No matter what.
Just as the Western world knew little about Africa's magical world,
Ian knew little about this land as well.
Now,
standing upon this land during Voldemort's active era, Ian had realized that Africa might be hiding secrets that had remained undiscovered even in his own time.
"Perhaps that's why the African Ministry of Magic and its wizards keep such a low profile internationally. They don't want wizards from elsewhere discovering their secrets."
Just how mysterious was this secret? Ian's heart was filled with complicated emotions. He temporarily suppressed his worry that the Fallen Deity might catch up and focused on the ruins before him. Pale light shone from the tip of his wand like a searchlight, sweeping across the rough rock walls and massive stone pillars.
The murals on the walls had severely peeled and blurred with age, but a few patterns could still barely be made out. They did not belong to the artistic style of any known civilization—neither the solemnity of Ancient Egypt, the cuneiform narratives of Mesopotamia, nor Maya's mysterious totems resembled what lay before him.
The creatures in the murals were bizarre. Some resembled crystalline lifeforms with multiple limbs and joints; others seemed to be made of flowing liquid metal. They were conducting some incomprehensible ritual, surrounded not by the usual sun, moon, and stars, but by grotesquely twisted geometric symbols that seemed to represent concepts of force fields or dimensions.
Besides that.
Fragments of objects lay scattered across the ground. Most were made from a dark, dull material that was neither metal nor stone, icy to the touch, with natural spiral patterns on its surface.
"Alchemical Creations?" Ian picked up a fragment and tried to use magic to analyze its ingredients and age, but the result only confused him further—the information returned