The Quest for Karn

Chapter 9

Elspeth popped out behind as Venser tried to get a good look into the room. He could not see anything save brightness. The room was well lit. Not bright like the room where they had met Tezzeret, but well lit. Koth popped out of the previous opening. Venser turned to Tezzeret. The metal-armed human was drumming the fingers of his metal arm on a wall. Waiting for his Phyrexians before entering the room, Venser guessed. Elspeth appeared beside Venser, still dripping and stinking. Her eyes wrenched down into suspicious slits. Her weapon was unsheathed in her white-knuckled fist.

“What is it?” Venser said.

Elspeth did not speak at first. Venser had to repeat his question.

“The smell,” she said. “Do you smell it?”

Venser did not want to tell her how much she stunk, how much they all stunk. “I think we all have a particular stench about us now,” he said.

Elspeth’s head jerked curtly, her eyes never leaving the doorway into the well-lit room. “Not that smell. The other.”

Venser took a good breath. His nose was usually fairly good, but he could not smell anything except the slight stink of rotting meat. He looked at Elspeth and shook his head. Her hands were shaking. Her lips were drawn into a tight, white line.

“I smell their tools,” she said. “Their blades.”

When the last of his chrome Phyrexians were dripping in the corner, Tezzeret stepped to the bright room. “This way,” he said.

Venser suddenly became very aware of the Phyrexians behind him. He stopped walking. They stopped walking. Would it be possible to turn and leave, or would they not let him go?

Tezzeret was the first to enter the room. Venser followed, then Elspeth, and last Koth, cursing as he tried to ladle the slime off his arms.

Inside the room, lights were focused on haphazardly arranged tables. There were cages of metal ribs lining the room. Phyrexians of various sizes were moving between the tables.

They were chrome-type Phyrexians like Tezzeret’s. One had a chrome breast and head, and unnaturally high shoulders. Each of its huge claws was festooned with blades and needles, and both of these claws were inside the cracked-open chest of a human lying on a table. The human was jerking and writhing as the surgeon pulled parts out and looked at them. A huge Phyrexian with a tiny skeletal head and patched-together arms as long as its legs held the humans down. As they watched in stunned silence, the blade-handed surgeon took out the human’s liver and dropped it unceremoniously on the table with a splat. Another Phyrexian, with strips of discolored iron wrapped around its body, poked at the liver with its sharpened finger lances, while its other hand, shaped like scissors, snipped bits off.

Elspeth screamed.

It was a sound like none Venser had ever heard-a primal, rage-filled shriek. She ran forward and cut the first Phyrexian she met, leaving two hewn parts to slip to the floor. Her sword moved like a blur and two more Phyrexians fell. Elspeth’s face was a grim mask and her blows were harder and less focused than normal-more wild hacking than anything else. She bellowed in a language Venser couldn’t identify as she butchered every Phyrexian in the room.

Some of the chrome Phyrexians behind Venser twitched, but Tezzeret looked at them once and they stopped moving.

When Elspeth reached the nearest surgery, the large orderly Phyrexian raised his meaty arms from the patient and had them severed neatly at the forearm. The next flurried cut came fast on the heels of the first, and the Phyrexian’s body slid apart in seven places. The surgeon pulled a syringed claw from the muck in the human’s body but was cut down in place, still with one claw in the human’s thorax. The Phyrexian doctor that had sliced up the liver looked from Elspeth to its chrome brethren at the doorway. The frantic knight’s sword swept down with an overhead strike that split its head and shoulders from each other.

Elspeth turned and hacked at the side of the next Phyrexians, tears running down her cheeks, and strings of drool coming from the corners of her mouth.

There were perhaps twelve Phyrexians when they entered, but they were soon dispatched. Elspeth sunk to the bloody, reeking floor, still holding her sword, and began to cry in wrenching sobs. Venser walked toward her. Unexpectedly, the person who had been on the table sat up. With no orderly, the human tried to stand, its stomach open. It fell on the floor. As Venser passed the cages, the beings within began to moan. They reached from between the rib bars and clutched at his clothes with weak, white fingers.

Venser reached Elspeth and bent down and put his hand on her shoulder. She jerked away. He glanced at her sword before speaking.

“What is this place?” Venser said. He walked back toward Tezzeret. Koth was standing off to the side with eyes wider than Venser had ever seen. The Vulshok’s vents at his ribs were wide and red. Venser could almost see the steam coming out of his ears.

“This is an experimentation chamber,” Tezzeret said calmly, looking at his fingernails. Clearly the sight of all the carnage did not bother him in the least.

“And this does not affect you?” Venser said.

“This arm,” Tezzeret said. “Is made of etherium, as you know. I had to collect it painstakingly over time, from bodies sometimes. I found them anywhere I could. I pulled them dead out of gutters after bar fights.”

Venser stared at the beast standing before him.

“From filth and weak flesh,” Tezzeret said, “to this purity.” He flexed his shining arm. “Phyrexians strive to have flesh, to be of flesh. They fail to see that flesh is what makes them dirty and weak.”

Elspeth’s sobs continued. Suddenly Venser was very tired and he felt as though he might be sick. Sick from what Tezzeret was telling him. Sick from what he had just seen. No, there was a level he would not pass. You could offer him four etherium limbs and he would not take them if the metal had to be extracted from bodies. “Why did you bring us here?” Venser said wearily.

Tezzeret raised his etherium arm and pointed. “For her.”

Tezzeret’s finger pointed to a cage on the far wall. Koth was closer, and he moved toward it, stepping carefully over the lumped bodies of the Phyrexians. It took Venser longer to reach the cage. Koth was already peering in by the time he arrived. Venser looked at the cage’s lock, which resembled nothing so much as a human heart of pocked metal. The artificer whispered words of power, moving mana to his hands from his head, and put his fingers into the lock’s suddenly pliable metal. He moved his fingers around until the door swung open. Inside, a figure lay on the floor. Koth walked into the cage. Soon he came out with the female human. She was dressed in leather, an unusual material to use for clothes on Mirrodin, Venser knew. Must be from another plane, he thought. Aside from that she appeared a normal human, except she needed a good scrubbing.

Venser turned to Tezzeret.

“Do you notice anything about her?” Tezzeret said.

Elspeth stopped crying. She looked at the human.

“No,” Venser said. “A human from somewhere else.”

“Is she from somewhere else?”

“She’s not Mirran,” Koth said.

“No?” Tezzeret said.

“She’s got no metal,” Koth said, looking at the human with barely hidden disgust.

“Ahhh,” Tezzeret said.

“What is your name?” Venser said.

The woman did not answer. She opened her mouth but no sound came out.

“Do you have a name?” Koth said.

“Leave her be,” Elspeth said thickly. “Can you not see she is shocked to be free? Unlock the other cages. Let the wretches out.”

“I would not do that,” Tezzeret said.

“Why?” Venser said.

“They are mostly Phyrexian. They would strive to kill you. This place studies Phyrexian transformation.”

“But she has no phyresis,” Koth said, staring at the woman. “Not any that I can see.”

Tezzeret nodded. His little smile reappeared. “Exactly.”

Venser looked back at the woman. All flesh and no infection, he thought. As he watched, she teetered and then sat down abruptly.

Tezzeret gestured to the woman. “They have been looking at this fleshling for some time. She does not succumb to the oil that spreads their infection. That is why she is not mangled. They pour the oil on her. They inject it under her skin. Still she defies infection. Nobody knows why.”

“She is the key to fighting their vile spread,” Elspeth said.

Tezzeret nodded.

“And how are you not infected?” Koth said.

“I have certain other advantages,” Tezzeret said. “Leading among these is my facility with etherium.”

“But look at her,” Koth said. “What I see here is something made to slow us down. This thing cannot travel with us.”

The fleshling’s head was weaving.

“Is that blood?” Elspeth said.

They rushed over to where the fleshling was sitting. Blood was running freely around her on the metal floor. Venser walked around her looking for the wound. The leather rags she was wearing were sodden on her back. He carefully pulled the leather back, and saw a yawning incision barely held together with crude, pocked staples.

“I am inclined to agree with Koth,” Venser said. “How can we move quickly with such a wounded one?”

“Have you seen nothing, artificer?” Tezzeret challenged. “This one is not infected by the plague. That does not interest you?”

“What interests me is your motivation for giving us this being.”

Tezzeret smiled. “And what a gift.”

Elspeth hurried around behind the fleshling. Just then a shiver went through the muscle of the room’s flesh wall. At the far end of the room a single eye snapped open and the golden iris dilated as it took in the light. It pivoted in its socket and focused on the companions. Then it snapped shut.

“This is not as good as it could be,” Tezzeret said. He pointed to the door they had come in. Four of his chrome Phyrexians scrabbled to the doorway and hunched, waiting.

A part of the wall near the eye shook and a crease appeared, and then two tight lips opened to reveal sharp teeth. The teeth parted and the mouth, as large as Venser, opened wide. A shriek came from the mouth.

Tezzeret turned to Venser. “You have moments. That is an alarm.”

Venser looked back at the fleshling. He knew Elspeth wanted to take the thing, and that Koth did not. His would be the deciding vote.

“She is the only being I have ever met to have this natural ability,” Tezzeret said.

Venser knew he was right. Imagine the planes and people they could help if they could find out why she was immune. Imagine if Karn was infected and the fleshling could somehow bring him back to himself.

“She travels with us,” Venser said.

Koth stomped his foot.

“She has a long cut on her back,” Elspeth said, looking up from the fleshing. “I will try to at least close it so we can move.”

“Flee, I would say,” Tezzeret said. “Separately these creatures can be dealt with. But in the numbers that are rushing toward our location currently …” Tezzeret shrugged.

From the cavern on the other side of the doorway a muffled clatter broke the silence, then another.

Koth ran to the doorway. Venser went with him. Elspeth kneeled behind the fleshling, chanting. A milky glow radiated around the two. The chrome Phyrexians looked nervously over their shoulders at Elspeth, of all people. They fear the white warrior, Venser thought. But he had no time to ponder the question. A deep growling roar sounded on the other side of the doorway.

“I’ll go have a quick look,” Venser said. He closed his eyes. The mana moved into his ears and through his eye sockets and nose, sucking into his brain. In his mind’s eye he saw the location in the cavern. He imagined he was hopping and when the pop occurred in his ears he opened his eyes. He was standing in a far corner of the cavern. He could see the glowing doorway and the blue Phyrexians staring out. He looked to the right before snapping back into the doorway.

“There are many,” he said. “And some huge Phyrexian I have not seen before, with a white shell for a head and shoulders. It has many arms and a steely body and legs.”

Tezzeret was behind him. “A bastion,” he said.

“Is that good or bad?” Koth said.

“It is not good,” Tezzeret said. “It was once white. Those are the worst ones: the ones that were crusaders. If there is one, then there will be more.”

“I cannot close this wound,” Elspeth yelled from the other side of the room. The shriek continued, just high enough to stick in Venser’s ears and keep him from thinking quickly. “Keep trying,” he said. “Can we jump down the screaming mouth?” he said to Tezzeret.

“I don’t know,” Tezzeret said. “You might be able to. Watch the teeth.”

“You are leaving?”

“Oh, yes,” Tezzeret said. “I wanted only to give you this creature.”

More clatters sounded from the room. They sounded closer than before.

“But why?”

“I have my reasons for wanting the Phyrexian invasion to have to work hard. To perhaps encounter significant resistance.”

“Have you seen Karn?” Venser said. “We need to find Karn.”

Tezzeret nodded slowly, apparently thinking about the question Venser had just asked him. “Yes,” he said finally. “I have seen the silver golem.”

Venser waited. “Where is he?”

“He is in his throne room, of course,” Tezzeret said.

“Where?” Venser said.

“Deeper still. At the heart of this metal clockworks.”

At that moment there was a tremendous rattle in the cavern outside the experimentation room. The Phyrexians at the doorway rushed out, followed by Koth. Venser and Tezzeret were last.

The room outside the doorway was filled with Phyrexians of all shapes and sizes. Three creatures with white porcelain crusts for heads towered over the rest, four arms hanging at their sides. Tezzeret’s chrome Phyrexians were already tearing into some of the closest creatures. Koth was glowing red and mucking up to his elbows in the thorax of another beast that, as they watched, fell back, a gaping red hole in its chest.

Venser blinked and appeared on the shoulders of one of the bastions. He pulled mana to him and when it was prickling his fingertips, he spread the back of the creature’s porcelain shell and reached in. He was never sure what he was touching, what metal parts, in the Phyrexians, but he dissolved whatever it was. Eventually the creature took a staggered step forward, and then fell limp.

Venser blinked away and back to the doorway before he hit the ground. Tezzeret had not moved.

“Impressive,” he said.

“But we cannot fight that army,” Venser said. “We need a way out.”

Tezzeret sighed, and walked back into the experimentation room. The mouth in the far wall continued screaming. It was all Venser could do to not clap his hands over his ears. Elspeth was still kneeling and chanting, with her hands on the fleshling. The sound of the fray outside the doorway was a loud rumble.

Tezzeret touched the wall, and another mouth opened. The mouth had no teeth. Venser, strangely, found himself feeling uneasy at the prospect of being swallowed by a toothless mouth.

“I’m not altogether sure where this one goes,” Tezzeret said. “But in general the ones without teeth go upward. The larger the teeth the deeper the way goes. At least I’ve found that mostly to be true. Go to the furnace layer. That is over and up. The heat will tell you.”

“Thank you,” Venser said.

“No,” Tezzeret said. “You have helped me more than you know. I would not have helped you otherwise.”

A shriek from outside the doorway drew their attention.

“I will not remain around here to meet that,” Tezzeret said.

With that, Tezzeret touched the wall and an extremely long-toothed mouth opened wide. He turned and winked at Venser before stepping in. Venser couldn’t help but wonder if Tezzeret was at that moment traveling to Karn’s throne room. He almost asked if he could accompany him. But the moment passed and Tezzeret was gone. After a couple of seconds the mouth closed.

Elspeth stirred. “I cannot fully heal this wound,” she said. “It is too deep. I do not know if something vital was removed. The best I can do is close it so we can travel.”

“So she can move?”

“Not by herself. We will have to assist her.”

He nodded. “Well, that would be our mouth,” he said, pointing at the toothless maw.

Venser walked across the room and looked out at the cavern. More Phyrexians had arrived. Tezzeret’s chromes were still fighting hard, but their numbers were halved. As Venser watched, one of them received the huge ball arm from a huge Phyrexian on the top of its head. The head crushed down and the Phyrexian stopped moving and crumpled. Koth was as red as an ember, taking great, heaping handfuls of metal out of a Phyrexian three times his size. The metal went from molten to slag the moment it left the vulshok’s hand and fell clanking to the metal floor.

When the Phyrexian fell, Venser yelled and beckoned Koth, who followed. The heat that he gave off as he approached made Venser step back.

“We’re going now,” Venser said.

“What? With all this fun to be had?” Koth said.

But he followed. Elspeth helped the fleshling to her feet. With her arm over Elspeth’s shoulders, the white warrior led her to the mouth Venser had pointed out. The fleshling did not look good to Venser’s eyes. She was pale and drawn. Her hair was dirty and infested with something that matted the locks. Bugs, he could not stand bugs-especially the ones that lived on the human body. But Mirrodin would not have bugs. Mirrodin would have something like bugs, but infinitely worse. A small shiver ran down Venser’s spine as he stepped up to the toothless mouth, waiting.

Koth noticed the shiver, apparently, and interpreted it as disgust of the mouth. “Don’t like the look of this one myself,” he said.

Venser glanced at Koth before he understood. “Oh, yes, the etherium-arm creature said the ones without teeth lead upward.”

“Don’t know if I trust that one.”

“I know I do not,” Venser said, smiling.

Koth nodded. The walls buckled somehow and a sound even more terrible than the screaming mouth rent the air. A sound like shells crushed under foot. Or skulls. The whine and snap of metal breaking came from the next room, and then the clank of many feet rushing over metal.

“We go now,” Venser said. Just as he spoke the mouth began to close. Koth stepped forward and seized the lips and with some effort wrenched them wider. Elspeth and the fleshing stepped into the mouth.

“This will hurt,” Elspeth was telling the fleshling as they disappeared into the maw.

“You go,” Koth said, when Venser gestured for the vulshok to go.

“Go ahead.”

Just as a bleeding Phyrexian stuck its small head into the doorway leading to the cavern-

Venser jumped head first into the oral cavity.

The sensation was different with the toothless mouth. It was tighter and slower. Many times Venser felt his breath would not hold out as the throat carried him upward in the way a snake might move its prey down the length of it. He found he could breathe better if he brought his arm up and held the bend of it over his eyes, creating a small air pocket. It was not comfortable, nobody would ever say that, but at least he did not feel like he was drowning. At one point he stopped. For that terrible time Venser was sure the Phyrexian whose mouth they were in knew a way to force regurgitation. But that did not happen and eventually he started moving again. The turns were few and Venser was glad for that, as they squeezed his body even more. After what seemed like forever, he was spit out and lay panting on the floor. Elspeth and the fleshling were leaning against the wall. But the wall was strange and bending, and neither Elspeth nor the fleshling looked comfortable.

The room was small, almost tiny. If Venser had ever imagined what it would be like to be inside a stomach, that would have been what he imagined. It was roughly circular and soft all over. The hole they had all been spit from opened again and pushed out Koth, who lay panting in the goo that covered them all.

“It’s like being born again,” the vulshok said, when he had his breath. Venser could not help but chuckle. Elspeth smiled. The fleshling blinked.

Venser touched the wall. Nothing happened. There were no other doors, just the tiny room. It seemed to get smaller after Venser touched the wall. He went to another side and touched the wall again. A mouth opened. A mouth with teeth.

“Try the other wall,” Koth said.

Venser did, and a toothless mouth creased into existence.

“How is it there are mouths now when there were round, lidded doorways before?” Elspeth said. “When we started this trip.”

Venser shrugged. “I think we are deeper than we were when we started. It seems we travel inside Phyrexians after we pass some point. That would be my guess.”

But the mouth that had carried them out opened. From down its gullet, they heard the struggling cries of many Phyrexians.

“They are coming up after us,” Koth said.

The next mouth appeared the same as the last they had used, and Elspeth went first. Koth followed and then Venser.

The trip was much the same as before, only longer. The mouth dropped them in a small fleshy room with a doorway into another vast cavern, the walls of which were covered in pipes and tubes.

The temperature was noticeably hotter. A glow emanated from far away across the cavern, and they walked that way. The fleshling walked between Elspeth and Koth, with her arms over both of their shoulders. Venser would not get too near the unwashed human.

They walked until Elspeth called a halt. The glow in the room only lit the lower portions, but upper reaches were dark. It was into that darkness that Elspeth pointed.

“What is that?” Elspeth said.

Venser squinted into the darkness. High up in the shadows a small form moved. It appeared to be flapping, but was very small and far away. As his eyes became accustomed to peering into the darkness, another form flapped itself into focus. Still another small thing was flying lower and the artificer made out its general form. It was very small, about as long as the last digit of his thumb. It had fleshy, beige membranes that it flapped, trailing bits of itself behind. Its body was round and oval shaped.

Next to Venser, Koth stared up at the same form. “It can’t be,” he said.

“What?” Elspeth said, looking at the vulshok.

“It’s impossible.”

“Do speak, vulshok,” Venser said, staring at Koth.

“That,” Koth said, “is a blinkmoth, unless I am a fool.”

“I will not comment on whether or not you are a fool,” Venser said, looking back at the strangely saggy little form flying at the edge of the darkness above. He had heard of the elusive creatures, of course, from Karn. He even happened to know that the drink he took to stave off the palsy contained some of their potent distillate.

They were farmed to near extinction long ago, Karn had told him. He had also told him how sad it made him that the only native life-form on Mirrodin had been used so poorly. But looking upon the rare creatures all he could think was how ugly they looked.

“How many are there up there?” Elspeth said.

Koth was beyond words, staring up at the moths.

“Four perhaps,” Venser said. “Should we see? I think we can risk some light.” Without waiting for an answer, Venser snapped a blue wisp into existence. He flung it up. The strand traveled up and up, and up some more. The ceiling was exceedingly high, but soon the wisp stopped. Venser concentrated on it and it began to glow brightly.

“Blazing ore!” Koth hissed.

The entire upper portion of the cavern was thick with the moths, flapping and bumping into one another. Koth looked around the room.

“Was this a farm?” he said. “I did not know they existed underground. They are never found in numbers such as this anymore. Never.” He looked back to the blinkmoths.

“They are the only natives to this place and were made by Karn’s hand,” Venser said. “Therefore, they are living manifestations of his creative essence.”

“Well, they do not fill me with awe,” Elspeth said. She squinted at the other side of the huge space. “They are rather runty little things, in fact.” She kept squinting.

“They were supposed to be gone long ago,” Koth said. “Gone to vedalken harvest.”

“They live, all right,” Elspeth said. “It is us I worry about. I see shapes advancing on us.”

Koth’s eyes instantly turned to where Elspeth was staring. Many dark shapes no larger than the blinkmoths were loping toward them across the wide room.

“They are Phyrexians,” Venser said, still watching the blinkmoths. The more he watched them the more he wanted some of his potion. The more his chin began to shake.

“How do you know?” It was Koth who spoke.

“I can feel their metal feet vibrating the floor.”

The others were quiet as they felt for the vibrations. The floor trembled under their feet.

“There are very many of them,” Koth said.

They were advancing from all sides, and in large numbers. The Phyrexians surged toward the island of blue light cast by Venser’s wisps.

Koth was already as red as an ember. He cracked his neck and stretched his arms behind his back in preparation. Elspeth’s sword was out. She held it loosely at her side watching the howling hoard advance on them. Venser was fighting hard to resist the desire rising in his chest to pull the tiny cork out of his flask and drain the few drops remaining down his throat. The three Planeswalkers had formed a triangle around the fleshling, who stood watching the advancing Phyrexians with a look of resolute detachment.

“How many are their numbers?” Koth asked.

“Plenty for all,” Elspeth hissed.

Then they were close, the Phyrexians, and Elspeth raised her sword and began running. She crashed into the first line of the enemy at a brisk trot-cutting three down with strikes too fast to see. The Phyrexians in her area trampled one another as they struggled to form a dense clump around her while she moved about her grim work, chopping each and every one of them down. In the red-tinged light, with Venser’s blue wisps overhead, her sword blazed a bright white, and many of the Phyrexians fell back, screaming.

Koth had grown long columns of loosely held rock out of his wrists which he used as whips. With these he was able to crush lines upon lines of Phyrexians.

But still more of the gabbling, dripping abominations pushed forward.

Venser fell back to stand next to the fleshling. When seven Phyrexians got too near, Venser blew out a cloud that caused their metal substructures to turn to the consistency of warm lead, and they fell apart into messes of writhing skin and sinew.

The pile of Phyrexian dead around Elspeth got higher and higher until Venser could not easily see the white warrior. But he could see her bright blade, and unless he was very wrong, it was not swinging as fast as it had been. Koth too was letting his rock whips rest on the floor as he huffed.

Venser watched a force of perhaps twenty Phyrexians break away from the group awaiting Elspeth’s attention and circle around to him and the fleshling. Venser looked past them. He noticed that the darker, far away parts of the huge room were without Phyrexians. He could teleport them there and stage attacks from that relative safety.

With the fleshling’s hand in his, Venser closed his eyes. He mouthed the words of power and felt the pull, then pop that told him he had left. But something was wrong. When he opened his eyes, both he and the fleshling were floating momentarily high above the ground, in the flock of blinkmoths. Far below, Venser saw Elspeth and Koth battling the Phyrexians in two pools of light. A blinkmoth flew into his check and another against his leg. The fleshling was convulsing and jerking on the end of his arm and Venser himself felt a tremendous fluttering all through his body like he would vomit three hundred times at once.

Then they began to fall.

He closed his eyes, but found it difficult to find the words that had come so easily before they appeared in the group of blinkmoths. As they picked up speed Venser set his mind on the floor, imaging what it looked like.

They were plummeting downward.

Venser took a last breath. He had only moments, he knew. He forced the words out of his mouth and with a sudden pop they appeared sprawled and dizzy on the hot floor.

Off to their side, Elspeth’s sword flashed and the Phyrexians screamed in the rosy light. Koth’s rock whips boomed on the floor. But Venser knew he could not stand. He lay with all of his limbs trembling so that he could not trust them to move where he told them. His heels banged on the floor rhythmically and his neck was jerking his chin back and forth. A blinkmoth crawled down his neck.

The fleshling was standing above him in the dimness, her eyes glowing a slight blue as she looked down at the artificer. Even in his state, Venser knew that the fleshling’s eyes were not glowing before he had teleported with her. His trembling continued until suddenly it stopped. He lay gasping and exhausted until the last tremors finally left. It had never been that bad, even after that first teleport that caused the whole mess.

Still the fleshling stared down at Venser with her blue eyes glowing impassively. “I can feel the blinkmoths inside me,” the fleshling said. “I can feel them flying in my skull.”

There was a certain calmness to her that put Venser in mind of Karn. She was telling him there were moths in her skull as calmly as she might that she preferred cloudy skies to sunny.

“I feel … different,” she said.

“I also do,” Venser said. It was true. He felt much worse than he had before. Plus, his right hand would not totally stop shaking. Even if he concentrated, it would not stop. Concentration always stopped it in the past.

Venser managed to push himself up off the floor. His head spun and he sat down hard. Still the fleshling watched him. “Help me up,” Venser said.

She bent and took Venser’s hand and helped him to his feet. He felt awful, like his brain was still half-materialized in his head. He knew that each teleport made his condition worse, but it was a drastic worsening of symptoms.

“You are wounded?” the fleshling said, cocking her head to the side as she waited for the answer.

“Yes. Are you?”

“No,” the fleshling said. “I feel every pore in my body.”

“And what do they feel like?”

“They feel like they are dancing.”

Unfortunately, Venser realized exactly what she was describing. He had felt it after he started drinking his potion. He had not felt that strong a reaction since he started depending on it.

Something screamed and they turned in time to see Elspeth hammer her blade down on the head of a large Phyrexian. As they watched, the creature’s two parts peeled apart to the chest, and it fell back, kicking. It was the last of the beasts, and Elspeth put her sword tip down and leaned heavily on it, gasping for air, her shoulders stooped.

Koth was lying on his back with his arms and legs splayed, huffing. The bodies of the fallen enemy lay in stinking piles all around. The far-away glowing side of the cavern flickered.

Venser stood unsteadily.

“We must walk,” the fleshling said. “We must.” She turned and began walking toward the glow. Elspeth nodded and began stumbling after the fleshling, unbelievably dragging her sword behind her. Venser followed. Koth stood up from the floor and ambled after them.

They slept where they fell, each taking turns on watch. When Venser woke he went looking for water pools left from the dripping of the upper levels. He found some shallow pools to drink from. The others woke and Venser showed them the pools and then they all walked on, clanking steps on the metal floor.

Venser’s hand was still shaking, and he kept it out of sight from the others. The fleshling’s eyes were still glowing, and Elspeth and Koth, Venser noticed, did not move too close to her.

Time meant nothing in the dim cave, lit from the far-off glow. Without a sun or a moon it was impossible to keep track of time. But to Venser it seemed as though they walked for hours, perhaps days. Twice they stopped their march to sleep. Once they found a small pool rippling with warm, stagnant water which they fell on. The fleshling could not bend her back well. She drank out of Venser’s helmet. As she was drinking Venser could not help but imagine what water out of his filthy helmet would taste like. He would never find out, that much he could guarantee.

By what might have been day four-or perhaps only ten hours-the glow had become noticeably brighter. They could easily see the expressions on one another’s faces. Koth’s face was smiling. There was the particular stench of sulfur in the air.

“I know raw metal when I smell it,” Koth said.

He was correct. They kept walking and found a river of rosy material flowing along a wall of pipes, which were sweating in the sweltering heat. The flow of molten material ran along the side of the wall for a time before making an abrupt turn left and passing through a hole.

“Do we follow the river?” Elspeth whispered to Venser.

“What did you say?” Koth said.

“I only inquired if he thinks we should follow the lava.”

“That is not lava,” Koth said. “That’s ore.”

“Why is it here?” Venser said.

Koth shrugged and looked back at the river, smiling. After watching it move for a time the vulshok turned back.

“I will lead us from here,” he said, casually. “I will bring us up to the surface.”

“What is the furnace layer?” Venser said.

“Must be the area under the Red Lacunae, under Kuldotha.”

“Can you take us there?” Venser said.

“Maybe. If I choose.”

“Well, choose to take us there,” Venser said. “Lead the way. That Tezzeret said the Phyrexians in the furnace layer are different than the others.”

Koth grunted and looked away, the smile still large on his face.

They walked on with Koth strutting at the lead. For a time they followed as close to the river as the heat would allow. But when it disappeared they walked along the wall. Koth looked closely at the wall as they walked. Every so often he would stop and touch the wall. Venser, on the other hand, kept his eyes on the floor. In the light from the molten ore he could clearly see a part of the wall coming up with many scuffs, some of them deep, leading to a section of the wall.

When they reached that part of the wall, Koth continued walking. Venser stopped. He carefully shrugged out from under the fleshling’s arm. He went to the part of the wall that the scuffs seemed to move to. The pipes were mostly rigid there. But after some feeling around and moving some of the more pliable conduit aside, he must have touched a trigger because a doorway opened. Koth walked back.

“Excellent,” he said. But he did not look pleased, Venser thought. The smile he had earlier turned into a frown. “I would have found that eventually.”

They gazed into the doorway. Inside was a largish, brightly lit room with no apparent ceiling. On the other side of the room were a set of metal stairs against the wall. They extended up and up until they were lost to the light in the room.

But the room was not empty. Two large Phyrexians were standing against the wall. The dark iron of their long claws was corroded, as were the plates on their backs and shoulders. But their helmets were off and thrown to the side. Their tiny white heads, which looked like stitched-together bone, bobbed as they made guttural sounds to each other. Other pieces of their metal coverings were cast aside in the swelter of the room. Venser could see their chests and necks, where tattered metal met chafed flesh.

They watched a writhing lump of something on the floor. It seemed a partially phyrexianized elf. It still had the ears of an elf, but plates of bloody, patinated copper pushed out of its skin and wove in with a darker metal to make a musclelike sheathing. The transformation was far from complete, and the elf convulsed on the floor, staring with eyes as black as oil at the dark ceiling.

But the Phyrexians seemed utterly absorbed in the process. As Venser watched, one of them lumbered up and pulled one of its claws across the elf’s bare neck. The blood that flowed out was mostly black. By the time the Phyrexian had moved back to its original spot, more of the copper and dark metal sheathing had wound itself up the elf’s arm and to the slice, covering it.

Venser felt a shiver of disgust move up his spine at the sight of the elf’s flesh turning to metal. But anger replaced that feeling. The fleshling shifted her weight to his shoulder as Elspeth detached herself. She stepped into the room and drew her sword quietly from its sheath. The Phyrexians did not notice her at first, and by the time they did Elspeth had gained the middle ground and was upon them. Venser had seen her many times use her sword ability to strike from every angle at once. Elspeth took exactly two swipes with the glittering blade. The first separated the Phyrexian’s neck and arm from its body and sent it caterwauling away, and the second was a downward strike that split the other’s head and shoulder from the neck offering up a virtual geyser of black, frothy material from the cut.

The smell of the material that poured from the thrashing Phyrexians’ bodies put Venser in mind of the acrid reek of a crushed bug.

Elspeth moved to the elf next. The wretch watched her approach with black ichor clouding her eyes. With a flick of her wrist, the white warrior knocked the elf’s head away.

Elspeth stared down at the headless body jerking around on the floor. She turned and went back to the fleshling, who put her arm over Elspeth’s shoulder.