Venser stepped around the vulshok and went to stand next to Elspeth. Her eyes were narrowed and her lip was drawn in the corner into a snarl. She stared down at one of the dead Phyrexians.

In the barred window behind them the sound of thousands of clicking insects continued. The wide fire in the distance flickered and danced, giving off plumes of smoke that rose high in the absolutely vast room.

"Their claws are cold and cruel," Elspeth said. She was looking down at her hands as she spoke. She clenched one gloved hand. "Once they touch you it is hard to forget that feeling."

"Are you hurt?" Venser said.

Elspeth turned on him. For one quick moment Venser thought she would stab him with the knife she had just pulled out of the Phyrexian's eye. But the sneer quivered and disappeared. "I do not allow them to hurt me," Elspeth said.

The sudden stillness of the room was beginning to unnerve him. The huge s.p.a.ce and many others on Mirrodin, he realized suddenly, reminded him of when he was a child running in the streets and he found the set of a theatrical play. He and the other children he was with could never afford to attend such a play, but they found the set. The set builders had just left the premises and the back door was open. He and his friends wandered in and stood in the hush of the room with its small castle with an open side. There was also a tree built of wood planks. It was for appearance of course, and n.o.body was around. That's how the rooms felt to Venser there in the bowels of Mirrodin.

The clicking in the barred room started again. "Are they cruel?"

"I'm sorry?" Elspeth said.

"Are the Phyrexians cruel, by nature?"

Elspeth thought for a moment. "The prison I was in was little more than a factory. Conveyer belt ran from room to room. They like organs and flesh. They like to hold them and play with them. One of their loves is interchanging parts for other parts."

"I see."

"You do not," Elspeth said. "I was eight years old and I saw people ripped apart...slowly. The beasts are semisentient. They can play with you. They understand how to hurt and cause fear. They would force me to watch, only to see the look on my face."

"They are that aware?"

"Oh yes."

Koth had walked up to listen. "This has made you stronger. Now you are mighty."

Elspeth said nothing. She wiped the blade of her knife on the leather of her underjerkin before slipping it back into the scabbard in her boot. Then she looked over at the round portal next to the barred window. "Shall we look at that situation?" she said.

The guide had watched them, as he always did-unspeaking and very still. When they moved toward the door, he followed.

Unlike the other doors they had approached, the door opened to reveal a dimly lit room. There were three large holes in the metal floor that looked strangely fleshy, organic. They quivered slightly as the party stepped in the room. Another circular door opened into another, vast room. That other room was filled with large objects, hundreds of them. Each object was made up of an arm attached to a large cylindrical tank with a spine fused to it. There were literally hundreds, maybe thousands of the devices, and each arm was pushing down on something, keeping whatever was in the tank down.

Each tank had a small set of eyes near its top. The top of its tank was rimmed with sharp teeth, all pointing downward.

"What are those arms holding down?" Koth said, stating the question playing over each of their tongues.

Without warning a head sputtering black fluid popped out of the nearest cylinder. The arm attached to the device immediately moved its claw and shoved the head back down.

But not before Venser recognized an elf's ears.

"These must be propagation tanks," Venser said. "Breeding tanks."

"Phyrexians don't need to breed," Elspeth said.

Venser thought for a moment. "Perhaps they want to turn more beings to Phyrexians faster than normal," Elspeth said.

"I have never heard of such a thing," Venser said.

The guide was silent, watching.

"We should destroy them," Elspeth said.

"But how?" Koth said. "It would take countless hours. What we should do is move toward the surface and find others and then return."

"Koth is right," Venser said.

The vulshok turned with a shocked look on his face. "Did you just say I I was correct?" was correct?"

"Only in that we have to leave this place now," Venser said. "Not that we should travel to the surface."

"Oh," Koth said. "Well then, artificer, now that you've decided not to a.s.sist these poor beings," Koth's voice was rising as he talked. Venser had noticed that that was happening more and more frequently with the geomancer. The sweat had collected on his face, and the iron dust stuck to it. He looks like he's losing his mind, Venser thought.

"Which of the three holes will you take us down?" Koth said.

"We cannot help these creatures. Their fate is already decided. Destroying these tanks would only slow our path," the guide said.

The arm on the nearest tank flexed and its spines clicked as the tank readjusted its hold.

The guide led them along pathways hewn in the metal walls and ways hidden to all eyes save his. There was a quietness about the sylvok that made Venser uneasy. When he spoke, it was with an accent that he had never heard before. That made sense, as Venser was not a Mirran, but when he watched Koth out of the corner of his eye as the guide talked, the vulshok's face pinched itself in confusion at his accent. The fleshling blinked when he spoke, but she did that when anyone spoke, so it was hard to glean anything from that.

But the guide was certainly from Mirrodin. His coppery legs, green with patina, gave that away. However, he bore none of the signs of infection they had seen in the camp, and he was not what Venser would ever have called shifty or evasive. He merely never spoke or made noise. He was as silent a creature as a romei buck.

Once, after they had spent hours descending a series of foot- and handholds in the honeycomb support structure between two walls, they encountered a brace of Phyrexians and the guide did something unusual. They had finally found the floor and, with legs wobbling from their climb, Venser and the others moved toward a hole cut in the wall. Light showed from the hole, telling Venser that it led to yet another vast cavernlike room. Koth arrived at the door first. He caught sight of a pack of Phyrexians struggling over something just outside the doorway.

Elspeth pushed to the front-ready to fall upon them and quickly make good of the thing. But the guide put a light hand on her arm and pulled her back. He held one finger up to his lips and squatted against the inside of the wall.

They waited that way for what seemed like days. When the troupe of the enemy moved away, Koth was snoring softly on the floor, and Venser was quickly on his way to sleep. But the guide was on his feet and tugging on Koth's sleeve.

The room was of medium size. They entered it by cutting into a Phyrexian's intestine tube and forcing open the eye at the bottom. Standing in the middle of the room was a beast that reminded Venser somewhat of a horse, but with shiny metal plates for skin, and a head of glinting metal. Still, its eyes had the same dim expression of boredom he'd always disliked in horses. They entered the room and heard the tip tap tip tap of small feet scampering away. The guide froze, his expression blank. He looked around quickly and his nostrils flared. of small feet scampering away. The guide froze, his expression blank. He looked around quickly and his nostrils flared.

He may not have heard anything more, but there was plenty to see, Venser thought. The edges of the room were piled high with the neatly cut parts of Mirran creatures. What flesh they had on them was festering, and the air in the room was foul enough for the guide to pinch his noise. The horse in the middle of the room stood still, regarding them with pupilless eyes.

After the sound of the scampering feet, the room was absolutely silent except for what appeared to be a clock on the wall, ticking lightly. But Venser could not understand what it was timing. There was one hand, which was moving toward a red circle.

Elspeth moved forward, until she stopped near the creature at the center of the room. It did not move and Elspeth began to move around it.

The hand on the clock moved closer to the red circle.

What is the red circle? Venser thought suddenly.

The question had occurred to the guide also. He moved forward and motioned Elspeth back. She ignored him and looked intently instead at the shiny metal along the creature's back.

The fleshling, who was standing between Venser and Koth, watched the proceedings with as much of an impartial face as the guide. But her eyes jumped from the cut pieces, to the creature, and then back again.

The hand was four ticks from the red circle.

Suddenly the fleshling surged forward, ran to Elspeth, and shoved her hard away from the creature at the center of the room. Elspeth fell and so did the fleshling. The hand on the clock clicked to the red circle. At that moment there was a tremendous whooshing sound, and air blew in their faces as something large moved through the air nearby.

The Mirran horse fell to pieces before their eyes. Its parts clattered to the floor and Venser got a good look at just how deeply the metal that made up the creature's skin went until the meat and tendons took over. There was blood, but it pooled for only a moment before disappearing down drains that must have been hidden in the floor.

Elspeth looked up from the floor with wide eyes. The fleshling looked as though she might weep. But she did not weep, and the moment quickly pa.s.sed. She was on her feet the second after that. Elspeth struggled against her armor and finally stood herself.

"What?" Koth said, staring at the bloodied pieces on the floor.

They all looked at the guide, whose eyes were moving from place to place along the wall of the room.

"Why is it here?" Koth asked. "What do they get from doing any of this?"

Venser would have shrugged if he hadn't disliked the shrug as an expression. He understood exactly what Koth was asking. What were the Phyrexians after down in the bowels of Mirrodin? He had seen many rooms, and exactly none of them made any sense. For instance, how could the Phyrexians melt down and recast their dead in the furnace? Were they not made by transformation via a contagion? What was accomplished by melting down the metal bodies of the dead? Didn't Phyrexians grow their own armor? But, clearly, there were no answers anywhere down there. Only confusion and more questions.

The guide moved slowly to where the pieces lay. He looked carefully at the pieces before standing again and looking around the room.

He certainly looked like a guide to Venser. He certainly appeared to be genuine, and not a spy. But what was to say that the forces standing against them had not found a way to recruit a real guide?

The guide located an eyeway in the corner. After he cut it open with a long knife, they all moved through and into the darkened room on the other side.

And into another room, where they found no Phyrexians. The guide moved them along the outer side of the room and then through another eyeway. Then there were more rooms of metal and more exits. Sometimes the exits joined into long tunnels. In one tunnel the guide suddenly stopped walking. He stopped and fell to his hands and knees and began looking closely at the floor of the tunnel, using his fingernails to find any seam. Eventually he found something, and pulled up a hinged panel of metal. They clambered down through the hole and descended a strange ladder of what appeared to be ribs. After that, the guide took them along another pa.s.sage, and more after that.

"I don't understand," Koth said. "What do we accomplish by this running around down here? We have the fleshling. Why don't we go heal everybody on the surface?

"I am not sure there are survivors on the surface," Elspeth said, mirroring Venser's own thoughts.

"There are survivors," Koth said. "And they deserve our help, but we do not help them."

The guide raised his hand.

"Hush," Venser said to Koth.

Koth shot him an evil face in response to the chastis.e.m.e.nt.

Next they were in another pa.s.sage that descended at an angle that required them to squat to move. At the bottom was a doorway, barely visible in the blue glow from Venser's wisps. The doorway was not an eyeway, or a rough-cut hole, but a simple entranceway with smooth sides. This kind of entranceway was uncommon enough. But as soon as they stopped, Venser heard it, the odd sound the guide ahead must have heard: a sort of skittering. At irregular intervals something heavy bounced along the ground. But at other times there was no sound but the whoosh of wind.

Wind down here? Venser wondered.

When the guide moved his hand forward, they advanced. Soon they were at the entrance, and Venser turned off his wisps, so they were once again in darkness. Silently they each felt their way into another vast room. Venser could tell by the echoes from his feet. Water dripped off to the right somewhere. The air was still and stagnant. Like almost every room they had moved through, it smelled vaguely of rotting meat. It was strange air in these underground rooms: it always felt to Venser as though some creature was crouching in it, with its twisted spine as tight as a spring, and ready to pounce.

But there was no attack, and soon Venser's eyes began adjusting as best they could to the almost total darkness. If there was any light in the room, Venser was not sure where it would have come from. But still his eyes found enough of what they needed to make out something: white blurs.

It was hard to say how far away the shapes were. A hand grasped his, and Venser felt what he thought must be the thick glove of Elspeth's sword hand. Understanding what was supposed to happen, Venser reached back and found Koth's strangely smooth palm and held it.

Hand in hand in the darkness they moved. At first Venser thought they were moving toward the blurring shapes, but then they turned and walked until they b.u.mped into the wall. Then the guide, for Venser hoped it was the guide who was leading them, turned them left and they skirted the wall.

As they walked, Elspeth's hand squeezed tighter and tighter. A couple of times Venser had to disengage his hand and then find Elspeth's hand again, lest she crush his knuckles and fingers.

But traveling along the wall still took them near the blurred shapes. They became larger and larger until Venser recognized them for what they were. Elspeth's hand tightened dramatically, and then let go of his and went, Venser a.s.sumed, to the grip of her sword.

Venser could see why.

The white blurs were actually strange Phyrexian angels. All white, with what appeared to be a porcelain exoskeleton, covered with chips. Pink tendons wormed from one section of porcelain to another, apparently holding them together. They had tattered metal wings that flapped, keeping them aloft. Their heads were all porcelain, with black round holes for eyes, and a thin black line for a mouth.

And between them they were throwing something round and s.h.a.ggy. They were throwing the round shape as fast as they could, in a joyless game that Venser could not begin to understand. In that vast room they stood playing catch. Venser thought back to the conversation they were having earlier. Why was any of this here?

One of the angels missed its catch, and the ball fell to the ground with a dull thump. It rolled over and Venser recognized it for what it was. He looked away from the tortured line of a mouth and a flattened nose.

The angels noticed them at that moment, and shot up into the darkness. Venser could see their blurs, and a moment later an angel shot out of the dark and raked a claw down his body armor, knocking him over with the force of the blow. The pain was sharp as he rose, but didn't feel critical enough to stay on the ground.

By the time he was up, Koth was grappling with one of the angels, who flapped its wings, pulling Koth with it into the air. Venser snapped his mana to his raised fingers, and furls of power radiated out and softened the metal of the angel's wings, so they drooped and the angel fell. The impact gave Koth the opportunity to wrap his hands around the angel's head and begin beating it against the floor.

Off to the side, Venser could see Elspeth and the second angel brawling. Surprisingly quick, the angel was able to dodge Elspeth's attacks. The white warrior began to move her own mana to her sword for a thousand-cuts-in-one strike. But the angel put up its hand and Elspeth's weapon dropped from her fingers.

She reached down for the sword, but the angel surged forward and palmed Elspeth's head in its claw. It turned, raised Elspeth off the ground, and threw her away into the darkness, leaving her sword glittering on the ground.

The angel looked down at the sword and c.o.c.ked its head to the side. Venser began running for the sword. He did not think about what would happen if the Phyrexian had the weapon, he just ran. By the time he reached the place, the angel had bent over the sword and was reaching down with its claw. Venser kicked the sword and it went skittering away.

He'd been struck hard plenty of times in his life. He was raised in Urborg, after all, and his childhood had been far from perfect: his father had broken his nose when he was ten, and that blow had knocked him out for almost an hour. He'd fought in the insurrection there and been wounded in the abdomen with a spear that went through him, knocked him way back, and pinned him to a tree. That one had hurt.

But the blow that the Phyrexian lashed out with was worse.

Elspeth saw it from the shadows. She was on her knees feeling for her blade and happened to look up. Her own head pounded where the Phyrexian angel's metal claw had squeezed, but otherwise she was unhurt. She looked up in time to see the Phyrexian's strike: Venser cartwheeled limp through the air like a tossed doll, his helmet spinning off to the side.

He landed with an unsettling thud. Elspeth turned back to her search. She moved to where she thought Venser had kicked the sword. By the time she found it, the angel was tearing the armor off Venser's chest. It did not sense her approach, which was good because she was terrified to look it once more face-to-face. But still she could not strike an opponent's back. She tapped it on the shoulder with the tip of her sword, but it did not turn. Having fulfilled the Etiquette of the Field with the tap, she wasted no time with enchantments, but simply swiped the creature's head neatly off its shoulders, cutting the tops of its wings off in the process.

Yet it continued to move, to claw at Venser's unmoving form. Without eyes its movements were gross and imprecise. Such imprecision alone was enough to make Elspeth kill it again. She swung again and severed it at the waist, cutting off the bottoms of its wings, and in that way it fell.

She shoved the angel's torso off of Venser and kneeled over him. Off to the side his helmet sat with a tremendous dent the rough size of the angel's claw. Elspeth turned back to Venser. He was breathing, she was glad to see. She felt his head and found a large lump above his ear. Koth and the fleshling appeared. Then the guide.

"What's this now?" Koth said.

Elspeth ignored the knave. She put her hand on Venser's forehead. Down her arm trickled the mana she had in reserve. It moved into her hand and settled into Venser's forehead.

"This would not have happened if I were leading," Koth mumbled. "We wouldn't be down here with mutes and trackers, tearing angels apart."

"I am not mute," the fleshling said.

Elspeth concentrated more mana into Venser, trying to wake him from his slumber. Please Please, she thought.

Venser's eyes popped open. They looked around wildly, and then settled on Elspeth's face. He brought his hand to his face and wiped his hair out of his eyes. His hair is long now His hair is long now, she thought. Hadn't it been short when Koth talked her into kidnapping him? How long have we been in the bowels of this place? Hadn't it been short when Koth talked her into kidnapping him? How long have we been in the bowels of this place?

Venser sat up and winced. The random slashes from the where the angel tore off his chest armor bled freely.

"They are not deep," Elspeth said, smiling. Something she had not done in days, maybe months. It felt strange to her face.