Robert Wintermute - The Quest for Karn

Still more butchers shoved and rocked in from the edges, running surprisingly fast in a convulsive frenzy to cleave the intruders’ skulls and, Venser assumed somehow, drink their brains.

They were a stone’s throw from the hole when the far wall quaked and a large portal in the shape of an iris diaphragm blossomed and out of the conduits and gutlike wetness of the hole stepped two massive Phyrexians. They were near the size of the Phyrexian machine that had been crushing bones with its one huge hand. But their hands, unlike most Phyrexians, had no sharp tipped fingers. Each hand was as large as their torso, and made of some metal wrapped with thick bands of sinew. The monstrous Phyrexians moved over the crowd of butchers, crushing them as they planted their knuckles on the floor and swung their bodies to catch up.

The smell of the place was already rot and old blood, but with these crushing creatures, the smell of singed hair joined the melange.

Elspeth stopped swinging her sword. She turned to Venser, but the artificer was not looking at the crushers or the butchers. His eyes were fixed on a place at the far end of the room.

“What is our plan with this large foe?” Elspeth yelled to her comrades. “Will we choose this point to continue on our path down that hole?”

The meat hole was within their reach. The few Phyrexians left that stood between them and the hole had stopped fighting to watch their huge cousins.

“I wonder,” Venser said, ignoring what Elspeth had said. “If that is what I think it is.”

Koth ran toward the hole. He reached down and seized a huge section of spinal vertebrae. He hurled the bone and it took the first Phyrexian in the eye and knocked it back and over. As the Phyrexian struggled to get up, Koth jumped on him and drove an ember-red hand down into the beast’s chest, stilling its efforts. Another Phyrexian charged forward and swung. Large gauntlets of metal snapped out of Koth’s forearms, which he raised as a shield. The Phyrexian’s cleaver bounced harmlessly off the growths.

Koth’s hands went black, and the seams where his fingers bent glowed a bright red. He dived forward and plunged both hands to the elbows into the Phyrexian’s body, instantaneously melting through the thing’s metal framework of supports and bone shards. As he ducked the Phyrexian’s swings, Koth lifted it off its feet and hurled it into the other butchers who had begun to advance.

The path was clear to the meat hole.

“Let’s go,” Koth said.

But Venser was not moving. In a moment the crushers would be upon them. Even Elspeth had begun to walk toward the hole.

“Oh, artificer, sir,” Koth said. “You coming?”

At that moment Venser blinked out of existence to teleport to the bottom of the pit. Shrugging, Koth ran to the hole. The ground shook as the crushers advanced. They were just behind him, by the feel of it. Koth could smell their grim knuckles.

Elspeth was the first one down. Koth looked before he jumped. Darkness. The first crusher stopped and pulled back its huge fist for a punch that would surely have driven Koth back and into the metal wall. He jumped. The cushion of wind at the front of the punch whizzed past his head as he fell down into darkness.

The landing was soft and wet. They lay in the dark, listening to the caterwauling screams echoing from the hole above them. When Elspeth struggled to her feet a voice broke the quiet.

“Be at ease,” the voice said. “We are many and you are few. Do not struggle or we will gut and leave you and the twisted ones will work through your skins. We need you as you need us to leave this dark place.”

“We are not leaving this dark place,” Venser said.

“Oh, you are leaving,” the voice said. “You are coming with us. Furthermore, you will like it very much. We will even take the vulshok, if he will agree not to run away.”

“Show yourselves,” Koth yelled, starting to glow red in the darkness.

“Loud as always,” the voice said.

But many forms started to appear in the darkness at the edge of Koth’s glow. They were of differing heights and sizes, but all carried weapons. There were thirty that Venser counted. An elf with etched copper arms stepped forward, with his bow half drawn and two cocked fingers holding an arrow in place. His skin was greenish, and the smell of him was odd, Venser thought. Perhaps it was the copper growing into his skin. But the elf’s hair, which seemed to be made up of segmented sections of cable or some close substance, was sweat sodden and pulled back. Deep creases surrounded both his eyes and mouth, as if he had frowned for years.

Behind the forms, vast boulders towered.

“Are we saved by the elves?” Koth laughed.

The elf at the front of the group held up one finger. “Not entirely,” he swept his hand back. The outline of a vulshok, with spikes at the shoulders and head, was clearly visible behind him.

“I am Ezuri and you are saved by Mirrodin. It is a place you may remember from the old days,” the elf said.

Koth was quiet.

Venser noticed for the first time that the elves in the group, and the leader in particular, had small circular parts of their arm and leg metal that glowed green.

“What do you seek?” Elspeth said, standing tall and white in the festering filth around her. Her sword was unsheathed and laid across her left arm. Venser was suddenly very glad that she was a part of the group. Koth was seething… getting redder and redder the longer he stood. There would be a fight if the situation continued.

It was the elf who spoke. “We are here to lead you out of this madness,” the elf said, “if you would come.”

Koth brightened. “Yes, please,” he said. Then he seemed to realize that he’d spoken too quickly. “Why are you helping us?”

The elf laughed a high, shrill laugh. “One, maybe two more rooms and you would be as this meat we are standing upon,” he said. He looked down at the rotting flesh. “Some of this is elf. Perhaps some of these elves were from my tribe.” He lifted his foot. “That might even be my wife.”

Nobody spoke. After a moment Venser stepped forward.

“I am Venser of Urborg.”

“It is I, Ezuri,” the elf said. “And these are raiders against the fiends.”

“Ezuri, we thank you for wanting to help us, but we must continue down from here.”

“Why?” the elf said. “We have been tracking you for some time, and at every turn you seem to be uniquely able to choose the most dangerous path, and to take it.”

Venser heard Koth stir next to him. He would hear from the vulshok later how they were not on the correct path, but it was time to make sure that the elf did not impede their progress.

“We search for a friend who was lost here.”

“Who is this friend? I might have seen him.”

“His name is Karn,” Venser said.

Ezuri stared at Venser for what seemed like a full minute. “No, I have not seen anyone by that name.”

“We must find him,” Venser said.

“If he is any deeper than the meat room, you may forget you ever heard his name.”

As if to prove the point, a chorus of gargled bellows cut the stinking air. Ezuri did not move his head, but his large ears pivoted slightly at the sound. His eyes never left Venser’s.

“I cannot let you pass this room,” Ezuri said. “You know this. I cannot let you stir those that tear flesh into a frenzy. We have been pressing them hard and making good progress against them. I cannot let you undo our work.”

“You think you have them on the run?” Koth said. “We were just at the Vault of Whis-”

“And there were some Phyrexians around there,” Venser cut in.

Sensing he was not getting the whole story, Ezuri cut his gaze from Koth to Venser, then after a quick glance at his troops, turned back to Venser before continuing.