Robert B.Wintermute - The Quest for Karn

Elspeth, on the other hand, showed absolutely no signs of stress, except when fighting. That made Venser all the more nervous. She had become bloodthirsty, but that could hardly be blamed. She’d mentioned her imprisonment at the hands of the enemy. A traumatic event like that could not help but leave scars. Yes, Venser would have to watch her for signs of stress. He would have to watch them both, and in the meantime it was up to him to think rationally. The mission could not be compromised. They must find Karn, and by any means at his disposal, Venser would make that happen … even if that meant dealing with every Phyrexian in that rat’s nest under the surface. Even if that meant dealing with Koth and Elspeth. He would find Karn, oh yes.

“Mr. Artificer, sir,” Koth waved his hand before Venser’s eyes. “Are you there, sir?”

Venser blinked. “I am here, you dolt.”

“There he is,” Koth said. “I thought for a time that you’d have to be put out of your misery. That you were becoming like them.” He pushed one of the still Phyrexians with his foot.

“I am not affected by the black oil,” Venser said defensively.

“Oh, no?” Koth said. “Why not.”

Venser stepped around the vulshok and went to stand next to Elspeth. Her eyes were narrowed and her lip was drawn in the corner into a snarl. She stared down at one of the dead Phyrexians.

In the barred window behind them the sound of thousands of clicking insects continued. The wide fire in the distance flickered and danced, giving off plumes of smoke that rose high in the absolutely vast room.

“Their claws are cold and cruel,” Elspeth said. She was looking down at her hands as she spoke. She clenched one gloved hand. “Once they touch you it is hard to forget that feeling.”

“Are you hurt?” Venser said.

Elspeth turned on him. For one quick moment Venser thought she would stab him with the knife she had just pulled out of the Phyrexian’s eye. But the sneer quivered and disappeared. “I do not allow them to hurt me,” Elspeth said.

The sudden stillness of the room was beginning to unnerve him. The huge space and many others on Mirrodin, he realized suddenly, reminded him of when he was a child running in the streets and he found the set of a theatrical play. He and the other children he was with could never afford to attend such a play, but they found the set. The set builders had just left the premises and the back door was open. He and his friends wandered in and stood in the hush of the room with its small castle with an open side. There was also a tree built of wood planks. It was for appearance of course, and nobody was around. That’s how the rooms felt to Venser there in the bowels of Mirrodin.

The clicking in the barred room started again. “Are they cruel?”

“I’m sorry?” Elspeth said.

“Are the Phyrexians cruel, by nature?”

Elspeth thought for a moment. “The prison I was in was little more than a factory. Conveyer belt ran from room to room. They like organs and flesh. They like to hold them and play with them. One of their loves is interchanging parts for other parts.”

“I see.”

“You do not,” Elspeth said. “I was eight years old and I saw people ripped apart … slowly. The beasts are semisentient. They can play with you. They understand how to hurt and cause fear. They would force me to watch, only to see the look on my face.”

“They are that aware?”

“Oh yes.”

Koth had walked up to listen. “This has made you stronger. Now you are mighty.”

Elspeth said nothing. She wiped the blade of her knife on the leather of her underjerkin before slipping it back into the scabbard in her boot. Then she looked over at the round portal next to the barred window. “Shall we look at that situation?” she said.

The guide had watched them, as he always did-unspeaking and very still. When they moved toward the door, he followed.

Unlike the other doors they had approached, the door opened to reveal a dimly lit room. There were three large holes in the metal floor that looked strangely fleshy, organic. They quivered slightly as the party stepped in the room. Another circular door opened into another, vast room. That other room was filled with large objects, hundreds of them. Each object was made up of an arm attached to a large cylindrical tank with a spine fused to it. There were literally hundreds, maybe thousands of the devices, and each arm was pushing down on something, keeping whatever was in the tank down.

Each tank had a small set of eyes near its top. The top of its tank was rimmed with sharp teeth, all pointing downward.

“What are those arms holding down?” Koth said, stating the question playing over each of their tongues.

Without warning a head sputtering black fluid popped out of the nearest cylinder. The arm attached to the device immediately moved its claw and shoved the head back down.

But not before Venser recognized an elf’s ears.

“These must be propagation tanks,” Venser said. “Breeding tanks.”

“Phyrexians don’t need to breed,” Elspeth said.

Venser thought for a moment. “Perhaps they want to turn more beings to Phyrexians faster than normal,” Elspeth said.

“I have never heard of such a thing,” Venser said.

The guide was silent, watching.

“We should destroy them,” Elspeth said.

“But how?” Koth said. “It would take countless hours. What we should do is move toward the surface and find others and then return.”

“Koth is right,” Venser said.

The vulshok turned with a shocked look on his face. “Did you just say I was correct?”

“Only in that we have to leave this place now,” Venser said. “Not that we should travel to the surface.”

“Oh,” Koth said. “Well then, artificer, now that you’ve decided not to assist these poor beings,” Koth’s voice was rising as he talked. Venser had noticed that that was happening more and more frequently with the geomancer. The sweat had collected on his face, and the iron dust stuck to it. He looks like he’s losing his mind, Venser thought.

“Which of the three holes will you take us down?” Koth said.

“We cannot help these creatures. Their fate is already decided. Destroying these tanks would only slow our path,” the guide said.

The arm on the nearest tank flexed and its spines clicked as the tank readjusted its hold.

The guide led them along pathways hewn in the metal walls and ways hidden to all eyes save his. There was a quietness about the sylvok that made Venser uneasy. When he spoke, it was with an accent that he had never heard before. That made sense, as Venser was not a Mirran, but when he watched Koth out of the corner of his eye as the guide talked, the vulshok’s face pinched itself in confusion at his accent. The fleshling blinked when he spoke, but she did that when anyone spoke, so it was hard to glean anything from that.

But the guide was certainly from Mirrodin. His coppery legs, green with patina, gave that away. However, he bore none of the signs of infection they had seen in the camp, and he was not what Venser would ever have called shifty or evasive. He merely never spoke or made noise. He was as silent a creature as a romei buck.

Once, after they had spent hours descending a series of foot- and handholds in the honeycomb support structure between two walls, they encountered a brace of Phyrexians and the guide did something unusual. They had finally found the floor and, with legs wobbling from their climb, Venser and the others moved toward a hole cut in the wall. Light showed from the hole, telling Venser that it led to yet another vast cavernlike room. Koth arrived at the door first. He caught sight of a pack of Phyrexians struggling over something just outside the doorway.