Dear Journal:
In all the years I’ve written to you, I’ve never had a problem that couldn’t be solved with logic or time. But, Journal, this was that one time that nothing made sense. How does one make sense of something that has no previous experience to draw on?
I’d better explain.
Down those infernal stairs we trooped. Caesar, Lady, Senator, Tribune, Staff, other Senators and officials, Praetorians, and, naturally, the Wrinklies (who’d caught on that something was up at the last minute, some still grasping their cushions, which they promptly dropped). As appropriate a procession into the depths of the earth could not have been contrived. Seemed fitting somehow.
With blueprints in hand and nerves of steel (or was that putty) we trooped past the Loot Room and into the Scroll Room in search of a missing doorway. Carefully clearing away stacked scrolls from one wall, we commenced tapping said wall to find any hollow sections that the plans said should be hidden in that area.
‘Taptaptaptap. Tap. Taptap. Thunk. Taptaptaptap’ . . . ?
Thunk?!
That section of wall was checked again and, sure enough, there was a hollow spot. The hollow section, upon further examination, turned out to be seven feet high by seven feet wide. What kind of doorway was this!?
Hammers and muscle made short work of the wall section and, after clearing away the debris, we found we’d stumbled onto, or into, another problem. There was a doorway alright. Sealed by a large, round door. A round door made of a peculiar dull, pitted metal with no lock or other obvious means of opening it. A door that sneered at our best (laugh) efforts to batter it down.
It was then, in total frustration at being stymied, I struck the center of the door with my right fist. The hand with Ceasar’s ring on it. At the moment of contact, there was a sharp ‘click’ as that door split in half and opened inwards.
I stared at my VERY sore ring hand in baffled amazement. Just what was Caesar’s ring anyway? A key? Or, more precisely, a key to what? And where?
Well, we opened the door the rest of the way and entered what was behind it.
Meep!
We found ourselves standing in the most immense pillared room I’d ever seen. The light from our lanterns (lit before we entered) only covered a portion of that titanic chamber.
What had we, literally, walked into? I knew then that we would most definitely need the aid of Brother and the Titans to figure all of this out. Would that he would return soon!
The Roman View 
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