Twilight of a Hybrid, стр. 45

“No luck I can see,” said Valverno.

“The same to you,” said Marina. “Just where could the entrance could be?”

Valverno stroke his chin, thinking the entrance wasn’t on the mountaintop but someplace on the side. “I may have a slight idea where the entrance could be,” said Valverno. “What if this fortress was supposed to serve as a castle or a watchtower, while the front entrance was built someplace else? Like on the side wall? There is a ruin city built on this mountain’s side. An impossible thing for human to build, a city within a straight wall going downward with a hundred percent chances of falling.

Geraldus raised an eyebrow. “A city built on a mountain’s wall? I wonder how these ancient people manage to build such a place on a straight wall.”

“However they made a place is a mystery to us,” said Valverno. He widened his wings and was about to talk off again. “I’ll fly for a closer look at the city built beneath this mountaintop.

He started to float in the air, but his quickly caught his attention of Marina’s emotionless face. Seeing her face with no expression was making him feel his humanity started to grow in his heart. In his mind, Valverno was conflicted if he should be the one carrying Marina to every place he would go.

It seemed the hearts of a Siren can easily be broken than the human heart.

Valverno signed and asked, “You want to come flying with me?”

Marina gave a small smile.

Valverno drifted to Marina. She walked to him and wrapped an arm around his neck. Then he placed his arm around her waist so he wouldn’t fall from his flight.

After he made sure they were secured tight to each other, Valverno floated back to the air and made his way to the mountain’s side. He flew slower than usual in his flight, so Marina would have time to touch his skin and made sure she wouldn’t forget he was her hybrid husband, and not everyone else’s hybrid husband.

Valverno flew to the mountain’s walls and saw the city had been built. The cliff dwelling city was more suburb than the fortress on the mountaintop. The city managed to stay intact without any crumbled buildings or collapsed piles of stone, unlike the fortress built on the mountaintop.

“The ancient people knew how to build without falling over the cliff’s edges,” said Valverno.

“And there were very well discipline when it came to building, and I wonder how long it took them to build that entire place,” said Marina.

Valverno flew down an open, narrow walkway he saw as a passage built right beside the cliffy city. The passage was thin and narrow, barely to fit a single, walking person acceding or descending to or from this city. The small area Valverno landed on had a great overlook of the entire city, from where he was standing. He released his arm from Marina, so she can walk on her own free will.

A few thin, tower-like, square-shaped buildings with small windows without glass reached as high as the ceiling. Many more had been seen built lower and in square shapes, which may have served as stoned houses, and they were built half as tall as the few towers.

Valverno preceded first and walked the built pathway leading to the city dwelling on the mountain’s high cliffs. Marina followed after him.

Behind them, Flarefur landed where Valverno landed on and Geraldus dismounting from the drifting Griffin immediately. They both caught up with the married couple and all walked together.

Geraldus and Flarefur had also seemed awed and greatly influenced by the site of the still-standing city and how it manage to endure many years of weather, population, decay, and many natural disasters.

Valverno walked close to the back to the hole carved into the mountain. This part looked part of a curve-in cave that was carved by claws. Valverno could tell by lots of claw marks marked all across the backgrounds of the cave. So Valverno now assumed there were creatures such as Dragons or Griffins helping out with the construction of the city.

Marina stopped and looked at the near the very back corners. Flarefur dove to the city’s front view, toward the edges and steamy cliffs. Geraldus walked into one of the houses and wanted to see if he would be welcomed as a house guest.

Valverno stayed toward his left side at the curved cave’s end. He looked at the higher walls to the hole carved into the mountainside and the people making the buildings out of the inside the mountain itself. What hard work it would have taken to have endured the construction of the place. This was truly a wonder if how the people could have made the city without any use of magic and how they manage to build it.

Before Valverno could see what’s on a roof of a stone house, Valverno’s eyes were drawn to a stick figure painting on the inner walls followed by a dozen more. He gazed at the walls many paintings featuring the human figures look like stick people holding spears and hunting down large strange animals that weren’t painted as lions or bears or as any creatures like Dragons or Unicorns. Just strange animals depicted with two-to-four legs, a long neck and tail, and two heads: one a human and the other a bird.

Strangely enough, many other animal pictures painted on the walls Valverno wasn’t recognizing, which meant those ancient animals must have been hunted down to extinction. Then he turned his attention to a bird picture colored in red spreading its wings wide, facing upwards to the sky. Right below it was a human figure holding a red feather.

Valverno took a moment to look at the picture. The red bird just had to be a Phoenix and the human below it had to be the king the Phoenix gave its feather to like the ghosts Valverno saw on the mountain’s top. “This must have been what early humans witnessed of