The Quest for Karn

Chapter 15

Venser might have fallen asleep. Sometimes he heard strange sounds, and once even music, hypnotic and repeating. At another point it was screams-hundreds of beings screaming all at one time. Still they floated. Elspeth woke, fell asleep, and woke again. Cave openings passed in the blue shadows. At one, Koth insisted that they leave the shaft, and using his hands he brought himself close to the cave mouth. But after seeing something in the cave he became very quiet and did not mention leaving again.

It was hard to know how deep they were in Mirrodin. Venser had stopped caring. Eventually the guide floated up next to Venser and pointed. “It will have to be there,” he said.

Koth paddled up beside him, as did Elspeth. A cave was passing, dark and small. No more than a tube hole.

“Why that one?”

“We are as deep as we should go,” Venser said.

“I for one am ready to leave this place,” Elspeth said. “It feels as death might. This is a sensation I am not overly interested in.”

Koth grunted. “I agree with the white one.”

“Yes,” Venser said. “Death no, squeezing down this tube, yes.”

Venser paddled to the hole. It took longer than he had thought it would, and by the time he was near his arms were tired. The side of the shaft moved past faster than he’d expected.

“Are you all ready?” Venser said. “The side here is moving fast. We’ll have to not miss the hole or I don’t know how you’ll follow. Who wants to go first?”

“I will,” Elspeth said. “I have no fear of this hole … as long as it leads me to more Phyrexians to slaughter.” She stroked closer to the wall of the shaft, which really was moving past at a fairly quick clip. Koth stroked over so he was above Elspeth, and touching the wall as he slipped downward. Venser aligned behind them both.

Elspeth caught the hole’s rim and amidst her clattering armor, she thrust into it as deep as her mid-section. She struggled for a moment as the current of the shaft caught her legs and pulled them downward. Then she was wriggling through with only her feet extending out of the hole. Then her feet were gone.

Koth did not have quite so easy a time. He could not dive as deeply into the hole. And for a desperate couple of moments, he was grasping the inside of the tube while his waist and lower body dangled out and were pulled down. The geomancer heated his hands until his fingers sunk into the wall of the tube as though it were warm butter. With a good handhold, he was able to haul himself up and into the hole. The metal walls of the hole were still hot as Venser threaded into it. He burned the palm of his right hand and cursed under his breath as he scraped his right knee on one of the five rough divots Koth’s fingers had made in the cooling metal.

The tube they found themselves in was very tight indeed. Koth had to fight a growing impulse to push outward. There was no light and any attempt at light, Venser knew, would only illuminate the area between each of them and not pass ahead. So they crawled. The tube seemed to stay fairly level and the crawling was not especially difficult. Then they started to slide a bit. At first nobody was sure if they were sliding down or up. Venser concluded that the tube was angling downward, but he could not really tell.

They turned a tight corner and Venser heard a whoosh and Koth was no longer crawling in front of him. Venser carefully crawled forward and felt a pull and then he was yanked by Koth’s suction … traveling suddenly fast enough to feel the slight imperfections of the tube banging into his elbows and knees.

It continued, the downward slide, until suddenly they shot out of the slide and into the air. Venser knew only that there was darkness one moment and light the next, coupled with the feeling of falling. He was able to see the floor for one split second before the plummet. He breathed the mana stream extending from his head into him and a moment later he felt the familiar explosion in his skull and teleported, appearing in a squat on the level floor.

Koth, Elspeth, and the guide did not have as easy a time. The white warrior executed a flip and went skittering across the shiny floor on her rump. Koth tucked his shoulder and hit the ground with the tremendous clatter of metal on metal. He left a long scrape in the floor.

“That could have gone better,” Koth said, testing the rotation of his shoulder in its joint as he stood.

The guide stood and bent his neck side to side.

Elspeth was sitting on the floor, legs splayed. She was staring at the room they had jettisoned into. Other tubes met in the room and at the far end others left in the same way. But in the middle was another huge room. The metal walls, roof, and floor were shiny. The light came in organic patches that clung in irregular shapes to the walls.

Off to the right a round, human-height door woven with bars was visible. There was movement in the room-reflections on the walls shifted and moved, as though something were inside the room moving fast, casting its reflection. Venser squinted, but saw nothing.

To the left, a huge square set of meat steps extended up in a series of turns that ended at a set of what look suspiciously like a wooden gallows. There were pieces of metal hammered together unevenly and at odd angles. A single chain hung unmoving from the edge of the hammered-together structure.

A warm wind stirred their sweat-soaked hair. Venser took off his helmet.

Venser had not at first realized just how large the room was. As he looked, its walls seemed to stretch far, far away. Yet another larger room. He could see lines of smoke in the distance as if a brush fire were burning. But what was there to burn down in these metallic bowels?

More movement along the walls near the door … Venser turned in time to see a circular crease appear in the wall. Another crease appeared down the middle of the circle. All the creases split open and from its epicenter stepped Phyrexians, one after another.

Something had been moving in the barred portal to the right of the newly formed hole, but when the Phyrexians stepped out, all movement ceased. Then whatever was in the barred room started thrashing and clicking, as if the room on the other side of the barred portal was full of giant insects all clicking together in a maddening frenzy.

What stepped out of the round portal was even more shocking. A line of ten thin beings stood before the door. Each of the beings stood in exactly the same way. Each looked at the party with its white, porcelain face cocked to the right. Eyes that were no more than dark holes bored into the face stared with neither lid nor iris. Their mouths were nothing more than expressionless notches. Their bodies were an exterior, shell-like white porcelain. But underneath the filth- and oil-smeared ceramic the creatures were composed of barbed, dim gristle.

They took a step forward in unison. Large barbed metal wings snapped out from their backs and spread wide. A moment later the Phyrexians took flight. They ascended high into the air. The chamber seemed to have no ceiling, and for a terrible moment, Elspeth lost sight of them.

It was Koth who found them in the dark air. “To the right, coming low,” he bellowed.

They looked right and there were the ten skimming the floor with their sharp fingers spread wide, ready to rake the party from their boots.

Venser breathed deeply and in his cranium he imagined the mana moving the turns and curls of his brain, lighting the regions until it glowed from within. Then he imagined a blue smoke coming from his nose as he repeated the rounded syllables of the incantation. His eyes pulsed blue. Their bodies doubled, and then doubled again, six of them stood in a rough line against the flying Phyrexians. Then their bodies copied again, and again.

Four Elspeths drew swords and fell into a wide stance. Four Koths began to grunt and growl the spells of incineration and blaze. Koth raised his hands and four huge balls of fire blasted from his fingertips at the Phyrexians. They dodged the balls, but Venser watched as the fire shot across the room and did not stop. The balls streaked for as long as Venser was watching. The enemy was almost upon them before he took his eyes off the fireballs.

Elspeth stepped into the Phyrexians and brought her sword’s blade down in an overhead attack. As she did so, the steel flashed and blurred into a mass of flashing blades. But something was different. Instead of the sound of thousands of swishing swords Venser was used to hearing, he heard thousands of clanging sounds. Thousands of glancing blows. One of the Phyrexians did find its torso split, and with the same rapt expression on its plain face, it fell in two pieces.

Four Koths seized Phyrexian wrists and spun to the left, but only one actually cast its foe into the gallow-like structure made of meat, where it hit hard so that the pieces of metal at the top vibrated like a tuning fork and the creature did not move again.

Venser pulled more power from the folds of his cranium. He dodged to the left to avoid the pocked claws of a Phyrexian that had guessed which Venser was real. As he passed he touched the creature’s leg. A blue charge traveled up the leg and into the barbed flesh. The charge circled and shot along all straight angles. Finally it found the creature’s skull. The Phyrexian’s eyes flashed blue and a moment later it went limp and fell in a heap of wrong angles.

The Phyrexians stopped and with their wings flapping furiously, they hovered and began raking with their claws. Koth’s eyes went red and cuffs of metal popped out along his forearms. A Phyrexian claw glanced off his arms and he shoved his hands into the thing’s barbed abdomen. His hands sunk into the metal and the geomancer pulled great hunks out. Oil fell out and the Phyrexian clawed at Koth, but the vulshok continued to yank bits out until he tore the creature out of the air and threw it down. The Phyrexian tried to rise but Koth fell on its chest with his knees and began banging its head savagely on the metal floor.

Another hovered above Koth, sweeping gashes in his back and hair. Koth turned and knocked the Phyrexian out of the air with a blazing fist.

Elspeth was beside herself. Venser had never seen such rage. She was screaming as she hacked at the nearest Phyrexian, leveling gashes out of its porcelain shell. The Phyrexian caught her sword, twisted, and wrenched it from Elspeth’s grasp. It cast the sword aside and came at the white warrior’s chest with its claws forward. Instead of falling back Elspeth lunged forward, catching the Phyrexian’s claws in her hands. They grappled a few feet off the ground until Koth seized the Phyrexian’s foot and dragged it down and began twisting its head on its neck. The head turned freely and seemed to have little effect on the Phyrexian, who continued to try to scrabble a path through Elspeth’s hands to the white warrior’s chest.

Koth began pulling up on the head. He heaved and twisted and eventually the head popped neatly off. The Phyrexian’s body went limp and fell to the ground. Koth held the head up and looked at it. He tapped the porcelain shell with the back of his knuckle. “It’s like egg shell,” he said.

Two of the other Phyrexians grabbed Koth’s arms and swept him high into the air. The geomancer laughed as he flew high. Elspeth, in one smooth movement, reached down for the knife in her boot, raised up, and threw. The bright blade glittered in the air before finding its target: the right eye of the Phyrexian holding Koth’s left arm.

Both the creatures stopped flying upward. The one with the knife sticking out of its eye turned and looked at its compatriot. They both cocked their heads as their wings flapped.

“You have something in your eye,” Koth said.

The Phyrexian turned its strange gaze on the geomancer. Its wing beats slowed before stopping altogether, causing it to plummet.

As the beast fell it did not release its hold on Koth’s arm … neither would the other Phyrexian, who strained against the combined weight, and then fell as well. Koth managed to turn as he fell so that the Phyrexians were between him and the metal floor. They hit first. By the time Koth hit, the Phyrexians were dead and offered enough resistance to break his fall. He bounced high off their bodies and came to rest near Venser, who helped him up.

Elspeth, meanwhile, had dispatched the two remaining Phyrexians with her blade, which she had retrieved.

Koth shook off Venser’s arm. “That was fun,” he said. “I’d like to try that again. Should we? Should we do that again?”

Venser shook his head. The geomancer was acting stranger and stranger. When was the last time any of them had eaten food or had more than a mouthful of water? They were each in their own way starting to show the strain of the trip. Venser knew that at some point he could, in likelihood, have to fight and restrain the much larger vulshok. Venser smiled. He’d fought larger and more powerful beings in his time. Koth would be easily dealt with.

Elspeth, on the other hand, showed absolutely no signs of stress, except when fighting. That made Venser all the more nervous. She had become bloodthirsty, but that could hardly be blamed. She’d mentioned her imprisonment at the hands of the enemy. A traumatic event like that could not help but leave scars. Yes, Venser would have to watch her for signs of stress. He would have to watch them both, and in the meantime it was up to him to think rationally. The mission could not be compromised. They must find Karn, and by any means at his disposal, Venser would make that happen … even if that meant dealing with every Phyrexian in that rat’s nest under the surface. Even if that meant dealing with Koth and Elspeth. He would find Karn, oh yes.

“Mr. Artificer, sir,” Koth waved his hand before Venser’s eyes. “Are you there, sir?”

Venser blinked. “I am here, you dolt.”

“There he is,” Koth said. “I thought for a time that you’d have to be put out of your misery. That you were becoming like them.” He pushed one of the still Phyrexians with his foot.

“I am not affected by the black oil,” Venser said defensively.

“Oh, no?” Koth said. “Why not.”

Venser stepped around the vulshok and went to stand next to Elspeth. Her eyes were narrowed and her lip was drawn in the corner into a snarl. She stared down at one of the dead Phyrexians.

In the barred window behind them the sound of thousands of clicking insects continued. The wide fire in the distance flickered and danced, giving off plumes of smoke that rose high in the absolutely vast room.

“Their claws are cold and cruel,” Elspeth said. She was looking down at her hands as she spoke. She clenched one gloved hand. “Once they touch you it is hard to forget that feeling.”

“Are you hurt?” Venser said.

Elspeth turned on him. For one quick moment Venser thought she would stab him with the knife she had just pulled out of the Phyrexian’s eye. But the sneer quivered and disappeared. “I do not allow them to hurt me,” Elspeth said.

The sudden stillness of the room was beginning to unnerve him. The huge space and many others on Mirrodin, he realized suddenly, reminded him of when he was a child running in the streets and he found the set of a theatrical play. He and the other children he was with could never afford to attend such a play, but they found the set. The set builders had just left the premises and the back door was open. He and his friends wandered in and stood in the hush of the room with its small castle with an open side. There was also a tree built of wood planks. It was for appearance of course, and nobody was around. That’s how the rooms felt to Venser there in the bowels of Mirrodin.

The clicking in the barred room started again. “Are they cruel?”

“I’m sorry?” Elspeth said.

“Are the Phyrexians cruel, by nature?”

Elspeth thought for a moment. “The prison I was in was little more than a factory. Conveyer belt ran from room to room. They like organs and flesh. They like to hold them and play with them. One of their loves is interchanging parts for other parts.”

“I see.”

“You do not,” Elspeth said. “I was eight years old and I saw people ripped apart … slowly. The beasts are semisentient. They can play with you. They understand how to hurt and cause fear. They would force me to watch, only to see the look on my face.”

“They are that aware?”

“Oh yes.”

Koth had walked up to listen. “This has made you stronger. Now you are mighty.”

Elspeth said nothing. She wiped the blade of her knife on the leather of her underjerkin before slipping it back into the scabbard in her boot. Then she looked over at the round portal next to the barred window. “Shall we look at that situation?” she said.

The guide had watched them, as he always did-unspeaking and very still. When they moved toward the door, he followed.

Unlike the other doors they had approached, the door opened to reveal a dimly lit room. There were three large holes in the metal floor that looked strangely fleshy, organic. They quivered slightly as the party stepped in the room. Another circular door opened into another, vast room. That other room was filled with large objects, hundreds of them. Each object was made up of an arm attached to a large cylindrical tank with a spine fused to it. There were literally hundreds, maybe thousands of the devices, and each arm was pushing down on something, keeping whatever was in the tank down.

Each tank had a small set of eyes near its top. The top of its tank was rimmed with sharp teeth, all pointing downward.

“What are those arms holding down?” Koth said, stating the question playing over each of their tongues.

Without warning a head sputtering black fluid popped out of the nearest cylinder. The arm attached to the device immediately moved its claw and shoved the head back down.

But not before Venser recognized an elf’s ears.

“These must be propagation tanks,” Venser said. “Breeding tanks.”

“Phyrexians don’t need to breed,” Elspeth said.

Venser thought for a moment. “Perhaps they want to turn more beings to Phyrexians faster than normal,” Elspeth said.

“I have never heard of such a thing,” Venser said.

The guide was silent, watching.

“We should destroy them,” Elspeth said.

“But how?” Koth said. “It would take countless hours. What we should do is move toward the surface and find others and then return.”

“Koth is right,” Venser said.

The vulshok turned with a shocked look on his face. “Did you just say I was correct?”

“Only in that we have to leave this place now,” Venser said. “Not that we should travel to the surface.”

“Oh,” Koth said. “Well then, artificer, now that you’ve decided not to assist these poor beings,” Koth’s voice was rising as he talked. Venser had noticed that that was happening more and more frequently with the geomancer. The sweat had collected on his face, and the iron dust stuck to it. He looks like he’s losing his mind, Venser thought.

“Which of the three holes will you take us down?” Koth said.

“We cannot help these creatures. Their fate is already decided. Destroying these tanks would only slow our path,” the guide said.

The arm on the nearest tank flexed and its spines clicked as the tank readjusted its hold.