Robert B.Wintermute - The Quest for Karn

“They are no longer yours,” Glissa said. “They are ours, and we are you.”

“Oh,” Karn said, as casually as if she had told him the temperature of the air. But in the next moment the brightness seemed to drain out of Karn’s eyes, and he slipped down the wall until his feet were bent under him. The fine droplets of oil appeared all over his body again.

“His body, or his mind, will not fully accept what we give,” Glissa said.

“He is not one of us,” Geth said.

Glissa turned on him. “He is as much Phyrexian as I am. Let nobody say otherwise. We need Karn if we are ever to fully integrate Mirrodin.”

“How did you become so wise to the plan?” Tezzeret demanded.

“You already know more than your mandate dictates,” Glissa said. “Now know this: you will infect this flesh creature and find the rebel settlement. Kill everything and bring their bodies back so we can utilize them. Bring the fully infected flesh creature to me personally. I like flesh. I find it interesting. I have my own collection, you know.”

“Is that so?” Tezzeret said. “It disgusts me. Flesh is weakness.”

“Yes!” Geth said, raising his one good claw.

“Silence, fool,” Glissa said to Geth, who put his arm down. “Flesh has its uses.” She turned back to Tezzeret. “Now, you will travel on your little quest with my own guards. Do you understand?”

Tezzeret regarded her coolly.

“Do you understand?” Glissa repeated.

“Yes.”

“Excellent. Now then,” Glissa walked over to where Karn lay crumpled on the floor, panting. She took hold of his arm with her hand and the hooked part of her scythe hand. “Come, Father, why not sit comfortably atop your throne.”

But she could not budge the silver golem. “You have taken my portals.” He pulled his arm free and leveled a blow against the wall, denting it deeply.

Tezzeret tried to imagine what a blow like that would do to Glissa, or Geth for that matter. Tezzeret knew what he would do if Karn tried it with him: he’d throttle the life out of the mad bastard, no matter how much he respected his craftsmanship. Or at least he’d try. The truth was that Tezzeret loved what Karn was. Karn, the creator of planes and organizer of metals. To see such a magnificent artificer brought to that kind of subjugation was a blemish on what it meant to bend metal.

“Leave him be,” Tezzeret said. “There squats the creator of Mirrodin,” Tezzeret said, suddenly serious. “Neither of you have sung metals to form, have given everything you are to be great. You do not have the right to be in the same room with him.”

“But you do?” Glissa said.

“I have stolen, killed, and scraped for the ability to create etherium. Nobody ever gave me an ounce of value. I took it and now I am one of very few to control this great metal that is essence.”

“Are you finished, philosopher?” Glissa said.

“You promised me I would have a force of my own,” Tezzeret said through unsmiling lips.

“I did, didn’t I?” Glissa said. “But who trusts the word of a Phyrexian? Honor is a social construct. We do not follow constructs. We follow hunger. Anyway, who are we kidding? You want more than a force, you want an army. You have been building an army. We know this. We have been watching.”

A force of ten Phyrexians slinked through the far door. They were each one worked through with patina-covered copper, with gray muscle herniating out between the gaps in the jagged structure. Their eyes were black and dripping.

“You can steal, kill, and scrape your way to the settlement with my minions. “You will find these harder to control than your blue ones,” Glissa promised. “Now go.”

Geth made to follow Tezzeret.

“No, Geth,” Glissa said. “You stay. We will discuss what to do with enemies of the oil.”

Geth grinned as Tezzeret passed.

“Symptoms of our cage!” Karn bellowed.

As Tezzeret left the chamber, he heard Karn’s silver fingertips scraping the metal floor.

The middle hole dropped them, as though in free fall. They had found the holes lined up one after the other and as each smelled as dank and foul as another, they chose the middle one. Much of the time Venser felt like he was traveling upside down. Some of the turns were so abrupt that his elbows slammed into the side of the strangely flexible tube. Other times the tube traveled straight. At one point the tube traveled straight for so long they actually stopped moving and had to crawl until they began to slide.

The speed picked up quickly and continued that way for so long that Venser seriously considered teleporting away. Yet still the speed increased, the turns coming one after the other without warning. Venser could hear Koth muttering as they skidded through the tunnel. Before long, even the usually quiet Elspeth began to bellow and bang her heels on the tube. Finally the chute dumped them in an unceremonious heap on the smooth floor of another vast room, gasping and blinking and stunned in the light.

Unlike any other room Venser had seen under Mirrodin, the room was bright. Very bright. It was as if its own sun had risen and sat directly overhead. They struggled to their feet and wandered, blinded, holding each other’s sleeves like children, until Venser bumped into a wall and they all put their backs to its coolness and slid down onto the floor.

“Can you see?” Koth said.

“No,” Venser said at last. When he opened his eyes the light hurt deep in his head. Still, he had hoped Elspeth would respond so he could gauge just how disturbed the tube had made her. From the sound of her cries as they slid, Venser wanted to know if she had come unhinged.

“Hold up your hand,” Koth said. “Peer through the cracks between your fingers.”

Venser brought up his filthy hand and rested it on his brow. Through the space between his middle and first fingers he was able to see without the sharp pain.

The ball of light was still blazing in the ceiling. The floor continued to vibrate. Sometimes the vibrations were more and sometimes less. But the light that burned down on them was as constant as any machine.

“My job in their prison,” Elspeth said in a voice made rough by her prolonged bawl in the tube, “was to cut down the bodies the Phyrexians left behind. They liked to play and experiment and do other things. They would drive spikes through the space between the heel and tendon and hang their victims upside down. It was a prison.”

“Yes,” Venser said. “You told us that.”

“No, I mean for Phyrexians,” Elspeth said. “They took our parts for themselves. They are nothing more than perverse machines that want to masquerade as flesh and blood creatures, so they dress in our muscles, skin, and viscera.”

“They imprison their own?” Koth said after a time.

“Yes. The imprisoned ones experimented on us to keep quiet. At night they were mostly locked in their own cages by other Phyrexians.”

“That is fascinating,” Venser said. “And how did they treat prisoners of their own kind, the Phyrexians?”

“With deference, almost kindness, if that is possible,” Elspeth said. “If one of the prisoners was especially wild, some of the guards would collect around the door and sing to him.”

“Sing?”

“Well,” Elspeth said, “it did not sound like our singing. It was terrifying to hear.”

“So you were a distraction?” Koth said.

“Yes. A distraction.”

“And how are you here standing before us?” Koth said.

“Have some respect,” Venser said.

But Elspeth put a gloved hand on Koth’s shoulder. “Perhaps they did not prefer children? I do not know why. I ask myself that question quite often.”