"The Vault of Whispers," Koth said. They were stopped in a stinking dell very near the tower, and all around them the calls of creatures unknown clinked in the failing light. The tower itself loomed overhead.

"Has it always looked like this?" Venser said.

"Yes. Always," Koth said. "That middle section has always been rotted out."

"But what keeps it from toppling when the middle has a hole as it does?"

"That network of strings. They are lead. There is much lead in this place. The lead holds the halves together. That and the power of the Black Lacunae."

"What is that?" Venser said.

"The Black Lacunae?" Koth said. "It is where the dark power under the surface of Mirrodin shoots upward as a geyser of water might. There was no stopping or slowing the flow at this place, and those that have given themselves to dark foolishness come to this place for power. We vulshok have a saying, 'Steel is hard, but a fool's head is harder.'"

Venser chuckled at that. He looked back at the lead and iron mountain that held the Vault, and the smile fell from his face. It really was an amazing thing to see. It seemed to be constructed of dull gray veins wrapped around struts of melted lead. The green gas that floated ominously out of the chimneys of the other mountains did not float as much out of the top of that mountain. Rather, a powerful dimness rose as heat waves might and moved up into the air before mushrooming out over all of the land. The top was corroded away to such a degree that only fingers of lead remained. The very air seemed to be breaking down the mountains, and despite himself Venser had to wonder what his own lungs looked like after breathing the air.

"What does this air do to us?" he said.

Koth was squatting out of the hot winds, sitting back on his haunches and poking absently at the ground with a long sliver of iron. "It turns us into nim." He said. "If we stay long enough."

Suddenly Venser c.o.c.ked his head. "Do you hear that?"

A roaring echoed off the mountain.

Aware that the vulshok was watching him, Venser hardened his face into an expression he hoped conveyed a sense of command. Truth be told, he had not felt in command at all lately. With the vulshok constantly undermining him, and the uncertainty of the mission they had kidnapped him to accomplish, Venser was not altogether sure any of them would make it off of this fascinating plane. He had already resigned himself to die before he could planeswalk away, spreading the sp.a.w.n of phyresis to other places. As he looked out over the vista, he wondered if the others had the same commitment.

The green necrogen gas suddenly swirled around in a dense shroud. Through the mist, coming over the rise, the outline of a monstrosity materialized. A huge, vicious-looking Phyrexian lumbered into view. Roughly snake shaped but with bare ribs and articulated metal cabling, the smell of rotting flesh preceded it, and long appendages ending in sharp spikes swung as it loped forward. Its eyeless head turned toward them.

"We are close now," Koth said. "Let us destroy this beast and be done with it."

As the creature had not detected them yet, Venser and Koth lay sheltered in a raw divot next to a slough and awaited its arrival. When the beast had moved between them the Planeswalkers attacked. But it was stunningly fast, and snapped around in an instant, extending an appendage Venser had not seen from its belly. The segmented limb shot at Venser's head, knocking him out of the aura of blue he had wound around his head.

Koth wasted no time in extending his arm and shooting a column of rock from his forearm in a loose stream. The Phyrexian knocked the javelin of rock aside and in the same motion swiped Koth off his feet and into an outcropping.

It was Koth who woke first. Blinking in the low light, he struggled to remember the events that had brought him there. He appeared to be lying on a table. The unconscious form of Venser was on a similar table next to his. The vulshok turned to move, only to realize that he was bound at the wrists and ankles.

The room around him was lit only in faint patches and from unseen sources, but what he could see did not fill him with joy. The walls were made entirely of many coils of fleshy tubes and dull metal pipes held flat by webs of pale sinew.

Koth began pulling at his restraints. He turned his face so he could see the thick metal shackles. Well constructed, they did not budge. Out of the corner of his eye he suddenly made out a strange shape, small and human in form, but perfectly smooth and silver, as if made entirely from the most perfect chrome. The figure was squatting in the corner, regarding him with the utmost calm. When the creature had Koth's attention, it stood and beckoned him with one hand before squeezing between some pipes and disappearing.

Koth had no time to think about the strange creature. Around him, the horrible walls dripped with black oil and the ceiling appeared to be held up with curved columns constructed of the twisted bodies of vaguely familiar, yet unknown creatures. Dark fangs and exposed ribs intermeshed with die-cast iron plates and shards of whitest bone.

Koth closed his eyes. He pulled the power from the earth into him. Smoke rose from his head, his fists balled, and his craggy forearms began to animate. Sharp spurs stabbed outward, shearing the shackles. He sat up and yanked on the shackles binding his ankles until they gave way with a tremendous snap.

He was free.

"Venser!" Koth said. He was off his table and shaking the artificer in a moment. "Venser!" The artificer could teleport out of his restraints, Koth knew, if he could just wake him.

But he would not wake.

A clank cut the air behind him: the sound of something banging metal against metal, and he knew something was there, that something was coming. Koth cast his eyes around for a place to hide. The walls seemed to be almost alive-the intestinelike pipe work glistened green-black in the low light. He did not relish the idea of hiding in the wetness of the pipes, but he was able to spread open a void in them and in the next instant he slid within.

From between the pipes, Koth watched as a section of the wall on the far side of the room split. Two Phyrexians stepped into the room. One of them had huge, gruesome meat hooks for hands, which it held up before it as it stumbled toward Venser. The other smaller Phyrexian had dozens of small arms, each ending in a filthy, bent syringe. Both of the experimenters' bodies were nothing more than metal skeletons wound around and through with fleshy swaths. Their too-small or too-large limbs gave them an unsettling, off balance appearance that made Koth want to gag. Or maybe it was the wall, which was dripping on his neck as he watched the Phyrexians approach Venser who lay strapped to a table.

They walked around Koth's empty table, seeming to make no note of its vacancy, and stopped to look down at Venser. Suddenly a s.p.a.ce in the ceiling opened above Venser. A metal arm girded with pink muscles extended downward. A mouth apparatus with spines surrounding it hung at the end of the appendage. Ichor dripped over Venser's chest as the device centered itself on his neck. As Koth watched, the device opened like a nightmarish flower.

Koth felt the anger rush up like a geyser from his feet. And by the time the energy reached his shoulders he knew he would be absolutely unable to control it. The power reached his forehead and he exploded out of the wall, sending flechettes of the pipes and metal substructure shooting out at the Phyrexians.

The experimenters fled backward, howling.

Koth ran to Venser. The device on the arm seemed to sense Koth's movement. It turned toward him and as he came near enough, clamped onto his neck with a metallic snap snap.

Venser's eyes fluttered open. Above him the sinewy arm of the device was extended into Koth's neck. The vulshok struggled, pulling against the device that gripped him.

In one fluid motion, Venser teleported to Koth's side, took hold, and began to pull at the clamper near its mouth pincers. Then he started snapping parts off the device in a mad attempt to disable it.

"I'm taking us out of here," Venser said. Koth's face was blue as he nodded.

Venser closed his eyes and took hold of Koth's upper arm. A blue mist began to filter out of his pores.

The device attached to Koth's neck clicked and a panel displaced in its side. A curved, armored syringe slid smoothly out of the panel and pointed its dripping tip at Koth's right eye.

At that moment the walls of the chamber began to tremble, and then shake thunderously. The right wall began to vibrate. Venser turned to the wall, a look of resignation pulling at his face.

A cut appeared, shearing off the conduit-work walls. Bright white light flooded in the dark room through the cut. Then another cut appeared and more light glinted in. With a deafening smash a hole appeared and the room became blindingly bright. In the light the forms of the two Phyrexian experimenters disintegrated to nothing. Silhouetted in the new entrance stood the shining form of Elspeth of Bant.

Dull gray hills showed behind her and Venser could smell the necrogen gas of the Mephidross around her as, with her sword shining like a rising star, she charged forward. Koth was motionless on the floor. With a sweep of her sword, Elspeth sheared the device in half. The two parts that fell away shrieked and writhed on the pocked metal floor, leaving Koth gasping and holding his neck.

Elspeth stepped back into a ready pose and surveyed the room. Seeing no other danger, she stood up and sheathed her sword.

"Elspeth," Koth choked. "...of Bant."

Elspeth pursed her lips and nodded. "There are more of these beasts near a cave on the outside. Let us end this now and see if we may hammer them once and for all."

"Where were they?" Venser said.

"There," Elspeth said. She pointed to one of many holes in the very center of the mountains, at base level.

"I have been here once before on reconnaissance," Koth said. "And that doorway seemed to be used more than most, but vermin creep out of any hole. You know how vermin are. Let us move closer," Koth said.

"They are here," Elspeth said. "Be ready."

They crept along a dell until it trenched, and then they crawled on hands and knees to a place close to the base of the mountain. They lay in the warm, sc.u.m-covered water until Venser finally spoke.

Then they felt it. The ground began to shake slightly. The filthy water began to ripple. Soon small waves were coursing its banks. The mountain above them began to groan. Venser sunk as deep as he could in the black water. Everything about his being said fly fly. But he mastered himself and did not move. The banging became rhythmic and strong, like a battering ram on the door of a castle, and then it turned to a deafening thunder. The ground trembled.

And the Phyrexians came. First one stumbled through a hole in the mountain and stood blinking in the open air. Then another came from another hole. A third appeared from yet another hole. More came after them. Soon a steady line of bulky, toothy beings of skeletal angularity with long tooth-crammed mouths were streaming out of each entrance. Then the flow increased again. Phyrexians were crawling out of the holes, one over the other, clawing forward. It stayed that way for a time, with the entrances pressing out shadowy, hairless beings like material through a sausage press. Some survived, and those stood outside screaming their guttural choking cries into the green murk, while other Phyrexians fell upon their wounded brethren in a mad feast.

"Is that all there are?" Koth murmured. "They are not a large force."

But there were more. Soon the cave entrances split at the corners and still larger amounts of Phyrexians came pouring out. Larger and larger beings emerged: twisted trolls with long bony faces, tiny eyes and huge mouths sheltering long teeth. They swatted other Phyrexians out of the way. Hulking great soldiers made of tattered metal and raw flesh with tiny, st.i.tched together skulls lurched from the bowels with long fingers of glittering metal. Behind them a vast array of strikers that the companions had seen earlier, with heads formed into the notched tip of a spear, and broken, gnashed teeth chipped and bleeding black. At the head of the ma.s.s swaggered a herald with a grim standard held aloft: its own small head impaled on a spike. Wispy scouts hopped from head to head, and behind them all tumbled wave upon wave of ma.s.sive brutes as large as three men with claws as long as legs, which they swung as they walked, laying open their own kind and themselves in the mayhem.

"We must get closer," Venser hissed.

Koth turned and stared at the artificer.

Venser leaned forward in the water, so his stomach sc.r.a.ped the bottom of the slough. The artificer walked himself with his hands along the slough. Reluctantly, the others followed. Soon they were close enough to the menagerie to smell the filthy reek wafting from their rot and rust in their moist folds. And the sound. They made the oddest creaking as they walked. It was an ominous sound that Elspeth remembered well. The sounds and the smells brought back such memories that she could not make herself move along the slough to join the others. As soon as she did, by touching her sword, she wished she had not. The closer she got to the Phyrexians, the more she felt again like a little girl, held captive in their oubliette.

The gross, twisted expressions that played across the Phyrexian faces were what affected her most. For something with half-sentience, at best, Elspeth thought, that leer was unnerving. It spoke of all manner of callousness...of slyness and cruelty. Of extreme, painful carelessness coupled with playful curiosity. She put her head under the filthy slough water and held it there until she thought she would burst.

When she raised her head the others were gone. She spied them sheltering in a raw divot where they must have crawled from the slough. They were not farther than two lengths of a human body, but she would not follow, not with them them on the move. on the move.

She realized too late that she had risen to her knees to look for the others. That, coupled with her soiled white garb, made her easy to see. A single, garbled cry went up from a marching Phyrexian, and Elspeth fell back into the water. She walked herself backward along the slough and behind a slight turn, and dropped lower in the water.

A moment later the beast appeared. A brute trooper, as luck would have it, with tiny, glittering eyes set close together in a head st.i.tched more than once it appeared. Layer upon layer of armor crisscrossed every part of its body so it squeaked as it fell remarkably fast to its knees next to the water. It smelled the slough and bit at the water until it ran out between its transparent teeth.

Another, rougher cry went up and the trooper stood and dashed back to the ranks. Elspeth rested her head against the metal bank and took deep breaths until her heart stopped feeling like it might beat up and out of her throat. When her breathing was normal, she carefully tore off her white tunic, so her tarnished armor showed.

And so it was. By later in the day the flow of Phyrexians had not lessened in the least, but the light from the suns had changed. Shadows appeared, and Elspeth was able to crawl to the divot the others were sheltering in.

"...An invasion," Koth was saying.

Venser nodded.

"I am not going into the camp of the enemy. Our numbers aren't enough. Our battle is in the hills with the others, snapping off parts of the main force. This is how a smaller force..."

"I know how to fight a large force," Venser said, cutting off the geomancer. "But you cannot hope to save your plane with that technique. Not with a foe like this."

Elspeth agreed with Venser. But, to be fair, she was not altogether sure that any technique could save Mirrodin after the display of numbers and strength she was seeing.

Venser continued. "Only Karn has even the smallest chance of setting this straight." Now the artificer looked directly at Koth to speak. "Your people and all the beings of this plane will fall to this force. This number is larger than any I have ever heard of. They must have been sp.a.w.ning under the surface for years years.

Koth squinted back the way they had come. The entrance Elspeth had hacked through the leaden side of the mountain was a small dark hole far behind. But in that moment Koth saw a shiny form standing in it.

"We should travel into the Vault through the room where Elspeth found us," Koth said absently, his eyes still on the silver creature. He blinked and it was gone.

"Why?" Venser said.

"I have just seen the creature that was following us, I think. I saw it in the room when I first awoke also." Koth pointed. "It is in the hole that Elspeth cut when she came for us."

Venser turned to look, but the creature was gone.

Koth stood in a crouch and began moving back along the slough toward the hole. Venser watched him go.

"You who are such tight comrades?" Venser asked Elspeth.

Elspeth watched as the Phyrexians continued moving. There were were fewer of them than before, she noted. "Not that such things are your business in the least," Elspeth said. "But we met only days before he kidnapped you." fewer of them than before, she noted. "Not that such things are your business in the least," Elspeth said. "But we met only days before he kidnapped you."

"Where did you meet?"

"Fighting for coin in a pit."

"You?"

She smiled. "Yes, me. I have need of coin as does anyone."

"Did you win against the geomancer?"

"As a matter of fact, I did," Elspeth said. "Does that surprise you?"

Venser shrugged. "A bit."

"There are other parts of me that you may find shocking."

"Such as?"

"I was imprisoned by the Phyrexians once."

"How did you escape them?"

Elspeth looked back before speaking. "Through despicable means," she said. "I am embarra.s.sed to speak of it now. It was long ago."

"You were a child?"

"Yes."

"Children do not act despicably," he said. "They are simply children doing childish things."

Images flashed suddenly into Elspeth's head, images of blood and intestines strung across a large room. The length of the intestines shocked her as a little girl, but still they strung them across the room when a new prisoner arrived. They inserted their sharp fingers into the belly and out came a line of intestine, which they drew out as thread from a spool. And she, she moved from cell to cell, relatively free, pointing out the ones who would die soon to the Phyrexians, who lacked simple common sense. She aided them. Even though they did not speak, they followed her for some reason, maybe because she had been there so long that they saw her as part of the prison and not a fun toy to be experimented upon. But she saw it all. Every horrible thing that can be done to a human.

"Children are children," Venser said.

Elspeth blinked. If he only knew. Perhaps he should. It had been with her for so long, carried on her shoulders during all her travels so that, perhaps, with almost certain death approaching, she should relieve herself of the weight.

"When they became interested in me, I would divert their attention by pointing out better candidates to be experimented on. Sometimes women, even children. Old men. They all cried. They all wailed." She felt like covering her ears from the wailing she heard when she closed her eyes to sleep at night, the same sound she heard first thing when she woke.

Words had escaped Venser. He opened his mouth to say something, only to close it again.

She could tell by his shocked expression that he was expecting another story-perhaps the story of the brave child helping the other prisoners, only to end up the subject of experimentation herself. Truth was, she managed to evade being cut or molested in any way. Countless others took that burden for her. And the children were the cries that stayed with her the longest.

Sound came back to Venser's lips. "How did you escape?"

"I escaped," she gulped. "By cutting open a large corpse and slipping inside and staying still in its reek until it was tossed into the rot heap. I was small and still the fit was tight." She didn't tell him that it took many days for the Phyrexians to move the corpse; they were not good housekeepers. She lay in the corpse for at least two days, but it could have been more. She was almost dead herself of thirst when she finally crawled out. But the smell never left her. It was always in her nose, waking her in the morning and turning her stomach and making it difficult to eat.

"But you survived," Venser stammered. "You persevered. You were unbeaten."

"Unbeaten," Elspeth said hollowly.