Elspeth pushed to the front-ready to fall upon them and quickly make good of the thing. But the guide put a light hand on her arm and pulled her back. He held one finger up to his lips and squatted against the inside of the wall.
They waited that way for what seemed like days. When the troupe of the enemy moved away, Koth was snoring softly on the floor, and Venser was quickly on his way to sleep. But the guide was on his feet and tugging on Koth’s sleeve.
The room was of medium size. They entered it by cutting into a Phyrexian’s intestine tube and forcing open the eye at the bottom. Standing in the middle of the room was a beast that reminded Venser somewhat of a horse, but with shiny metal plates for skin, and a head of glinting metal. Still, its eyes had the same dim expression of boredom he’d always disliked in horses. They entered the room and heard the tip tap of small feet scampering away. The guide froze, his expression blank. He looked around quickly and his nostrils flared.
He may not have heard anything more, but there was plenty to see, Venser thought. The edges of the room were piled high with the neatly cut parts of Mirran creatures. What flesh they had on them was festering, and the air in the room was foul enough for the guide to pinch his noise. The horse in the middle of the room stood still, regarding them with pupilless eyes.
After the sound of the scampering feet, the room was absolutely silent except for what appeared to be a clock on the wall, ticking lightly. But Venser could not understand what it was timing. There was one hand, which was moving toward a red circle.
Elspeth moved forward, until she stopped near the creature at the center of the room. It did not move and Elspeth began to move around it.
The hand on the clock moved closer to the red circle.
What is the red circle? Venser thought suddenly.
The question had occurred to the guide also. He moved forward and motioned Elspeth back. She ignored him and looked intently instead at the shiny metal along the creature’s back.
The fleshling, who was standing between Venser and Koth, watched the proceedings with as much of an impartial face as the guide. But her eyes jumped from the cut pieces, to the creature, and then back again.
The hand was four ticks from the red circle.
Suddenly the fleshling surged forward, ran to Elspeth, and shoved her hard away from the creature at the center of the room. Elspeth fell and so did the fleshling. The hand on the clock clicked to the red circle. At that moment there was a tremendous whooshing sound, and air blew in their faces as something large moved through the air nearby.
The Mirran horse fell to pieces before their eyes. Its parts clattered to the floor and Venser got a good look at just how deeply the metal that made up the creature’s skin went until the meat and tendons took over. There was blood, but it pooled for only a moment before disappearing down drains that must have been hidden in the floor.
Elspeth looked up from the floor with wide eyes. The fleshling looked as though she might weep. But she did not weep, and the moment quickly passed. She was on her feet the second after that. Elspeth struggled against her armor and finally stood herself.
“What?” Koth said, staring at the bloodied pieces on the floor.
They all looked at the guide, whose eyes were moving from place to place along the wall of the room.
“Why is it here?” Koth asked. “What do they get from doing any of this?”
Venser would have shrugged if he hadn’t disliked the shrug as an expression. He understood exactly what Koth was asking. What were the Phyrexians after down in the bowels of Mirrodin? He had seen many rooms, and exactly none of them made any sense. For instance, how could the Phyrexians melt down and recast their dead in the furnace? Were they not made by transformation via a contagion? What was accomplished by melting down the metal bodies of the dead? Didn’t Phyrexians grow their own armor? But, clearly, there were no answers anywhere down there. Only confusion and more questions.
The guide moved slowly to where the pieces lay. He looked carefully at the pieces before standing again and looking around the room.
He certainly looked like a guide to Venser. He certainly appeared to be genuine, and not a spy. But what was to say that the forces standing against them had not found a way to recruit a real guide?
The guide located an eyeway in the corner. After he cut it open with a long knife, they all moved through and into the darkened room on the other side.
And into another room, where they found no Phyrexians. The guide moved them along the outer side of the room and then through another eyeway. Then there were more rooms of metal and more exits. Sometimes the exits joined into long tunnels. In one tunnel the guide suddenly stopped walking. He stopped and fell to his hands and knees and began looking closely at the floor of the tunnel, using his fingernails to find any seam. Eventually he found something, and pulled up a hinged panel of metal. They clambered down through the hole and descended a strange ladder of what appeared to be ribs. After that, the guide took them along another passage, and more after that.
“I don’t understand,” Koth said. “What do we accomplish by this running around down here? We have the fleshling. Why don’t we go heal everybody on the surface?
“I am not sure there are survivors on the surface,” Elspeth said, mirroring Venser’s own thoughts.
“There are survivors,” Koth said. “And they deserve our help, but we do not help them.”
The guide raised his hand.
“Hush,” Venser said to Koth.
Koth shot him an evil face in response to the chastisement.
Next they were in another passage that descended at an angle that required them to squat to move. At the bottom was a doorway, barely visible in the blue glow from Venser’s wisps. The doorway was not an eyeway, or a rough-cut hole, but a simple entranceway with smooth sides. This kind of entranceway was uncommon enough. But as soon as they stopped, Venser heard it, the odd sound the guide ahead must have heard: a sort of skittering. At irregular intervals something heavy bounced along the ground. But at other times there was no sound but the whoosh of wind.
Wind down here? Venser wondered.
When the guide moved his hand forward, they advanced. Soon they were at the entrance, and Venser turned off his wisps, so they were once again in darkness. Silently they each felt their way into another vast room. Venser could tell by the echoes from his feet. Water dripped off to the right somewhere. The air was still and stagnant. Like almost every room they had moved through, it smelled vaguely of rotting meat. It was strange air in these underground rooms: it always felt to Venser as though some creature was crouching in it, with its twisted spine as tight as a spring, and ready to pounce.
But there was no attack, and soon Venser’s eyes began adjusting as best they could to the almost total darkness. If there was any light in the room, Venser was not sure where it would have come from. But still his eyes found enough of what they needed to make out something: white blurs.
It was hard to say how far away the shapes were. A hand grasped his, and Venser felt what he thought must be the thick glove of Elspeth’s sword hand. Understanding what was supposed to happen, Venser reached back and found Koth’s strangely smooth palm and held it.
Hand in hand in the darkness they moved. At first Venser thought they were moving toward the blurring shapes, but then they turned and walked until they bumped into the wall. Then the guide, for Venser hoped it was the guide who was leading them, turned them left and they skirted the wall.
As they walked, Elspeth’s hand squeezed tighter and tighter. A couple of times Venser had to disengage his hand and then find Elspeth’s hand again, lest she crush his knuckles and fingers.