We had parted, my lords, that Marfisa and Rolandus had helped each other, fighting these strange creatures resembling wolves, mice or who knows what else, and how after killing one of these creatures and seeing the blood flow, Rolandus had felt shaken and dazed. 

Books! Rolandus wanted to take Marfisa to a room full of books he had found. We have already seen how much Marfisa loves books and we have seen how much Rolandus cares of Marfisa, so don't be too surprised, my readers, that this is all Rolandus was thinking about at that moment. 

Marfisa said nothing, but followed a dazed Rolandus along the corridors of the fortress until she realised that the corridor was getting pitch dark. She stopped the catizus, who did not seem to realise what was happening around him, then turned back. 

Marfisa descended the stairs and with what she found in the room, she made an improvised torch, which she lit at the fire still glowing in the fireplace. 

When she went back up the stairs Rolandus was there. He had not moved a step and merely gave Marfisa a glance before resuming his walk down the corridor. He seemed to be in a hurry, as if afraid to forget the books he had found. 

He made his way back to the book room, which he wanted to show Marfisa. He took a stool and tried to pick up the book higher than one of the stacks on the table, but his arms were too short.   

Marfisa placed the torch on the floor, in a spot away from anything that might catch fire, and the sword on the table, then stepped forward and stretched out her arm and brought the book to herself: Gaetica, by Criton of Heraclea. It spoke of the history of the Getae, Dacians and Thracians, as well as their customs. Although it was of interest to her, Rolandus had evidently chosen it at random. 

Marfisa closed the book and placed it in her rucksack, after which she knelt in front of the catizus and wiped his blade with a cloth. Finally, she took what was left of the mead they had bought at Halmyris and handed it to her companion, so that he could calm his nerves. 

Rolandus drank it all in one gulp, while Marfisa shifted her gaze to her own sword. There was still blood on the blade and at the sight of it Marfisa discovered her hand trembling. 

Noticing that she too was shaking, Rolandus handed her what remained of the mead. Then he gently took Marfisa’s sword and wiped away the blood that remained on it. The two said nothing to each other. They calmed their tempers and turned their heads in unison towards the stacks of books on the table. 

"You should have told me right away that there were books!" said Rolandus in a mock reproachful tone. "That explains why it was taking you forever." 

"Yes! I should have told you many things, among them not to shout in the fortress that I was exploring," said Marfisa. 

They both smiled, but the memory of blood made that smile slightly bitter. 

Marfisa took a closer look at the books: by selling them to the right bookseller or collector, one could earn between four and twenty nummi per volume depending on rarity. There were about fifty of them, and if they could carry them all they could earn at least a couple of gold coins. 

"Fifty books, we certainly don't carry them," said Rolandus. 

"Then I say we carry only the best-preserved ones, the ones that don't have pages falling out or missing covers..." said Marfisa, "...maybe we take one from each stack of books." 

Just by looking, one could see that the books at the top of the stack were drier and better preserved than those at the bottom. Marfisa took one and read the title: Apotelesmatics of Hephaistos of Thebes. She flipped through its pages to understand its contents, but after a few pages her reaction was: 

"...?" 

Rolandus stood up on the spot to also read the contents of the book in curiosity, but his reaction was a no different: 

"...?" 

It looked like a trilogy of volumes based on astronomy and whatnot: on planets, stars and constellations and all sorts of stuff: planetary rotations, moon phases... such a work would have been gold in the hands of a good astronomer, but for them... 

"Bah! I guess Aesara will like these a lot," said Marfisa, closing the volume. 

"Are you sure she'll be able to make sense of this thing here?" said Rolandus.   

To which Marfisa replied, in a tone that was between saccharine and proud, saying: "That one has the entire Synagogues of Pappus of Alexandria at home, all eight volumes from arithmetic to mechanics. If anyone can understand what's written here, it's her." 

And don't think that Marfisa didn't deserve to use that proud tone, because when Marfisa had found Aesara in that alley in Sicca Veneria, it was already so much that Aesara knew that the earth was not flat. Now, having found her teachers she was a proper young lady... that is, a proper young lady by Marfisa's standards, I think many of you, my lords, would call Aesara a terrible nerd. 

"There was a telescope in one of the rooms on this floor, the bandits were using it to spy on you while you were in the courtyard. Since they won't be needing it anymore, I thought I'd take it with me. It could always come in handy," said Marfisa.  

Who knows to whom the telescope originally belonged? To the bandits? To the previous owner of the fortress who was perhaps passionate about astronomy? Who knows for what purpose the fortress itself had been built? 

If Marfisa's hypothesis was correct: that fortress must have been relatively recent, and perhaps later restored as the private villa of some local patrician. Then destroyed by who knows who, for who knows what reason. 

Who knows from which window the owner delighted in studying the stars. It was while looking out of that room's window that they set their eyes on one of the fortress towers. 

"The towers... I think we hadn't explored them yet if I'm not mistaken. After what happened, I wouldn't want any nasty surprises," said Marfisa. 

They descended the stairs and went back outside again to explore destroyed towers: two were completely collapsed, the third was crumbling and only the fourth was still intact. There was a walkway connecting it to the fortress, but they preferred to enter it via the base. 

As soon as they entered the room, they could tell right away that it was in total disarray: the roof was completely gone and there was nothing but rubble on the floor, as well as the bones of half-buried skeletons with arrows stuck in their ribcages. 

There must have been a battle a long time ago, but against whom hard to say. They were certainly not in a border area, and it could not have been the weather that brought those towers down. 

The books were too well preserved, as well as some of the buildings, for that place to have been abandoned for centuries, unless that fortress had been destroyed long ago and someone had decided to resettle there without having fully restored it. In any case, the entire fortress had been abandoned and had fallen into disrepair, and now it had been taken over and turned into a den of bandits? It was not too clear to her what those cynocephali were doing there. 

The fish meanwhile were still there, waiting to be eaten. Or rather, one and a half fish were waiting there to be eaten. 

"..." (Marfisa). 

"What?" said Rolandus. "You were taking forever." 

All was quiet, but as they approached the other tower, they heard someone snoring. They cautiously poked their heads in for a look and nine creatures appeared before them asleep, unaware that the guards left to patrol for the day would not wake them to ask for replacements. 

"...!" 

"...!" 

Marfisa said nothing. They walked backwards, quietly, swiftly and inconspicuously. Then they ran away, hiding into the nearest tower. 

"Dammit! This is the last time we stop at ruins before we check the inside!" said Rolandus, trying to keep his voice low. "Did you at least check everywhere? I don't want any more surprises!" 

"If we exclude the towers, which also look unsafe to me, I only missed the donjon..." said Marfisa, "...but there was a scroll that said of a secret entrance to this barn, here somewhere." 

"After saying that there are nine cynocephali in the tower sleeping, do you still want to look around? I don't know how many more there might be.” 

''Don't make too much noise and we'll be fine. As you can see, I was doing fine until you screamed." 

Marfisa stood up and rummaged around in the tower. 

"Don't tell me you're still not satisfied?" said Rolandus, but Marfisa did not answer. 

The room was flooded. There was a ladder leading down into the water, where there was a very corroded gold-coloured chest resting on the ledge three metres below the waterline. 

They should have been able to reach it, even if they needed to dive completely into the water to do so. 

Rolandus turned to Marfisa and said: "Perhaps it was a good idea that you wanted to check this tower."   

"Yes, I can see that too," replied Marfisa, "You can swim, can't you?" 

Rolandus looked at the pool and said, "Ah! I don't go in that water." 

"Look at this! It's up to me to be the man," said Marfisa. 

"You are not really believable. You are almost twice as tall as me." 

"Alright, you keep your eyes open, I'll dive in." 

The stairs descended to a metre and a half, then stopped. She dived down to her chest, then put her head under the water. She had difficulty keeping her eyes open under the water. She put out her hands, tried to grasp what she thought was the crate and then returned to the surface again. 

Rolandus saw Marfisa under the water splash and then immediately return to the surface.   

"How good a swimmer did you say you were?" said the catizus in a mocking tone. 

"...!" 

"What?" 

"You should take a bath too. Courage, the water is warm." 

"No, no I think I'll pass." 

"Come on! We've already taken a bath together. You've even seen me naked." 

"No, no, I insist. I'm fine like this!" 

"Then be more careful what you say. I can swim like a swan" said Marfisa, before taking a swan dive with such elegance that the catizus was amazed. 

"As far as I can tell, swans are good swimmers as long as they don't go underwater," said Rolandus, before pretending not to have said anything when Marfisa surfaced again. 

She swam down. She could see the chest and get her hands on it. Her immediate reaction was to try and pick up the chest, but it was stuck to the ledge. It wasn't loose. It was deliberately built into the ledge.   

She quickly realized it, so she just lifted the lid up, put her hand inside and grabbed a hand of coins and then came straight back to the surface. 

"I guess finders' keepers," said Marfisa. 

It was a handful of silver coins. Marfisa dove back in and emptied the chest. 

"We have been reasonably avid, and I imagine this is a good quantity of silver. Now that our treasure hunt is over, can we leave?" said Rolandus. 

"First I want to have a look at that stable I wanted to know about, then we can leave," said Marfisa, "...maybe there might be some fey artifacts. I just want to know what it is, because there might be a vault underneath it all. Maybe even more chests. 

"All right. Can we look a little bit, then can we leave quickly? There are nine cynocephali sleeping in the third tower," said Rolandus. "Anyway, I expected you to pull up the chest." 

"Yes, but it won't move. It is stuck on that thing. I had planned it quite a bit in my head, but it seems to have been stuck on purpose. Maybe to obstacle or slow down theft..." said Marfisa, "...anyway now I want to get into the stable. I want to know what's there." 

Marfisa looked in each stable to see if there was an opening. It did not take them long to start finding something, because as Marfisa walked, she placed her boot on the floor causing a suspicious crunching sound as if there was no firm ground under her feet.   

They both got down on their knees and began to scrape the straw until they found a wooden trapdoor. At one end was a kind of rope handle. They lifted it up and there was a wooden ladder going down into the earth. 

It was quite dark. You could see a ladder going down to a small landing, and then from that landing there was a stone staircase going in two directions. 

"I'm going in first," said Marfisa. 

"Then the ladies first..." said Rolandus, "...although I think you'd like to send first the one small, silent, with fine hearing and that sees better in the dark." 

"Then I'll follow you. I'll wait up here until you give me a signal or something." 

"I'll advance to the bottom and see what's there. Just get to the bottom of the ladder, when I get to the bottom of the ladder, I'll crawl down the right ladder." 

Marfisa nodded and watched him go down and look around. He had ended up in what looks like a mine shaft tunnel, with a ladder carved into the rock heading further down. 

Marfisa could no longer see Rolandus, but she could make out where he was and knew he was about ten feet down. She heard him say, "It looks like there are stairs going down. Before you go down, make sure you clear all the fire and make it look like we weren't there." 

Marfisa ran to clear all traces of their small camp, taking care to light a flashlight before submerging the fire under a layer of earth. 

Meanwhile, Rolandus stood crouched in a corner. It was so dark that it was instinctive for him to do so. He pricked up his ears and could hear Marfisa working to clear the camp. 

Nostalgic memories came back to him. He had a schoolmate who was the idol of the girls. They enjoyed sneaking after him, and he identified them just by the sound of their footsteps. Such subtle hearing for a catiza was the equivalent of good, strong, masculine shoulders for a human female. You could really see that catizi and humans had different survival mechanisms and strategies. 

It was very nice to be left to memories in such a dark place. He got up again and saw Marfisa coming down with a torch giving him some light. 

They were completely underground and Marfisa's torch was the only source of light there. They reached the bottom of the stairs where the corridor went left and right. 

"Paululum longius vado, sic ero paulum e luce sum, sed quomodocumque satis probe te; I go a little further, so as to be a little outside her light, but still close enough to you," said Rolandus in Latin, just in case there was anyone listening in the shadows. 

"Considerans umbram pulcherrimam quam in solo proiecisti... ita, vere absistere a me et facem, si id facere vis; considering the beautiful shadow you cast on the floor... yes, you really should stay away from me and the torch, if you want to do that..." said Marfisa also in Latin. "...quomodocumque volo te longius non manere, ergo noli recedere a luce; I still do not want to be too far away from you, so don't move away from the light." 

"Perfectus! Eo facere hanc para ab hac quidquid quodquod; Perfect! I go to do eeny, meeny, miny, moe."   

There were no marks on the walls, no paintings, no signs, no ruins, nothing like that. It was just flat stone, literally. He went to the left and noticed that there was an alcove to the left. It was just a flat wall. they continued down the corridor. It took them a while and they couldn't hear anything.    

As Marfisa walked past the alcove, Rolandus wanted to look inside to see if it had a purpose. He looked around to see if there was anything around the room because it was a bit strange to have an empty alcove. 

"Examinare possumus postquam reprimimus ceteras cellas; we can examine it after we check the other rooms," said Marfisa. 

"Recte, post reliquas frangemus; all right, we will check it after the rest," said Rolandus. 

They peeked through the corner just outside. There was a long corridor in the shadows. 

Starting there, there were pictures of family portraits hanging on the walls. They seemed to depict something like the original inhabitants of the castle. They were very ruined, very dusty and shrouded in cobwebs. The pictures looked like oil paintings of the castle and its inhabitants. A long white room was solely dedicated to those images. 

They passed everyone painted, until halfway down the corridor they found a door. Marfisa reached out her arm to grasp the handle, but Rolandus blocked her and put his ear to the door to hear if there was anything or anyone beyond it. He heard nothing. Marfisa then tried to turn the handle, a click was heard, and a crack opened.   

The door creaked open, as if it had not already been open for centuries. Inside they saw a massive stone sarcophagus. It looked like a family mausoleum, approximately the size of a square with a side of ten metres. 

"That's why you didn't hear anything, they were all asleep. Dead tired," said Marfisa. 

"Ha, ha!" replied Rolandus. 

Marfisa went inside. The mausoleum seemed to have been carved out or covered with marble and was decorated on each side with statues of the people buried underneath. On the ceiling, however, there seemed to be a kind of dome. Marfisa wandered around the room, while Rolandus kept watch until he lost sight of her.   

"'Oof! That woman just can't be out of sight!" he said, rolling his eyes. "Mehercule! Bloody hell!" 
He followed Marfisa moving in parallel around a gigantic stone sarcophagus. About five feet high, it was made of marble and on each side were small niches, carvings of the people who rested there: family members, who now stood there like statues. 

Marfisa could imagine that someone had really been living in that castle for some time. After that, an astrologer had taken it over. Since then, the astrologer no longer lived there and it was now left in ruins and had been taken over by bandits, if you can call them that, but the mausoleum had been there longer than anyone. 

Rolandus kept an eye on Marfisa as he looked around. One never knew. Following the room, however, he noticed a doorway. It made sense. Given the location of the room's hallway, it was to be expected that there was another room in that area.  

"Hey Marfisa, look here." 

They headed for the door. There was no lock there, also because indeed there was no reason to have a closed door locked in a secret crypt. The strange thing was that looking through the open door they could see a bed, as well as numerous crates, broken barrels, and old clothes. 

Rolandus looked out slightly. Everything was very old and dusty, but there was nothing strange about it apart from the position of the room: the time-worn clothes were perfectly normal, as was all the furniture in the room. 

Rolandus entered the room and, giving it a closer look, discovered that the barrels, still intact, contained lantern oil. He tried to use them to light the lanterns in the room; in fact, when Marfisa entered, she saw him climb up one of the statues to reach the lantern attached to the wall. 

"Do you need a hand?" said Marfisa. 

"No, no, I can manage," replied Rolandus. 

It was at that moment that Marfisa noticed that there was a channel filled with lantern oil, dug into the wall and connecting the various lanterns. The moment Rolandus lit one, all the others were lit almost instantly. 

The room was now moderately lit, and a yellowish colour reverberated along the whitish walls. Marfisa walked over to one of the barrels filled with lantern oil, and with one of her empty bottles scooped up its contents. 

"This will come in handy, should we decide to buy a lantern," said Marfisa. 

"At least we will waste less time making improvised torch each time," said Rolandus. “A light and constant light is more useful than a large flame.” 

Marfisa took a good amount, probably enough to fill six lamps, after which she turned her head toward what appeared to be another door. 

She knew there was something missing in that direction, on the other side of the wall, but she did not know what activated or opened the passageway to it. Something was wrong, not quite right about that wall. She tried drumming on it and was certain that there was something behind it. 

"There should be a room here, judging by the shape of the corridor we went through," said Marfisa. 

She set about measuring the dimensions of the room through her footsteps and had confirmation that the wall was in the wrong position. There had to be something behind it, somewhere, but she did not know how to get past it. What lever or mechanism was hiding the passage from her? She tried to give the wall a few pushes, to see if anything moved, but there were neither levers nor panels nor moved tiles. Nor did floor give her any clue: there were no scratches or dislodged dust to indicate where a hidden door might be. The entire wall was a plain slab of smooth marble. 

"Who knows what is hidden in that room?" said Marfisa. 

"Maybe a treasure? We've done nothing but hunt for it, completely giving a damn about the bandits upstairs. Why stop now?" said Rolandus. "There might even be objects we need; we still have a long journey ahead of us." 

"Maybe a lantern." 

"I would also say that we don't have much time. If the bandits above wake up and see their dead companions, we'd probably be in more trouble than we already are." 

They turned back, passing through the mausoleum, where they found another door along the north side of the massive sarcophagus. Again, Rolandus leaned his ear against the door, but heard nothing. This one, too, however, had no lock. It looked like a wine cell, but it had been ransacked. 

The room was now useless and unused. There were only cobwebs and broken bottles. There were still shelves, but the bottles had either been taken or had been broken. 

They returned to the mausoleum, where Marfisa approached a statue larger than the others. It seemed to depict an important person. 

It was a statue made entirely of marble, if one excluded the golden pendant it wore around its neck. All other objects it wore instead were sculpted in stone. 

"I will stay here," said Rolandus. 

"What do you think? That it might be cursed?" said Marfisa. 

"It's not like I trust a valuable object much, which everyone ignored after looting the other rooms," said Rolandus. "It could be anything, it could be a trap, it could have a switch that opens everything or throws anything at us." 

"Well, well," said Marfisa. "It could just be a gold necklace, though, and we'd be happy." 

"Let's go then and have a look at the other rooms first, then we'll decide." 

"Why does it have a pendant? Could it be important or a fake?" 

"It's the only statue that has a jewel, that's why it makes me nervous. Maybe I'm overly paranoid." 

They explored the third room. This one seemed to be longer, and on one of the walls hung the weapons that belonged to the people buried in the mausoleum. Those who had been buried there must have been all or most of them warriors. They seemed to be very old weapons, many of those were models that had not been manufactured for a long-time including swords, spears, shields, axes, bows and in javelins. 

Marfisa tried to pick up one that caught her attention. It was surprisingly sharp and revealed itself to be of excellent construction. One could easily use it to parry strikes. Time had not affected it and she suspected that it might be, if not fairy-like, forged by satyrs given the quality of the steel. 

Even Rolandus tried to look, but there was nothing suitable for its dimensions, nothing at least that was usable. There were also numerous bows and quivers filled with arrows, but even the smaller ones were too big for him. 

Marfisa handed him the sword and said: "Here! This weapon has a long but thin blade. It shouldn't be too heavy for you." 

When his deep azure eyes rested on the blade, Rolandus immediately noticed that it looked as if it were new despite the time spent down there. The hilt could be wielded by him two-handed with no problem, distributing the weight over both arms. It was a good weapon for someone as small as he was. Like the hilt, the sheath was also finely decorated. Made of ebony it was edged with what looked like crystals made of silver. 

Rolandus left his sword in place of the one he had taken. 

"Now I want to take the necklace..." said Marfisa, "...maybe it was forged by satyrs too." 

"Take the necklace then..." said Rolandus, "...but I there won't go close to it." 

They turned back toward the necklace, toward the massive marble statue armed with a spear. From its appearance it seemed similar the figures seen in the paintings in the entrance hallway, although they could not be sure it was one of them. It stood there, with its beautiful gold necklace that neither of them dared touch. 

"There is a secret door, do you think this necklace might have something to do with it?" said Marfisa. 

"It is possible. Do you want to try?" said Rolandus. 

Marfisa recalled to the poem she had found in the upper floors. The one in the untranslatable language. It seemed to have been written long ago, but probably not at the time of the crypt. 

"I was thinking... I have this poem here. Oh, I was just wondering if..." said Marfisa. 

"Well, you know, when I asked you if you found anything, you said no, just books and broken glass," said Rolandus. 

"Well, technically it's like information, I mean books and things like that, because I didn't know if it was relevant to anything yet. I'm just wondering if this relates to that," Marfisa said, showing him the paper. 

"In my opinion there is a protection," said Rolandus. "There is some kind of protection, but we don't know where it is, and we don't know what it does. Maybe that poem is a magic formula to get that necklace." 

"Or we're just being paranoid." 

"I feel he has some kind of protection." 

"Then you'd better prepare to run." 

Marfisa tried to remove the necklace from the statue.   

"This is fairy territory in my opinion, there might be enchantments or similar," said Rolandus. 

"That's why I didn't want to get close." 

Marfisa lifted the necklace, noticing how heavy it was, but nothing happened. 

"So... we were paranoid about nothing?" 

Well, my dear readers! Beautiful words those of Rolandus, but you know what they say about famous last words. I will certainly not tell you; but you if you want it will read it, if in the next chapter you will follow me. Or who knows! In the room there is silence. Maybe nothing will happen, but it's not now that you will know.