Page 47 of The Alpha Wolf Defying Fate

“Well,” Sasha said confidently. “Ibis are often associated with Thoth, the god of wisdom and knowledge.” She gave a frown at the sign. “Whatever the sign is saying, it has to do with learning.”

I nodded then and pointed back to the mix-matched symbols. “If I take these and translate them as best I can, they all have to do with knowledge as well.”

A loud crash made us both leap back and look at the dust as if wafted through the air.

Baer stood beside a now open door and peered inside with a wide grin on his face.

“Looks like a bookstore,” he laughed. “Guess that’s what they meant by knowledge.”

He grabbed Aurora’s hand and pointed to another storefront across the street. “That looks promising to me. Maybe it’s an old grocery store.”

I watched as the two of them ran off to explore the next store, the same crash of the door flying off its hinges, reaching my ears as Baer made it across the road.

“That’s not a bad idea,” Sasha said then.

“What’s not?”

“Looking for food. Or anything really. We’ve been living off the land for a while now. But maybe there is some store house or something with food that’s still good.”

She was right. It wasn’t a bad idea. This part of the city was completely frozen in time. Not even a single shingle out of place on the rooftops. It was likely that the food found here could still be good.

I took a look around and got a feel for the place. My feet were planted to the ground as I found roots growing beneath the stone of the roads. I mapped out the area in my mind, checking for any sign of life aside from us within the city. When I found it to be monster free, I nodded to Sasha.

“It’s safe here if you want to explore the buildings. We can split up and meet back in a little bit. Over there at that fountain.”

I pointed up the road where the street opened into a courtyard with a large fountain at its center, the water still flowing from the vase held in a beautiful woman’s arms.

Sasha nodded. “I’ll call through the bond if I find anything.”

I smiled, knowing that we now had that connection. That she thought of it as if it were the most natural thing.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m going to check out the bookstore here first. Maybe I can find something that will tell us what the city is.”

She nodded and continued on, peering through windows as she went to the next building. I watched her disappear into one before entering the bookstore, carefully stepping over the broken-down door with a grimace at the splintered wood.

It was a shame that such a well-preserved piece of history had been torn down so carelessly by the other alpha, but what was done was done.

I took in the room with interest, my eyes finding a lever beside the doorway. After testing the directions of the lever for potential traps, I pulled it.

The sounds of gears turning startled me more, my faith in my power wavering until light suddenly illuminated the room around me. I turned towards the high ceiling and found a large mirror reflecting light down at me. Its angle pointed towards a gap in the wall as a beam of light came through.

I ran through the rows of shelves filled with dust covered books to the door at the end, eagerly opening it to find an even larger space than the room I had first entered.

“It’s a library,” I whispered to myself, my wolf lifting his head with curiosity at our discovery.

The ceiling sparkled with a crystal-like chandelier, the sunlight beaming through a glass ceiling above.

The crystals reflected the sun’s light in different mirrors, each aimed at another and the soft sound of more gears turning. At a closer inspection of the mirror next to me, I discovered they seemed to be moving in the same direction as the sun passing through the sky.

I had often heard of the mysterious technology of the ancient world. The idea that Alexandria had once had a supposed death ray invented by Archimedes that was powered by the sun. But never in all my wildest dreams did I think I would ever see proof that such an invention could even be possible.

I stepped down the marbled staircase into the sunken room, taking in the brightly lit walls. My gaze moved back to the crystal chandelier on more than one occasion, wondering how the room might be lit after the sun went down. Did the crystals collect and store the light energy like modern day solar panels? Or did the light fade with the sun and keep the world of those who lived here dependent on the sun?

Something told me that the answer would be the latter.

At the very center of the room, there were several desks with small lamp-like objects made from the same crystals as the chandelier. Their light was slightly dimmer, yet still bright enough to illuminate the space of the desk for reading and writing.

A map was rolled out on one of the closer desks and I felt my heart skip at the prospect of possibly getting an answer as to what this city could be. However, the map was written in the same mix match of different ancient symbols, and the map didn’t quite match that of any modern maps I’ve studied.

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