Three thousand years, more worlds than she could count, and always-always-an outsider.

The square altar was as tall as a man and stood on a stairway dais that was almost as high. Xantcha could barely see the holy book laid open atop it, although it was the largest book she'd ever seen-bigger than her bed. A huge cloth of red velvet covered the altar from the book to the dais. As Xantcha watched from the back of the sanctuary, an old man climbed the dais steps on his knees. At the top he lifted the velvet over his head and shoulders. He was letting Avohir dry his tears; she would be affixing Ratepe's spiders.

Xantcha claimed a space at the end of the line of mourners, petitioners, and cripples shuffling along a marked path to the dais where a red-robed priest guarded the steps. She was under the great dome, halfway to the altar, when a second priest came to take the place of the first. The second priest also wore a red robe with its cowl drawn up. His beard, as black as Ratepe's hair, spilled onto his chest.

Shratta, Xantcha thought, remembering what Ratepe had told her in the burning village.

He'd been at his post a few moments before the air brought her the scent of glistening oil.

Xantcha tried to get a look within the priest's cowl as her turn on the dais stairway neared. The oil scent was strong, but no stronger than with other sleepers. She didn't expect to see glowing or lidless eyes and his-itshands, which she tried unsuccessfully to avoid, had a fleshy feel around hers.

"Peace be with you," he said, more sincere than the guard. Xantcha held her breath when he touched her cheeks. "May your burdens be lifted."

The path was clear, as simple as that, as simple as Ratepe had promised it would be. She hobbled on her knees, like everyone else, raised the velvet drape and flattened an artifact against the dark stone. A second spider on the opposite side would be a good idea, four would be better. Xantcha gazed up into the dome as she left, looking for a sphere-sized escape hole.

There were no holes in the roof, but there was one in the wall-an archway into a cloister where a few laymen in plain clothes appeared to be continuing their prayers. Xantcha took the chance and joined them. No one challenged her, and after she bruised her knees a while longer, she yawned out Urza's armor and left the cloister through a different door.

The smell of oil was stronger in the corridor beyond the cloister. Not a great surprise. She was in the priests' private quarters now. The corridors were poorly ventilated, and under such circumstances she'd expected the taint to thicken, but there was something more. Xantcha palmed a

handful of screaming spiders from her sack, affixed them to the wall, and pressed deeper into the tangled chambers behind the sanctuary. The scent grew stronger and more complex. She suspected there was an ambulator nearby, or perhaps one of the vertical disks she'd seen so long ago in Moag.

We call them priests, she reminded herself, although there were no gods in Phyrexia, only the Ineffable, and blind obedience wasn't religion.

Midway down a spiral stairway, Xantcha encountered a priest rushing for the surface. Without a gesture or apology, he shoved her against the spiral's spine. She slipped down two, treacherously narrow, steps before catching her balance. The scent of glistening oil was heavy in his wake, but except in rudeness, he hadn't noticed her.

In her mind, Xantcha heard Ratepe muttering, Phyrexians: no imagination! Ratepe was young. He hid his fears in sarcasm. She put one of his stone-shattering spiders on the spiral's spine.

The stairway ended in a vaulted crypt. Light came from a pair of filthy lanterns and Phyrexian glows attached haphazardly to the stone ribs overhead. The sight of Phyrexian artifacts answered a wealth of questions and left her feeling anxious within Urza's armor. Xantcha thought again of Moag and wondered if she shouldn't scurry back to Russiore, confess her deceit when Urza came for her, and let him explore the crypt instead of her. But the truth was that Xantcha feared Urza's anger more than she feared Phyrexia.

Tiptoeing forward, Xantcha silently apologized to Ratepe. The crypt's air was pure Phyrexia. Not only was there some sort of passageway in Avohir's temple, it was wide open. She might have to tell Urza what she'd found, after she knew what it was, after she'd shared her discoveries with Ratepe, with Mishra.

Xantcha came to another door, the source of a fetid Phyrexian breeze. She hesitated. She had her armor, a boot knife and a handful of fuming coins, a passive defense and no offense worth mentioning. Wisdom said, this is foolish, then she heard a sound behind her, on the spiral stairs, and wisdom said, hide!

Three steps beyond the door the corridor jogged sharply to the right and into utter darkness. Xantcha put one hand behind her back and finger-walked into the unknown. The loudest sound was the pulsing in her ears. She had a sense that she'd entered a larger chamber when the breeze died.

She had a sense, too, that she wasn't alone; she was right.

"Meatling."

Thirty-four hundred years, give or take a few decades, and Xantcha knew that voice instantly.

"Gix."

Light bloomed around him, gray, heavy light such as shone on the First Sphere, light that wasn't truly light, but visible darkness. Xantcha thought the demon was the light's source and needed a moment to discern the upright disk gleaming behind him.

Gix had changed since the last time she'd seen him, corroded, crumbling, and thrust into a fumarole. He'd changed since the first time, too-taller. She looked at his

waist when she looked straight ahead; symmetric, altogether more man-shaped, though his metal "skin" didn't completely hide the glistening sinews and tubes-like a born-man's veins only filled with glistening oil- that wound over his green-gold skin. Gix's forehead was monumental and framed a rubine gem that was almost certainly a weapon. His skull seemed to have been pivoted open along his brow ridge. A black-metal serrated spike ran from the base of his neck to the now-raised base of his skull. From the side, it looked like the spike was rooted in his spine and attached to a red, blue, and yellow fish.

In another circumstance, the demon would have been ludicrous or absurd. Far beneath Avohir's altar, he was the image of malignity and horror. Xantcha stood transfixed as a narrow beam of blood-red light shone between her and Gix's bulging forehead. She felt surprise, then a command:

Obey. Listen and obey.

"Never." Urza's armor wasn't perfect protection against the demon's invasion of her mind, but added to her own stubbornness and to the walls she'd made ages ago. Xantcha defied the demon. "I'll die first."

Gix grinned, all glistening teeth and malice. "Your wish-"

He probed her mind again, brutally. Xantcha fed him images of his excoriation. The demon withdrew suddenly, his metallic chin tucked in a parody of mortal surprise.

"So old?"

Light sprang up in the portal chamber, a catacomb, with desiccated bodies heaped here and there, all male, all bearded. The Shratta, if not all of them, then at least a hundred of them, and probably their leaders. Replaced with Phyrexians or simply exterminated? Like as not, she'd never know. Whatever their crimes, Xantcha knew the Shratta would have suffered horribly before they died; that would have to suffice for Rat's vengeance.

"Yes, I remember you," Gix whispered. "One of the first, and still here?" His metal-sheathed shoulders jerked. "No. Not sent. I saved you back ... Waiting. Waiting ..." The demon's voice faded. The light in its forehead flickered. "Xantcha." He made her name long and sibilant, like a snake sliding over dried leaves. "My special one. Here ... in Dominaria?"