a few moments. I headed towards where her voice came from. The sight I was met with was her standing over a stump, a few more in the distance, and her grinning widely.

"This looks relatively fresh. I would have to guess within the past week or so and there's not a whole lot of them so whoever chopped it knows how to take only what they need." She said looking around. I nodded in agreement and knelt over the stump. The tree had fallen with an ax and not a saw. I could see where they had cut a piece out and used the weight of the tree to finish the job. The ground was free of branches telling me that whomever chopped it down planned on using the entirety of the tree and not just the lumber. I stood up looking to see where the tree was dragged to. I glanced around and saw a few broken branches in the direction of the other stumps.

"Follow me, I think we may have found someone who can get us to the road." I said walking off towards the trail I found. As I got closer to the other stumps an actual trail was being made more clear. I smiled as I kept walking.

"I can't believe this worked." She said as we followed the trail. The stumps started to show up more and more. I spotted a few snares for wild life as we kept walking. I pondered why this person would put snares so close to the trail they made.

"Of course this worked. There's always people who choose to live in the woods rather than near a settlement." I answered. A waft of smoke filled my nose. We were getting close. I started to move faster down the trail. I caught a glimpse of a log cabin in between the trees. "We're here. Let's see if anyone is home."

"And if they're not?"

"We wait until they are. Simple as that, Lise." I broke through the tree line and saw that the cabin had been built in a small natural clearing. There was fur hanging from a line drying, an ax stuck into a log for chopping wood, and a small shack next to the house. Whoever lived here was well versed in thriving in the wilderness. There were several trails including the one we used to get here in the tree line leading off to different directions.

I walked up to the cabin door and knocked. I didn't hear any movement from inside. I knocked a second time, still nothing. I knocked for a third time and was greeted by silence again.

"Nobody home? Guess we can't be that lu-" Ana stopped mid sentence as I opened the door, "That breaking and entering. We shouldn't do that."

"It's fine. We're not breaking anything. The door was unlocked and we're not gonna take anything." I said opening the door fully. Inside the cabin was a large room with a table, a few chairs surrounding it, a bookshelf, a fireplace with a few still burning embers and a door leading to another room.

I walked over to the table and sat down in one of the chairs. I sighed and pulled out the book I had inherited from my grandfather. Lise sat in a chair across from me and looked at the ornate book.

"That's a spell book, huh?"

"For a single spell, yes. It teaches you how to cast it and that's about as far as I've gotten." I pushed the book over to her as she looked it over she started to chuckle.

"Your- Our grandfather really scratched the original author's name out and wrote his own in its place." She said, flipping past the first page.

"Yeah, like I said, there's many things about Thyme you don't know." I sighed. I started tapping on the table when I heard a creak by the door. A man filled the doorway and had his bow raised at me.

"You two, I have questions." He said not moving from the door. I raised my hands and faced him.

"Alright, we'll answer your questions. We're just two lost travelers who need to get to the main road to Greenwater. I'm Justin and this is Ana." I said calmly.

"That isn't what I want to know. Why do you have his book and why do you speak of Thyme as if you know him." His arrow was firmly pointed at me.

"Well, I know him because I'm his grandson. I trained under him up until the day he died. I found the book in Woods Refuge along with a letter addressed to me."

"Show me the letter."

"I burned it."

"If you are his grandson, what was his wife's name?"

"Ellie. Short for something but that's what he called my grandmother" I said looking at the man where his eyes were. He sighed and lowered his bow.

"When Justin said his kin would find their way to me. I believed him but as the years went by I started to lose faith in his words." He said, stepping into the room. I could see him clearly now. He had fair skin and pointed ears. His long brown hair that had streaks of gray was pulled into a ponytail and had a cloth covering one eye.

"Wait, you're a half elf aren't you, how? I thought my grandfather was the only half elf in this realm." I said.

"You're only half right. Justin brought me here when he needed help with his quest. I traveled with him and a few others until we disbanded. I didn't want to go back to my home reality but the others… I don't know. I didn't ask when Justin darkened my door for the first time I saw him since and the last time ever."

"There was no mention of him traveling with anyone in his journals from his days here."

"That's because we asked him not to mention us. We were best friends who would have and did follow that man into The 9 layers of Hell themselves." He said sitting down in a chair.

"He must have gathered you after being in Refuge because the old timers never mention any of you in their stories." Lise said. I was still baffled. I tried thinking of who this man was from my grandfather's other journals.

"When he gathered us he mentioned he had been here for about a year. That's ancient history now. You may call me Yrak," he said. That's when it clicked, this man was mentioned once in the entirety of the journals.

"Justin said his kin would show up here? Why would he say that?" Lise said.

"Because the bastard knew I would cross paths with Yrak someday." I said looking at my grandfather's traveling companion.

"Yes, in his last visit he said his son had a child. He also suspected he fathered more than one child while he was here. However, his visit wasn't merely two friends catching up. Stay here." Yrak got up and went into the door across the room. I heard him move something in there. After a few seconds he came back with a rectangular shaped object covered in a plain cloth.

"No, he didn't. There's no way he gave that to you. He had no idea I could cast magic at the time."