The Quest for Karn

Chapter 2

They moved though the darkness on Koth’s iron slabs. Koth stopped to whisper words of power and wisps of light danced in the air, lighting the surrounding walls as they made their way deeper into the canyon.

Without warning, it started to rain so hard that Koth could not see the outline of the mountains silhouetted against the sky, and the group had to stop. They laid up in a small draw under a slag overhang as the rain fell hard, spattering the rust mud over their boots.

When the rain stopped, they rode the iron boulders again.

“Where does the water go?” Venser said. “It is gone, all that fell. There are no pools.”

Koth cocked his head to the side and spat.

“What do I know of water?” he said.

“I heard gurgles.”

It was Elspeth who had spoken. Venser turned to her in the darkness. Only a white form gliding behind.

“Yes, it must drain,” he said.

“Hush your nattering,” Koth said. “We are here.”

The sky had a slight greenish tint, Venser thought, as the boulders came to a stop. For some reason it was brighter there, as if the suns were about to rise. It was bright enough, for instance, to see a small hut soldered to the side of a peak that shot straight up and high into the air. A light burned in the hut and Koth stepped off his boulder and made for it.

“Why is the air green?” Elspeth said.

Koth stopped and looked up. Then he looked down at the metal ground. Long blotches of darkness were clearly visible on the metal, even in the low light. “It can’t be,” Koth said.

He ran the rest of the distance to the hut, and into the doorway. A moment later he was back out again.

“Malach!” Koth yelled with his hands cupped around his mouth. The noise echoed off the cliffs and boomed back at them.

“Koth,” Venser said. He was standing away from the hut, behind a small heap of iron rubble, his eyes looking at something on the ground. He bent. “I’m sorry, but I think I found your-” Venser was turning a corpse over by the shoulder, when the limp form gave a violent shudder and lunged for his neck.

Venser recoiled and the creature came away with only air. It struggled to its knees and lashed out with its misshapen claws. Half of it was pocked metal and the rest was twisted meat, Venser realized in horror. A plate of metal covered its face where its eyes would be. And its stretched skull ended in a grotesque, fang-packed maw that it jacked wide in a silent scream.

Suddenly there were four more of the monstrosities, charging out from behind a hill-their rotting bodies sticky in the green air.

Elspeth drew her sword and in one fluid motion separated the skull from the nearest one. Black fluid spattered against the side of Venser and the creature’s body crumbled with a dull thud to the metal ground. Instantly the others were upon them. Koth put up his arms and narrowly escaped having his face bitten as he pushed the thing back with his stony forearm plates. He brought his fist forward in a ruthless blow that crumpled the thing’s face plate and sent it spinning back.

Two zombies tackled Venser and the three rolled over each other. They came out on top and pressed their gaping jaws at Venser’s neck. The disgust and effort showed on the artificer’s face as he struggled to shove them away. Their jaws snapped as they began to press closer.

A slight blue tinge began to glow around Venser, and in the next moment all three forms were suddenly gone, leaving only a wisp of blue.

Venser and the bewildered zombies appeared in the same position high, high above the glimmering expanse of Mirrodin. The next instant they all three began to fall. The creatures thrashed as they fell. But a blue glow appeared around Venser again and he blinked out of existence … and back to the ground, where he stood up and brushed his clothes off.

Elspeth heard a sound and turned as a large form lumbered toward her. Its snags of teeth were as long as her head. It towered above Elspeth, dripping dark slime as it squeezed between two large boulders. Elspeth moved her greatsword to her left hand and then to her right, judging how to attack. From her indecisiveness, it was clear to Venser that she was not altogether sure she could best the adversary.

Koth stepped next to him. The geomancer brought his hands together in a decisive motion. The boulders on each side of the thing slammed together, crushing the beast and sending a spray of black ichor over them all.

Just then the two that Venser had teleported into the stratosphere came crashing to the ground and burst into wet pieces.

By the time Elspeth had cleaned and sheathed her greatsword, Venser was looking closely at the dead, if, indeed, they had ever been alive enough to be called dead.

The pieces of them that had been made of flesh did not bleed, so dried out was the meat. Their metal parts were pitted and corroded. The articulating metal plates, like fitted armor, covered where their eyes would have been. A series of tubes thrust out of the ribs. The larger of the creatures had more tubes.

“What are those?” Venser said, prodding one of the tubes with a gloved finger.

“They are vents,” Koth said, looking out into the green vapors swirling around them. “They release this necrogen gas, which is what creates more of them. They are called nim.”

“Nim,” Venser said. He pressed on the seam where a nim’s metal arm grew onto its misshapen body, where one of the roped muscles of its back transformed into a conduit of metal that wound up its bicep. “Fascinating.”

“Not how I’d put it,” Koth said. “And it is very bad that they are here. The Mephidross has reached its dark fingers far indeed if the nim are on our doorstep.” He stared down at the crushed giant nim. “If I were them I’d be hiding.”

“Why,” Elspeth said.

“Because the Phyrexians are coming for them as well,” Koth said. “They will take them away and experiment on them, just as they would any of us.”

Elspeth nodded, as if seeing the truth of the statement. But in her mind she could feel a cold shackle on her own ankle, and hear the howls of pain coming through the barred window at the top of the door to her cell. She suddenly smelled the odor she’d detected in Koth’s mother’s house-the tinny, dry reek of Phyrexia. A deep chill ran up her spine.

“What do you think?” Venser was saying to her.

Elspeth sniffed and looked down at her ichor-spattered feet, half surprised not to see a shackle attached to her ankle.

“Should we make for the Vault of Whispers?” Koth said. “It must surely be there that the phyresis starts.” When Elspeth said nothing, the vulshok stamped his foot in the murky water. “This place was part of the Oxidda Chain when I left this plane. It must be the Phyrexia’s doing. We must cleanse them at the Vault.”

Venser looked up. “It spread that quickly?”

Koth nodded, not deigning to answer Venser’s question directly.

“Yet I see no Phyrexia on it,” Venser said, looking back to the nim’s parts, half submerged in the filthy water.

Once again on the boulders, Koth turned them north and led them above a small path into the rougher country. Soon the metal under them became steep and they made their way to a higher plateau. Elspeth held her sword close to her chest, still shivering at the thought of the shackle she’d imagined around her ankle.

Koth was down with his ear against the ground. “There are sounds,” he said finally.

“How far are we from the Vault?” Venser said. He was standing nearer to the wisp lights that he had brought out to light their way, looking closely at an area in the side of the Oxidda, where jags of metal were jutting out.

“Perhaps ten angles of the sun,” Koth said with his ear still to the ground. “Perhaps less.”

“I smell smoke,” Elspeth said.

“We are near the hut of a shaman,” Koth said. “It is her fire you smell. It is a good sign. It means she is not gone to the nim or Phyrexia, but I will not stop there.”

“Why?” Elspeth said.

“She is mad, that is why.”

“And what are the sounds you hear?” Venser said.

“It is hard to say,” Koth said.

“And their numbers?”

“Twenty at least. Accompanied by something I have seen in a nightmare, I think.”

“Nim, Phyrexians, villagers?”

“These are not villagers. These are creatures. They drag parts as they wander.”

Venser went back to looking closely at the metal cliff face they were standing next to. Then he said, “Come help me with this.”

Venser had them scrape at the metal cliff face, which crumbled easily.… Koth with his igneous forearm growths and Elspeth with a boot knife. Venser used the edge of his helmet. A strange, crumbly material sifted down as they scraped. A bluish brown hue.

“Irrenphor,” Venser said. “A byproduct when certain metal alloys are heated and cooled. This material grows on slag. It is part mineral and part mana life.”

Just then Elspeth made a small spark when her knife caught some of the iron as she scraped. Venser stayed her hand with one of his.

“It is part metal, part life, and all explosive,” he said. “Work carefully.”

Elspeth and Koth chipped, digging out chunks and culling them with the edge of their gloved hands into small piles, which they moved into larger mounds. The whole time Venser stood back, watching the process and making small marks with a thin metal quill on a wad of papers he kept tucked away, as a breeze ruffled the hem of his tunic.

Finally the piles were painstakingly pushed together into a single as high as a man’s shin. Venser carefully tucked his papers away before he got down on his knees beside the pile. It glowed slightly in the dark night. Venser began crumbling the thicker chunks of material between his fingers. When the others stooped to help, Venser motioned them away. When he was finished a pile of gritty powder lay before him.

“This will give them something to remember,” Venser said.

A long, guttural sound, like an animal being choked, cut the night. So shocking was the cry that a group of small mouselike creatures on metal legs burst from a hole in the mountain and fled disturbed into another hole. Koth ran to the edge of the plateau.

“Where will they come?” Venser asked, calmly. “And how?”

Koth did not move his gaze. “They will come here,” the vulshok pointed to his left. “And here.”

“I have not seen much of Phyrexia,” Elspeth said. “Their numbers are surely smaller.”

Venser looked up briefly. He was separating the pile in to many smaller piles again. “Do not think what you see reflects the extent of the phyresis.” He shook his head. “We could all be surprised.”

Venser stood and brushed his hands down the front of his leather and metal tunic.

“Will it work?” Koth said.

“Well,” Venser said. “I do not run fast. On the other hand, I don’t have to run faster than them. I only have to run faster than you.”

Koth looked at Venser before chuckling. Venser smiled.

“Well, I am quick like ionized lightning,” Koth said.

“Then help me move these piles to the edge.”

They could hear more strangled sounds and a strange grinding scream in the darkness as they moved the piles. There was a sudden metallic clambering.

“Quick,” Venser said.

There were three piles, each the size of Koth’s foot. They stood near the precipice. A moment later two claws topped the edge and a head followed. Red eyes glowed in deep sockets as the creature jerked and convulsed for better purchase. Black oil streamed over a face composed almost entirely of mouth, with huge, looping fangs jutting at strange angles. It shuddered and regurgitated a jet of blackness at Elspeth who raised her foot for a kick at its head. The Phyrexian snapped open the mechanism of its mouth, which popped to double its size and caught Elspeth’s foot and jerked back. She fell, but managed to bring her sword down and split the creature’s skull in half.

“Back,” Venser yelled. Elspeth crabbed backward just as the creatures, with eyes of blood, began clambering over the edge of the plateau.

What scrambled over the edge was terrible to view. Koth inhaled sharply with the shock of the moment. Venser fought to keep from fleeing. At the head of the Phyrexians was a creature double the size of a man but stooped and with massive skeletal shoulders of metal and stretched skin. A black spine twisted through its body, and rough jags jutted out at irregular intervals from the grotesque twist. The thing’s huge claws and teeth dripped with black vomitus and it shook as though caught in the throes of a most violent fit.

“I never thought,” Venser managed to say. “That they would be so …”

“Awful?” Elspeth said.

Venser nodded. Before this sojourn on Mirrodin, he had never seen a live Phyrexian, had seen only their artifacts and remnants, and with the handful of the beasts that stood before him, he wished he could still say that. They were more haphazard than he thought they would be. And they appeared smarter than he would have believed. Their dark eyes glittered in their deep sockets. He turned his head in disgust and stepped back.

But none of the Phyrexians moved. Their red eyes stared until the large one raised its mouth and began to make the noise they’d heard earlier: the sound of choking and screaming. A moment later the others joined in, and then farther away another chorus. Then another, very far away. Soon the Phyrexians were gargling their black oil in unison all around. At that moment Venser realized fear. It came slowly to the artificer. But when he heard the full extent of the infection echoing around them, how many of the scourge frolicked freely in the surrounding terrain, he felt a deep grimness settle on him.

Elspeth was shaking in her own right. But it was not from fear. When Venser glanced to his side, he saw that she could barely hold herself back. Sweat had broken upon her brow, her eyes were wide and wild, and the promise of deep violence surrounded her. He noticed, as he had in Koth’s mother’s house, webs of spittle at the corners of her mouth. Her blade was drawn in the shining blackness. Elspeth started forward.

“Wait,” Venser hissed. For one dire moment he thought the white knight would charge, and they would all be lost. But she stopped.

Irrenphor was known even on Dominaria as one of the most powerful naturally occurring explosives. Venser tugged a thread of mana into him, and flicked a spark at the feet of the Phyrexians. The effect was instantaneous. Colors popped and flashed and everything jumped together and burned. A moment later Venser appeared with a snap on a distant precipice. Teleporting always left him with a slight queasiness, but that time it was worse.

A concussive blast shook and the side of the plateau where he had stood a moment earlier.. There were no more gargled calls. There was nothing except the aftermath sound of falling bits of metal. The hole opened by the detonation was as dark as a maw and about the same shape. Koth and Elspeth were alive and struggling to stand at the other end of the high plane.

Venser teleported back onto the plateau to help Elspeth and Koth stand. “They are coming for us even now,” Venser said.

Elspeth was still holding her sword, which didn’t surprise Venser who had seen how hard she was gripping it before the explosion. Silhouetted against the dark sky was a dark, twisted mountain. Venser turned toward it. “This way,” Venser said.

Koth was brushing himself off. “We travel that way anyway, little artificer. The Vault of Whispers lies at the bottom of that mountain.”

“That is good. Perhaps Karn is there. Our hope is with the Silver Golem.”

“But where does one find this silver golem?” Elspeth said.

“Don’t know and don’t care,” the vulshok said, the red slits at his sides flaring briefly as he followed Venser.

“I knew I had to come long ago,” Venser said. “When Karn sent that cryptic message, ‘Don’t follow me’.”

They walked for a time before anyone spoke.

“So you spared no moment to get here,” Koth said.

“No, I thought it would be a bad idea to come here,” Venser said. “I still do.”

“But you feel duty-bound to find your comrade, Karn?” Elspeth said.

Venser was silent a moment. “Yes.”

“Even though we kidnapped you?” Koth said.

When he reached the hole created by the explosion, Venser fell into a crouch. He stared at the hole for a very long time, running his hand along the edge and gauging the thickness of the metal exposed. There was a strange, acrid smell-and right next to Venser lay a dark arm composed of stained metal with claws and hanging flaps of greasy flesh. Koth walked carefully around the Phyrexian arm as he approached the edge. Blackness lay in the hole, unbroken blackness and no sound.

“Mirrodin is composed this way. A shell over whatever is underneath.” Koth said, carefully sitting on the edge. He could feel a slight draft of warm air rising from the hole. It smelled like a machine.

“What is underneath?” Elspeth said, standing next to Venser.

“I do not truthfully know. As a youngling we would break rules and sneak below, but never too far. Our ore came up to the surface for us and we rarely had to go below to find it.”

Venser nodded. “What about other parts of the plane? Do other Mirrans venture below?”

“Who can tell with those types? In the Tangle, the elves huddle in their steely trees, damn their eyes. And the leonins of the plains stay in the air and sleep in burrows just beneath the gleaming flatlands-there are no males of note in this race … the ones they have are really just a group of female lovers. They may break one of their fingernails if they ventured under the crust. I have heard that the vedalken of the quicksilver sea live under the surface, experimenting on humans and eating eyeballs for power, and one look at those blue bastards and who would doubt it.”

Venser smiled as he listened, but Koth did not seem to notice, and continued his tirade.

“And that brings me to the Mephidross, this stinking swamp. Who knows what happens in these fell lands. The rot has long ago taken away the brains of its denizens. They may live underground all the time … I have heard word that those squirrelly bastards do this.”

“Your golem is down there?” Elspeth said.

Venser nodded. “Perhaps.”

Koth noticed it, as well. “Each of the lacunae is only a great hole where the mana from the deep once punched through and spouted upward.”

“You mean that lacunae must have a path down?” Elspeth said.

“I mean that you will not like it when you see the Vault of Whispers.”

“Really?” Elspeth said seriously.

“Really.”

“How far is the Vault?” Venser said.

“A day, maybe less if certain people would move faster.”

Elspeth looked back at where the smoke smell she’d detected before came from. Back to where Koth had gestured that the shaman lived. Then she looked in the direction of the Vault. The memory of the shackle on her ankle made her leg seem heavy, and seeing the Phyrexians made her hands tremble so badly that she could not grasp her sword’s pommel. She stopped walking.

“I am not going with you to the Vault of Whispers.” Elspeth said suddenly.

“What?” Koth said. “Why?”

“I am going to find the shaman you spoke of earlier.”

Koth and Venser stared at her.

“Why?” Venser said.

Elspeth looked at him for a moment. “Do you realize that you shake?” Elspeth said.

Venser raised himself up a jot. “That is not true,” he said. But from the vehemence of his tone, Elspeth could tell that he knew exactly what she was talking about. He even shoved his shaking right hand into the tight space between his under robes and his tunic as she watched.

“I have seen you when you think nobody is watching,” she said. “You shake, don’t you? How long has it been thus that you have had this palsy?”

Venser turned away. “This is absurd,” he said.

“I can perhaps heal you,” she said. “But the truth is not that I will go to this shaman’s place to find herbs to heal. I will leave you because I have been enough of a burden to you.”

“A what?” Koth said. “What is this rot you speak?”

Venser’s face had drained of its color as he stared at Elspeth. Both of his hands were shoved into his tunic, and his lips were drawn tight in obvious embarrassment. “Go then,” he said.

“I will,” Elspeth said. She turned and walked in the direction of the wood smoke blotting the horizon.

Koth grunted. “I will go now to the Vault to save my people.” He turned and began walking. He kicked at the wet ground as he walked. “And there is no decent ore. So we cannot ride boulders.”

Venser followed. “What she said,” Venser said. “About my shaking …”

But Koth said nothing, and Venser found he had nothing to say. He walked after the vulshok clutching one hand to the other.

In the darkness the tablelands stretched out to the edge of the known world, it seemed, but Koth led them back down into the dim valleys. The dark sky closed in as the walls narrowed around them to almost total blackness. With the blue lights of Venser’s wisps he could see they were walking next to a slough of fetid water, along a mushy bank. Bits of tubes and cracked, buckled walkways littered the side as they moved through.

They had to be careful not to catch bits of themselves on exposed jags. Everything was sharp. Everything poked. Even the inhabitants of Mirran’s insides must be metal, Venser thought. He was thirsty, but the filthy water of the Mephidross was dark and foul smelling. He would not touch it.

They walked until all five suns took the sky as a single line rose above the horizon. The world went from darkest dark to nearly blinding sun in a matter of minutes. The sunlight revealed a profoundly changed Oxidda Chain. A puce haze drifted in the valleys. The mountains themselves seemed more spiky and contorted, with edges sprung in wide, torturous curves that made Venser’s stomach churn. There was not one sound to be heard in the utter silence. Each of their footfalls echoed loudly away.

Koth took in the new appearance of the Chain with his mouth pressed tight in a line. He stopped and squatted next to what had been a plantlike growth of oxidized metal, barbed thin, and stirring very slightly in the heated breeze. It had become a blackish green color, and sticky to the touch. And it stunk … smelling mostly like burned lead. Koth stood and spat.

“It is worse than when I left. I thought it was bad then.”

Venser was squatting next to the metal plant. He took the frond between his fingers and tried to break it from the rest of the plant. It bent and he had to wipe his fingers on his leg before standing.

“Well,” Venser said. “It is not very good. I’ll say that.”

“And,” Koth said in a lower voice, “I believe we are being followed.”

Venser looked to the side before turning to evaluate the claim. Koth stared at the plant an extra moment before shaking his head and looking back down the valley.

“There is no life on this plane, it appears,” Venser said. “I would take even the enemy rather than this vacant place.”

Koth looked back the way they had come. He nodded once, and then looked down at his feet before speaking. “The Oxidda was not always as you see it. It had life once,” he said. He took a deep breath before continuing. “Not too long ago in the annals of the vulshok, our elders disappeared. This happened all over Mirrodin, I am told. But other creatures lost their elders and segments of their people. The filthy goblins rebounded quickly, of course, as they had little-to-no knowledge to pass on. To us the loss was very great. Our skill with ore, and smelting too, was compromised.

“Then the metal failed altogether. A flaw found its way into the molten ore and the ingots lost their vigor. Conflict among the tribes erupted. Armed conflict followed.

“And you?” Venser said. “Where did your loyalties lie?”

“I am an alloy,” Koth said. “And because of that I have always been … apart. But my bones ring with metal and I was able to drive from the ore the contaminants, but only in small batches. A day’s worth at a time. This proved enough ore to give each tribe good metal to work, and they stilled their hands from fighting and took once again to working.”

“That was before Phyrexia?” Venser said.

It was as though the word Phyrexia itself made the metal beneath their feet tremble. Each of them glanced around, half expecting to see scourge-beings materialize from the clear air.

Koth nodded.

Venser coughed. With a start he noticed that his hand was shaking. He stowed it in his tunic. Hopefully his tic wouldn’t present itself, as it sometimes did in times of stress. He drove the thought from his mind and looked down at the ground.

“Here is why we cannot leave this place,” Venser said. He ran his finger along the underside of the infected plant. Then he held his finger up. It dripped with dark oil of a slight greenish tinge.

“Oil?” Koth said.

“The spawn of Phyrexia …” Venser said, “seethes with infection.” Venser wiped the sticky substance on his breeches. “Only one drop can yield legions of Phyrexians.”

Koth took this information in without expression.

Mirrodin is lost, Venser thought.

“We will win,” Koth said.

Venser did not look so sure. He turned toward the path. “Only Karn can stop the Phyrexians, if such a thing can be done here. He created this plane of yours.”

“When I am leader non-Mirrans like Phyrexians will be first against the wall,” Koth said.

Koth stood and started walking. When Venser heard Koth’s words he stood. “I will be sure to be gone by that time then.”

Elspeth took the blacksmith’s tongs the woman offered. Clasped in the tongs was a crucible full of steaming soup. It had roughly the look and consistency of molten lead, and Elspeth’s stomach did not welcome its arrival. “My thanks,” Elspeth said, eyeing the soup uncertainly. She put the tongs and the soup down on the table where she was seated.

The woman sat opposite, her eyes lingering on Elspeth’s armor, which was carefully laid out on the metal floor.

“It is well wrought,” the woman said, her eyes still on Elspeth’s armor. “I would not ever take it off.”

“Truthfully, I do not feel fully clothed without it,” Elspeth said. She pulled her robes tighter around her and took in the surrounds of the hut. Chunks of various rocks swayed on lanyards from the hammered ceiling. The bones and full skeletons of metal creatures were posed and welded to the metal walls around the hut. The air smelled of lead solder and brimstone.

The woman took a fire tool and poked the dung fire in the middle of the floor until flame licked up. “I am Vadi,” she said.

“Elspeth.”

“Well, Elspeth,” Vadi said. “You are paler than any auriok should be. You had better drink my ore stew.”

Elspeth looked at the soup, but did not move to pick it up. “How long has the Mephidross swamp been advancing?”

“Who can say? Forever.”

“But faster lately?” Elspeth said.

“Yes.”

“Are you concerned?” Elspeth said.

The woman shrugged. She was not old, as Koth had made her seem. She was wide-beamed and robust. “Why be concerned?” the shaman said. “I lived through the advent of the green sun, and the disappearance of our elders. What can hurt me now? We are vulshok. We adapt.”

Elspeth felt the blood rising to her face. “You will all die, you know.”

For the next day the suns above Koth and Venser’s heads moved in their prescribed paths. Night was punctuated by the desperate screams of the Phyrexians wandering the rank canyons. But Koth kept their path on small byways known only to him, he said, and they saw none of the enemy for that day. That night they slept in the nostril of an immense statue of metal buried to the top lip. Venser asked who the statue was modeled after and Koth shrugged. “I have never seen its like on Mirrodin,” Koth said. “Ours is not a plane of monuments.”

“I could teleport us to that mountain,” Venser said, gesturing to a distant gas-chimney. Koth fixed him with an even gaze.

“I don’t teleport well,” Koth said. “I tend to be detrimental to the teleporter’s health.”

Venser shrugged. “Can I wait for you at the next rise?”

“Without Elspeth I think we should stay close, don’t you?”

Again the shrug.

By that time the water situation had become dire. As they drew nearer to the leaden horizon where Koth said the Vault crouched, the air had become more toxic, burning their lungs and the water was not potable in the extreme. Late afternoon found them collapsed in a high crevice. Returning to the valley long after sunset. With visions of choking Phyrexians in the backs of their minds, they prowled until Koth dropped into a low crouch behind a jagged boulder. He pointed ahead.

“Be very still,” the vulshok said quietly.

Ahead the valley widened slightly and approximately thirty small treelike forms shown in the crepuscular light. They had been wrought, that much was obvious to Venser, but how long before? The whole plane had been made by the hands of Karn, and so the tree forms must be the same. From their hard boughs hung large white balls that glowed with a greenish tinge.

“Gel fruit,” Koth croaked, walking around the barbed boulder and toward the trees in a low crouch. “Water.”

Venser was unsure if they should eat the fruit from a Mephidross gel-fruit tree, even if it had been part of the Oxidda Chain recently. It looked sick. Its form had begun to twist and effect the torturous aspect of the Mephidross. Off to the right, Venser heard the skittering of something. He crouched and ran behind Koth. Whatever had made the sound had quieted. Venser and Koth reached a scattered pile of tubing and stopped.

“Something is afoot,” Venser said. “There are sounds I have not heard before.”

“What do they sound like?” Koth said, his voice little more than a whisper.

“They scratch.”

“Do they whine?” Koth said.

“I did not hear them make that noise. It was a dry metal noise.”

Koth was silent.

“It could be blinkmoths,” he said. “There are still a few around. Or ink moths, their Phyrexian version.”

“I like the first one better,” Venser said. He had found the metal carcass of some creature with the articulated back plates of an insect. It was lifeless and limp, but he held it up, flopping before Koth’s eyes.

“Could it be one of these?”

“A dung disposer?” Koth said, glancing momentarily at it. “You disgust me.”

Venser dropped the small carcass.

Koth hardly seemed to notice, so intently was he gazing at the tree forms and their low-hanging fruit. “The sounds are not made by a dung disposer. But something is most likely watching us at this moment. Gel fruit groves are found in some of these canyons, and they are always dangerous places, even before the Phyrexians. Whatever lives makes its way to these. Either to gain water and food or to eat what comes here to gain water and food. I generally avoid these areas, but we need what they can give.”

Crouched, they watched the grove until Venser’s knees burned and his stomach was wound into a knot of thirst so painful that he would have agreed to fight a legion of Phyrexians if it meant a drink at the end. He could hear Koth’s stomach gurgling. But Koth did not move. A hot breeze rocked the fruits on their branches tantalizingly. Finally Venser spoke. “Let us make a move or whatever is watching us will soon hear my stomach and know our position.”

“You are right,” Koth said. “You go ahead. Now is the time for you teleporting.”

Venser paused. “I will.” He watched the trees, thinking how to move into the grove.

But Koth thought better of it. “I will have no more of this sneaking around,” he said. And with that he began striding to the trees.

He stopped at the first tree and picked a head-sized fruit, which he carried back toward Venser. It happened when Koth was about halfway between Venser and the tree. A momentary whistling of wind and Koth dropped the fruit, drew his fist back, and lashed it out. Something fell from his fist and banged off the ground. There were two more whizzing sounds, Koth swung twice, and two more small forms fell clattering.

Koth seized the fruit and started walking back to the crevice. Venser blinked into being next to Koth and had to immediately duck one of the vulshok’s bright fists.

“Say something next time you are to appear, young artificer.”

Before Venser could reply another whizzing cut the air and he put out his hand, a blue miasma appearing around it from which only his fingers poked. The metal form flying toward them slowed and began to waver in its path, until it floated lazily past and bumbled away into the dimness.

“You should see what it’s seeing it its mind’s eye,” Venser said, nodding as the small dartlike creature moved past them. It was long and thin, with a beak pursed to a sharp needle as long as a man’s arm. Fluid dripped from that sharpened tip. A finlike appendage extended out its back. “We look like tall reeds to it, and it hungers for our flesh.”

Venser leaned close for a look, and at that moment was pierced by another dart flying from behind. The pain was instantaneous and searing. So much so that Venser found he could not concentrate enough to teleport away, and a moment later felt the world fade into blackness.

When he opened his eyes again, the land of Mirrodin was moving slowly past and the heat around his face was as if he were standing near a blast furnace. He closed his eyes and when he opened them again he was slumped against the metal side of a small cave. The metal burned his back, but he could not stand, could not make his limbs cooperate with his brain’s commands. The best he could manage was to slip over and fall on his side. He closed his eyes again.

When he opened his eyes for the third time he was floating again, bobbing as the land fell away behind. He found he could raise his hand and he did so. He scratched his matted hair and spoke.

“Where is my helmet?” he said.

“He lives,” Koth said. Koth turned to Venser, who he had strapped to his back.

“Well,” Venser croaked. “I feel just wonderful.”

He felt so bad that when Koth untied him from his pack, Venser cried out. Moving his limbs felt like the worst pain imaginable. As if they were being ripped free from their joints. Koth stood him on his feet.

“There is nothing wrong with you,” Koth added. “Stinger mechs like the one that found your neck offer paralysis serum, but movement does away with its effects.”

Venser nodded painfully.

“So move,” Koth commanded.

He took one excruciating step, and then another. It felt as though sand had found its crafty way into his joints. But soon the pain lessened and after an hour of walking in circles it felt only as though he were walking on fractured bones. Koth threw Venser his helmet and he greedily slipped it on. The familiar smell of his hair was in it and he relaxed a bit.

“Where are we?” Venser said.

Koth stepped dramatically back and extended one arm.

“Your body they will harvest,” Elspeth said to Vadi, her bowl of cold soup long forgotten. “They may even keep you alive for a time, letting you heal, occasionally taking strips of your flesh and sinew for fuel or musculature. You’ll begin to recognize your own body parts stretched and fused into the skeletons of your captors.

The vulshok watched Elspeth without expression.

In her mind Elspeth watched helplessly as three Phyrexians lifted a human in their meat-hook hands. The screaming … the screaming.

“But your mind will be left to its own sad devices. They don’t understand the mind or its needs. Your mind will fall away, or you will scream yourself to insanity. Be ready for this. This is the harvest you shall reap.”

Vadi looked at her suspiciously. “How do you know?”

“I know,” Elspeth said. “Because I survived them.”

The vulshok’s hand went out, but instead of touching Elspeth in consolation she took the hefty handle of a battle spear lying propped against the low table.

“I do not have their infection, if you think that,” Elspeth added, noticing how the Vulshok held her spear.

“You are not auriok. You are a troublemaker and liar like that upstart Koth. Speak now or I will lay you low.” The vulshok kicked her stool back and brought the head of her greatspear up so it hovered at Elspeth’s throat. “You are a spy for the Hammer tribe. Speak doomsayer!”

“I wish I had a confession for you,” Elspeth said. She looked down at the sharp tip of the spear. She scooted her chair forward toward the spear tip. “Knowing what I know about our mutual enemy, I wish you would end my days now.”

Vadi lowered the spear, the scowl still on her face. “You are no auriok. You’re no spy. You are none of these things. You are something much worse.” The vulshok spat a dry splotch at Elspeth’s feet. “You are a coward.”

“You do not know what I know.”

“You say you left your friends. You say they are better off without you. You say there is a great enemy. You say, say, say. All talk. All words. And words are wind.”

“They are better off not depending on me,” Elspeth said.

“So you will hide, is that it?”