The Quest for Karn

Chapter 11

They moved between the boulders until they found a set of badly corroded stairs. The stairs went up and up, swaying and creaking as the four climbed them. Venser walked up them first as a test. If he fell or encountered anything unforeseen, he could teleport back down, or he could have counted on being able to do that before his trip with the fleshling. He abruptly wondered if he would ever teleport dependably again. But he did not encounter anything except stairs that did not stop.

Eventually he walked back down and they all started to walk up the open stairs. They climbed so high that they left the light below. Soon they could see the entire larger cavern, and then more caverns beneath them, all glowing in the pulsing light from the rivers of molten metal.

The stairs were wide, but not quite wide enough for Elspeth and the fleshling to walk abreast. Koth walked two steps below and made sure that the fleshling did not teeter backward.

Venser stayed ahead, with his blue wisps lighting the way before them. Twice they heard a tremendous roar vibrate the wall that the stairs were affixed to. The second time the walls and the steps vibrated and Venser thought for one tight second that they would all tumble. But the tremor passed quickly, and they encountered no true opposition, save the stairs themselves.

The air was so hot that Venser’s throat tightened every time he took a breath. The air had taken on a particular smoky taste. Koth on the steps below breathed deeply and exhaled loudly.

“Ore,” he said. “Lots of ore.”

The stairs ended abruptly at a landing. A platform of hot metal. Venser could feel the heat through his boots. A doorway with a metal door, not an eye, not a mouth, no metal-and-flesh conduit, stood at the top of the landing. It was clad and shining. Venser tugged one of his mana tethers and felt the cool tingle as the power emptied into his cranium. He sniffed and whispered his spell of wrought, but the door remained solid and unmoving. Cursing under his breath Venser spoke other words, and even traced a sigil that sat glowing on the door. Then he seized the air in front of the door and twisted. The sweat popped out on his forehead as he turned the air. He clenched his teeth and kept turning. Eventually he was able to reach into the metal of the door and scooped the lock out. The door swung open.

The cavern on the other side of the door was filled with a red glow. It was a large room, Venser could tell-he could see no walls. He stepped into the room, followed by the others.

A movement drew his eye too late, and a huge Phyrexian moved into his field of view from the right. It was large and skeletal in appearance, and glowing. What looked like bone, however, proved to be glowing metal, and its thin arms trailed behind it as it stumbled along. The heat emanating from it made Venser’s cheek tingle. The Phyrexian stopped and turned to them, examining them with its small head. Venser fell back and readied himself. But the Phyrexian turned away and continued walking. Soon it was gone, lost to the glow and fire.

Venser turned to look at the others.

“What was that?” Koth said.

And then Venser remembered that Tezzeret had mentioned that the Phyrexians in the furnace layer were different.

“The Phyrexians here are different,” Venser said. “The metal-armed one told me that.”

Koth shook his head, watching the form of the glowing skeleton move away.

“What is happening here in this place?” Elspeth said.

“I think those are forges,” Koth said, not able to keep the amazement out of his voice. The vista showed massive buildinglike structures dotting the cavern. The buildings contained the cherry glow of ore, and there were rivers of ore connecting one building to the next. Each building had a veinlike tube attached to its top. Each tube extended upward into darkness.

Forms moved back and forth between the buildings, carrying globs of molten metal. Some of them were large, insectlike forms, picking their way over the rough, slag-littered ground with precise legs. But huge creatures with two legs and arms moved among the buildings as well. They dragged the motionless forms of other Phyrexians behind them toward the ore pools.

“Where is our destination in this place?” Elspeth said.

“I do not know,” Venser said. The terrain was dotted with piles of slag. The glow of molten metal lit the distance, and insectlike Phyrexians moved in silhouette in front of it.

They started to walk. The way was more difficult than the steps, if that was possible. There were no trails, as the Phyrexians seemed to be large enough to mince between the slag piles and canals of ore. But twice Venser almost fell, tripping on hardened slag obscured on the shadowy ground.

Slowly they made their way to one of the buildings. As they got closer, it was clear to them all that it was no ordinary building … more of a Phyrexian on its stomach with a large open maw of teeth. One of the vein canals attached to its head. The bright white glow of molten metal shone from its mouth.

“The ore is coming in through that cord attached to its head,” Koth said, shaking his head.

And it was. They could see the molten ore through breaks in the tube.

“But what is it doing?” Venser yelled above the blowing of the Phyrexian furnace.

“It is melting down Phyrexians for reuse.”

The voice that had spoken was deep. They turned to see an elephantine humanoid standing on its rear legs, with an immense club slung casually over its shoulder. As they watched, six more forms appeared out of the flickering shadow: three humans, an elf, and a lionlike being walking on two legs. Each was armed, but none had their weapons up and at the ready.

“This is where the metal of the beasts are melted,” the elephantine said. “It is a shameful place, but not a dangerous one.”

“Have you ever watched sausage being made?” one of the humans offered.

Nobody said anything, and the elephantine humanoid glanced back at the human who had spoken.

“Well, it’s not something you forget seeing,” the human said. “It’s disgusting. Like this.”

They eat sausage on Mirrodin? Venser thought. He turned to look at his group. Koth was eyeing the strangers warily. Venser turned back. The humans were vulshok, he could tell by their spiky, metal hair. Why isn’t Koth greeting them? Venser wondered.

“Where does your way take you?” the elephantine said.

“That is our own business,” Koth said.

The elephantine one squinted to see Koth, who stood back a bit. “Ah, yes, a vulshok,” he said.

“Loxodon,” Koth said. “Why are you here?”

“We are looking for friends to resist what is happening on the surface,” the loxodon said, scratching its trunk with its club. “Are you friends?”

“We are not enemies,” Elspeth said. “And this one I have is wounded. She needs to lie down.”

“Our assignment is to bring friends,” the loxodon repeated.

“I am Venser and this is Lady Elspeth and Koth,” Venser said. The loxodon’s eyes stayed on the fleshling for a moment before looking back at Venser. “We are friends.”

“Maalan they call me,” the loxodon said, curling his trunk. “Follow me, friend.”

They walked between the Phyrexians that were attached to the ground, receiving the molten ore of reprocessed Phyrexians. The heat was overwhelming. Soon they were all drenched in sweat. Venser’s head was pounding.

“Do you have water?” Venser asked the loxodon.

“Yes,” Maalan said. “For friends.”

“We already said we were friends,” Koth said.

The loxodon took a canteen from a lanyard over his shoulder. Venser, Elspeth, and Koth took turns with it. Koth gulped more of the iron tasting water than the others, Venser noticed.

Maalan led them between the ore reprocessors. Many times large, wasplike creatures larger than themselves stopped to regard them. The creatures seemed to move ore from one processor to the other with willowy scoops sprouting from their thoraxes. The wasp Phyrexians seemed to look through the group. At one point the loxodon shooed a group that was blocking their path.

“Why don’t they attack?” Koth said.

The loxodon regarded him coolly. “As near as we can tell, they do not regard us as a threat, son of Kamath.”

Koth shrugged. “Every other Phyrexian does.”

“That is true,” Maalan said, and walked ahead.

The room seemed larger than any they had been in yet. It went on and on. All along what must have been the edge, Venser could see more of the wasp Phyrexians and other, stranger forms moving. The ore streamed down along the veins into the tops of the reprocessors.

“Where are the new Phyrexians created from this ore?” Venser said.

“That does not happen here,” the loxodon said. “And not in that way.”

“How does it happen?”

“I do not know that, friend. If I knew that I would tell you, I promise you that.”

Venser watched Maalan walk next to him. What he really wanted to know was how the loxodon knew Koth’s father’s name. He wanted to know why Koth said nothing when the loxodon addressed him with his father’s name.

Venser fell back from the group. When the others were some steps ahead, he put his hand under his armor and took out his vial. He held it up to the glow. His heart jumped into his throat when he saw how little was left. Less than a finger in height of the precious fluid glowed in the bottom of the bottle. He carefully removed the cork and took a tiny sip, feeling the energy impart itself into the contours of his mouth and make its way to his brain-causing it to glow, or so he always thought.

He looked at how much of the fluid remained before putting it back into the special pocket he had stitched in the cloth under his armor. There were other times he’d drained a bottle. But that was before he had depended on the distillation so much. And those times were bad. If he ran out down there, in that place, there would be great problems for him. And after his teleport with the fleshling, even his potion did not put his head right. He knew the day would come, but he had doubted it would be so soon. The teleport into the flock of blinkmoths must have exacerbated something. It had made him worse, just as it seems to have affected the fleshling in another way altogether.

He had run out of his potion other times. Once he had been unable to leave his bed for two days. Another time had found him at the mercy of psimortifiers, in their “exploration chambers.” He had prevailed in each circumstance, but only through luck.

And all for what? Venser thought as he patted the bottle where it lay under his armor. For a fluid that really did nothing for him? It actually did less than nothing even before the teleport. It gave him a mana boost at first, and then depleted him later. Venser suspected that it depleted him more than it boosted. The boost was slight, and did not last for very long. But it felt like a large boost. It felt good.

He remembered the day he had started to need the potion on a daily basis. He and another artificer had traveled far afield in Dominaria looking for Phyrexian artifacts. There were still many battlefields where the forces of the scourge and Dominaria had clashed, but Venser had long since learned that such battlefields did not yield what he searched for.

Sure, one could find fragments and severed parts, but what Venser looked for was fully intact Phyrexians or the ships and vehicles they traveled in. He’d even found largely intact pieces once or twice, but he’d never seen anything like what he saw that fateful day.

He had been deep in the most remote wastes on a multi-day expedition. On the last day, the younger artificer he’d been traveling with had found a strange pile of black stones. At least they had felt like stones. They were hard and of the deepest color. Afus, the junior artificer, had found them piled perfectly into the shape of a tiny pyramid.

Against his better judgment, Venser had taken them, taken them all. He had known it was not wise to come into contact with objects of power that were unidentified. And they were powerful. Venser had felt the mana seething in them. They were worth coin anyhow. That was how he had rationalized taking them. They were worth gold.

And then he had made the worst mistake of all. He had teleported with them. Afus was traveling overland, but that was not how Venser chose to travel. He had learned early after developing his ability to teleport that it was not wise to travel with anything powerful that you did not want to become in some way enmeshed with. Inevitably whatever you traveled with ended up part of you after the mana put you and it back together. The black stones immediately affected him, causing the palsy. It was incurable and fatal. Afus, even though he had never teleported with the stones, had died shortly after finding them. His body had lain for a day in his studio before Venser had gotten up the courage to open him up and take a look inside. What he’d found still haunted his deepest nightmares: The young artificer’s organs and lungs had become shriveled and transparent, as if they were ceasing to be.

Venser had no doubt that his organs would end up looking the same way. He just had not thought it would begin while he was on Mirrodin. The blinkmoths had somehow accelerated the effect.

He had later figured out that the substance was in all likelihood some of the material residue left when Yawgmoth had been vaporized after the explosion that ended the Phyrexian invasion on Dominaria.

“You coming?” Koth said.

Venser blinked out of his ruminations. He had fallen far back from the rest of the group.

“Yes,” Venser said, and started walking faster.

Koth walked ahead.

“Koth,” Venser said. “Why did Maalan address you as ‘son of Kamath’?”

The vulshok slowed his step. “Because my sire is Kamath.”

“Yes, but how did he know?”

“I am known here.”

Venser remembered the expression the loxodon had on his face when he addressed Koth. He was known all right, but not honored. For some reason Venser remembered Koth’s mother. Koth’s people could not have understood when he disappeared. They could not have known that he had left to find help for Mirrodin. To them, Venser thought, they would have seen a coward’s motive.

They walked in silence. Eventually the wall of the cavern became apparent. The crew leading them trailed ahead in a ragged line that made its way to a particular part of the wall. As they neared it, Venser could see where someone had cut a jagged hole out in the metal wall with concentrated fire. It was through that hole that they walked, ducking their heads slightly.

Behind the wall were gridworks and supports, but no Phyrexian conduit guts. A ladder extended upward, and they climbed.

Many times they found other cutout doors leading to other hot, metal rooms connected with ladders. Venser lost count as to how many. But eventually they came to a smaller room that smelled of roasted meat, singed fat, and unwashed humans. Coal fires burned near ragged shelters scattered here and there. Some shelters were made of the thorax shells of large Phyrexians. Others were metallic skins stretched over a framework of the other parts of a Phyrexian. As they approached, every occupant of the small camp came out to stare as Venser, Koth, Elspeth, and the fleshling passed.

Venser heard whispers and some hisses as Koth passed. Eventually the loxodon stopped in front of a shelter made of only the rounded pieces of Phyrexians’ belly armor that was raised off the ground slightly. An elf stuck his head out of the round hole in the side of the structure, and turned his milky white eye to them.

“Ah, yes,” said Ezuri. “I recall these machine lovers. Wherever did you find them?”

The loxodon spoke up. “They were in furnace room minor wandering around.”

Ezuri nodded slowly. To Venser it looked as though the elf had added a little weight onto his frame. The creases around his eyes were also not quite as deep as he remembered.

“You have prospered, Ezuri,” Venser said.

The elf turned and looked him up and down. “You have not, artificer,” he said. “I take it you have not found the one you seek. What was his name, Kurt, Kam?”

“Karn.”

“Karn, just so,” Ezuri said. In a moment the elf hopped out of the hole of his structure and stood before them in a robe of shimmering material that draped to his ankles.

“We have not found the golem, no,” Venser said. He opened his mouth to tell the elf about Tezzeret telling them where Karn can be found, and to tell him about the fleshling, but something in the way Ezuri was staring at him made Venser close his mouth.

Ezuri’s eyes moved over the rest of the companions, until it stopped on the fleshling leaning on Elspeth’s shoulder.

“You are new. Who are you?”

The fleshling said nothing

“Speak up,” Ezuri said.

“Melira,” the fleshling said softly.

Melira? Venser thought.

“The disgusting flesh of an outlander?” Ezuri said. “Yet you have the mark of a Greenshank sylvok to my eyes.”

Venser said nothing. Nothing at all.

Ezuri’s eye did not leave the fleshling.

“Are you still prevailing against the forces of Phyrexia?” Elspeth said.

That made Ezuri’s eye move off the fleshling and rest on Elspeth. “Why, hello, white lady.”

“So, you have vanquished the Phyrexians from the surface?” Elspeth said, repeating her original question, which she could tell was a sore spot for the elf.

“We are making headway,” Ezuri said casually.

Venser stepped forward before any more words could be spoken on the subject. “Ezuri,” he said. “Could we stay here for a time, until we have rested?”

Ezuri glanced at Koth before curling his lip. The vulshok pretended not to notice. “All enemies of Phyrexia are welcome here,” Ezuri said. “But I warn you that you may be asked to help our efforts.”

“Thank you, Ezuri,” Venser said.

The elf nodded. “Leaving will be your trick. But you are welcome to stay.”

“Leaving will be our trick,” Elspeth said.

Ezuri’s eye drifted back to the fleshling before he turned and climbed back into his shelter.

The loxodon led them to another part of the settlement. He stopped at a small shelter-nothing more than a Phyrexian crusher’s back panel leaned against the metal wall.

“This was a friend’s place,” the loxodon said. “Gone to shadow now. He had to be put away.”

Elspeth wasted no time leading the fleshling into the shelter, and helping her lie down on her stomach.

“Water is found over there,” the loxodon said, gesturing to an indentation in the metal where water dripped. “The latrines are over there.”

Venser walked over to the water pool and took a long drink. He filled up his canteen, aware that all of the eyes of the small settlement were on him. Three children appeared at the water pool. They watched Venser from a safe distance, but eventually came closer. He smiled at them and they trailed him as he walked back to the shelter. He noticed that some of the children had dark stains blotching their metal parts. Some even had the stain on their skin parts. One girl who walked with the other children behind Venser, giggling as she copied his walk with long loping steps, had more than a dark stain on her arm. Her stain had worn away skin, and appeared to be spreading up her arm.

The children followed him all the way back to the camp. Koth stood to shoo them away, but Venser frowned. “Leave them be,” he said.

Koth glared at the children before sitting down next to Venser. The little girl stuck her tongue out at Koth, and then the children began to run after one another.

“You see the dark patches,” Venser said.

“Phyresis,” Koth said.

“Many show the sign,” Venser said.

“Yes,” Koth said. “It’ll take them all.”

Venser suddenly understood the loxodon’s cryptic words from earlier when he described the occupants of their current shelter as “gone to shadow.”

From inside, Venser heard Elspeth chanting. He stood and went into the shelter, which was open on two sides. He placed his full canteen next to Elspeth and then returned to sit next to Koth.

The children, having seen where Venser went, skirted around and poked their heads into the other entrance of the shelter. They stood and watched Elspeth chant. After a time, all the children ran away but the girl with the large blotch on her arm. She inched closer and closer until she was sitting at the head of the fleshling.

Venser could not see what was happening in the shelter, but he heard Elspeth stop chanting. There was talking in the shelter.

“Why are you shunned here by these people,” Venser said.

Koth said nothing at first. “For caring about Mirrodin,” he said. “I disappeared, and my own tribe spoke against me. Their words echoed. Now my name draws harsh words.”

“And you think you can gain their trust back by leading them against the Phyrexians?”

Koth nodded. “I know I can.”

Venser heard the little girl’s voice rise, as though she were telling a story.

“If I can show them that I am still a vulshok,” Koth continued. “A Mirran that did not leave his mother and family to the nim and Phyrexians.”

Venser forced away the images of Koth’s mother in her hut. The terrible way her body jerked, controlled like a puppet by a Phyrexian. “There are other ways, you know,” Venser said. “To show that you are not a coward.”

The vulshok’s eyes flashed at the word coward. “What would an artificer know about it?” Koth said, suddenly defensive.

“Nothing,” Venser said.

They sat staring at each other. Suddenly the little girl in the shelter screamed.