“I have to think not,” Venser said.
“It could be following us,” Elspeth ventured. “It did before.”
“You mean Tezzeret sent it to keep an eye on us before,” Koth said.
“That could be,” Venser said.
“Do you smell that?” Koth said. He held his nose between two thick fingers.
They looked down at the Phyrexians. “All that smell cannot be coming from them,” Elspeth said.
“They must have been guarding something to have been standing there,” Venser said.
“Don’t think I want to find it,” Koth said.
But Venser was already at the wall, pushing and probing as he looked for the door that must surely be there. After a snap, a small door opened and a terrible stink wafted out.
“Why would we go into that place?” Koth said.
“Because they were guarding it,” Elspeth said, drawing her blade and glancing at the dead Phyrexians.
“Exactly,” Venser said. “And this may be the correct way, for all we know.”
Holding their noses, they entered.
Unaccountably, they were walking through festering meat that reached a depth of mid-calf in places. The smell was absolutely disgusting, and Venser found himself breathing tiny breaths through his mouth. All words came out with a nasal numbness. Still Venser felt the gore pushing up from his stomach.
“This way,” he said, pointing into the blackness ahead. Far ahead Elspeth thought she could see a faint light. When she pointed it out to Venser, he snapped his fingers and the blue wisps disappeared. There was a glow in the huge room-a white glow that sifted up through the darkness of the far corner.
“We should advance on this carefully,” Venser whispered. “There might be many rooms like this one, and if we start a fight now, it might raise an alarm or follow us all the way to the furnace level.”
“The alarm we must assume has already been raised,” Elspeth said.
“Maybe,” Venser said.
Koth stopped walking, or at least Venser could not hear his footfalls squishing next to him anymore.
“Wait.” Koth said. “How far are we going?”
“We are finding Karn.”
“And let me guess, you know where he sits?”
“I have ideas where my friend and ally would choose to sit, yes.”
“And where would that be?” Koth said from directly behind, his voice raised a decibel.
“I think Karn would favor a room deep in the middle of his creation. A nerve center position,” Venser said.
“I am needed on the surface,” Koth said. “That’s where I’m going. My people need me. My people are fighting a foe …”
Elspeth and Venser stopped walking.
“How will you leave?” Venser said.
“How will you ascend?” Elspeth said.
Koth was silent for a moment. “I will jump.”
Venser put up his hand. “Quiet,” he said. “We are nearing the glow.”
But Koth was not quiet. “You know, you are not the leader of this group. I am. I organized this expedition. I talked Lady Elspeth here into coming. I did all of that. I direct this little nightmare.”
Venser shook his head in the darkness. “This is larger than you and yours,” he said. “This could concern more planes than a few. We must contain the spread.”
“That is all fine and good,” Koth said. “But don’t try to yank my culpers. You are here for Karn. I don’t think you care a bit for this plane. You made some pledge to this golem and you mean to keep that promise.”
When Venser said nothing, Koth continued. “I’ve never met an artificer with a sense of duty, but there are wonders under all suns, we vulshok say. Why not be honest and tell us both that you are here for personal gain?”
“Why would you think that,” Venser challenged, “when you brought me here?”
Elspeth was quiet. Venser could not be sure if she was on the edge of gagging in the fester, or if Koth’s words had struck a chord and she was reevaluating his motivations. But he could not ask her at that moment, for they neared the lighted area.
At that side of the room the piles of meat were quite old, and the breakdown artifacts covered them from top to bottom. Their iridescent backs rippled and clicked in the dim light as the party neared. But the small machines were not what they looked at. A single glow orb hung in the air. Behind the orb, set back in the overgrown walls of conduit and ridges, like the spinal run of some unfamiliar creature, stood a round doorway. There was no handle that Venser could see. A long table stood in front of the doorway, mired halfway up its legs in the sloppy fester. On the table stood many dented metal bowls of differing sizes. A large bowl sat at the end of the others. It was of a very dark metal. As Venser watched, tiny motes of yellow, like fireflies, spun around its edges in seemingly perpetual orbit.
“Darksteel,” Koth hissed beside him.
Venser squinted at the bowl. Darksteel, yes. He knew of it from his studies in metallurgy. A virtually indestructible metal found only on Mirrodin. Extremely difficult to work and very rare and expensive to buy. The bowl had something in it. From where he was crouched, Venser could not see what it was. The smaller bowls contained other, bloody things.
The sound of movement from behind made them freeze. Out of the corner of his eye Venser watched as a small form moved around a mound of meat. It walked with its head cast downward, but its jagged profile was unmistakable. The rows of crooked teeth filling a thin jaw completed the picture. It had eyes-glittering black things, four of them, but they were very small and appeared to not be of much use, as it passed within an arm’s reach before moving toward the table. Once at the table the small Phyrexian placed what was in its hand in the first bowl. It was muttering something as it did so, in a tongue that made Elspeth’s lip curl.
The first bowl turned a deeper purple and the creature scooped the fist-sized object into the next bowl, muttering again. The next bowl became suddenly bright silver. The little creature picked up the heart. Carefully the Phyrexian raised its right hand and out of its first finger a long, thin blade slid. The cut that the small creature made was thin and deep. The blood came from the heart and the Phyrexian held it over the third bowl. When the blood hit the bowl it sizzled and popped. The blade disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, and the creature took the heart in both its hands. It hinged the two sides open and closed at the cut line, like a mouth in a bloody little pantomime. That went on until the Phyrexian, apparently satisfied, dropped the heart unceremoniously in the second to last bowl.
Koth glanced at Elspeth, and then back to the strange creature. Venser watched as the Phyrexian opened another one of its fingers and sprayed a fluid into the second to last bowl. It let the cut heart sit in the fluid for a long time. Long enough that Venser found his eyelids falling. Then, with sudden and blinding speed it seized the heart and, as though the thing were struggling, it stuffed it into the darksteel bowl.
A moment later the Phyrexian turned and walked back out to the meat piles to find another heart. When the Phyrexian was gone the artificer crept from behind his heap of meat and to the round door. It did not open. He pushed on the door’s soft sides and waved his hand before it, but still it did not open. The darksteel bowl was behind him. Venser tried not to gaze in, but he saw what was inside it anyway-many other hearts all sliced.
When he turned back to the door, the small Phyrexian was there. It stood very still, with its long, black face cocked at an angle like a bird eyeing something shiny. Venser also stood absolutely still. He tried to breathe mana into himself, but found, to his horror, that he did not have what he needed for a jump. The jump he had made with the fleshling had all but drained him to the last. To make matters worse, his heart was beating fast in his chest. Then it was beating faster still. The small Phyrexian jerked its head completely sideways so the hole in the side of its head that served as an ear was aimed at Venser’s chest. It was with a certain concern that Venser noticed that the creature’s hand was tapping out the beat of his speeding heart on its emaciated metal thigh. The artificer’s heart was practically hammering on his chest.