The Obsidians

“You okay?” Hazel asked.

Oliver nodded. “I just have a weird feeling, that’s all. Like I’ve been here before.”

A frown appeared between Hazel’s eyebrows. “Perhaps you have. Another you, I mean. From a different timeline.”

Oliver pondered her words. It was of course possible that a different version of himself had been to this place before, but that didn’t account for the strange feeling of familiarity Oliver himself was having. Any different Oliver from a different timeline would have different memories. There was no way he’d be able to tap into those.

It was a complete mystery. And yet, with each footstep he took, he felt more and more like he’d walked this exact path before.

Oliver shook the thoughts from his head. It was impossible. He must’ve just been thinking of a history book he’d read, or a documentary he’d watched. Perhaps he was recalling a dream. Either way, he didn’t have time to waste thinking about it. He had to stay focused on Esther, on finding the Elixir to save her life.

Gianni led them up to a large lacquered door and rapped his knuckles against it. He turned his head and said something to David. David relayed the message in English to the others.

“This is the headmistress’s office.”

Oliver gulped. He couldn’t help but feel nervous every time he met another powerful and revered seer. He respected Professor Amethyst more than anyone in the universe and to meet his counterparts through history was always a humbling, nerve-wracking experience.

Gianni opened the door and led them into an office. It was enormous, more like the ballroom of a palace than a head teacher’s office. There were large paintings in gold frames all over the dark green walls, and a huge marble fireplace. Chandeliers hung from the ceiling and the smell of almonds punctuated the air.

As they moved farther inside, Oliver saw a large desk behind which sat an extremely elegant-looking woman. Though she was old, she was extremely glamorous and there was a youthful energy in her bright eyes. She had the same olive-colored skin and dark eyes as Gianni. Luscious shiny black hair hung over one shoulder in waves.

“Oliver Blue?” she asked, her voice soft and lilting, her Italian accent strong.

“Yes,” he stammered, a little overcome by her strong presence.

“Please. Take a seat.” She gestured to a row of chairs and smiled, her teeth white, her smile inviting. “All of you.”

Oliver felt bewildered by everything, but did as he was instructed. His friends sat alongside him in solidarity.

“I’m the headmistress of the Rome Seer School,” the woman announced. “Lucia Moretti. Let me first welcome you.”

“Thank you,” Oliver stammered. He felt a little flustered in the presence of such an elegantly powerful woman.

The headmistress continued. “I understand you were able to activate the ancient portal that was rumored to lead you to the Elixir. I must say I am rather surprised that it led you here.” There was a sparkle of excitement in her eye. “To think, the key to finding the Elixir has been on my doorstep all along.” She smiled at Oliver. “I am not surprised that after all these centuries, it was you of all people who managed to activate the portal, Oliver Blue.”

Oliver frowned, confused. What did that mean?

“I don’t understand,” he said. “What do you mean me ‘of all people’?”

“Why, you’re the son of Margaret Oliver and Theodore Blue!” she exclaimed. “Aren’t you?”

At the sound of his parents’ names, Oliver felt his heart begin to pound. Walter and Hazel visibly jerked in their seats. As two of Oliver’s closest friends, they knew full well how he’d been desperately searching for his parents.

“You know my parents?” Oliver asked, his voice sounding breathless from shock.

“Of course I do,” the headmistress replied. A small frown had appeared between her eyebrows. “They’re rather famous in these parts. But you know all this.”

“I don’t, actually,” Oliver said hurriedly. “My parents gave me up for adoption. I know nothing about them.” His voice was racing now, as if trying to hurry through the conversation so he could get to the conclusion quicker. “Are they here? In Rome? Do you know where I can find them?”

Lucia Moretti’s face fell. “I’m sorry. I feel I’ve spoken out of turn.”

“Not at all,” Oliver replied quickly. “Please, tell me anything you know. I have nothing to go on. Just their names and that they studied at Harvard. Oh, and a notebook of my father’s.”

The headmistress’s eyebrows rose slowly up her forehead. “A notebook?” she asked. “May I see it?”

“Of course.” Oliver took the notebook from Hazel, who had been keeping it in her satchel, and quickly handed it to her. If she knew anything about his parents, he wanted to know.

Mistress Moretti leafed through the book. “Oliver, do you know what this is?”

He shook his head.

“It is a formula,” she told him. “A formula for the Elixir.”

Oliver gasped. “What?! You mean the cure was with me all along?”

“Wait. Relax,” she said. “Do not get ahead of yourself. What I mean to say is that this is an attempt to create the formula for the Elixir. Your parents were human, Oliver. You are aware of this, aren’t you? They didn’t have seer powers. Therefore, time travel was completely unavailable to them. But they moved in seer circles. They wanted to experience what seers could. Here is proof that your father was attempting to create his own Elixir. With it, he’d be able to travel in time, throughout timelines and alternative parallel worlds. But it is incomplete. He did not succeed.”

A whole host of emotions vied inside Oliver. He couldn’t absorb all the information he’d just been given. To think his mortal parents had been trying to unlock the secrets of time travel felt odd to him. What could they possibly want to be able to travel through time for? Seers time traveled to fulfill the destiny of the universe, to protect the timelines on her command, to undo the work of rogue seers who attempted to create havoc. But humans had no need to travel through time. It was dangerous enough for a seer, but for a human? Surely it was suicide.

He didn’t know whether to be relieved that his father’s formula was incomplete or not. If Teddy Blue had succeeded in creating the Elixir then he’d be able to save Esther life. But because he had not, perhaps that in itself had saved his father’s life?

Mistress Moretti snapped the book shut. “Oliver, you know nothing happens by coincidence. The portal brought you here for a reason, because somehow this is the place the Elixir will be discovered. I believe this notebook is the first step. The second step comes from me.”

Oliver frowned with curiosity. “What do you mean?”

“I am a mathematician, Oliver,” Mistress Moretti said. “The best mind the universe has ever known. I have a mind that’s rivaled only by Einstein’s.” She drummed her fingers against the desktop and her eyes flashed with excitement. “You need my instruction. You need my knowledge. If I train you, together we will be able to complete the formula.”

“But I don’t have time,” Oliver said. “I’m not trying to find the Elixir to unlock time travel, I’m doing it because Professor Amethyst told me it is the only thing to save my friend from time travel sickness! My friend is close to death.” His voice cracked as an image of Esther appeared in his mind’s eye. Instinctively, his hand tightened around the amulet. “I don’t have time to train here.”

The headmistress paused. She tipped her head to the side and regarded Oliver for a moment. “I see.”

She seemed disappointed that Oliver hadn’t taken her up on her offer to be trained here. He had not meant to insult her. In any other time and place, he’d have snapped up the chance to train at the Rome Seer School, to learn all the mathematical genius Mistress Moretti possessed. But he just didn’t have the time.

Hazel was busy worrying her hands in her lap. She looked at Oliver with an anxious expression. “Isn’t this our only chance, though?” she asked. “The Elixir has never been created. The portal led us here because this was where we could find all the pieces of the puzzle needed to create it. Mistress Moretti’s mind is surely part of that puzzle.”

“I can see what you’re saying,” Oliver told her. “But surely Esther will die before I get the chance to learn all I need to.”

“There’s a ritual,” Mistress Moretti blurted, interrupting their conversation.

“A ritual?” Oliver asked. He didn’t like the sound of that. It sounded ominous to him. Dangerous even.

Mistress Moretti nodded slowly. “It’s… how should I say it… a complicated procedure. One I have not done before. But it may be your only hope.”

Oliver’s nerves grew even more. Her words provided him with no comfort at all.

“What will it involve?” he asked, hearing the tremble in his voice.

“It will transfer all my knowledge and abilities to you,” she explained. “It will teach you everything I know. You’ll have access to my memories, even the subconscious ones that I’ve long forgotten. Then, I believe, you’ll be able to use that knowledge to finish the formula for the Elixir. What do you say?”

The whole thing terrified Oliver. But Esther needed him. So did the school. In addition, Mistress Moretti had told him he’d be able to see her memories. She knew his parents. Perhaps her memories might also bring him closer to finding them?

“Will it hurt me?” Oliver asked.

Mistress Moretti’s lips twisted to the side in consternation. “I don’t think it will be a pleasant experience,” she told him. “I imagine that it will be quite a shock to the system.”

Oliver glanced at his friends.

Walter gave him a reassuring nod. So did Hazel, although the look in her eyes betrayed her fear. Finally, Oliver looked at David. He trusted David implicitly.

“I believe this is a good idea,” David said.

Swallowing the lump that had formed in his throat, Oliver turned back to Mistress Moretti. He nodded decisively.

“Okay. I’ll do it. I’ll do the ritual.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Chris didn’t know what was happening. One second he’d been in Mistress Obsidian’s office, listening to her warn him that failure in this next mission would result in him being sent to a horrible hell, and then the next second he was here… wherever here was.

All around Chris, all he could see was black. He felt very calm, a bit like he was sleeping.

Images started to flash in his mind. He saw water, murky and swirling. Then he smelled that awful stench of raw sewage.

Fear gripped Christopher as he suddenly realized where he was. The River Thames! No!

Had Mistress Obsidian sent him back to that awful place? Had this whole second mission just been some kind of elaborate ruse, a way to get his hopes up only to dash them again by sending him to his watery grave? Terror began to consume him.

Chris could feel the water against his skin and all the sticky residue from the toxins in the dirty river. The smell in his nostrils made his eyes water.

He was swirling around and around and around, as if in a whirlpool. Then suddenly he saw a flash of someone else. He was not alone.

“Oliver?” Chris cried in disbelief.

His puny little brother was here, too, swirling around in the churning waters. What was happening?

The waves crashed around them and forced them onto the banks. Christopher flopped into the mud, gasping for breath. Lights flashed like strobes around him.

Looking up, Chris saw where the lights were coming from. There were two portals standing on the riverbank in front of him, both rusted and decrepit looking, flashing their electric light displays.

As the lights flashed all around, making his vision flash in and out, Chris tried to get to his feet. He could see Oliver just a few feet to his side trying to scramble up, too.

He was heading for the portal, Christopher realized.

There was no time to waste. Still on his belly on the muddy bank, Chris threw an arm out toward Oliver, stretching as far as he could. He grabbed hold of his brother’s ankle.

But Oliver was like a worm, writhing in the mud. His ankle was slippery from water and the toxic muck of the river.

Despite Chris’s strength, Oliver managed to slither out of his grasp. In a second, he was through the portal. It zipped shut. The lights went out, plunging Chris into darkness.

Chris took in a huge gasp of breath. He flew into a sitting position and looked around, completely dazed.

Madeleine’s face materialized before him.

“Are you okay, Chris?” she asked.

Chris swallowed the hard lump in his throat and it dawned on him that he’d been dreaming. He’d been having a nightmare, his mind replaying the awful moment when he’d failed to kill Oliver on his last mission. He was more determined than ever not to let that happen again.

He looked around to see Natasha and Malcolm a few feet away, dusting themselves off from the bumpy ride.

“What happened?” Christopher asked Madeleine.

“We just went through the portal,” she explained. “You must’ve fallen asleep.”

Malcolm’s head started up and he scoffed, as if sleeping in a portal was a sign of bad manners or something.

“How could I fall asleep in a portal?” Chris gasped, smoothing down his messed up hair.

He’d traveled through portals before. They were not particularly pleasant experiences. Usually, they made him feel like his whole body was being pulled apart atom by atom. He must have been really exhausted to have slept during transportation through a portal! It was evidence of just how hard Colonel Cain had been drilling him.

The sensation of panic Chris’s nightmare had induced began to recede. He glanced about.

“Where are we then?” he asked Madeleine.

“Rome, I think. Sometime in the fifteen hundreds.”

“Huh,” Chris grunted. He had not exactly enjoyed going back to the sixteen hundreds and he had a feeling the fifteen hundreds would be even worse.

Natasha and Malcolm had collected themselves and came over.

“So, what next?” Natasha asked Chris.

Chris didn’t want to waste a moment. He leapt to his feet and rubbed his hands together with delighted glee.

“Now we find Oliver,” he said, grinning devilishly at his ragtag bunch of followers. “And cause a little mayhem on the way.”

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