Hun Came and Vucub Came

Two death gods share the throne of Xibalba: Hun Came, One Death, and Vucub Came, Seven Death. Beneath them the lords likewise work in pairs, each pair holding a fatal affliction in its portfolio - Xiquiripat and Cuchumaquic corrupt the blood; Ahalpuh and Ahalgana raise pus and dropsy; Chamiabac and Chamiaholom, bearers of bone staffs, waste people to skeletons; Ahalmez and Ahaltocob strike people down in their own houses; Xic and Patan seize travelers by the throat so they die on the road vomiting blood. Four owls carry their summons: Shooting Owl, One-Legged Owl, Macaw Owl, and Skull Owl.

In the Popol Vuh the two lords, enraged by the stamping of a ballgame overhead, sent the owls to summon Hun Hunahpu and Vucub Hunahpu down for a match. The brothers walked straight into every snare: they greeted the dressed-up mannequins seated among the lords and were laughed to scorn; they sat on the guest bench and leapt up scalded, for it was glowing stone; in the House of Darkness they let the torch and cigars burn away. The next day they were sacrificed and buried in the ballcourt, and Hun Hunahpu's head was hung in a calabash tree - which at once fruited so thickly the skull could hardly be told from the gourds, and Xibalba declared the tree forbidden.

When the Hero Twins came down a generation later, every device of the two lords misfired. A mosquito made from a hair of Hunahpu's shin bit its way down the assembled court and harvested all twelve names; the killing houses failed; even the head the bat took in the Bat House was swapped back. At the last, the twins in their beggar-dancer disguise performed the marvel of sacrificing a victim and restoring him to life, and the two lords, beside themselves, demanded to be the next subjects. The twins killed One Death, then Seven Death, and revived neither. As the court groveled, the twins passed sentence: Xibalba would receive no more clean offerings, only the smoke of burnt sap, and would keep company with none but wrongdoers.