She'd thought the shining creature who'd descended from the too-bright sky was the Ineffable. He was nothing like the priests she'd seen and nothing at all like a newt. His eyes were intensely red, and an abundance of teeth filled his protruding jaw. And she'd known, perhaps because of that jaw filled with teeth, that it was he, as the Ineffable was he and not it in the way of newts and priests.
"You can call me Gix," he'd said, using his toothsome jaw to shape the words in an almost newtish way, though he didn't have the soft-flesh lips that were useful for eating but got in the way of proper Phyrexian pronunciation.
Oix was a name, the first true name Xantcha had ever heard, because it couldn't be interpreted as a place within a cadre. Gix was a demon, a Phyrexian who'd looked upon the Ineffable face with his own eyes and who, while the Ineffable slept, controlled Phyrexia. From a newt's lowly perspective, a demon's name might just as well be ineffable.
Gix offered his hand. The only sound Xantcha heard was a slight whirring as his arm extended and extended to at least twice his height. As Gix's hand unfurled, black talons sprang from each elegantly articulated finger. He touched the other Xantcha lightly beneath its chin. Xantcha felt trembling terror in the other newt's hand. The demon's talons looked as if they could pierce a priest's leather carapace or go straight through a newt's skull. A blue- green spark leapt from the demon to the other Xantcha, whose hand immediately warmed, relaxed, and slipped away.
Deep-pitched rumbling came out of the demon's throat. He lowered his hand, his head swiveled slightly, and Xantcha felt a cold, green light take her measure. Gix didn't touch her as he'd touched the other Xantcha. His arm retreated, each segment clicking sharply into the one behind it, then more whirring as his jaw assumed a sickle smile.
"Xantcha."
All remaining doubts about the difference between names and places vanished. Xantcha had become a true name, and
confronted with him, Xantcha became her. The notions for male and female, dominance and submission, were already in Xantcha's mind, rooted in her dreams of soft, green grass and yellow sun.
"You will be ready," the demon said. "I made you. No simple rendering for you, Xantcha. Fresh meat. Fresh blood. Brought here from the place where you will go, where you will conquer. You have their cunning, their boldness, and their unpredictability, Xantcha, but your heart is mine. You are mine forever."
The demon meant to frighten her, and he did; he meant to distract her, too, while a blue-green spark formed on his shiny brass brow. In that, he was less successful. Xantcha saw the spark race toward her, felt it strike the ridge between her eyes and bury itself in the bone. The demon had inserted himself in her mind.
He made himself glorious before her. At least, that's what he tried to do. Xantcha felt the urge to worship him in awe and obedience, to feed him with the mind-storm turbulence no compleat Phyrexian could experience, except by proxy. Gix made promises in Xantcha's mind: privilege, power, and passion, all of them irresistible, or meant to be irresistible, but Xantcha resisted. She made a new place for herself, within herself. It wasn't terribly difficult. If there could be two Xantcha's within the cadre, there could be two within her mind, a Xantcha who belonged to Gix and a Xantcha who did not.
She filled the part that belonged to Gix with images from her dreams: blue skies, green grass, and gentle breezes. The demon drank them down, then spat them out. The light went out of his eyes. He turned away from her, to others in her cadre and found them more entertaining. For her part, Xantcha stood very still. She had denied the demon, rejected him before he could reject her. She expected instant annihilation, but the Ineffable did not seize her. Whatever else she had done, it was not a mistake great enough to destroy her heart.
After sating himself on newtish thoughts and passions, Gix departed. The teacher-priests sought to reclaim their place above the cadre, but after the elegance and horror of a demon, they seemed puny. In time, they became afraid of their charges and kept their distance as the newts began to talk more freely among themselves, planning for their glorious futures on other worlds.
Xantcha maintained her place, eating, sleeping, laboring, and taking part in the discussions, but she was no longer like the other newts. That moment when she'd created two Xantchas in her mind had transformed her, as surely as the tender-priests reshaped newts in the Fane of Flesh. She was aware of herself as no one else-except Gixseemed to be. She stumbled into loneliness, and, seeking relief from that singular ache, she sought out the Xantcha whose hand she'd once held.
"I am without," she'd said, because at the time she hadn't known a better word. "I need to touch you."
She'd offered both hands, but the other Xantcha had reeled backward, screaming as if it were in terrible pain. The rest of the cadre swarmed between them, and Xantcha was lucky to survive.
Xantcha remembered the newt that had sawed off its arm
with the razor grass, but what she wanted was an end to her isolation, not an end of existence. She considered running away. The First Sphere was vast. A newt could easily lose herself beyond the shimmering horizon, but if she placed herself beyond her cadre and its priests, Xantcha would slowly starve, because despite their constant efforts with hoes and plows and sickles, nothing edible grew in First Sphere's soil. Except for the meaty sludge brought up from Fane of Flesh, there was nothing on Phyrexia's First Sphere that a newt could eat.
When the cadre closed ranks to keep her from the simmering cauldrons the priests brought from the Fane, Xantcha picked up a sickle and cleared a path to her place. Five newts went down with the cauldron for rendering; one priest, too. Xantcha went to sleep with a full stomach and the sense that she'd never reopen her eyes. But neither Gix nor the Ineffable came to claim her. Once again, it seemed that she hadn't made a mistake.
Others did ... newts began to disappear, a few at a time while they slept. Xantcha contrived to make a tiny hole in her box. She kept watch when she should have been asleep, but the Ineffable wasn't consuming newts. Instead, priests picked up a box here, a box there, and took them away. Speaker-equipped priests could spew words faster than soft-lipped newts; sometimes they forgot that newts heard faster than they spoke. Xantcha hid in a place on the edge and listened to chittering, metallic conversations.
The moment she and the others had been promised since their decanting had arrived. Newts were leaving Phyrexia. They were sleeping on another world. One of the priests had gone through the portal. It didn't like what it had found. Its coils had corroded and its joints had clogged because water, not oil, flowed everywhere: in fountains, across the land and in blinding torrents from the sky that was sometimes blue, sometimes black, sometimes speckled and sometimes streaked with fire. A worthless place, the priest said, rust and dust, fit only for newts.
Xantcha held her breath, as she'd held it before Gix. Although she'd never seen or felt it, she remembered water and knew in her bones that a place where water fell from the sky would be a place where a newt could get lost without necessarily starving. She began to make herself more useful, more visible, to the others, in hopes that the priests would pick her box, but though the disappearances continued, the priests didn't take her.
The cadre withered. Xantcha was certain she'd be taken away. There simply weren't that many left. Then the taking stopped. The newts slept and worked, slept and worked. Xantcha wasn't the only one who listened to the priests. None of them liked what they heard. There were problems in the other world. Newts had been exposed and destroyed.