Early the next day, with the clarity of morning, Hans prepared himself for the second part of his "audit." He approached the excavation site, where the wooden framework rose above the shaft. There he saw heaps of fractured stones, unnaturally displaced, their edges splintered as though they had been wrenched violently from the earth. Among them he noticed fragments of hardened clay: the very plugs miners used to tamp down a charge of gunpowder before lighting the fuse.
On the ground he found a charred length of hemp fuse, brittle with age. He picked it up cautiously between his fingers—it still smelled faintly of sulphur. The Jesuit leaned over the shaft and discerned, on the stone, a scorched surface blackened with smoke, clear evidence of an explosion that had shaken the pyramid's foundations. He paused, reflecting. This was no work of mere opportunistic looters: they had brought mining techniques to carry out a systematic plundering. Questions circled in his mind about what the Society of Jesus could be seeking with such a display of resources.
"Which Apostolic Order authorized all this?" he murmured.
After checking once more the knots and the strength of the rope, the Jesuit ventured inside. He slid down slowly, clutching the wooden frame that stood above the shaft, applying the climbing techniques he had learned long ago in the mountains of his native Schwarzwald. The descent was long and silent, until at last his feet touched solid ground.
Before him stretched a tunnel blasted open with explosives. From his leather pouch he drew a flint and, striking it against the tinder, lit the wick of a small oil lamp. With its yellowish glow he pressed forward: the darkness closed in around him, and the air smelled of earth, moss, and antiquity. Behind him the light of the jungle faded, and before him lay only absolute blackness.
He halted at the threshold of a corridor. The wavering light revealed inscriptions carved into the tunnel walls: ancient glyphs, the faces of Mayan chieftains, and warriors clad in jaguar skins, bearing shields and macuahuitls. In several murals the story of Hun-Hunahpú was told.
Hans crossed himself silently and whispered a brief prayer in Latin, followed by words in an ancient tongue of his family—no one knew where it came from, but it had been handed down for generations—before pressing into the unknown, guided by the trembling glow of his lamp and the weight of history that had led him here.
"An i bellon i taure a i orod, úva-nin, a tiron nin bo i lend naid. (By the gods of the forests and the mountains, guard me and guide me on the right path)."
Once commended to the gods, he moved cautiously through the corridor, which seemed to stretch into infinity, descending ever deeper into the bowels of the pyramid by way of stairways.
The air changed at once: denser, damper, heavy with the scent of earth and ancient stone. His footsteps echoed on the uneven flagstones as he held his lamp aloft. Shadows danced upon walls covered with Mayan hieroglyphs—figures of ancient gods with faces of jaguar, serpent, and death.
As he advanced, he realized the architecture seemed designed to mislead intruders. Passages split with no apparent logic, stairways plunged steeply into ever darker galleries, and the echo toyed with sound, amplifying it with disquieting force. In places he had to crouch to pass through narrow openings carved into the living rock; in others, the walls pressed close, as though the temple sought to swallow him whole.
At last he reached a funerary chamber. By the light of his lamp he distinguished murals painted in red, still visible despite centuries of damp, depicting a chieftain being worshipped by a host of courtiers offering sacrifices and reverence. On the central wall, a sculpture showed a figure in ceremonial garb, holding aloft his severed head with both hands.
"Hun-Hunahpú…" Hans whispered.
He lowered the light to the slab that sealed the sarcophagus. It bore the stylized engraving of a tree and had been pried open by the force of picks and mallets, leaving fragments scattered across the floor. Remnants of plunder were everywhere, along with scattered bones. Driven by his innate curiosity, Hans peered through the gap hacked into the slab—wide enough for a man to pass. Inside the sarcophagus he saw the opening of a secret passage. He resolved to enter. It was no small feat, but fortune favored his slight frame. Carefully he passed the lamp through, pushing it just far enough to keep it upright and avoid being swallowed by eternal darkness. He shifted stones, bones, shards of pottery, and other funerary remains. In doing so, his hand was cut by the edge of an obsidian knife. Sucking at the bleeding finger, he crawled through until he emerged into a new space.
When he raised the light, he found himself in a corridor whose walls were adorned with unsettling frescoes: gaunt figures and skeletons whose empty sockets seemed to gleam, baring their teeth in menacing grins.
"Some passages return the gaze…" Hans muttered, unnerved.
He breathed in the stale air of the corridor, closed his eyes, and recalled his grandmother's old tales. Then, softly, he recited a fragment of those forgotten stories:
Hans continued on cautiously until he came to a great octagonal chamber. He entered carefully, his eyes roaming over the space. Scattered chaotically across the floor lay funerary objects—jars, vases, richly carved wooden chests, along with statuettes and forgotten European tools, many broken. At the center stood a pedestal bearing a dodecahedron-shaped object enclosing a sphere within, still intact, untouched by the looters. Approaching, Hans thought of the Roman artifacts unearthed along the Rhine. A chill passed over him, as though reality itself had grown tenuous.
Then his gaze lifted to the walls. The frescoes there were painted in a style foreign to the Mayas, more akin to Roman art. They depicted Mayan figures in ceremonial garb beside strange beings with pointed ears and unfamiliar attire, their serene eyes fixed upon the viewer.
"This… this does not belong. How is it possible?" Hans murmured.
He pressed on, careful not to stumble over jars or statuettes, and noticed fragments that resembled pieces of armor. One fresco stretched across multiple walls, showing a battle between the Mayas and these long-eared strangers clad in armor, wielding strange weapons that emitted light against an army of the undead. Another mural showed them mounted on flying machines, assailing bizarre ships and fortresses.
The Jesuit raised his eyes to the ceiling, where a black sun had been carved, its fractured rays radiating outward. Once again he felt a pang of disquiet: he had seen this symbol before, on ancient Germanic monoliths hidden deep within the Schwarzwald's shadowed forests.
With the faint glow of his lamp, Hans traversed the chamber until he stopped before a fresco of a full-length figure wearing a helm with glowing eyes, brandishing a raised sword from which bolts of lightning burst forth, subduing his foes. Hans stared at it in bewilderment.
"I mablon i thôl vaetha i gwedh na i thaur, a lín dagorf laid bain pedir bo amar i cuinar (The bearer of the helm shall forge the covenant with the damned, and their legions of the undead shall walk upon the land of the living)," he whispered, fearful of being overheard. "My Lord… what is all this? What anachronism does it represent?"
His foot struck a pile of loose stones and earth. Shining his lamp, he saw it had been dug out of a wall. As he drew near, he realized explosives had been used, and discovered that the looters had opened a passageway. Compelled by curiosity, he stepped inside.
The walls here were bare, and stalactites hung from the ceiling where water had seeped through over the centuries. Hans pressed onward, seeking the purpose of this corridor, until he came to a metal door. With great curiosity he ran his hand across its surface. On the wall beside it, he saw a cartouche inscribed with symbols he recognized—characters like the runes carved upon forgotten monoliths in the forest.
"But… how did you come here?" Hans asked aloud, stroking the reliefs.
As his wounded finger traced a square figure with a symbol at its center, a series of strange echoes startled him. At that moment, he thought he had already sated his curiosity as "auditor" and decided it was time to return to daylight and the world of the living. But then came the sound of ancient mechanisms, followed by the muffled grinding of gears. Terrified, he stumbled backward, tripped, and fell to the ground. His lamp rolled and nearly went out.