"And what do they feel like?"

"They feel like they are dancing."

Unfortunately, Venser realized exactly what she was describing. He had felt it after he started drinking his potion. He had not felt that strong a reaction since he started depending on it.

Something screamed and they turned in time to see Elspeth hammer her blade down on the head of a large Phyrexian. As they watched, the creature's two parts peeled apart to the chest, and it fell back, kicking. It was the last of the beasts, and Elspeth put her sword tip down and leaned heavily on it, gasping for air, her shoulders stooped.

Koth was lying on his back with his arms and legs splayed, huffing. The bodies of the fallen enemy lay in stinking piles all around. The far-away glowing side of the cavern flickered.

Venser stood unsteadily.

"We must walk," the fleshling said. "We must." She turned and began walking toward the glow. Elspeth nodded and began stumbling after the fleshling, unbelievably dragging her sword behind her. Venser followed. Koth stood up from the floor and ambled after them.

They slept where they fell, each taking turns on watch. When Venser woke he went looking for water pools left from the dripping of the upper levels. He found some shallow pools to drink from. The others woke and Venser showed them the pools and then they all walked on, clanking steps on the metal floor.

Venser's hand was still shaking, and he kept it out of sight from the others. The fleshling's eyes were still glowing, and Elspeth and Koth, Venser noticed, did not move too close to her.

Time meant nothing in the dim cave, lit from the far-off glow. Without a sun or a moon it was impossible to keep track of time. But to Venser it seemed as though they walked for hours, perhaps days. Twice they stopped their march to sleep. Once they found a small pool rippling with warm, stagnant water which they fell on. The fleshling could not bend her back well. She drank out of Venser's helmet. As she was drinking Venser could not help but imagine what water out of his filthy helmet would taste like. He would never find out, that much he could guarantee.

By what might have been day four-or perhaps only ten hours-the glow had become noticeably brighter. They could easily see the expressions on one another's faces. Koth's face was smiling. There was the particular stench of sulfur in the air.

"I know raw metal when I smell it," Koth said.

He was correct. They kept walking and found a river of rosy material flowing along a wall of pipes, which were sweating in the sweltering heat. The flow of molten material ran along the side of the wall for a time before making an abrupt turn left and pa.s.sing through a hole.

"Do we follow the river?" Elspeth whispered to Venser.

"What did you say?" Koth said.

"I only inquired if he thinks we should follow the lava."

"That is not lava," Koth said. "That's ore."

"Why is it here?" Venser said.

Koth shrugged and looked back at the river, smiling. After watching it move for a time the vulshok turned back.

"I will lead us from here," he said, casually. "I will bring us up to the surface."

"What is the furnace layer?" Venser said.

"Must be the area under the Red Lacunae, under Kuldotha."

"Can you take us there?" Venser said.

"Maybe. If I choose."

"Well, choose to take us there," Venser said. "Lead the way. That Tezzeret said the Phyrexians in the furnace layer are different than the others."

Koth grunted and looked away, the smile still large on his face.

They walked on with Koth strutting at the lead. For a time they followed as close to the river as the heat would allow. But when it disappeared they walked along the wall. Koth looked closely at the wall as they walked. Every so often he would stop and touch the wall. Venser, on the other hand, kept his eyes on the floor. In the light from the molten ore he could clearly see a part of the wall coming up with many scuffs, some of them deep, leading to a section of the wall.

When they reached that part of the wall, Koth continued walking. Venser stopped. He carefully shrugged out from under the fleshling's arm. He went to the part of the wall that the scuffs seemed to move to. The pipes were mostly rigid there. But after some feeling around and moving some of the more pliable conduit aside, he must have touched a trigger because a doorway opened. Koth walked back.

"Excellent," he said. But he did not look pleased, Venser thought. The smile he had earlier turned into a frown. "I would have found that eventually."

They gazed into the doorway. Inside was a largish, brightly lit room with no apparent ceiling. On the other side of the room were a set of metal stairs against the wall. They extended up and up until they were lost to the light in the room.

But the room was not empty. Two large Phyrexians were standing against the wall. The dark iron of their long claws was corroded, as were the plates on their backs and shoulders. But their helmets were off and thrown to the side. Their tiny white heads, which looked like st.i.tched-together bone, bobbed as they made guttural sounds to each other. Other pieces of their metal coverings were cast aside in the swelter of the room. Venser could see their chests and necks, where tattered metal met chafed flesh.

They watched a writhing lump of something on the floor. It seemed a partially phyrexianized elf. It still had the ears of an elf, but plates of b.l.o.o.d.y, patinated copper pushed out of its skin and wove in with a darker metal to make a musclelike sheathing. The transformation was far from complete, and the elf convulsed on the floor, staring with eyes as black as oil at the dark ceiling.

But the Phyrexians seemed utterly absorbed in the process. As Venser watched, one of them lumbered up and pulled one of its claws across the elf's bare neck. The blood that flowed out was mostly black. By the time the Phyrexian had moved back to its original spot, more of the copper and dark metal sheathing had wound itself up the elf's arm and to the slice, covering it.

Venser felt a shiver of disgust move up his spine at the sight of the elf's flesh turning to metal. But anger replaced that feeling. The fleshling shifted her weight to his shoulder as Elspeth detached herself. She stepped into the room and drew her sword quietly from its sheath. The Phyrexians did not notice her at first, and by the time they did Elspeth had gained the middle ground and was upon them. Venser had seen her many times use her sword ability to strike from every angle at once. Elspeth took exactly two swipes with the glittering blade. The first separated the Phyrexian's neck and arm from its body and sent it caterwauling away, and the second was a downward strike that split the other's head and shoulder from the neck offering up a virtual geyser of black, frothy material from the cut.

The smell of the material that poured from the thrashing Phyrexians' bodies put Venser in mind of the acrid reek of a crushed bug.

Elspeth moved to the elf next. The wretch watched her approach with black ichor clouding her eyes. With a flick of her wrist, the white warrior knocked the elf's head away.

Elspeth stared down at the headless body jerking around on the floor. She turned and went back to the fleshling, who put her arm over Elspeth's shoulder.

Venser made it light when he blew out a puff of wispy shapes that danced and flickered blue before their eyes. In the ghostly light Koth looked at Elspeth and Venser and spat. They were reeking and sweating, with a crazed look about them.

The smell was nearly unbearable. Koth began breathing through his mouth.

The artificer stood and followed Koth, and the blue will-o'-the-wisp followed him. "It is getting warmer. We are on the right path, obviously."

Small metal creatures, no larger than hummingbirds, suddenly appeared around a fallen Phyrexian, eating the meat on it. There were hundreds of them. Venser squatted down to watch them work. There was no sign of phyresis in these small metal creatures. They were neither sharp looking, nor possessing of tense, asymmetrical bodies laden with teeth.

"So this is how cleanup occurs on Mirrodin," Venser said. "I knew the ecosystem had to clean itself somehow."

"Breakdown artifacts," Koth said. "They devour whatever is small enough to be devoured. I have never seen so many in one place."

"Are these found on the surface?"

"Fewer and fewer lately."

"I wonder why?" Venser said. "And why they have no taint of phyresis on them?"

Koth shrugged. He looked closely at Venser. The artificer did not look well. His helmet was off and his sunken cheeks and pale skin unnerved Koth, who thought flesh looked disgusting enough even in the best case.

Elspeth stepped up next to Koth. She gazed around the huge room. So large was the room that Venser's wisp did not even reach to its edges-shadows formed and disappeared among the intestinelike pipe work that made up the walls.

"You think that the little silver demon went this way?" Koth said.

"I have to think not," Venser said.

"It could be following us," Elspeth ventured. "It did before."

"You mean Tezzeret sent it to keep an eye on us before," Koth said.

"That could be," Venser said.

"Do you smell that?" Koth said. He held his nose between two thick fingers.

They looked down at the Phyrexians. "All that smell cannot be coming from them," Elspeth said.

"They must have been guarding something to have been standing there," Venser said.

"Don't think I want to find it," Koth said.

But Venser was already at the wall, pushing and probing as he looked for the door that must surely be there. After a snap snap, a small door opened and a terrible stink wafted out.

"Why would we go into that place?" Koth said.

"Because they were guarding it," Elspeth said, drawing her blade and glancing at the dead Phyrexians.

"Exactly," Venser said. "And this may be the correct way, for all we know."

Holding their noses, they entered.

Unaccountably, they were walking through festering meat that reached a depth of mid-calf in places. The smell was absolutely disgusting, and Venser found himself breathing tiny breaths through his mouth. All words came out with a nasal numbness. Still Venser felt the gore pushing up from his stomach.

"This way," he said, pointing into the blackness ahead. Far ahead Elspeth thought she could see a faint light. When she pointed it out to Venser, he snapped his fingers and the blue wisps disappeared. There was a glow in the huge room-a white glow that sifted up through the darkness of the far corner.

"We should advance on this carefully," Venser whispered. "There might be many rooms like this one, and if we start a fight now, it might raise an alarm or follow us all the way to the furnace level."

"The alarm we must a.s.sume has already been raised," Elspeth said.

"Maybe," Venser said.

Koth stopped walking, or at least Venser could not hear his footfalls squishing next to him anymore.

"Wait." Koth said. "How far are we going?"

"We are finding Karn."

"And let me guess, you know where he sits?"

"I have ideas where my friend and ally would choose to sit, yes."

"And where would that be?" Koth said from directly behind, his voice raised a decibel.

"I think Karn would favor a room deep in the middle of his creation. A nerve center position," Venser said.

"I am needed on the surface," Koth said. "That's where I'm going. My people need me. My people are fighting a foe..."

Elspeth and Venser stopped walking.

"How will you leave?" Venser said.

"How will you ascend?" Elspeth said.

Koth was silent for a moment. "I will jump."

Venser put up his hand. "Quiet," he said. "We are nearing the glow."

But Koth was not quiet. "You know, you are not the leader of this group. I am. I organized this expedition. I talked Lady Elspeth here into coming. I did all of that. I direct this little nightmare."

Venser shook his head in the darkness. "This is larger than you and yours," he said. "This could concern more planes than a few. We must contain the spread."

"That is all fine and good," Koth said. "But don't try to yank my culpers. You are here for Karn. I don't think you care a bit for this plane. You made some pledge to this golem and you mean to keep that promise."

When Venser said nothing, Koth continued. "I've never met an artificer with a sense of duty, but there are wonders under all suns, we vulshok say. Why not be honest and tell us both that you are here for personal gain?"

"Why would you think that," Venser challenged, "when you brought me here?"

Elspeth was quiet. Venser could not be sure if she was on the edge of gagging in the fester, or if Koth's words had struck a chord and she was reevaluating his motivations. But he could not ask her at that moment, for they neared the lighted area.

At that side of the room the piles of meat were quite old, and the breakdown artifacts covered them from top to bottom. Their iridescent backs rippled and clicked in the dim light as the party neared. But the small machines were not what they looked at. A single glow orb hung in the air. Behind the orb, set back in the overgrown walls of conduit and ridges, like the spinal run of some unfamiliar creature, stood a round doorway. There was no handle that Venser could see. A long table stood in front of the doorway, mired halfway up its legs in the sloppy fester. On the table stood many dented metal bowls of differing sizes. A large bowl sat at the end of the others. It was of a very dark metal. As Venser watched, tiny motes of yellow, like fireflies, spun around its edges in seemingly perpetual orbit.

"Darksteel," Koth hissed beside him.

Venser squinted at the bowl. Darksteel, yes. He knew of it from his studies in metallurgy. A virtually indestructible metal found only on Mirrodin. Extremely difficult to work and very rare and expensive to buy. The bowl had something in it. From where he was crouched, Venser could not see what it was. The smaller bowls contained other, b.l.o.o.d.y things.

The sound of movement from behind made them freeze. Out of the corner of his eye Venser watched as a small form moved around a mound of meat. It walked with its head cast downward, but its jagged profile was unmistakable. The rows of crooked teeth filling a thin jaw completed the picture. It had eyes-glittering black things, four of them, but they were very small and appeared to not be of much use, as it pa.s.sed within an arm's reach before moving toward the table. Once at the table the small Phyrexian placed what was in its hand in the first bowl. It was muttering something as it did so, in a tongue that made Elspeth's lip curl.

The first bowl turned a deeper purple and the creature scooped the fist-sized object into the next bowl, muttering again. The next bowl became suddenly bright silver. The little creature picked up the heart. Carefully the Phyrexian raised its right hand and out of its first finger a long, thin blade slid. The cut that the small creature made was thin and deep. The blood came from the heart and the Phyrexian held it over the third bowl. When the blood hit the bowl it sizzled and popped. The blade disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, and the creature took the heart in both its hands. It hinged the two sides open and closed at the cut line, like a mouth in a b.l.o.o.d.y little pantomime. That went on until the Phyrexian, apparently satisfied, dropped the heart unceremoniously in the second to last bowl.

Koth glanced at Elspeth, and then back to the strange creature. Venser watched as the Phyrexian opened another one of its fingers and sprayed a fluid into the second to last bowl. It let the cut heart sit in the fluid for a long time. Long enough that Venser found his eyelids falling. Then, with sudden and blinding speed it seized the heart and, as though the thing were struggling, it stuffed it into the darksteel bowl.

A moment later the Phyrexian turned and walked back out to the meat piles to find another heart. When the Phyrexian was gone the artificer crept from behind his heap of meat and to the round door. It did not open. He pushed on the door's soft sides and waved his hand before it, but still it did not open. The darksteel bowl was behind him. Venser tried not to gaze in, but he saw what was inside it anyway-many other hearts all sliced.

When he turned back to the door, the small Phyrexian was there. It stood very still, with its long, black face c.o.c.ked at an angle like a bird eyeing something shiny. Venser also stood absolutely still. He tried to breathe mana into himself, but found, to his horror, that he did not have what he needed for a jump. The jump he had made with the fleshling had all but drained him to the last. To make matters worse, his heart was beating fast in his chest. Then it was beating faster still. The small Phyrexian jerked its head completely sideways so the hole in the side of its head that served as an ear was aimed at Venser's chest. It was with a certain concern that Venser noticed that the creature's hand was tapping out the beat of his speeding heart on its emaciated metal thigh. The artificer's heart was practically hammering on his chest.

Venser turned to run, and the Phyrexian raised its hand. The artificer stopped in his tracks. He closed his eyes and felt the grip of the creature's mana on his heart, which raced and skipped along in his chest. He had one chance. He reached out with the mana he had left, and formed a link with the beast. For one horrid moment he saw into the thing's mind-a murky place of blood and constant screaming and hunger and no light. Venser turned that part of his brain down. Then he began to drop the mental walls he kept constantly around his mind to protect from telepathic attack. If he did it correctly, the link he had with the creature's mind would allow the mana directed against him to move through and back to the sender, as if in a circuit. Sometimes it even worked. Once, when attacked by a mind-mage trying to steal one of his creations, Venser had tried to form the link and pa.s.s the thief's attack back to him, only to suffer a minor stroke when the attacker blocked his own mind.

So, if the sender threw up its own wall fast enough, then the full charge turned around and came thundering back.

Venser dropped his last mind barricade, and a moment later the Phyrexian stood upright and began jerking wildly. Venser made his hold tighter and tighter, until the thing sunk to its k.n.o.bby knees in the stench and began to shriek.

The sound was so loud Venser almost lost his concentration. It echoed off the walls and down the cavernous room. Venser tightened his mind, and then tightened it again. A moment later the Phyrexian had black fluid running from its eyes and the holes of its ears pitched forward and did not rise again.