As the golden mask came away in Allen's hands, the air in the burial chamber seemed to drop twenty degrees. The figure underneath wasn't the heroic, eternal king depicted on the murals. This was the raw, ugly reality of three thousand years of preservation.
The skin was a deep, sickly mahogany, stretched so tight over the cheekbones that it had begun to split like parched earth. His eye sockets weren't empty; they had been packed with a thick, obsidian-colored resin that caught the light of Allen's wand like a pair of dead, oily pools. Linen rolls were stuffed into the nostrils, distorting the nose into a flattened, subhuman shape.
But the most jarring part was the mouth. The upper lip had retracted in death, exposing a row of prominent, jagged buck teeth. They were yellowed and uneven, a grotesque mirror of the massive stone statues that had guarded the entrance.
A wave of air hit Allen—a sour, heavy stench that smelled of ancient cedar oil, stagnant bitumen, and the dry, metallic tang of very old blood. It was the smell of a tomb that had forgotten what it was like to breathe.
Allen instinctively clamped his mouth shut, his stomach doing a slow, nauseous roll. Behind him, Nancy made a sound like a wounded bird. Her face went ashen, her eyes rolling back into her head as she swayed on her feet.
"Nancy!"
Allen caught her just before her skull hit the obsidian plinth. He didn't hesitate, pulling a vial of a potent Pepperup-Antidote hybrid from his belt. He tipped her head back and poured the liquid down her throat.
"Ugh—bloody hell! That's... that's battery acid!" Nancy sputtered, her eyes snapping open as she went through a violent fit of retching.
"It's a wake-up call, Nancy. Drink it all or the fumes in here will have you seeing hallucinations you won't walk away from," Allen snapped, handing her the half-empty bottle.
Nancy's hands shook so hard the glass clinked against her teeth, but she gulped it down. She looked at Allen with a dazed, grateful expression, her usual arrogance completely burned away by the terror of the room. "Thank you," she whispered, her voice barely audible. "I... I've got it."
She looked past Allen, and her face suddenly froze. Her jaw dropped, her eyes widening until the whites were visible all around.
Allen spun around, his heart hammering against his ribs. He saw Ron.
The ginger-haired boy wasn't looking at the gold anymore. He had picked up the golden mask Allen had set aside and, with a vacant, glassy-eyed expression, he was slowly lowering it onto his own face.
"Ron, put that down!" Allen yelled, stepping toward him. "It's been sitting on a corpse for thirty centuries! Do you have any idea what kind of necro-curses could be on that?"
Ron didn't answer. He didn't even seem to hear. As the mask touched his skin, his wand slipped from his numb fingers, clattering onto the stone floor with a sharp ting. His entire body began to spasm, his limbs jerking like a marionette with tangled strings.
"Ron! Talk to me!" Allen reached out to grab the edge of the mask, but the moment his fingers touched the gold, he felt a jolt of ice-cold energy that nearly paralyzed his arm. The mask wasn't just sitting on Ron's face; it was fusing to it. The gold seemed to liquefy at the edges, sinking into Ron's skin.
Ron stopped shaking. He stood perfectly still, his head tilting at an unnatural angle. When he spoke, his voice wasn't his own. It was a layered, echoing sound—like a dozen voices whispering from the bottom of a well.
"Tetru... Teteki... Kri... Khara!"
Allen's blood turned to ice. He recognized those phonetics. It was the phonetic sequence from the door—the Great Awakening.
"Nancy, get back!" Allen roared.
A heavy, dragging sound came from behind him. Shhh-clunk. Shhh-clunk.
Allen pivoted on his heel, his wand raised. The mummy was out of the coffin.
It moved with a stiff, agonizing slowness, its linen-wrapped joints popping and cracking like dry kindling. The resin in its eyes seemed to liquefy, dripping down its cheeks like black tears. It didn't look like a king; it looked like a nightmare woven from bandages and rot. It stared at Allen, its buck-toothed mouth stretching into a horrific, triumphant grin.
Thump-thump... thump-thump...
The sound of its footsteps was the only thing filling the chamber. It raised its arms, the brittle linen rustling with a sound like dead leaves. Allen leveled his wand at the creature's chest, the word Confringo on the tip of his tongue, ready to blast the thing back into the afterlife.
Suddenly, a pair of hands clamped around Allen's throat from behind.
The grip was inhumanly strong. Allen felt his airway shut down instantly. He caught a glimpse of the golden mask in his peripheral vision. Ron—or whatever was wearing Ron's body—was choking him.
Allen's wand slipped from his hand, clattering into the pile of gold coins. He clawed at the hands, his boots scraping against the floor, but the 'Ron' entity was a wall of muscle and ancient malice. The mummy was inches away now, its sour breath filling Allen's senses. It reached out a shriveled, claw-like hand, its fingers twitching as it prepared to touch Allen's face.
Then, the pressure on Allen's throat vanished.
Ron let out a choked grunt and collapsed forward, his body slumping into Allen before sliding to the floor. Standing behind him was Nancy. She was holding a heavy, mahogany jewelry box, her knuckles white as she gripped the lid. She had swung it like a mace, catching Ron right at the base of his skull.
She stood there, gasping for air, her eyes fixed on the mummy. "I... I think I killed him. Allen, I think I killed Ron!"
Allen scrambled back, rubbing his bruised neck and gasping for oxygen. He grabbed Nancy's arm, pulling her away from the reach of the staggering mummy. "You didn't kill him, Nancy. You saved us. He's a wizard; his head is thicker than it looks."
The golden mask hissed as it detached from Ron's face, clattering to the floor like a discarded shell.
The mummy didn't seem to care about the loss of its puppet. It let out a sound—a dry, rattling wheeze that eventually formed into a sharp, rasping cackle. "Thank you... my little slave," it hissed in a language that shouldn't have been English, yet somehow vibrated directly into their minds.
Nancy's scream died in her throat. She stared at the moving corpse, her brain refusing to process the reality of a talking mummy.
"Who are you?" Allen demanded, his voice raspy. He was slowly backing toward where his wand had fallen, keeping his eyes locked on the creature.
"Who am I?" The mummy straightened its back, its spine popping with a series of sickening cracks. There was an undeniable air of arrogance in its posture, a regal authority that even the rot couldn't hide. "I am the Shadow of the Sun. I am the Lord of the Two Lands. I am the great Pharaoh Tutankhamun—and the greatest Prophet to ever tread upon the sands of time!"
He puffed out his chest, the ancient amulets on his collar clinking together.
Nancy, seeing that the mummy was more interested in talking than eating them, felt her terror recede just enough for her curiosity to kick in. She clutched Allen's sleeve. "What is it saying? It sounds like it's gargling gravel."
"He says he's Tutankhamun," Allen translated, his eyes searching the floor. "And that he's been waiting for us."
"I have endured the silence for far too long!" Tutankhamun proclaimed, his voice growing stronger with every second he drew breath. He raised his arms as if embracing a sun only he could see. "Centuries of dust, my slave! I saw your arrival in the stars before your ancestors had even learned to build a fire!"
He gestured with a clawed hand, and Ron's wand, lying near the plinth, twitched before flying through the air. The mummy caught it with practiced ease. He held the hawthorn wood up to his resin-filled eyes, a glint of genuine excitement appearing in those black voids.
"As a reward for the one who broke the seal," the Pharaoh announced, his voice booming through the chamber, "I shall grant you a mercy. You shall not die. Instead, you shall have the eternal honor of serving as my personal slaves as I reclaim my world."
Allen's eyes found his wand—it was tucked under a pile of emerald-encrusted bracelets three feet to his left. "He thinks he's going back to Egypt to rule," Allen whispered to Nancy.
"In those bandages? He'd be arrested in five minutes," Nancy hissed back.
Tutankhamun was lost in his own glory. "I am resurrected! My power is absolute! My wealth shall buy the souls of every king in this new world, just as I ruled four thousand years ago!"
A groan came from the floor. Ron sat up, clutching the back of his head and blinking back tears of pain. He saw the mummy standing over him, holding his wand. He didn't think about the horror of the situation; he didn't think about the prophecy. He just thought about the fact that he was a Gryffindor and someone had his property.
"Hey! You ugly bag of bones!" Ron shouted, scrambling to his feet. "Give that back! That's my wand!"
Ron actually lunged forward, reaching out to snatch the wood from the mummy's hand. "It's mine! Give it!"
Tutankhamun let out a cold, wheezing laugh. "You have served your purpose, little one. You won't be needing tools anymore."
He leveled the wand at Ron's chest, a green sparks beginning to sizzle at the tip.
In that split second of distraction, Allen moved. He dived for the emerald bracelets, his fingers closing around the familiar wood of his wand. He didn't even stand up; he fired from the ground.
"Expelliarmus!"
The spell hit the mummy with the force of a speeding truck. Tutankhamun was blasted off his feet, his light, dried-out body flying across the room and slamming into the side of the golden sarcophagus. Ron's wand spun out of his hand, and Ron dived for it like a seeker going for the snitch.
Tutankhamun scrambled to his feet, his tattered linen bandages trailing behind him like the tail of a comet. He looked shriveled, his body little more than a framework of bone and preserved muscle, but his eyes were burning with a new, dangerous light.
However, to Allen's utter confusion, the Pharaoh didn't strike back. Instead, his hand flew to his chest, clutching a small, purple amulet that was tucked deep within his burial shroud. He pushed it further into the linen, his movements frantic and protective, as if that single piece of jewelry was more important than the entire mountain of gold surrounding them.