On the fourth day, though time meant little in that place, passing only in the world outside, he discovered the reason for his revulsion. The dull, scraping sounds of armor against stone, of multitudes locked in battle, had caught first at the edge of hearing, seeming unreal, then steadied, held, and increased as he went on. Till coming to the fissure-like opening of yet another vast cavern, he looked down on a sight that twisted his spirit like rope and squeezed hard at the knots. Some twenty meters below him, as it were through a glassless window, he saw and understood at last the riddle of these pathetic creatures. Newly hatched---the broken, swollen webs of multiple cocoons lay many layers deep all around them---they were locked into countless battling pairs. Each separate fight was to the death, the victor sometimes stopping to eat a part of the vanquished, gaining strength, then moved on to grapple with others who had yet survived. By such attrition their numbers had already been reduced from thousands to hundreds, to what end he could not imagine. Then he saw the females. Huge and bloated, they sat complacently on raised vantage points at the margins of the battlefield, awaiting the final conquerors. These victors he knew, from the signs he had already seen, would mate with them and then be cast out, possibly eaten, left to die as they would, the reason for their brief, wretched lives extinguished. He watched them in dull horror, growing to intense pity and disgust. For he knew that what he sought lay beyond them, and that its power, for good or ill, had nothing to do with them, and no influence whatever, either to elevate or corrupt. They were only here, and through some flaw of intelligence, or heart, or having no choice, they lived and died in a meaningless haste of reproduction. He must past through them. He waited as long as his patience would hold, away from the window, not watching. When he looked in again many hours later, the number of fighting pairs had been reduced to perhaps sixteen. He crawled in through the high opening, moved carefully down the back-leaning arc of wall and onto a level with the combatants, all unnoticed. A narrow wrinkle in the chamber, nearly flat at the base, ran like a sunken path before him, dividing the battle in half. Having no choice, he began to walk the shallow gauntlet, moving stiffly, always ready for a fight. First one pair and then another released their grip as they saw him, confused. Some, already on the verge of death, lay writhing and legless, fighting still. The four queens, each from its raised pedestal, looked on in disbelief: their sacred ritual had been disturbed. Simin moved steadily forward, staring down and backing off each male as he passed. He was nearly halfway through.