The plane landed in Alexandria before the sun rose. Corrine stepped of the plane with stiff legs, and made her way through the airport. She grabbed a map of the city and was on her way.

She couldn't take a bus or train into town because everything was closed for the night, so she had to walk. The map was in Arabic, and Corrine couldn't read it. She resorted to matching the letters and hoping she was close.

Muffled talking was coming from her bag and she jumped when she remembered Orcus was shoved in there. She opened the bag grabbed Orcus and put him on her shoulder.

"Sorry about that," she muttered. She was too tired to think properly.

"Yeah. Yeah," he said with an eye roll.

They worked together to figure out where they were going, matching letters to a language neither of them could understand. After a while they knew where they were and that they only had a couple of blocks until they reached the library, or, more accurately, the ruins.

"How exactly will I find the book? The place was burnt to a crisp. I can't imagine it will be simple," Corrine asked.

"I'm not positive it will be there. Berstuk, and his followers have had much more time to collect these artifacts than us. I wouldn't be surprised if they already found the book." Turan's voice was grim, she sounded like she was close to giving up.

"Okay... Sure... But are there any... tricks to finding the book, in case it is there?" She didn't want to have to think of failure. It was much more likely than success and everyone's life was on the line. She couldn't think of that.

"We'll figure it out once we get there."

"Thanks really doing me a solid." She rolled her eyes and turned to the pika on her shoulder. "Will there be any security or anything there?"

Orcus sighed heavily. "This may surprise you, kid, but I'm not all knowing."

"Well you knew about the war and where Berstuk would be. I would consider that pretty close to all knowing," she said with a pretentious smirk.

He sighed again, more dramatically this time. "I only know that because Turan told me. I only know any of this because Turan told me." When Corrine didn't respond, he got annoyed. "Heck, she wasn't even sure Berstuk would be in St Petersburg. She was just guessing."

She stopped dead in her tracks. "Wait. She didn't know Berstuk would be in St Petersburg, but he was there on what? Luck?" She was waving her arm wildly in the air, so much so that Orcus was having a hard time staying on her shoulder.

"Don't ask me. All I know was that none of the gods knew where he would be. They just thought he would at least be in Russia." His claws were digging into Corrine's shoulder waiting for her to calm down.

"Turan, you had no reason to think Berstuk was in St Pertersburg did you?" Her voice was ice cold and her glare matched.

"Yes, gods tend to go back to their place of worship, but I don't know why the other gods were there."

"And you didn't think twice about it?" She started waving her hand around again.

"No."

"Stop it!" Orcus yelled. He was practically dangling from Corrine's shoulder.

She pushed Orcus back onto her shoulder and crossed her arms in frustration. She didn't know if she was just being a tired brat or she should be angry, but she was angry enough to throw Orcus down the street. She was infuriated by the fact that Turan and the others sent kids places they had no real reason to send. Sure, Berstuk was there, but they almost died because they weren't prepared. She was disgusted by the mere idea.

The rest of the walk was silent, aside from Corrine and Orcus bickering over which way to go, no one spoke. The city mirrored their silence, you could hear a fly's steps in its silence.

The flat road Corrine was walking on turned into an uphill climb. Her feet ached by the time she reached the top, but The Library of Alexandria was in full few. She ran to the ruins, but once she was through the parking lot outside of it, there was a fence in her way.

"Well now what?" she said to herself. She glanced up wards and found barbed wire at the top of the fence.

"Climb it." Orcus jumped from off her shoulder and sat on the ground.

"What?" she asked.

"Climb. The. Fence."

Corrine rolled her eyes the put her hands in the fences holds and pulled herself up, she stuck her feet in the lower holes and climbed until she was face to face with the barbed wire. She pulled her duffel bag off her shoulder and threw it over the fence, then took her sword and sheath off and threw it over. She started climbing down to help Orcus over, but he stopped her.

"Get in there. I'll find another way in, but you need to find that book as soon as possible, and you can't do that when this place is open."

She rolled her eyes, but didn't bother asking why she couldn't. She figured it had something to do with other people, who are not supposed to know about the war. She climbed back to the top of the fence and swung herself over the barbed wire. The wire cut her leg and she fell to the ground.

She winced slightly, but it was only skin deep. She stood up, picked up her things, and walked deep into the ruins.

"Alright, Turan. How do I do this?" she asked.

"It was Thoth who hid it, so I've summoned some more help." She sounded unsure of herself.

"What? How?" she asked.

She sighed heavily. "I'm not a sitting duck in here, Corrine."

Corrine rolled her eyes and stood still, waiting for the "help." As if on cue, a large bird flew overhead. It landed in front of her and did an imitation bow. Corrine jumped back at the surprise bird and struggled to hank out her sword.

"Calm down," Turan order. "He's another familiar."

She slowly slid her sword back into its sheath, eyeing the bird. "Who are you?"

"Hi, I'm Kroni..." His head was popping in and out like pigeon when it walks.

Kroni was a large black and white bird. His head was small and black with a long beak to complete it. His body was white with a black tail, and it had long black legs sticking out of the bottom. He looked like a compressed heron.

"Corrine..." She tried to hold her fists so she could still protect herself, but not insult Kroni.

"I... know..." he ducked his long neck so his head was on the ground.

"Well alright then..." she muttered. "Can you find the book?"

His head shot up and his voice was filled with excitement. "The Book of Thoth? Yes, I can find it! Ibises are Thoth's sacred animal."

She furrowed her brow. "Ibises?"

He ducked his head again. "It's a type of bird."

"Huh..."

Neither of them moved. Kroni slowly brought his head up, but he didn't break eye contact.

"So... Uh... The book?" Corrine tried to play it off like she wasn't annoyed, but at this point she wanted to throw rocks at this bird brain.

"Oh, right! The book!" He jumped up and flew around in circles for a second.

He took off from his circle and flew around the ruins, telling Corrine to follow. He would fly to one corner mutter something then fly somewhere else. He wouldn't stay still for two seconds. Corrine was running back and forth through the ruins and whenever she stopped Kroni would yell at her.

"We've no time to waste!" he said, still flying back to where they started.

After a while the sun was starting to rise. Its light flooded the ruins and Corrine was getting antsy. Kroni was still nowhere close to finding the book and someone was bond to come to the library soon.

"Kroni! We're running out of time!" she yelled.

He started circling another spot. "We'll be fine. No one will come around at sun rise." He dived down in a spiral. "I think I found it!"

Corrine raced over and knelt beside the bird, who was staring at the ground. "I'm guessing it's underground."

"That's right."

She sighed. "How am I supposed to get it out then?"

"Well you have a sword, don't you?"

She sighed again. She took off her duffel bag and took her sword out of its sheath. She raised the blade high above her head and plunged it into the ground.

The ground around it began to crack and break in long strides. A soft light glowed from underground. Corrine yanked her sword from the ground and started moving rocks.

Under the carnage and rubbish was a package wrapped in a linen cloth. The package was about the size of a dictionary but a lot thicker. Corrine unwrapped it and pulled out the contents.

Inside were sheets of papyrus. Each sheet was covered front to back in hieroglyphics. There were hundreds of sheets that Corrine could never tell which one had the spell on it.

She looked at every sheet front and back, in pure astonishment that someone could write this much in hieroglyphics on papyrus. As she glanced at a page Turan and Kroni started screaming in her ears.

"Stop!"

"Wait!"

"What?" she asked with gritted teeth.

"Corrine, you may want to keep that one," she said her voice strained as if she was talking to a toddler who was about to drop an expensive vase down a flight of stairs.

Kroni was aggressively pecking the sheet she was holding. "That one has Kebechet's location! It has her location!" he screamed

"Calm down!" She had to yell over the two of them.

She took the sheet and folded it then shoved it into her jean pocket.

"Better?" she asked.

Turan muttered a 'yes' and Kroni aggressively nodded.

"Good." She put the rest of the sheets into the linen cloth and walked back towards the way they came. "Let's go find Orcus then we can hide this." She gestured to the stack of papyrus.

Kroni didn't follow. "Orcus?"

"Yeah... He's the other familiar." She got to the fence and started climbing.

"A god can't have more than one familiar at a time... It's a one or the other choice," he started following her halfheartedly.

She threw her bag and her sword over. "What?"

"A god can't have more than on-"

"Shut up!" she screamed. "Turan?"

"We had to find the book."

Corrine threw herself over the barbed wire not caring about the book still in her hands. She hit the ground hard, but quickly scrambled to her feet. She grabbed her sword but left her bag behind.

"Orcus?" she yelled.

No response.

"Orcus!"

She took off running around the fence hoping that by some miracle Orcus would still be there. She could hear Kroni yelling at her to stop, but she couldn't. Her legs moved on their own.

Corrine ran until a rock got in her way. She fell to the ground and felt her knee start to bleed. She twisted around to look at her knee and beside her feet was the thing that tripped her. A small stone rodent lying sideways on the ground, a cold expression plastered to its face.

"Orcus!"

I'm not sorry.

I wrote this while on in the car for a road trip so sorry if the quality if a little iffy. I also edited it in the car so... sorry. Anyhow thank you all for reading!