The landscape could not have been more different from the frozen northlands they had left mere hours ago. A sea of waving sand stretched out before them, flat save for a low ridge off to the east. The sun was setting but beating down hard enough to make the landscape shimmer with heat haze. As Beren paused to take in the strange sight, the rumbling began to grow worse, so badly it seemed that the sand beyond seemed to shake. Dust drifted down from the ceiling and Beren and Jocasta leaped down onto the hot sands. The structure they had emerged from was a simple columaded doorway with a flat roof that seemed to protrude from the side of a huge sand dune.

“I can still feel…” Jocasta began but Beren held up a hand, then squatted to place his hand flat against the sand.

“It is like an earthquake,” he mused.

“Beren,” Jocasta interrupted, but he waved her down.

“Almost like…”

“Beren!” Jocasta shouted, grabbing his head and lifting his chin to the sand in front of him. A low spot had appeared a hundred feet infront of them and was sinking fast. It looked for all the word like water running down an unseen drain. The depression raced out towards them and there was a sudden feeling of sand rushing past their feet. Jocasta spun to see the entire dune behind them beginning to slump towards the depression, now over thirty feet deep and grown rapidly. Millions of tons of sand was pouring towards the hole at a pace so fast it seemed a dream.

“Get back!” Beren shouted but the ground was already gone from beneath their feet and they tumbled down into the yawning pit, rolling down the incline and struggling like swimmers to stay atop of the cascading waves of sand. The sand sucked at them as though trying to draw them under and Jocasta kicked and thrashed wildly. Beren, heavier by far was having a harder time, his powerful body serving only to dig him in deeper as they carrened deeper. Cursing in several languages (deliberately excluding Old Pharonic) Jocasta extended her hand and shouted a few arcane syllables, a wall of fire burst from her palm and fused a ten foot section of sand into dark glass, with a yell she threw herself onto it, yelping with the heat it still projected. Beren managed to grab the edge which broke off in jagged shards, then burst from the sand like a man kicking himself free of a frozen pond. The pane of glass rode atop the sand like a raft, albeit a raft careening into a whirlpool.

“Up here!” Jocasta shouted and Beren managed to crawl to her, the cooling glass now painful but not actually causing burns. Jocasta shifted her weight and the glass sheet changed direction, turning slightly as though to circle. By carefully managing their weight they managed to begin circling the declivity, whirling around it like suds in a draining sink.

“Gods above,” Jocasta exclaimed as they made their third circuit. It was difficult to see the door they had emerged from in all the flying dust but she could just make it out, no longer in a dune but at the top of a massive pyramid of sandstone, the sand from which the whirling sandpool was clearing.

“Swing out wide and…” but Beren had already seen it, the cut wide towards the pyramid and at the last moment both leaped from the glass raft to impact on the side. Beren caught hold of the rock and braced himself against the sand still pouring down from above. Jocasta managed to grab hold of Beren’s leg and cling on for dear life. After a minute or so they were above the falling sand level and Jocasta was able to uneasily find purchase of her own. Far below them the sand drain was nearing its end. As it did so more structures, smaller pyramids and temples, partially ruined by uncounted eons beneath the sand, began to emerge. Impressive statues of half men half beasts, some thirty feet tall were exposed. Great obelisks of black marble, carved with inscriptions in Old Pharonic emerged like the rootlets of some vast plant.  It was like watching the desert bury them but in reverse. They both stared in fascination as the last of the alluvial sand vanished into a great fissure at the center of the complex. Jocasta wasn’t sure how, but was entirely certain that it had been designed to do exactly what it had just done. The engineering and mystical expertise it must have taken were staggering. Abruptly everything was silent.

“Well, you don’t see that coming down the road from Bloomsberry fair,” Jocasta commented inanely. 

“What is it?” Beren asked in wonder.

“An ancient city, filled with treasures and arcane knowledge beyond worth,” Jocasta said dryly.  An ominous sound that might have been part of the excavation spell but sounded for all the world like an evil chuckle echoed around them.

“You want to get out of here?” Beren asked.

“I thought you would never ask.”