"That was not my mother."

"She looked real enough for me. Part of her at least."

"Not my mother," Koth repeated decisively. The vulshok's tone of voice warned against further pursuit of the subject.

"Since our worst thoughts proved true, and Phyrexia has reached this metallic sh.o.r.e, then our only hope is to find Karn."

"Karn?" Elspeth said. She'd moved into the doorway so soundlessly that Venser had not detected her. Very nice Very nice.

"His friend," Koth said. "Who brought him to Mirrodin. Some unknown unknown Mirran." Mirran."

"He created Mirrodin," Venser said. "He is the artisan who made this plane. The Silver Golem himself."

They said nothing for a time. "That is not true," Koth said. "We vulshok have our own stories."

"It is true, I a.s.sure you."

"Venser," Elspeth said. "Why would he be here? And if he is, then he has surely been consumed. And in that case, we do not want to find him."

"Last I heard he was traveling here. He sent a message that none should follow him. He is my friend and I would have followed him."

"Eventually?" Koth said.

"Yes," Venser said, staring darkly at Koth.

"What is our next course of action?" Elspeth said.

Venser turned to her. "We don't know just how badly this place is infected yet. I have not seen many of the telltale signs of septic infiltration. He could be somewhere fighting the Phyrexians even as we speak."

Elspeth nodded once to acknowledge that that was indeed a possibility. Koth, on the other hand, frowned.

"Silver golems and Phyrexians are both foreigners and will be expelled as soon as possible," Koth said. "You will see that Mirrodin does not stand alone. Her children will fight for her. People like my comrade Malach. We will find him. He can tell us how bad the infection has become." Koth walked out the door.

They moved though the darkness on Koth's iron slabs. Koth stopped to whisper words of power and wisps of light danced in the air, lighting the surrounding walls as they made their way deeper into the canyon.

Without warning, it started to rain so hard that Koth could not see the outline of the mountains silhouetted against the sky, and the group had to stop. They laid up in a small draw under a slag overhang as the rain fell hard, spattering the rust mud over their boots.

When the rain stopped, they rode the iron boulders again.

"Where does the water go?" Venser said. "It is gone, all that fell. There are no pools."

Koth c.o.c.ked his head to the side and spat.

"What do I know of water?" he said.

"I heard gurgles."

It was Elspeth who had spoken. Venser turned to her in the darkness. Only a white form gliding behind.

"Yes, it must drain," he said.

"Hush your nattering," Koth said. "We are here."

The sky had a slight greenish tint, Venser thought, as the boulders came to a stop. For some reason it was brighter there, as if the suns were about to rise. It was bright enough, for instance, to see a small hut soldered to the side of a peak that shot straight up and high into the air. A light burned in the hut and Koth stepped off his boulder and made for it.

"Why is the air green?" Elspeth said.

Koth stopped and looked up. Then he looked down at the metal ground. Long blotches of darkness were clearly visible on the metal, even in the low light. "It can't be," Koth said.

He ran the rest of the distance to the hut, and into the doorway. A moment later he was back out again.

"Malach!" Koth yelled with his hands cupped around his mouth. The noise echoed off the cliffs and boomed back at them.

"Koth," Venser said. He was standing away from the hut, behind a small heap of iron rubble, his eyes looking at something on the ground. He bent. "I'm sorry, but I think I found your-" Venser was turning a corpse over by the shoulder, when the limp form gave a violent shudder and lunged for his neck.

Venser recoiled and the creature came away with only air. It struggled to its knees and lashed out with its misshapen claws. Half of it was pocked metal and the rest was twisted meat, Venser realized in horror. A plate of metal covered its face where its eyes would be. And its stretched skull ended in a grotesque, fang-packed maw that it jacked wide in a silent scream.

Suddenly there were four more of the monstrosities, charging out from behind a hill-their rotting bodies sticky in the green air.

Elspeth drew her sword and in one fluid motion separated the skull from the nearest one. Black fluid spattered against the side of Venser and the creature's body crumbled with a dull thud to the metal ground. Instantly the others were upon them. Koth put up his arms and narrowly escaped having his face bitten as he pushed the thing back with his stony forearm plates. He brought his fist forward in a ruthless blow that crumpled the thing's face plate and sent it spinning back.

Two zombies tackled Venser and the three rolled over each other. They came out on top and pressed their gaping jaws at Venser's neck. The disgust and effort showed on the artificer's face as he struggled to shove them away. Their jaws snapped as they began to press closer.

A slight blue tinge began to glow around Venser, and in the next moment all three forms were suddenly gone, leaving only a wisp of blue.

Venser and the bewildered zombies appeared in the same position high, high above the glimmering expanse of Mirrodin. The next instant they all three began to fall. The creatures thrashed as they fell. But a blue glow appeared around Venser again and he blinked out of existence...and back to the ground, where he stood up and brushed his clothes off.

Elspeth heard a sound and turned as a large form lumbered toward her. Its snags of teeth were as long as her head. It towered above Elspeth, dripping dark slime as it squeezed between two large boulders. Elspeth moved her greatsword to her left hand and then to her right, judging how to attack. From her indecisiveness, it was clear to Venser that she was not altogether sure she could best the adversary.

Koth stepped next to him. The geomancer brought his hands together in a decisive motion. The boulders on each side of the thing slammed together, crushing the beast and sending a spray of black ichor over them all.

Just then the two that Venser had teleported into the stratosphere came crashing to the ground and burst into wet pieces.

By the time Elspeth had cleaned and sheathed her greatsword, Venser was looking closely at the dead, if, indeed, they had ever been alive enough to be called dead.

The pieces of them that had been made of flesh did not bleed, so dried out was the meat. Their metal parts were pitted and corroded. The articulating metal plates, like fitted armor, covered where their eyes would have been. A series of tubes thrust out of the ribs. The larger of the creatures had more tubes.

"What are those?" Venser said, prodding one of the tubes with a gloved finger.

"They are vents," Koth said, looking out into the green vapors swirling around them. "They release this necrogen gas, which is what creates more of them. They are called nim."

"Nim," Venser said. He pressed on the seam where a nim's metal arm grew onto its misshapen body, where one of the roped muscles of its back transformed into a conduit of metal that wound up its bicep. "Fascinating."

"Not how I'd put it," Koth said. "And it is very bad that they are here. The Mephidross has reached its dark fingers far indeed if the nim are on our doorstep." He stared down at the crushed giant nim. "If I were them I'd be hiding."

"Why," Elspeth said.

"Because the Phyrexians are coming for them as well," Koth said. "They will take them away and experiment on them, just as they would any of us."

Elspeth nodded, as if seeing the truth of the statement. But in her mind she could feel a cold shackle on her own ankle, and hear the howls of pain coming through the barred window at the top of the door to her cell. She suddenly smelled the odor she'd detected in Koth's mother's house-the tinny, dry reek of Phyrexia. A deep chill ran up her spine.

"What do you think?" Venser was saying to her.

Elspeth sniffed and looked down at her ichor-spattered feet, half surprised not to see a shackle attached to her ankle.

"Should we make for the Vault of Whispers?" Koth said. "It must surely be there that the phyresis starts." When Elspeth said nothing, the vulshok stamped his foot in the murky water. "This place was part of the Oxidda Chain when I left this plane. It must be the Phyrexia's doing. We must cleanse them at the Vault."

Venser looked up. "It spread that quickly?"

Koth nodded, not deigning to answer Venser's question directly.

"Yet I see no Phyrexia on it," Venser said, looking back to the nim's parts, half submerged in the filthy water.

Once again on the boulders, Koth turned them north and led them above a small path into the rougher country. Soon the metal under them became steep and they made their way to a higher plateau. Elspeth held her sword close to her chest, still shivering at the thought of the shackle she'd imagined around her ankle.

Koth was down with his ear against the ground. "There are sounds," he said finally.

"How far are we from the Vault?" Venser said. He was standing nearer to the wisp lights that he had brought out to light their way, looking closely at an area in the side of the Oxidda, where jags of metal were jutting out.

"Perhaps ten angles of the sun," Koth said with his ear still to the ground. "Perhaps less."

"I smell smoke," Elspeth said.

"We are near the hut of a shaman," Koth said. "It is her fire you smell. It is a good sign. It means she is not gone to the nim or Phyrexia, but I will not stop there."

"Why?" Elspeth said.

"She is mad, that is why."

"And what are the sounds you hear?" Venser said.

"It is hard to say," Koth said.

"And their numbers?"

"Twenty at least. Accompanied by something I have seen in a nightmare, I think."

"Nim, Phyrexians, villagers?"

"These are not villagers. These are creatures. They drag parts as they wander."

Venser went back to looking closely at the metal cliff face they were standing next to. Then he said, "Come help me with this."

Venser had them sc.r.a.pe at the metal cliff face, which crumbled easily.... Koth with his igneous forearm growths and Elspeth with a boot knife. Venser used the edge of his helmet. A strange, crumbly material sifted down as they sc.r.a.ped. A bluish brown hue.

"Irrenphor," Venser said. "A byproduct when certain metal alloys are heated and cooled. This material grows on slag. It is part mineral and part mana life."

Just then Elspeth made a small spark when her knife caught some of the iron as she sc.r.a.ped. Venser stayed her hand with one of his.

"It is part metal, part life, and all explosive," explosive," he said. "Work carefully." he said. "Work carefully."

Elspeth and Koth chipped, digging out chunks and culling them with the edge of their gloved hands into small piles, which they moved into larger mounds. The whole time Venser stood back, watching the process and making small marks with a thin metal quill on a wad of papers he kept tucked away, as a breeze ruffled the hem of his tunic.

Finally the piles were painstakingly pushed together into a single as high as a man's shin. Venser carefully tucked his papers away before he got down on his knees beside the pile. It glowed slightly in the dark night. Venser began crumbling the thicker chunks of material between his fingers. When the others stooped to help, Venser motioned them away. When he was finished a pile of gritty powder lay before him.

"This will give them something to remember," Venser said.

A long, guttural sound, like an animal being choked, cut the night. So shocking was the cry that a group of small mouselike creatures on metal legs burst from a hole in the mountain and fled disturbed into another hole. Koth ran to the edge of the plateau.

"Where will they come?" Venser asked, calmly. "And how?"

Koth did not move his gaze. "They will come here," the vulshok pointed to his left. "And here."

"I have not seen much of Phyrexia," Elspeth said. "Their numbers are surely smaller."

Venser looked up briefly. He was separating the pile in to many smaller piles again. "Do not think what you see reflects the extent of the phyresis." He shook his head. "We could all be surprised."

Venser stood and brushed his hands down the front of his leather and metal tunic.

"Will it work?" Koth said.

"Well," Venser said. "I do not run fast. On the other hand, I don't have to run faster than them. I only have to run faster than you."

Koth looked at Venser before chuckling. Venser smiled.

"Well, I am quick like ionized lightning," Koth said.

"Then help me move these piles to the edge."

They could hear more strangled sounds and a strange grinding scream in the darkness as they moved the piles. There was a sudden metallic clambering.

"Quick," Venser said.

There were three piles, each the size of Koth's foot. They stood near the precipice. A moment later two claws topped the edge and a head followed. Red eyes glowed in deep sockets as the creature jerked and convulsed for better purchase. Black oil streamed over a face composed almost entirely of mouth, with huge, looping fangs jutting at strange angles. It shuddered and regurgitated a jet of blackness at Elspeth who raised her foot for a kick at its head. The Phyrexian snapped open the mechanism of its mouth, which popped to double its size and caught Elspeth's foot and jerked back. She fell, but managed to bring her sword down and split the creature's skull in half.

"Back," Venser yelled. Elspeth crabbed backward just as the creatures, with eyes of blood, began clambering over the edge of the plateau.

What scrambled over the edge was terrible to view. Koth inhaled sharply with the shock of the moment. Venser fought to keep from fleeing. At the head of the Phyrexians was a creature double the size of a man but stooped and with ma.s.sive skeletal shoulders of metal and stretched skin. A black spine twisted through its body, and rough jags jutted out at irregular intervals from the grotesque twist. The thing's huge claws and teeth dripped with black vomitus and it shook as though caught in the throes of a most violent fit.

"I never thought," Venser managed to say. "That they would be so..."

"Awful?" Elspeth said.

Venser nodded. Before this sojourn on Mirrodin, he had never seen a live Phyrexian, had seen only their artifacts and remnants, and with the handful of the beasts that stood before him, he wished he could still say that. They were more haphazard than he thought they would be. And they appeared smarter than he would have believed. Their dark eyes glittered in their deep sockets. He turned his head in disgust and stepped back.