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 passing 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 stitched-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 bloody, 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.
Chapter 10
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.