Death in a Paradox

The First Chapter

The First Part

The First Chapter

~~~

To Augustus and Meredith,

We hope this will help.

Augustus, Meredith, Annabella, and others

~~~~

There's a girl somewhere, waiting.

She's sitting in the corner, rocking herself slowly. She's very lonely. All day long, she sits and rocks herself. Her eyes are unfocused. She really doesn't care.

Go find her and tell her she'll be disappointed.

~~~

 Augustus

I met Annabella at the age of ten. She wasn't really rocking herself anymore. She only does that when she's really depressed. You have to be cautious with Annabella, because if you aren't, she'll get a little shaky and her eyes just turn blue. Her eyes were like that then, a sparkling blue that looked like a cold February morning.

She uttered nine words that made me run away from her for quite a long time.

"The Shadows are coming for me, Augustus. Help me."

You have to know I was an annoying rich ten-year-old at that time. I thought I was fearless and valiant, a boy who could laugh at anything scary. But those blue eyes and the strange voice petrified me more than anything. She didn't even know my name. Though, slowly, I began to trust that artful grin and those cold eyes.

When we were really close, when she was fourteen, Annabella began revealing some of her experiments to me. I was kind of thrilled, because she only shows her experiments to people she trusts. See, she has an abundance of trust issues. The only other person Annabella trusts is Meredith, and maybe Landager, I’m not sure. Her experiments were unique and strange, but she showed me one thing that really stood out.

"It's a shard of time," she told me. "You know that one fairy tale you always hear? With the three old hags, who broke the sphere of time, and the shards are everywhere? Well, it's not a fairy tale. It's real, to some extent."

You have to learn to be serious with Annabella. She barely jokes, although though she has a great sense of humor, even if it's about the stupidest fairy tale ever told by Necromancers.

The story is three old hags, one black haired, one red haired, and one brown haired (the actually words are the one with a head of fire, the one with the obsidian head, and the one with the dirt hair - I feel like that one got excluded) were flying on stars, which is really stupid, because even Necromancers haven't figured that out, and we're the most advanced magical race. They found a sphere and smashed it with a long, black rock. In some versions, it's a knife or a sword. The shards of this sphere fell all over the universe, I really don’t care about this part, and no one ever found a shard. Except for one guy who said he did, but really, it was a shard of something completely different. It's a long story involving eleven year old Annabella beating a famed scholar.

Truly, I could imagine Annabella with her hands on one of these.

"Where'd you get it?"

"The black market in Munich."

"When were you in Munich?"

"Does it really matter?"

"No."

She went on to explain how putting it out in the sun or moon at different times leads you to a specific time period. It's like when you fry ants with a magnifying glass, she told me. You create a portal. Mess up by the tinniest fraction of a second, and you're off. I'll admit I was yawning by the end of her labyrinthine explanation. I wish I was listening, even if it ended up being wrong.

Then Meredith Walker came in, pretty cute Meredith Walker who every guy has a crush on Meredith Walker, carrying a heap of books. She looked at me and smiled.

"Hey Annabee, I got the Necromancy Journal editions from the sixteen and seventeen hundreds. You owe me," she laid the books down on the table.

Annabella beamed. "Where'd you get them?"

Meredith smirked. "Where do you think?"

Annabella howled with laughter. "Mister Hurbly, right?"

"Correct. He got some special order Pepsi today. He was cursing quite badly and complaining that if the kids don't stop shaking his Pepsi, he's requesting to move to Madrid, maybe even Topeka."

"I'm pretty sure Professor Betlain-Saitela has a copy of all of them," I added in to their conversation.

"Now where's the fun in that? Hers also look about twenty years older," Meredith smiled shyly. Before that day, I thought Meredith was someone you shouldn’t trust due to her notorious pranking history, though she was a pretty cute girl in my class that, like Annabella, knew the answer to every question. I, as always, was mistaken. When we went back to our dorms, Meredith walked with me.

Meredith and I talked more over the next few days. Days turned into weeks, Annabella was an annoying science and necromancy genius, Meredith wore a bit more makeup when she saw me, and I finally asked her out. One of our first dates was the day Annabella figured it all out.

What, might you ask?

Freaking time travel.

~~~

Meredith

I was friends with Annabella for a few reasons. She provided me with an amazing sense of adventure that I rarely got to experience. Without her influence in my life, I'd be an annoying spoiled brat with a very rich father.

(Another reason I shouldn't mention, and is kind of silly, is that she's friends with Augustus Maxwelby, who's got amazing cheek bones and a nice smile.)

She taught me various things. Don’t trust anyone, adults especially. I found it funny when I first heard it. Annabella had a serious problem with adults, which is probably due to the fact that most adults convinced her that she had parents that loved her and will come for her. She’s still alone without her parents. She told me how to trick teachers, how easy it is to cheat even though there were special spells put on our tests, how to easily lie without showing you are. She taught me how to use a sword, spear, and knife.

When my father found out about my strange  secret training with Annabella, he shook his head and said I was being stupid and immature. When I got attacked a few days later and used the skills Annabella taught me and defeated my assailants, he glared at Annabella. He doesn't like her because she's at Doreen on a scholarship. He says that we're paying for her to go there. I tell him to shut up.

You can probably guess we're really close, which we are. Annabella is like the sister I never had. Well, not exactly sister. She feels more like a mother to me, because my real one ran off with the richest guy she could find. All I have is my step mom, but she and Dad travel so much I see them maybe about a month each year.

I guess that's enough introduction from me, so I'll write what actually happens.

Annabella figured it out. Like, she actually did fancy science and equations that would puzzle Einstein and got special magical wire and connected stuff. She kind of stole a Death Spear from the Dean's office, and placed that shard into a small v shaped hole in it. No one knows why there's a hole, but it was always made that way. It's one of the Necromancy secrets. Annabella just figured it out.  She glued the shard to the hole with the magical wire and it worked!

She touched a book with the spear. It appeared in her bag a few seconds later, looking much older than it did moments ago. That book was the first thing that ever used a form of time travel. I should have paid attention to the title.

"I shall name it the Time Spear! Get Augustus, we're trying this tomorrow!"

We almost did. If only she didn't stop us.

That book was one of the books I brought Annabella a few weeks ago. It was the eighth volume of the Necromancy Journal editions from the sixteen and seventeen hundreds. It was the original, published in 1701. It looked twenty years older than it should have.

Why didn't I notice?

Oh yeah, I was busy looking at Augustus.