A room that still held its majesty and grandeur even in its near-total ruin—broken columns, sections where the ceiling had caved in, tapestries burned to nothing.
This confirmed his suspicion; the place had already been looted and destroyed, with only those objects left behind that had not been worth taking.
The floor was strewn with the remains of broken, burned, or discarded things, and scattered among them were a few that had survived in one piece.
Licerio tasked two of his knights and all the squires with locating any objects that still appeared to be in good condition and marking their positions without touching them; the baron had been expelled from this place after picking one up and had never been able to enter again.
The room was wide near the entrance and seemed to narrow toward the far end, drawing everyone's gaze toward the object at the center of the opposite wall—a great sarcophagus, standing immaculate against everything around it.
The closer they came, the more clearly they could see how well-preserved it was. A whitish stone covered the lower body of the sarcophagus, with the upper lid in a pale grey.
Licerio stopped a couple of meters away. Marlleo continued forward until his palm rested against the sarcophagus. He had expected to feel the cold bite of stone—but felt nothing at all.
It was not only the temperature. The texture, the feedback of the surface—there was nothing. His eyes told him his hand was in contact with stone, but neither his hand nor his mind registered any sensation.
Marlleo pressed harder, thinking his vision and perception were failing him somehow, but his hand did not move into the sarcophagus. Nor did he feel any resistance stopping it; his hand simply held where it was.
He was able to pull his hand away and place it on other parts of the sarcophagus, but the result was always the same. After a few more tests, Marlleo was satisfied there was no immediate danger, and Licerio stepped closer.
Though they had found nothing to fear, they kept their guard up, watching their surroundings carefully.
Licerio experimented with the sarcophagus himself, getting the same results. He searched for any hidden button or lever without much luck.
He then moved through the surrounding area, finding a great many destroyed objects. The destruction was far worse here than anywhere else, with barely a single item surviving intact—which Licerio marked.
Moving pieces of broken stone, they uncovered a slab covered in writing. Licerio called to Marlleo and asked him to bring López's youngest squire, the boy Lecaro.
Knowing they were dealing with ancient ruins, he had been looking for someone with knowledge of history and old languages, though without much hope—if people could not read the language of today, how would they know an older one? A noble might, but never a commoner. It seemed fortune was on Licerio's side, however; López's new squire had some knowledge of ancient history and could at least recognize certain letters.
When he arrived, Licerio and Marlleo stepped aside and let the young squire get to work.
"This writing is more than three hundred years old. Some of these characters have clear similarities to our language—they could be from the tongue that preceded ours. These ones, for example," Lecaro said, pointing to several of the inscriptions on the stone.
Listening to Lecaro's explanation, both of them began to see the connections between the two languages.
"This must be the precursor to our language—most likely the tongue of the great old empire."
That empire had stretched across millions of square kilometers before its fracturing; finding ruins that belonged to it would be nothing unusual. And an empire of that scale would have wielded a power beyond imagining, Licerio thought.
"Can you read it?" Marlleo asked.
"At this point, no—but with enough luck, if someone could get me some old texts, I might be able to decipher it."
"As long as you show results, I'll fund your research," Licerio agreed.
The young man smiled and pulled a parchment and ink from his bag and pockets, copying every character from the stone onto the sheet.
Licerio and Marlleo left him to it and went looking for more clues. The more destroyed objects he came across, the more he found himself wondering why this room had been so thoroughly wrecked compared to the entrance and the corridor outside.
The chamber was burned and broken throughout, yet the corridor with its deeply irritating traps had not been touched—nothing altered or damaged anywhere along it.
Licerio fell into his thoughts, sitting on a plinth in the room. Across the chamber, López drifted through the space with no fixed direction, marking the objects that were still intact.
He was near one of the corners—one of the most heavily destroyed parts of the room. Using his sword, he lifted pieces of collapsed wall, turning up several objects in surprisingly good condition, having been sheltered by the very rubble that covered them.
Lifting one section of wall, he found the remains of a shelf beneath it. He carefully removed the broken pieces, and the floor beneath was covered in books.
When he tried to pick one up, it crumbled in his hands, leaving him holding only the cover. He looked at the others—many were in the same state, and many more were badly burned or damaged.
After setting aside the ruined ones, a handful still held together, and he moved them carefully to a safe spot before going to find Licerio.
When Licerio heard, he rose from the plinth and went to look at the books with Lecaro. Every one of them was written in the same ancient language, making them invaluable for working out how to decipher it.
After leaving Lecaro in charge of the books, he rejoined Marlleo, and they continued searching around the sarcophagus.
"Found anything, Marlleo?"
"No, my lord. Everything is so thoroughly destroyed that any clues may simply be gone. And if there are any left, I doubt we have the means to find them."
"I think the same—even so, we need to check every corner. This place is too important to our territory to leave anything unexamined. We don't yet know whether it will prove a blessing or a curse."
"Yes, my lord. I'll lift every flagstone if I have to."
Everyone returned to their tasks until a shout brought them up short. On one of the chamber walls, a young squire had grabbed hold of a large tapestry, and it had torn free, falling heavily on top of him.
The tapestry was so large it was enormously heavy, and the squire could only writhe beneath it, calling out for help.
When Licerio and the others moved to help him, they stopped dead. On the wall the tapestry had covered, two enormous eyes without pupils had been carved into the stone. The instant they saw them, a wave of confusion swept through everyone—they could still see the world around them, but they stopped feeling it. The air no longer entered their lungs, the ground no longer pressed against their feet, the weight of their clothes was gone, the friction of fabric against skin—everything.
By reflex or instinct, most of them snapped their eyes shut and wrenched their gaze away in fear. When they opened their eyes again, looking elsewhere, their senses came flooding back, and a long breath of relief went through the group.
The squires who had not yet looked away were either forced to by their companions or, seeing the reaction of those around them, did the same.
After pulling the squire out from under the tapestry, the group talked through what had happened—checking in with each other, making sure no one was carrying any hidden or lingering effects. Everyone seemed fine.
"What was that?" one of the squires asked, shaken.
No one could answer. Everyone was equally confused and lost—only Licerio and Marlleo had more to offer than the others.
"What do we do about those eyes? Should we try to cover them?" another squire asked.
"We can try. I just hope it's straightforward," Licerio replied.
The group moved into position, and Marlleo and Astor—the other knight—took on the task of hanging the fallen tapestry back over the eyes. They used the squares and several broken pieces as footholds to reach the height they needed, barely managing it, and worked the tapestry back onto its anchor points.
Coordinating the effort was not easy; some footholds on the broken pieces looked ready to give way, and everyone had to move carefully when putting weight on them.
When it was done, López volunteered to check whether the eyes were fully covered. He positioned himself in front of them and opened his eyes. A few seconds later, he exhaled and confirmed they were safe.
A small moment of relief, and they returned to their work. Licerio was now looking at the wall directly across from the one with the carved eyes.
On the floor, large chunks of broken wall lay scattered—loose bricks and burned cloth spread across the ground.
While examining the area near the sarcophagus earlier, he had already noticed a large piece of burned cloth buried under debris close by, though he had not paid it much attention at the time.
Licerio crouched and touched the cloth—it had the same texture as the tapestry. Including this one, that makes three. Had they carved three pairs of these eyes? Was this the trap of this room? It seemed the person who had primarily looted these ruins had already triggered the trap and destroyed it, he wondered as he turned the cloth over in his hands.
López's group had finished cataloguing all the objects that still appeared usable and in reasonable condition and went to join Marlleo in searching for clues around the sarcophagus.
Marlleo asked one of his squires to help him look at the top of the sarcophagus, climbing onto it. When he pulled himself up and stood on top of it, his gaze was immediately caught by a pair of crimson eyes on the lid—black pupils that held Marlleo completely.
His hands moved on their own toward the lid and pressed against it; the surface was warm, so unlike the rest of the sarcophagus. His mind was drifting through a thousand shapeless thoughts while his body moved without his awareness.