The acid popped as it ate at the surface of the floor and the heads of Egil's hammers. Had they been standing on the floor, the substance would already have eaten through their boots and started dissolving flesh. Tiny droplets from popping bubbles hit Egil's bare forearms, burned pink pinholes into the hairy flesh. The priest grunted at the pain, the stinging reek.
"Egil?"
The lucky dice Egil carried with him on every expedition slipped from his pocket and fell into the acid, asp eyes up. The ivory pyramids cracked, shattered, and dissolved. Egil loosed a stream of expletives cut short when he inhaled the smoke and started to splutter. The coughing upset his balance and he swayed.
"Nix!" he gasped between coughs.
Nix adjusted his weight, steadied himself on three points, and reached out and back to grab Egil by the ankle.
"Got you."
They hung there over the acid, two friends and adventurers, one balanced precariously on his melting hammers, the other hanging on the wall in a desperate three-point perch. The whole affair struck Nix as hilarious, but he swallowed his laughter lest a guffaw dislodge him from the wall and kill them both.
"Here's a moment, yeah?" Nix said through gritted teeth.
"Shut up."
"I hope you bought better hammers than usual," Nix said, watching the metal of the weapons smoke and crack.
"Do not make me laugh," Egil said. "I'll pull us both down."
"I'd let you go before that. But I'd mourn you, rest assured. For a few moments, at least."
The acid, spreading thin across the floor of the chamber, soon bubbled less, smoked less. In a few more moments the popping ceased altogether and the smoke diminished, crowding close to the high ceiling in a stinking yellow-black cloud. Nix gave it another sixty count, then said:
"That's it. It's inert."
"You're certain?"
"As certain as I was about the magic key," Nix said.
"Shite," Egil answered.
Nix chuckled as he released Egil's ankle, hopped off the wall, and landed in the thin layer of black liquid that coated the now-pitted floor.
"See?"
Egil lowered his feet to the ground and stood. "Pits, man!" He covered one nostril and blew snot from the other, each in turn, then hocked and spit.
The hallway behind the now open door was barely a hallway at all, being only a few hand spans deep and there blocked by another door, of similar make to the one they'd just opened. The walls, too, were made of the same odd metal as the doors.
"You see what they did here?" said Nix appreciatively. "They sealed this compartment and poured acid in through the holes above the door. Time spared us, I suspect. The acid must have been wizard-made to last this long. It was probably much stronger once. Your hammers probably wouldn't have lasted had we entered this tomb a century ago."
Egil eyed his hammers, the metal heads pitted and discolored, the prayers he'd engraved on the metal effaced.
"Time didn't spare us, Nix. You did."
Nix colored under his friend's praise. "You've done the same for me many times."
"Nevertheless."
Nix put a hand on Egil's shoulder, moved past him, and studied the second door. He sensed no ward, no bottom seal, no holes, no sign of any traps at all. And the lock appeared similar to the one he'd just picked.
"It's like the other. A simple lock to charm."
"Do it, then," Egil said.
Nix looked back. "You're certain? We just got a second chance. We could still walk away."
Egil shook his head, the set of his jaw hard under his thick beard. "This tomb and its idiot wizard-king owe me hammers and owe you boots." He eyed his pitted, discolored weapons and shook his head in disgust. "Give me your crowbar. These'll crack on the first skull they mean to split."
Nix took an iron crowbar from his satchel. Egil took it and tossed the hammers back into the darkness behind them. He took the lantern from its perch and aimed its light into the keyhole.
"Let's see what there's to see," Egil said.
Nix had the lock picked in under a fifty count. Counterweights descended, metal ground against stone, and the door began to rise.
The lantern light illuminated a domed, circular chamber beyond the door, the perimeter of the floor scored with deep, straight grooves. Statues of Abn Thahl stood at the compass points, the largest at due north. The statues featured the sand serpent and lamprey motifs favored by the Afirions, scaled forms coiling around the wizard-king's graven image. Painted images of still more serpents, lampreys, and even toothfish decorated the plastered walls, together with more pictoglyphs telling the story of Abn Thahl's life and rule. Fangs were everywhere in the imagery. Abn Thahl stood in the midst of the teeth and scales, unharmed, ruling not only men but the toothy creatures of the desert and sea, unleashing them on towns in great slithering waves to secure his rule. Some images had Abn Thahl with a serpent's head or a scaled body. Nix doubted the images were mere artistic license. He flashed back to his aborted education at Dur Follin's Conclave, to Professor Einz's droning voice as he lectured on magical history.
The Afirion wizard-kings were transmuters and summoners of accomplishment, routinely modifying their own forms, and commanding the spirits and creatures of the otherworld, with a particular affinity for the denizens of Hell.
"Nix?" Egil said. "You here?"
"Here," Nix said, shaking his head to dislodge the memory.
Abn Thahl's stone, gold-chased sarcophagus sat in the exact center of the chamber, the lid carved in his likeness. A large, irregular pit marred the floor before the sarcophagus, like a fanged mouth open in a scream. Atop the sarcophagus, glittering in the lantern light, stood the only treasure visible in the room: the golden, bejeweled idol of the sand serpent.
It was small enough to fit in a hand, but exquisitely made. Its ruby eyes and intricately crafted scales glittered in the lantern light. It was said to have been Abn Thahl's prized possession in life, a gift given him by his wife.
Right away Egil stepped into the room, and for the second time Nix recognized danger a moment too late. He grabbed for Egil's arm but the priest had already crossed into the chamber.
The carved lines in the floor flared orange and a flash made their shape plain, a shape Nix had recognized a moment too late — a summoning triangle.
Professor Einz would have excoriated Nix for missing so obvious a symbol.
A rumble sounded from deep under the earth, a vibration Nix felt in his bones, a shaking that put an ache in his teeth, stood the hair on the back of his neck on end.
"A summoning triangle," Nix said. "Godsdammit."
Egil hefted the crowbar and planted his feet. "Bah. It'll make things interesting."
A voice boomed in the chamber, deep and commanding, a five hundred year old echo of Abn Thahl, the words held in abeyance by the dead wizard-king's conditional magic, waiting only until tomb robbers broke the border of the summoning triangle.
"Vik-Thyss!" Abn Thahl's voice shouted in Ancient Afirion, the word profane, ominous. "Return and take those souls of these grave robbers!"
A sudden breeze gusted up from the pit near the sarcophagus, carrying the charnel reek of a graveyard, the faint tang of dry, reptilian stink.
"Shite," said Nix, as Egil set down the lantern.
A lamprey squirmed over the edge of the pit, larger than Nix had ever seen, its body as thick around as a man's waist, its heavy form thumping wetly against the floor. Intelligent black eyes stared over the fanged sphincter of its mouth. A second lamprey appeared beside the first and then…
Nix swallowed in a throat gone dry as an enormous, scaled, misshapen form lurched up, and Nix realized with horror that the lampreys were attached to the form at the shoulders.
They were its arms.