The Quest for Karn

Chapter 10

Venser made it light when he blew out a puff of wispy shapes that danced and flickered blue before their eyes. In the ghostly light Koth looked at Elspeth and Venser and spat. They were reeking and sweating, with a crazed look about them.

The smell was nearly unbearable. Koth began breathing through his mouth.

The artificer stood and followed Koth, and the blue will-o’-the-wisp followed him. “It is getting warmer. We are on the right path, obviously.”

Small metal creatures, no larger than hummingbirds, suddenly appeared around a fallen Phyrexian, eating the meat on it. There were hundreds of them. Venser squatted down to watch them work. There was no sign of phyresis in these small metal creatures. They were neither sharp looking, nor possessing of tense, asymmetrical bodies laden with teeth.

“So this is how cleanup occurs on Mirrodin,” Venser said. “I knew the ecosystem had to clean itself somehow.”

“Breakdown artifacts,” Koth said. “They devour whatever is small enough to be devoured. I have never seen so many in one place.”

“Are these found on the surface?”

“Fewer and fewer lately.”

“I wonder why?” Venser said. “And why they have no taint of phyresis on them?”

Koth shrugged. He looked closely at Venser. The artificer did not look well. His helmet was off and his sunken cheeks and pale skin unnerved Koth, who thought flesh looked disgusting enough even in the best case.

Elspeth stepped up next to Koth. She gazed around the huge room. So large was the room that Venser’s wisp did not even reach to its edges-shadows formed and disappeared among the intestinelike pipe work that made up the walls.

“You think that the little silver demon went this way?” Koth said.

“I have to think not,” Venser said.

“It could be following us,” Elspeth ventured. “It did before.”

“You mean Tezzeret sent it to keep an eye on us before,” Koth said.

“That could be,” Venser said.

“Do you smell that?” Koth said. He held his nose between two thick fingers.

They looked down at the Phyrexians. “All that smell cannot be coming from them,” Elspeth said.

“They must have been guarding something to have been standing there,” Venser said.

“Don’t think I want to find it,” Koth said.

But Venser was already at the wall, pushing and probing as he looked for the door that must surely be there. After a snap, a small door opened and a terrible stink wafted out.

“Why would we go into that place?” Koth said.

“Because they were guarding it,” Elspeth said, drawing her blade and glancing at the dead Phyrexians.

“Exactly,” Venser said. “And this may be the correct way, for all we know.”

Holding their noses, they entered.

Unaccountably, they were walking through festering meat that reached a depth of mid-calf in places. The smell was absolutely disgusting, and Venser found himself breathing tiny breaths through his mouth. All words came out with a nasal numbness. Still Venser felt the gore pushing up from his stomach.

“This way,” he said, pointing into the blackness ahead. Far ahead Elspeth thought she could see a faint light. When she pointed it out to Venser, he snapped his fingers and the blue wisps disappeared. There was a glow in the huge room-a white glow that sifted up through the darkness of the far corner.

“We should advance on this carefully,” Venser whispered. “There might be many rooms like this one, and if we start a fight now, it might raise an alarm or follow us all the way to the furnace level.”

“The alarm we must assume has already been raised,” Elspeth said.

“Maybe,” Venser said.

Koth stopped walking, or at least Venser could not hear his footfalls squishing next to him anymore.

“Wait.” Koth said. “How far are we going?”

“We are finding Karn.”

“And let me guess, you know where he sits?”

“I have ideas where my friend and ally would choose to sit, yes.”

“And where would that be?” Koth said from directly behind, his voice raised a decibel.

“I think Karn would favor a room deep in the middle of his creation. A nerve center position,” Venser said.

“I am needed on the surface,” Koth said. “That’s where I’m going. My people need me. My people are fighting a foe …”

Elspeth and Venser stopped walking.

“How will you leave?” Venser said.

“How will you ascend?” Elspeth said.

Koth was silent for a moment. “I will jump.”

Venser put up his hand. “Quiet,” he said. “We are nearing the glow.”

But Koth was not quiet. “You know, you are not the leader of this group. I am. I organized this expedition. I talked Lady Elspeth here into coming. I did all of that. I direct this little nightmare.”

Venser shook his head in the darkness. “This is larger than you and yours,” he said. “This could concern more planes than a few. We must contain the spread.”

“That is all fine and good,” Koth said. “But don’t try to yank my culpers. You are here for Karn. I don’t think you care a bit for this plane. You made some pledge to this golem and you mean to keep that promise.”

When Venser said nothing, Koth continued. “I’ve never met an artificer with a sense of duty, but there are wonders under all suns, we vulshok say. Why not be honest and tell us both that you are here for personal gain?”

“Why would you think that,” Venser challenged, “when you brought me here?”

Elspeth was quiet. Venser could not be sure if she was on the edge of gagging in the fester, or if Koth’s words had struck a chord and she was reevaluating his motivations. But he could not ask her at that moment, for they neared the lighted area.

At that side of the room the piles of meat were quite old, and the breakdown artifacts covered them from top to bottom. Their iridescent backs rippled and clicked in the dim light as the party neared. But the small machines were not what they looked at. A single glow orb hung in the air. Behind the orb, set back in the overgrown walls of conduit and ridges, like the spinal run of some unfamiliar creature, stood a round doorway. There was no handle that Venser could see. A long table stood in front of the doorway, mired halfway up its legs in the sloppy fester. On the table stood many dented metal bowls of differing sizes. A large bowl sat at the end of the others. It was of a very dark metal. As Venser watched, tiny motes of yellow, like fireflies, spun around its edges in seemingly perpetual orbit.

“Darksteel,” Koth hissed beside him.

Venser squinted at the bowl. Darksteel, yes. He knew of it from his studies in metallurgy. A virtually indestructible metal found only on Mirrodin. Extremely difficult to work and very rare and expensive to buy. The bowl had something in it. From where he was crouched, Venser could not see what it was. The smaller bowls contained other, bloody things.

The sound of movement from behind made them freeze. Out of the corner of his eye Venser watched as a small form moved around a mound of meat. It walked with its head cast downward, but its jagged profile was unmistakable. The rows of crooked teeth filling a thin jaw completed the picture. It had eyes-glittering black things, four of them, but they were very small and appeared to not be of much use, as it passed within an arm’s reach before moving toward the table. Once at the table the small Phyrexian placed what was in its hand in the first bowl. It was muttering something as it did so, in a tongue that made Elspeth’s lip curl.

The first bowl turned a deeper purple and the creature scooped the fist-sized object into the next bowl, muttering again. The next bowl became suddenly bright silver. The little creature picked up the heart. Carefully the Phyrexian raised its right hand and out of its first finger a long, thin blade slid. The cut that the small creature made was thin and deep. The blood came from the heart and the Phyrexian held it over the third bowl. When the blood hit the bowl it sizzled and popped. The blade disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, and the creature took the heart in both its hands. It hinged the two sides open and closed at the cut line, like a mouth in a bloody little pantomime. That went on until the Phyrexian, apparently satisfied, dropped the heart unceremoniously in the second to last bowl.

Koth glanced at Elspeth, and then back to the strange creature. Venser watched as the Phyrexian opened another one of its fingers and sprayed a fluid into the second to last bowl. It let the cut heart sit in the fluid for a long time. Long enough that Venser found his eyelids falling. Then, with sudden and blinding speed it seized the heart and, as though the thing were struggling, it stuffed it into the darksteel bowl.

A moment later the Phyrexian turned and walked back out to the meat piles to find another heart. When the Phyrexian was gone the artificer crept from behind his heap of meat and to the round door. It did not open. He pushed on the door’s soft sides and waved his hand before it, but still it did not open. The darksteel bowl was behind him. Venser tried not to gaze in, but he saw what was inside it anyway-many other hearts all sliced.

When he turned back to the door, the small Phyrexian was there. It stood very still, with its long, black face cocked at an angle like a bird eyeing something shiny. Venser also stood absolutely still. He tried to breathe mana into himself, but found, to his horror, that he did not have what he needed for a jump. The jump he had made with the fleshling had all but drained him to the last. To make matters worse, his heart was beating fast in his chest. Then it was beating faster still. The small Phyrexian jerked its head completely sideways so the hole in the side of its head that served as an ear was aimed at Venser’s chest. It was with a certain concern that Venser noticed that the creature’s hand was tapping out the beat of his speeding heart on its emaciated metal thigh. The artificer’s heart was practically hammering on his chest.

Venser turned to run, and the Phyrexian raised its hand. The artificer stopped in his tracks. He closed his eyes and felt the grip of the creature’s mana on his heart, which raced and skipped along in his chest. He had one chance. He reached out with the mana he had left, and formed a link with the beast. For one horrid moment he saw into the thing’s mind-a murky place of blood and constant screaming and hunger and no light. Venser turned that part of his brain down. Then he began to drop the mental walls he kept constantly around his mind to protect from telepathic attack. If he did it correctly, the link he had with the creature’s mind would allow the mana directed against him to move through and back to the sender, as if in a circuit. Sometimes it even worked. Once, when attacked by a mind-mage trying to steal one of his creations, Venser had tried to form the link and pass the thief’s attack back to him, only to suffer a minor stroke when the attacker blocked his own mind.

So, if the sender threw up its own wall fast enough, then the full charge turned around and came thundering back.

Venser dropped his last mind barricade, and a moment later the Phyrexian stood upright and began jerking wildly. Venser made his hold tighter and tighter, until the thing sunk to its knobby knees in the stench and began to shriek.

The sound was so loud Venser almost lost his concentration. It echoed off the walls and down the cavernous room. Venser tightened his mind, and then tightened it again. A moment later the Phyrexian had black fluid running from its eyes and the holes of its ears pitched forward and did not rise again.

But the scream had not gone unanswered. From the far side of the room Venser heard a cry and the tromping of many feet running. He was almost too fatigued to move, but move he did. Koth and Elspeth were already at the door by the time he arrived. Koth punched the lidded doorway, to no effect.

“Stand away,” Elspeth said. She drew her sword and thrust it deep into the rubbery flesh and drew downward, pulling a neat cut from top to bottom. Fluid spurted out and the cut yawned wide.

“You first,” Elspeth said, stepping back for Koth.

The vulshok gazed uncertainly into the gash. Then he stepped through and his leg disappeared suddenly. The choking call was echoed behind them and Venser jumped through the gash. He felt himself carried along a tube in the dark, winding and turning and then tumbling downward, and suddenly stopping.

“Do these foes travel in this manner all the time,” Elspeth said, picking herself off the ground. Cut hearts were strewn everywhere at the base of the eye, which irised closed behind them. Venser’s foot slipped on one of the organs as he tried to stand.

Koth was already away from the hole. The room was as large as the last, and just as dark, but Koth was glowing all over his body. He turned. “Look at this,” he said.

Venser walked over to where the vulshok was squatting. The glow emanating from the front of his body cut a rosy swath through the darkness. In the light, large chunks of rock cast severe shadows.

“Are those rocks?” Venser said.

Koth nodded. “These are rocks. I was a Planeswalker before I saw my first rock. “They are not known on Mirrodin.”

“How are they here, in this deep place?” Elspeth said.

Koth shook his head.

Venser approached one of the rocks. It was really more of a boulder. It stood taller than Venser, and if he was to trust the jagged edges, then it was blasted or torn out of a mountain in some way.

“This is stanite,” Venser said.

“What does that mean?” Koth said.

“It is a common rock, found on many planes.”

“Very strong,” Elspeth said.

“I can’t think what the enemy needs this for.”

Venser looked closely at the rock. “How long have you been away from Mirrodin?”

“About a season,” Koth said.

“And the Phyrexians were here when you left?”

“Well, they weren’t on the surface, I’ll tell you that,” Koth said, pushing his knuckles into the palm of his hand.

Venser looked back to the rock. “That is interesting.”

“Why?” Elspeth said.

“Only that these rocks have been here for years,” Venser said.

“How do you know?”

Venser put out his finger and pulled it across the top of one of the boulders. His finger left a deep trail on it. “Dust,” Venser said.

“I do not think the Phyrexians pulled these here,” Elspeth said.

But Koth was not paying attention to the boulders anymore. His eyes were back on the portal, which remained open. “Why have they not come after us?” he said.

Venser turned. “It could be that there are many splits in the tubing, and they don’t know which one we took.”

“Why did we take this one?”

“I have no idea,” Venser admitted. “I had hoped you would be able to tell us.”

“These openings and tubes are not Mirrodin technology.”