“Did they create it,” Elspeth mused. “And then make it disappear when finished?”
“It was open when that silver devil jumped down it,” Venser said. He ran his palm over the ground. Then he got down on his chest, put his cheek on the cold floor, and looked sideways at it. “That could be,” he said. “But when they found the door, there were no incantations said that I heard.” He looked up. “Did either of you hear anything?”
“No,” Koth said, but I have a better way. “The geomancer put his hands on the ground. “I’d step back,” he said, “if you value your boots.”
Soon his hands began to glow red as did the floor around them. The slits along his ribs pulsed like a magma core. The glow in the floor spread, and soon covered most of it. Pink light filled the cavern and they could smell the soles of their boots singeing. The heat was nearly unbearable to Venser.
“I see something,” Venser said, pointing.
One area of the floor was not the same color as the others. A perimeter of lighter color created the outline of a rectangle. At one end of the rectangle was a small divot of yet another shade of orange. Venser took a small knife from his boot. He bent down and carefully poked the tip of the knife through the loop hidden in the divot. “Got it,” Venser said.
Koth nodded and removed his palms from the floor.
Their boots were smoking as they waited for the metal to cool. When the ring was cool enough to grasp, Elspeth and Koth took hold and heaved. Nothing happened. Venser bent down and pulled as well, and slowly, very slowly, the door began to tear free from the metal floor. It was a sound that made Elspeth’s stomach turn-she’d heard it so many times when imprisoned by the Phyrexians-tearing flesh.
But they managed to open the passage. A foul smell wafted up the chute, and a ladder descended into darkness. Koth went first, his whole body glowing slightly as he moved. The walls of the chute seemed to be bored out as if by an immense drill. Under their feet a hard banging sound echoed up from deep below. After climbing for what seemed like hours, they saw a light. Every movement they made echoed, so none spoke but quickened their pace toward the light. Venser took deep breaths to keep from hurrying too much and perhaps slipping to his death. He was not overly predisposed to darkness. And after the long darkness of the chute, Venser would have welcomed a legion of Phyrexians as long as the hall they were in was well lighted.
The light was brighter underneath. Koth stopped when they were just about to climb into the room below. The banging noise was loud there, and the vulshok spoke in a normal volume. “Should we drop down and take them unawares? How many can there be? From what I saw they’re all on the surface.”
Next in line was Venser, but he said nothing. He was trying hard not to jump for the red light.
“Do you smell something familiar?” Elspeth asked.
“The reek is horrible, but not familiar,” Koth said. “Rot, I’d say. Rotting flesh.”
“Yes, that,” Elspeth said. “And… something sweet.”
“That is blood, unless I am mistaken,” Venser said.
“Blood,” Elspeth said.
The hot updraft blew past their faces. The pounding sound continued.
“Well,” Koth said. “I guess we should just drop down.”
“I’ll teleport down and then back,” Venser said.
“I cannot see any floor, my friends,” Elspeth said.
“I can appear and then disappear.”
When nobody said anything, Venser settled himself and took a series of deep breaths. He slapped himself on the cheek once and felt the mana in the lines he kept tethered to other places course blue like blood in the vein toward him. It rushed to his cheek and he took one final deep breath and held it. When he felt as if he would faint, he pushed in his mind and disappeared with a snap.
Elspeth counted one, two and then the artificer was back holding the ladder, gasping for air.
“Do you always hold your breath?” Elspeth said.
“No, but it helps for short ones.”
“What is down there?” Koth said.
Venser did not replay at first. “It is a bad place, that,” he said. “The enemy is there, working.”
“Are they?”
“Yes,” Venser said. “Very many of them, but lumbering ones. Fit for their work.”
“That pleases me,” Elspeth said.
“Nothing about this place pleases me,” Koth mumbled.
“… and there are some others that I could not identify. I was in the air only a moment. They are larger, I know that.”
“What makes the hammering sound?” Elspeth said.
“I will let you see that for yourselves. It would cause you to question what we are about to do.”
Koth looked up. “Jackass, you are not supposed to tell us that. You are supposed to tell us the hammering sound is nothing.”
“I was never good at lying.”
Koth shook his head.
“I will appear off to the side, and fight them from there,” Venser said.
“I will slay everything in that room,” Elspeth said through gritted teeth.
“Then keep in front of me, crazed one,” Koth said. “Actually you are both cracked.”
“You brought me here,” Venser reminded.
“To fight the Phyrexians, not track down an old comrade.”
“Right. Ready?” Venser said, he looked down at Koth and up at Elspeth, who nodded. The pounding continued, and something metal and large banged into a wall. “Go.”
Koth pushed off from the ladder rungs and fell feetfirst to the floor, which was farther down than he thought it would be. He stumbled back a bit, and Elspeth landed soundlessly next to him.
The scene laid out before them took their breath away. The walls were splattered and the floor was covered, as were the slablike tables, with a bright redness. So bright, in fact, that it looked like paint. There were many of the metal catafalques in the room. Each had a body on it in the process of being butchered. Next to the table more bodies were piled. The meat pulled and hacked off the bodies was thrown in a cart next to the table, as were the organs. Everything else lay glistening and white. There was no drain in the floor, so the carnage was ankle deep. The reek was enormous, like a wall that hit them in the face.
Each table had a Phyrexian butcher. A huge thing with no face to speak of-only an immense mouth of long teeth crammed one over the others. Each butcher had a notched iron blade where its right hand would have been, and a hacked, gashed, fingerless stump for its left. Done with the meat, each butcher loaded the bones onto a creaky cart and walked them to an immense crusher, which Elspeth took for a machine at first. The bones were thrown into a basin and the room-high Phyrexian raised its boulder of a fist and dropped it on the bones. Every eighth pound or so, it brushed the bits left into a large hole next to the basin.
The meat went into another hole, but samples were obviously taken by the butchers, who had blood and material smeared around their mouths and over their wet teeth.
Elspeth and Koth stood stunned in the middle of the room. Venser was off to the side near the pulverizing Phyrexian. So still were they that the Phyrexians did not notice them at first, as the butchers had no eyes. But they had noise holes, Venser saw.
It was the pulverizer that raised the alarm. Its eyes were set spiderlike on a tiny head fused onto the trunk of its immense body. It had a toothless mouth hole, which began bellowing, with what must have been its tongue flopping around in its mouth. Its crushing hand stopped, and all the butchers froze. Dripping blood from their work, and from the flaps of skin hanging cut from their left hands, they turned toward Elspeth and Koth. Venser was nearer the crushing beast, but he had not been detected.
One of the bodies next to Venser moved and moaned. The artificer backed up. The body groaned and extended a bruised hand. It was an elf, Venser saw, or had been. He backed up farther, until he bumped something. He turned, and towering over him was a butcher. But the creature was facing Elspeth and Koth, and had apparently not noticed him.
Venser brought the mana to him. He felt it sparking the air around him and seeping into his pores. He reached out to touch the Phyrexian, who froze stiff in place.
