Venser looked away, out to the darkness. She could see the evident disgust on his face. Still, there was a certain lightness building in her stomach. "I can tell you more," she said.

Venser shook his head. "I have heard enough." He turned back to the Phyrexians. They watched the revolting combination of decomposing metal and sinewy flesh of all shapes and sizes march from the holes. Elspeth found herself wondering where they all slept, and how. Were they able to talk to each other? Her time in one of their prisons had not left her with a strong impulse of find out more about the Phyrexians. They were the essence of cruelty, with a child's desire to experiment and play.

She glanced away from Venser's eyes at the Phyrexians. One tripped and fell and the one behind it stepped squarely on its head and laughed its chortling laugh. "It seems to me that their numbers are decreasing," she said.

Venser peered back over the edge of the divot they were sheltering in. The dark smudge of the main body of the Phyrexians was spread out in the green haze filling the large valley.

"Are you ready?" Venser said. Without waiting for an answer, the artificer began crawling down the slough after Koth.

The experimentation room looked as it had before, with one exception. On the far wall as they entered was an area where the wet gut-works had been spread. A hole was revealed. Koth was squatting next to it with a smile on his face.

"Something is guiding us," he said.

Venser stepped closer, and suddenly a shake caught him. He put his hand out to the wall, and it sunk into the wetness. Venser lurched sideways and fell to his knees, shaking over half his body. From experience he knew to wait. When enough time had pa.s.sed, and Venser could open and close his fingers, he struggled to his feet. The others watched him wide-eyed.

"We will not speak of this," Venser said. "It happens sometimes."

"But why?" Elspeth said.

"It happens because of my foolishness. Because of a great mistake I made."

They moved through the darkness, skidding their feet across the strangely smooth floor for a long time without the least sense of where they were going.

"Can we dare light?" Elspeth whispered.

Venser nodded.

It took Elspeth some moments to cull the mana she needed in that black place, but eventually her suit of armor began to glow slightly and they could see more of their surroundings.

"I hear its movements ahead," Koth whispered. "This is the way."

"It makes me nervous to follow something I've never met," Venser said.

A loud hissing sound broke the stillness behind them. Elspeth dropped the charm on her armor, and the light blinked out. Shadows were moving in a pa.s.sage in front of them.

The pa.s.sageway opened into a very large cavern. An eerie green light filtered weakly to the edges of the large s.p.a.ce. At the far end a group of beings stood, tapping on the wall with their knuckles or whatever they had that pa.s.sed for knuckles. They were Phyrexians, yes, but somehow different. They moved with the jerky, sudden movements of the Phyrexians-had the same frantic speed and carelessness as they b.u.mped into one another, seeking something in haste.

"Are they sick?" Elspeth said.

"Vampires," Venser whispered. "Succ.u.mbing to phyresis."

Elspeth nodded at that, and tried hard not to let Venser sense her disgust.

Standing a bit back was their leader. The first thing that struck Venser was the size of the being. Its body was a ma.s.sive sh.e.l.l of flesh and metal, one substance wound into another, with jags of metal jutting off the carapace. Two huge, tipped claws hung on robust arms at its sides. And the head, the head looked tiny atop the mountainous torso. A black line of hair ran from the front forehead in a crest to the back.

"Keep looking," the leader yelled.

Venser watched the leader very carefully-when he walked, his body jerked to the side and the head was momentarily sideways.

The creatures kept knocking on the walls and floor until at last one of the Phyrexian vampires found what they were looking for. They all bent around something on the floor, until the leader lumbered over. They moved out of the way and he looked down at the floor with eyes that glittered in the low light, even from where Venser was standing across the room.

"Pull it up," he said.

"Yes, Master Geth," one of the Phyrexians hissed.

It was a door, but one that had to be torn from the floor. Ragged, b.l.o.o.d.y flaps of skin hung around the door's circ.u.mference when it was raised.

"Get moving," Master Geth bellowed suddenly. "The silver one's temper makes mine look pleasant. Move."

The silver one, Venser thought. Was he making reference to the silver creeper they were following, or was it the silver golem Geth?

The Phyrexians dropped one at a time down the trap door. Geth kicked the last one, sending him careening through the hole. Before Geth stepped into the secret door, he looked around the room. Venser jerked his head back, but for a moment Geth's eyes froze in his direction. Eventually he turned and hopped down the hole.

Venser and the others poked their heads around the corner, just in time to see a small silver form slip down the hole, after Geth.

Elspeth spoke first. "It seems that is our direction," she said.

"Yes," Venser said.

"I'm not going anywhere," Koth said. "And neither are you." He turned to Elspeth. "Or you. You will stir up the enemy even more than you have already. Let us fight the force that just left the Vault. We must leave here and raise a warning."

Elspeth looked from one to the other before speaking. "I think this is not the place to argue...especially loudly," she said.

Venser and Koth stared at each other. The small s.p.a.ce between them sparkled and cracked with mana.

"I have known the Phyrexians," Elspeth continued. "And they are cruel beyond measure." She paused to take in a deep, shaky breath. "I would like to kill each and every one of them, but the reality is that I cannot do that." The white knight was shaking, Venser observed. Whether in anger or fear he could not be sure. But her hands were clenching and releasing as she talked.

"How did you escape them?" Koth said.

But Elspeth was clearly not listening. Her eyes were raised and she was looking off into the darkness, caught in the dream playing in her head.

"I was only a little girl," she said. "And their experiments were..."

"Pointless," Venser interjected. "I have read that they are always pointless. Only so those beings can feel like they are experimenting."

Venser's words drew Elspeth out of her thoughts a bit. Her eyes focused and she looked down at her hands. "Only to cause pain in as many ways as possible. And terror," she said.

Koth said nothing. He looked at the patch of floor where Geth and his undead minions had pulled up the door.

"You saw our silver guide went down that hole," Venser said.

Elspeth was not done though. "They seemed to especially hate skin. My skin and skin of the others in the cells around me. They would remove it and st.i.tch it onto their own bodies, along with appendages. There was one of them, a smaller one, who did the st.i.tching. It had a long needle attached to its right wrist. With this needle it sewed the swatches of skin over the others. The sewer. Sometimes the skin took and stayed on them," she said.

"Should we be on our way?" Venser said, glancing uneasily at Elspeth.

The door had healed itself, and it lay without crease. They searched the floor and still could not find anything to grasp and pull. The walls of the cavern room were run with conduit and pillars of metal tubing, but the floors were generally smooth.

"Did they create it," Elspeth mused. "And then make it disappear when finished?"

"It was open when that silver devil jumped down it," Venser said. He ran his palm over the ground. Then he got down on his chest, put his cheek on the cold floor, and looked sideways at it. "That could be," he said. "But when they found the door, there were no incantations said that I heard." He looked up. "Did either of you hear anything?"

"No," Koth said, but I have a better way. "The geomancer put his hands on the ground. "I'd step back," he said, "if you value your boots."

Soon his hands began to glow red as did the floor around them. The slits along his ribs pulsed like a magma core. The glow in the floor spread, and soon covered most of it. Pink light filled the cavern and they could smell the soles of their boots singeing. The heat was nearly unbearable to Venser.

"I see something," Venser said, pointing.

One area of the floor was not the same color as the others. A perimeter of lighter color created the outline of a rectangle. At one end of the rectangle was a small divot of yet another shade of orange. Venser took a small knife from his boot. He bent down and carefully poked the tip of the knife through the loop hidden in the divot. "Got it," Venser said.

Koth nodded and removed his palms from the floor.

Their boots were smoking as they waited for the metal to cool. When the ring was cool enough to grasp, Elspeth and Koth took hold and heaved. Nothing happened. Venser bent down and pulled as well, and slowly, very slowly, the door began to tear free from the metal floor. It was a sound that made Elspeth's stomach turn-she'd heard it so many times when imprisoned by the Phyrexians-tearing flesh.

But they managed to open the pa.s.sage. A foul smell wafted up the chute, and a ladder descended into darkness. Koth went first, his whole body glowing slightly as he moved. The walls of the chute seemed to be bored out as if by an immense drill. Under their feet a hard banging sound echoed up from deep below. After climbing for what seemed like hours, they saw a light. Every movement they made echoed, so none spoke but quickened their pace toward the light. Venser took deep breaths to keep from hurrying too much and perhaps slipping to his death. He was not overly predisposed to darkness. And after the long darkness of the chute, Venser would have welcomed a legion of Phyrexians as long as the hall they were in was well lighted.

The light was brighter underneath. Koth stopped when they were just about to climb into the room below. The banging noise was loud there, and the vulshok spoke in a normal volume. "Should we drop down and take them unawares? How many can there be? From what I saw they're all on the surface."

Next in line was Venser, but he said nothing. He was trying hard not to jump for the red light.

"Do you smell something familiar?" Elspeth asked.

"The reek is horrible, but not familiar," Koth said. "Rot, I'd say. Rotting flesh."

"Yes, that," Elspeth said. "And...something sweet."

"That is blood, unless I am mistaken," Venser said.

"Blood," Elspeth said.

The hot updraft blew past their faces. The pounding sound continued.

"Well," Koth said. "I guess we should just drop down."

"I'll teleport down and then back," Venser said.

"I cannot see any floor, my friends," Elspeth said.

"I can appear and then disappear."

When n.o.body said anything, Venser settled himself and took a series of deep breaths. He slapped himself on the cheek once and felt the mana in the lines he kept tethered to other places course blue like blood in the vein toward him. It rushed to his cheek and he took one final deep breath and held it. When he felt as if he would faint, he pushed in his mind and disappeared with a snap snap.

Elspeth counted one, two and then the artificer was back holding the ladder, gasping for air.

"Do you always hold your breath?" Elspeth said.

"No, but it helps for short ones."

"What is down there?" Koth said.

Venser did not replay at first. "It is a bad place, that," he said. "The enemy is there, working."

"Are they?"

"Yes," Venser said. "Very many of them, but lumbering ones. Fit for their work."

"That pleases me," Elspeth said.

"Nothing about this place pleases me," Koth mumbled.

"...and there are some others that I could not identify. I was in the air only a moment. They are larger, I know that."

"What makes the hammering sound?" Elspeth said.

"I will let you see that for yourselves. It would cause you to question what we are about to do."

Koth looked up. "Jacka.s.s, you are not supposed to tell us that. You are supposed to tell us the hammering sound is nothing."

"I was never good at lying."

Koth shook his head.

"I will appear off to the side, and fight them from there," Venser said.

"I will slay everything in that room," Elspeth said through gritted teeth.

"Then keep in front of me, crazed one," Koth said. "Actually you are both cracked."

"You brought me here," Venser reminded.

"To fight the Phyrexians, not track down an old comrade."

"Right. Ready?" Venser said, he looked down at Koth and up at Elspeth, who nodded. The pounding continued, and something metal and large banged into a wall. "Go."

Koth pushed off from the ladder rungs and fell feetfirst to the floor, which was farther down than he thought it would be. He stumbled back a bit, and Elspeth landed soundlessly next to him.

The scene laid out before them took their breath away. The walls were splattered and the floor was covered, as were the slablike tables, with a bright redness. So bright, in fact, that it looked like paint. There were many of the metal catafalques in the room. Each had a body on it in the process of being butchered. Next to the table more bodies were piled. The meat pulled and hacked off the bodies was thrown in a cart next to the table, as were the organs. Everything else lay glistening and white. There was no drain in the floor, so the carnage was ankle deep. The reek was enormous, like a wall that hit them in the face.

Each table had a Phyrexian butcher. A huge thing with no face to speak of-only an immense mouth of long teeth crammed one over the others. Each butcher had a notched iron blade where its right hand would have been, and a hacked, gashed, fingerless stump for its left. Done with the meat, each butcher loaded the bones onto a creaky cart and walked them to an immense crusher, which Elspeth took for a machine at first. The bones were thrown into a basin and the room-high Phyrexian raised its boulder of a fist and dropped it on the bones. Every eighth pound or so, it brushed the bits left into a large hole next to the basin.

The meat went into another hole, but samples were obviously taken by the butchers, who had blood and material smeared around their mouths and over their wet teeth.