Before Tahngarth's eyes swam visions of that bright day, Hanna and Squee and the boy Atalla plotting to free the captives.
"More. Tell us more," Eladamri insisted.
"She sabotaged that cage pretty well. She shut it down for a week. Fact was, next time we left the city, we flew out on wings of cloth, like angels…" Gerrard gagged on his words. He reached out to his comrades. "She's the smartest one on board, don't you think?-trained on Tolaria. Hanna's dad is the Mage Master Barrin, but she outstrips him in artifact knowledge. Remember her rebuilding the engine in Mercadia? Remember her threading the needle over Benalia? Remember?"
Visions swam brightly before the eyes of the comrades.
"Come!" Gerrard said. "See for yourselves. Look on her perfect skin, her blushing cheeks-the sweetest smile you ever saw. Come over here, let me show you. So thin and strong, perfect health! Let me introduce you."
Dragging at Eladamri, Gerrard led the group rapidly, excitedly to the place where Hanna lay. The swarming visions followed them. Airy spirits encircled the woman, caressing her. They seemed at first to be holy raiments and then to be healthy flesh. The mists wrapped her atrophied muscles and filled them out. Belief cloaked her gaunt frame in strength. The grim set of her teeth became a smile, the sunken sockets became bright blue eyes. It was the old
Hanna-strong and glad and whole.
"Do you see?" Gerrard shouted. "Do you see?"
"Yes!" Eladamri replied. "I see!"
Gerrard slid his hands under Hanna and lifted her. "Do you see!"
The glamour did not come with her. The delusion of health peeled away from her skin. Misty muscle dissipated to gaunt infirmity. The eyes that had seemed open were closed now, had never opened. Her loveliness was a skull.
"Oh!" Gerrard said in sudden shock. "Oh!"
Eladamri clasped his arm. "It's all right. It's all right."
"No, it's not all right! Nothing is all right!"
"You did all you could," Eladamri soothed. "Our belief can't heal her-I realize that now. It is only her belief that could heal her. If she could awaken from this coma, she could save herself. Otherwise… You did all you could."
"Oh!" Gerrard repeated, falling to his knees. He looked up piteously at his comrades. "She is so light!"
Chapter 28
Thaddeus awoke, pinioned beneath the spider woman Tsabo Tavoc. Her compound eyes gleamed like twin gemstones in her pallid face. Her mouth segments twitched in concentration as she stared down at him. The massive weight of her body pressed on him in eight spike-tipped feet. Above her head, a smooth rock ceiling gleamed with myriad lanterns. They sent tendrils of smoke up across the wall to gather and coil in the vault. The swirling soot made a black halo above the spider woman's head.
"He awakens," she said in Phyrexian.
From birth, Thaddeus had learned languages both human and inhuman. He was fluent in Thrannish and so could parse out Phyrexian.
A seeming smile formed across the segments of Tsabo Tavoc's mouth. She withdrew slightly from him. Her fingertips were gory. A scalpel in her hand ran with blood. The red stuff steamed in the cold, wet air of the cave.
Again came her buggy voice. "How admirable."
The Phyrexian commander gathered her legs beneath her and shifted away. Her horrible weight remained on him. Only then did he realize it was not she who held him down. Spikes did. Driven through wrists and ankles, shoulders and hips, they pinned him to an examination table.
Thaddeus bucked on the steely block. Joints pried hopelessly against the heads of the spikes. None budged.
Thaddeus hissed. He should have been able to rip the spikes out. His arms were somehow unresponsive. An aching weakness filled his chest. Lifting his head, Thaddeus glimpsed the reason.
His blue flesh lay open to red innards. From the notch in his throat to the ring processes of his pelvis, he had been sliced open. Each layer of living flesh-skin and muscle and tendon-had been meticulously flayed back one by one. Pins identified important structures. Similar tags rested on his organs. Numbered slips of paper clung to his liver, his spleen, pancreas, stomach, viscera. Tsabo Tavoc had even sawn away one after another of his ribs, revealing gray lungs and flailing heart.
"Do you see how quickly he discerns his condition?" Tsabo Tavoc asked, her voice buzzing. She approached. The gory scalpel twirled deftly in her grasp. "Awake but moments, and he understands what we are doing here, understands he will never again be whole. He will die, and he knows it. See how quickly he calms? Truly, he is the pinnacle of humanity."
Thaddeus tried to respond. All that emerged was a red spray across his throat. He could produce no sound, could feel no breath between his lips.
Tsabo Tavoc loomed up above him. "Are you missing something?" she asked, holding up a larynx. "Quite a costly contrivance, this. A descended voice-box allows you to speak, but at risk of choking. It is too bad your master felt so tied to human physiology, retaining such weaknesses as this. Of course, you needn't worry about choking anymore."
Approving hisses rose from figures packed around the edges of the cavern.
Turning his head, Thaddeus peered past dissection carts and experimental apparatuses to glimpse the watchers. Red-robed vat priests stood five rows thick around the cavern. They leaned avidly toward Thaddeus. Their eyes gleamed beneath the folds of their hoods. Desiccated flesh clung to skull-like heads. Scabrous hands hung loose beneath priestly sleeves.
Tsabo Tavoc made a long slice in Thaddeus's thigh.
He twitched as each successive neuron was severed. His eyes rolled in his head. He would not have cried out even if he had the vocal cords to do so, but a raking sigh emerged from the stoma in his throat.
"Here, though, is significant improvement," Tsabo Tavoc said, neatly drawing back folds of skin to reveal muscles and their neural networks. "Do you see the myelin sheaths on these nerve bundles? They speed impulse. This nerve cluster travels to the base of the spine, where lies the cortex that processes sensory and motor information for the legs. At the base of the spine rests the innovation- a second cerebellum encased in the coccyx. It speeds response time, allowing Metathran extraordinary agility. It also prevents paraplegia. A Metathran can fight on, despite a broken back. A similar though smaller node controls the arms."
There seemed genuine appreciation among the vat priests. They produced an inhuman sound, halfway between the purr of a cat and the hiss of a roach.
"Compare to the original design," Tsabo Tavoc said, withdrawing from the table where Thaddeus lay. Her legs clicked across the stony floor.
Thaddeus turned his head to watch her. She reached another table where lay another form-a human woman. She had been tied in place instead of spiked, but she was similarly cut open. The woman shivered in dread at the Phyrexian's approach.
Tsabo Tavoc picked up one of the scalpels and sliced a long, deep line down the woman's leg. "Here, we have larger deposits of adipose tissue. These are not intended to power the skeletal muscles but rather to provision the whole body with food should famine occur. It is another concession to breeding ability. If this woman is bearing young, she will need extra fat deposits. The adipose tissue makes her a slower fighter. Her pelvis is inefficiently wide, as we have seen, and this bundle of leg neurons reaches not to the base of her spine but to her brain. The uterus- prone to numerous diseases and chronic breakdown-takes up an inordinate portion of the abdomen. All in all, this is a crude design, intended for child-bearing instead of war.
"The males are no better. They bear external genitalia that are extremely vulnerable to injury. Both genders are subject to intermittent madness caused by these systems. Humans and all the indigenous creatures of Dominaria still rely upon sexual reproduction. Such is the way for creatures that live beyond the salvation of Yawgmoth.