Parallels- an MCSM AU [COMPLETED]

THREE- Questionable Findings

i uh

wasn't originally going to change the POV at all in this book but um

some ideas happened?? so now we're doing things

this chapter is unfortunately fairly short, as most of the Lukas chapters will most likely be.

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▪Lukas's POV▪

I began searching the room even before Jess disappeared up the stairs, combing swiftly through bookshelves and glancing at already-open books lying about.

Petra wasn't known for making things easy, but she wouldn't have deliberately hidden whatever she'd found. My guess was that she'd probably left it wherever she'd found it...whatever 'it' actually was.

Luckily, the place was easy enough to navigate through. It may not have been the tidiest or more well-organized, but it wasn't a disaster.

I reached a cluttered desk at the far end of the room, and, somewhat absent-mindedly, picked up a hardcover book sitting on it. The title of the tome was 'Ad Vitam Aeturnum', and I frowned in confusion.

The words were in an old, nearly dead language that I couldn't recall the name of. Latin? No, that wasn't quite right. Something similar to that, though. Some people said it originated from the mythical land of the Aether, though that had never made sense to me.

I had never seen a complete book written in said language. Simple phrases and stuff like that were thrown around sometimes, but there were very few written works. No one was really certain of the civilization that had spoken it, or how and when it had begun to fade.

I tried to remember what I had learned of it. If I was correct, the title said something like 'to eternal life', though I couldn't be certain. I shuddered slightly, but hesitated right before I set the book down.

Could this be what Petra wanted us to find?

I paused, examining the book again and thinking.

No. Completely impossible. As far as I was aware, she didn't know anything about the lost language- it would be far too 'nerdy' for her. Besides, if she'd wanted Jess to see this particular tome, she could've just sent it to him with the letter.

I put the book down and glanced at the other contents of the desk. There was an empty inkwell, a few scattered sheets of blank paper, an old-looking ruffled quill, and a small book with an illustration of an Enderman on the cover. Nothing spectacularly unusual.

I turned and leaned back against the desk, scanning the room in hopes of noticing something obvious before I had to go into a full-out search.

It was then that I noticed the lever attached to the side of a bookshelf to my right. I straightened up, then walked over and cautiously pushed it upwards.

Nothing happened for a moment. Then, with a muffled thud and a slow grating sound, the wall behind the desk I'd previously been looking at slowly began separating.

I watched as unseen pistons pulled the blocks out of the way, revealing a dark, hidden room. Grabbing a torch from nearby, I carefully pushed the desk aside and stepped inside the secret room.

I was a little afraid of what I might find, leaning anxiously back as I lifted the torch and let the light fall on what had been hidden for who knows how many years.

The place was small, but even so, I didn't know where to look first.

One wall was dominated by papers and charts, all haphazardly pinned up and overlapping each other. They greatly varied in content- some had drawings, some had long paragraphs, and others had only a few words, all looking like they'd been written hastily. A few of these papers were connected by strings, lending the appearance of some kind of strange investigation. I barely glanced at them at first, but I noticed a lot of question marks.