King of the Alphas

Chapter Thirteen

'A Crystal Forest' Poem by William Sharp

Chapter 13;
The Private Library, Part Two

Abigail's POV

My face. I do not understand how something so old, could have a drawing of me. I wish I knew latin, because this would have been much easier to understand. I just sat there for a while looking at myself in the page. It was just me, a portrait of my face. I was not smiling. I look exactly how i do now.
I kept slowly turning the pages.
At a certain point after my picture, the book becomes blank.

How could this be? I turned back to the cover. Artemis Prophetia.

Prophet. A prophecy? So was this meant to be? Am I meant to be here? I certainly don't want to be.
I looked over my own shoulder, anxiety starting to weigh me down. My heart was beating a little faster, and my breath a little heavier.

I flipped through the pages again, desperate to find more. I soon closed the book and put it back in its original position. Determined, I started looking for more. Walking around the dim room, my first instinct was to pick up anything that caught my eye. As I skimmed through I noticed just how many texts there were with ripped out pages.

I stopped on something.
"Mors Maleficarum" I read the title on the cover softly. Wondering what it meant, I slowly opened it. There was a lot of dust, so i had to be quiet, and carful not to cough.
This book had some english in it. I started to scan some of the text.

King Adrian was young when he ended the last of the witches. In return, to become the King.

I read the line slowly. Looking at a picture of wolves killing the witches. In the image, they were all women and they had long hair, and thin body structures. Their hands were slender, and they all wore long dresses. They were in pain, and the wolves looked savage. There was blood everywhere, all in the middle of the woods.

The witches and the humans had a long history, full of war. The humans did not understand the culture of the witches, and believed they were spawned from hell. The witches were powerful beings, capable of great destruction or great peace. They believed that all humans were soulless.

King Rhen of the Humans, Father of Alexius Rhen, Adrian Regan, and Sirius, and a Husband to Alexandria, hunted the witches as sport. He believed if a human could kill a witch, they were considered to be a highly ranked human, capable and worth many riches.
King Rhen would burn the covens, and steal from them. He did this for most of his time as the King. This slowly turned his Kingdom into the richest, and he grew slowly off of the slaughter of the witches.

As time went on, King Rhen grew old. He said he would choose one of his three sons most worthy of the crown to take over as King. Soon, he chose Adrian Regan, for ending the very last coven, and bringing the witches down for good.

There was not much more English in the book. But something caught my eye. An image of Adrian Reagan with a woman holding hands in the castle. I stared at this image for a long time, a strange emotion bubbling up inside of me. She looked like the witches did in the pages before. There was so much information being thrown at me, but it was hard to connect it all together.

The rest of the pages were torn.
I thought to myself for a while. He killed off the witches, to rule a human kingdom.
Something about that made me shutter to my core. But there was so much I was still missing.

Knowing that my time was starting to run out, I grabbed one last book. This one was different, it was the color silver and it didn't have a title.
I started on the first page, and found a poem.

The air is blue and keen and cold,
With snow the roads and fields are white

Reading the first line, I knew this was something I heard before. Maybe in a dream... It was a strange feeling reading the first sentences of the poem. It felt so familiar.

But here the forest's clothed with light
And in a shining sheath enrolled.

Each branch, each twig, each blade of grass,
Seems clad miraculously with glass:

I kept reading, my heart was beating so fast. Images of The Alpha King flooded into my head.

Above the ice-bound streamlet bends
Each frozen fern with crystal ends.

I turned the page to find the last sentence of the poem, and something handwritten next to it.

Look, look at me
Come wake me up,
For still here I'll be

the note:
there is nothing else to live for in this world anymore. I am a monster, living with no purpose, unable to die. So I will wait for you, as there is nothing else to do. As long as it takes. Even if you don't exist, my heart is forever locked away until we meet.

A tear fell from my eye and onto the book. I knew in my heart this was meant for me. It was a powerful feeling, but an emotion I wasn't sure what to do with.

I set the book down where I got it and headed for the stairwell.
That might be enough for today. But I'll be back.
I walked up the stairs, shut the hidden door, and scuffled out of the aisle of books and into the main part of the library.
The last words of the poem, echoing in my head.