Robert B.Wintermute - The Quest for Karn

“I have not seen him in …,” Elspeth said.

It was hard to judge time and Elspeth let her words hang unfinished.

They walked back to the door they had just come through.

“Do you remember how many hearts were in the room with the small Phyrexian?” Elspeth asked.

“There were thirty-three,” Venser said.

“What were they used for?” Koth pressed. He had perked up remarkably, Venser thought, after being cast out by his people again. What a strange being, Venser thought.

“Who is to say?” Venser grunted.

“What if something took them?” Koth proposed.

“Something might have. Maybe that small silver creature that led us for a time,” Venser said.

“And now we have another guide,” Elspeth said. “Who is also leading us unbidden.”

“I too am suspicious,” Venser said.

They searched the walls for another door. Covered with metal and flesh, the veinlike tubes that glistened and squished when they parted them to look for a door made Venser feel as if he were searching through the intestines of a huge creature. And he found nothing.

“Why would the silver creature lead us and then disappear?” asked Elspeth. She turned to Venser-dark, sticky oil covered her hands and arms. The more time he spent around the white warrior, the less he felt he knew about her, and the more nervous she made him. The way she shook when she fought Phyrexians put his hairs up. They were the enemy, there was no doubt of that, but that someone could harbor such a complete hatred of anything made him uneasy. What did you have to do to get on Elspeth’s list of hated things, and what would you do if you did?

“Have you found something?” Koth said.

Venser turned back to his search. He looked and looked but it was Koth who finally found a small hole behind a bank of articulated columns of shiny metal, which swayed slightly to an unheard rhythm. The columns moved to the side when he pushed on them. The door that lay behind was perhaps the perfect size for a seven-year-old human child. Except its handle was smeared with blood and clots had formed in the drip line that stretched to the floor.

“It stretches,” Koth said, reaching down and pulling the edge of the fleshy hole wider. “Even I can fit.” The small door was merely a plug. They pulled it off and propped it against the ductwork.

“Do we go down this?” Elspeth said.

“Why not?” Koth demanded.

The guide stepped out of the shadows. Venser had the strong feeling that he had been watching them the whole time. But why would that be?

“We may travel that way,” the guide said.

Koth nodded at him and then turned to Elspeth.

“We go this way,” Venser said, with more force than he meant.

Elspeth nodded.

Koth looked away.

“Are we ready?” Venser repeated.

“Yes, I am ready,” Koth said. “But I do not follow your orders.”

“You don’t follow my orders,” Venser repeated. “Then will you take a suggestion and tell fair Elspeth and myself if you are ready to walk through this door and confront what may be there?”

“As I said, I am ready.”

“All right, I will go first.” Venser went through the door feetfirst. It was not a pleasant sensation pushing through the space, which seemed to close in on you from all sides, as if there was water on the other side. He could hear the echoed reverberations of movement all around him, and he could hear strange modulations of sound. For one moment he thought he heard the deep boom of Karn’s voice crying out in rage. But he had never known his old mentor and friend to make sounds like those. They had to have been made by something else.

The door Venser exited was massive-easily as large as seven humans standing feet on heads-and it stank of rotting flesh. Stinking or not, it was tiny in comparison to the space it opened into. They were on a ledge that looked over an absolutely massive cavern of metal. Colossal columns of metallic material stood at its center and long tendrils attached each to the other like rope to a pole. Sometimes many tendrils met at a huge chunk. The chunks were easily as large as rooms.

“What is that?” Venser said, his voice echoing away across the enormous space.

“Don’t know,” Koth said. “Don’t have any idea.”

“How large would you say this cavern is?” Venser said.

Elspeth shrugged. “Leagues,” she said. “Perhaps larger.”

“And yet these columns continue. Look there, that column seems to have grown into the metal of the wall. I wonder if it keeps its shape under the metal? I wonder if the strands do?”

They all looked to the guide, who stood back a bit. He looked back at them.

“The center of Mirrodin is solid,” Koth said. “We vulshok know this. It is the heart of our ore. We explore and use our geomancy to delve with sound through the core.”

“This does not appear solid,” Venser said.

“How can we ever know the truth of this situation?” Elspeth said. “We waste time surmising.”

“This place is Phyrexian corruption,” Koth said. Clearly disgusted, he turned away from the view.

But Venser did not turn away. “Very strange,” he said. “Very strange.”

“Where do we go?” Koth said.

“There. This trail before us leads that way … to where that strand is melted and its inner tube is exposed,” the guide said, pointing.

“We walk into one of those strands? I think not,” Koth said.

“It is through these that one moves around the core of Mirrodin.”

“How do you know?” Elspeth said.

“I know,” the guide said, his face expressionless.

“It makes sense,” Venser said.

“How does that make sense?”

“Well,” Venser said. “Do you see how the top of that column is dark and crumbling? It is clearly dead. Yet below it the metal is greenish and healthy.”

Koth nodded slowly, as if he knew what he was about to hear would be as ridiculous as the artificer himself.

“It seems that whatever flows up along that column can’t go up any longer. Up is plugged by that dark, dead-looking material. It must go sideways. Sideways is those tendrils. They are of different lengths. What if they are of different ages as well?”

Koth shook his head as he listened.

Venser did not seem to notice. He kept speaking. “What if those tendrils are caused by whatever is traveling up along the column? Perhaps when enough of those tendrils come together and connect with another column, they form a layer. A new layer under the crust.”

Koth was narrowing his eyes as he gazed across the vast expanse before them. “A crazy idea, I’ll give you that. I don’t believe a word of it. And how would you explain that?” Koth pointed.

It took some time for Venser to spot what he was looking at. The vastness of the cavern was all made of metal of one sort or another. There were inclusions of dark ore and marbles of lighter metal. But as his eyes moved over the calico of colors, they stopped on a flash. He looked closer. The flash came from what appeared to be a golden bubble. It clung to the wall near the column half-melted into the metal wall.

“What is that?” Koth said, gloat in his voice.

“I don’t know,” Venser said. “But we can get to it to find out. If we travel to that tendril and walk through it we should come out near the column, very near that bubble. It appears to be older than the column, which has grown around it, as you can see.”

“Yes,” Koth said, reluctantly.

Venser stood up straight and looked right to left. “Yes, right.”

Venser nodded. Koth looked down at his feet. There were many drips in the vast expanse. Some sounded closer than others. There was also the sound of movement … of rusted movement and metal banging into metal. But there were no Phyrexian cries.