The Quest for Karn

Chapter 19

Koth did not open his eyes. Elspeth looked uneasily back at Venser. The guide was unarmed, as far as Venser had ever seen, and sure enough, when Venser looked, the guide was gone. The fleshling was standing back between Venser and Koth. She had no weapon.

Venser looked around him for something to swing. As depleted of mana as he was, there was nothing more he could do but fight hand-to-hand. A twisted piece from a Phyrexian skeleton would work. He was lucky enough to find one lying within reach, and he picked it up and turned back to Glissa. The Phyrexians at her control were almost at the bottom of the pile of dead Phyrexians. Venser counted thirty-four of various shapes and sizes. One had the metal legs of a spider, but with a tremendous thorax that glowed bright blue. Elspeth moved her sword from left to right hand.

Venser had seen her slay countless Phyrexians in a battle, but never when she was so tired and never in one fight, at one time. Plus, any single one of those Phyrexians seemed keen enough to bare them away. They gnashed their teeth and popped their limbs in and out of their sockets as they approached slowly, fanning out to the sides to prevent retreat.

As Venser watched, he knew in his heart that Elspeth would be unable to prevail. It seemed the same thought had just occurred to Elspeth, for she looked down at her battle-scarred sword and then back at Venser.

The Phyrexians were very close, and Venser remembered suddenly when he was a child and he went walking under the linnean trees near his home on Dominaria. He saw the dogs too late. There were sometimes packs of wild dogs in the forests, yet he went there anyway because there were also to be found the ruins of airships and other wrecks of wars long finished. He would collect wreckage and tinker with it. But the wild dogs were hungry and they were especially hungry that day. They stalked him for the better part of an hour. There was no way to know how long they had been watching him with their red eyes. Venser had many times thought that the wild dogs that lived near his house had been some of the bravest creatures that he had ever encountered. Men and women would have their sport killing them, and still the dogs did not flee or shy away. They remained a threat. Find me a beast half as brave here, Venser thought.

He had escaped the dogs by jumping away. It was one of the first times he had ever teleported, which was why he was remembering it. He suddenly yearned to jump away once again.

And so the dogs would have him, it seemed.

The Phyrexians were formed into a crescent around Elspeth, with the left flank facing Venser. Atop the pile Glissa stood watching.

Tezzeret stepped out of the shadows, to the right of the Phyrexians’ left flank. When the nearest Phyrexian saw him, it shied back. “This was not the plan,” Tezzeret said.

Glissa looked surprised to see him. The Phyrexian advancing on Elspeth stopped.

Behind Tezzeret a cadre of blue-glowing Phyrexians looked on. Tezzeret’s Phyrexians were fewer in number, but they looked to Venser even crueler in aspect.

“Plan?” Glissa said.

“Yes,” Tezzeret said. “You have your plan. I have my plan. You sent me to get the flesh creature. I had no intention of doing that. Why would I do that when it was I who gave them the creature in the first place?”

The expression on Glissa’s face did not change perceptibly at the news. But when she spoke, there was a hitch in her voice that betrayed her unease. “Why would you give them such a creature?”

Tezzeret waved his glowing metal hand dismissively. “The creature is no concern of mine, neither is her innate ability. They will not be able to do significant damage with her. They lack the knowledge.” Tezzeret smiled at Venser before turning back to Glissa. “No, I gave her to them to get you out here.”

Glissa glanced away quickly.

“Oh,” Tezzeret said sadly. “You know I have deactivated that portal you just looked to.”

“What do you want?” Glissa said.

“Only your death,” Tezzeret said. “Geth is already mine. With you gone I control every Phyrexian in this place.”

“The Father of Machines controls his children,” Glissa corrected.

“Can’t you see that he will never be Phyrexian? It is an impossibility.”

“How wrong you are,” Glissa said. “And without me, you will not be able to control him.”

“That may be true,” Tezzeret admitted. “But what if someone else were to ascend that throne of his? This thought has just occurred to me, but what if it was someone like me? I have some metal to me after all.”

Glissa did not speak for a moment. “Why would you want that?”

“What an army!” Tezzeret said. “I would be the master, after all. I could utilize such an army to great effect.”

“The madness from your arm has greatly affected your brain.” Glissa said.

Tezzeret’s smile disappeared. “That,” he said, “is uncalled for. You have hurt my feelings. You have never known a person more in touch with his facilities as me. Now, I have a choice for you.”

“You can step away from Karn, and let me take your place, or-and this next choice is possibly the more favored by me, as I don’t like to have an enemy lingering-you can die at my hand. Either way, I cannot endure anymore of my current situation. My master sent me here and now I will make of it everything that I can.”

Glissa nodded, as if weighing the pros and cons of Tezzeret’s plan.

Meanwhile, the Phyrexians from both sides waited. Some even sat down. Venser caught Elspeth’s eye. He pushed out his chin toward the end of the passage they had been traveling down when Glissa’s henchmen arrived. Elspeth winked.

Glissa spoke. “So you are here to kill me?”

“You were supposed to have died at their hands with the main force of your soldiers, I am only here to finish.”

“That was a bad plan,” Glissa said. “I’m sorry, but it is, and it shows your inability to read a situation correctly. That is a necessity in a leader. You must learn that, or you will make other more critical mistakes than this.”

“Enough talking now,” Tezzeret said, clearly not liking what Glissa was saying.

“I agree,” Glissa said. She snapped her fingers and the pile of Phyrexians she was standing on began to wriggle and then to shake.

Venser stepped forward and tugged on Elspeth’s tunic. He gestured her to follow, and they both took ten steps back, so they were not in the middle of what was about to become a battlefield.

The pile of mangled and melted metal lurched forward, Glissa standing atop it. Tezzeret stood still and then the pile suddenly unfolded arms and legs and stood crablike to fill the passage. It wasted no time in snapping a claw made of the spine and three legs of other Phyrexians around Tezzeret.

Glissa screamed in triumph, and smiled to show long teeth dyed green with lamina.

But Tezzeret started pushing his head into the creature’s fist. He appeared to be squeezing together into a ball, until only his banded ropes of hair were visible. In a moment even that was gone. The Phyrexian giant opened his hand, and to everyone’s surprise, nothing fell out.

Venser and Elspeth took ten more steps backward. It had worked before when the Phyrexians were searching for their portal. They had been able to sneak away then, why not again? The guide was somewhere in the shadows waiting for them. Elspeth tapped the fleshling on the shoulder as they stepped back. Glissa was busy staring at the giant’s open hand and did not seem to notice their movements.

The fleshling squatted down and with Elspeth’s help, they lifted Koth between them.

Two hands appeared on the giant’s chest. One was metal and one was flesh, but both parted the metal chest as if it was a fallen autumn leaf. Tezzeret’s head poked through the hole, his eyes glowing.

Glissa, standing on the giant’s right shoulder, reached around its head and swung her scythe in a wide arc.

Tezzeret held up his etherium arm. The scythe appeared to pass through the arm. A moment later the top of Glissa’s scythe hand fell away, a blue seam glowing on the metal where the scythe had struck the arm. But not before the metal of the giant’s shoulder began to vine up around Tezzeret’s leg. In a moment it was entwined up to his waist. Tezzeret pulled to free his legs, but to no avail. Glissa took hold and swung around the front of the giant’s head and planted her feet squarely in Tezzeret’s face, snapping his head back.

Then the Phyrexians who had come with Glissa and Tezzeret fell upon one another with the tremendous sound of metal crushing into metal. The ground became a melee of blurring arms and black oil spatter. A Phyrexian nearby punched another’s teeth in, still another tore off an arm and cast it spinning aside.

When they were sure that all the Phyrexians and Glissa were busy, Venser, the fleshling, Koth, and Elspeth took ten more steps back. The shadows began to fall in around them, and they turned and ran.

The guide appeared as if from the darkness itself.

How was he able to do that? Venser wondered. Could the guide teleport? It seemed unlikely, but he resolved to keep more of an eye on the human.

The passage went on in the darkness. Venser ran into the darkness willingly, without thinking. The floor was smooth enough and he only tripped once, but was up and running again in a moment. The pitched battle behind slowly fell away, but the echoes continued. When the guide struck fire they all stopped running. He was standing next to a stretch of wall exactly like the other stretches of wall in the passage. Elspeth and the fleshling slowly eased Koth down and leaned him against the wall. Koth groaned and his eyes fluttered but did not open.

“We must be somewhat close to Karn now,” Venser said.

“We are deep,” the guide said, tapping on the wall. “Soon I will be as deep as I’ve ever been.”

“What perchance happens then?” Elspeth said. “When you do not know where you are?”

The guide kept tapping on the wall. “You find what you search for.”

“Those aren’t the most heartening words I’ve heard today,” Koth rasped from the floor.

“I have never actually been to the chamber you say Karn resides in,” the guide said. “I knew of it, of course. I cannot think it will be too difficult to find if the Father of Machines resides therein.”

Venser pursed his lips. Let us hope he is not difficult to find, he thought.

The guide stopped his tapping on a certain spot. He tapped six more times around the place.

“Let us hope that this portal is not locked, as some of the others were,” Venser said.

But when the guide pushed, the circular section of metal swung outward and the hole became visible. The guide took the small lamp he’d lit and leaned into the hole. “It appears to be a chute,” he said, his voice echoing.

“What good news,” Koth moaned.