Both Sin and Zai grunted in mutual sentiment.
“What if the two of you jump him?” Ben suggested with wild eyes.
“Just…hold him down and keep him safe until this is all over?”
Zai looked at him sideways.
“Is that what your mission requires, human? Will that fulfill your quest?”
Ben sighed heavily.
“I don’t know,” he half groaned, half growled. He wanted to pull his hair out in frustration.
“Neither Ere nor I have ever been on quests where we knew someone so intimately. As far as I know, it’s against the rules to change the past. But…and here’s the mind-boggling part—aren’t we changing the past just by virtue of our presence in it? I mean, we’re from the future. We interact with people in the past. Aren’t we changing things just by being here?”
They were all silent as they mulled over Ben’s words, keeping pace with Sol, who stayed a few steps ahead of them.
“How do you know you weren’t supposed to come to the past from the future in the first place?” Zai murmured.
“How do you know that time and events don’t evolve just as they are intended to?”
As if an internal gong had been rung within Ben, he suddenly stopped right where he stood.
“But that would mean…that would mean the past can never be changed. That everything that happened would always happen.”
Zai and Sin stopped as well.
Sin cocked his head to one side like a cat mesmerized by a particularly confounding toy.
“Perhaps,” he said slowly, his yellow eyes bright and curious, winking in the dark.
“It seems to me that if you are here, you have a role to play. Perhaps you were always supposed to be here. Perhaps the past is set. But time moves forward, not back, for those of us living it. So, as far as I can tell, you will not know what you have not lived. Therefore, the future is not set. You can still change it.”
Ben gaped at him in awe.
“Dude. That is so profound!”
Sin unfurled his spine and preened.
“I am not just good looks and brawn,” he said, sliding a pointed glance at Zai, making sure he was paying attention.
“I can philosophize too.”
I am a worthy Mate, even Ben could almost hear the implied message in Sin’s words.
The Hunter rolled his eyes subtly and snorted beneath his breath.
But Ben was impressed. Sin actually made a lot of sense.
However, his face fell again when he thought of something else.
“Does that mean I was always destined to come back in time to change something so that the future unfolds a certain way? Does that mean we’re all just hamsters on a spinning wheel and can’t ever stop running or get off?”
“I know not what these ‘hamsters’ are,” Sin said.
“But I do believe in Destiny.”
He looked directly at Zai as he said it. This time, the Dark One didn’t look away.