Robert Wintermute - The Quest for Karn

“I will use the next one.” Venser mumbled, working on the cap of the vial.

Keeping their distance, Elspeth and Koth watched as Venser took a sip from the bottle. He tried not to be greedy, but when his need reached the point it was at, it became difficult to keep composed. One sip was enough. He felt the raw mana course through him and his senses tightened and then bloomed and he could feel the energy of the metal of that place pumping all around him. He felt as if the power in him was circling his head and tapering up toward the sky.

“I feel better now,” Venser said.

Elspeth raised one of her eyebrows.

Venser put the small vial back in its pocket. He patted it and pulled a deep breath.

“What is that fluid?” Koth said.

“It’s a personal concoction,” Venser said.

Koth nodded.

“It contains the extract of the sap of a corkscrew tree from the plane of Zendikar,” Venser said. “Plus minerals rendered from certain material pulled from a disintegration hollow I know of in Dominaria, and something from Mirrodin, as a matter of fact.”

“Yes?”

“Moth extract, it is called.”

Koth’s mouth tightened. “Blinkmoths. There not many of those left on Mirrodin anymore. They were harvested to decimation, I have heard. But who knows these things-all I’ve heard are old stories. Rumors.”

“Of what?”

“Of the vedalken, the indigo experimenters, who became obsessed with that fluid, and the power they believed it brought. They still exist deep in the Lumingrid where the Knowledge Pool ripples. But they delved too deep, the myths say. This was so long ago. I would not ever touch what is in the blinkmoth.”

“You are not me,” Venser said, patting the vial through his armor.

“Clearly.”

To the center of Mirrodin, down holes riven through solid metal, along runways both twisted and forgotten, moved Geth-commander of the Vault of Whispers. He scuttled in his bulky exoskeleton of barbed alloy, ducking low-hanging veinlike tubes that had torn free from the wall and hung varicose in the dim passage.

Geth’s skull, surrounded up to his ears with a body that glinted and grew, turned neither right nor left. He knew the way to the throne room.

He imagined what he would report when questioned about the weekly progress. All fairly routine, a similar meeting to many of the others: good progress, pockets of resistance that will shortly be absorbed. Issues with furnace-level discipline, suggest harsh punishment. No significant problems encountered. Geth felt his mouth grin, a feeling that was becoming more and more difficult as his Phyrexian transformation continued. Skin is the thing he lacked. The skin that was left on his face was hard to move, leaving him with a permanent expression of stretched rage. He shrugged. It had always been his favorite expression anyway. It was what he’d become, and he was great.

Glissa the meddler would be there, asking him questions that she already knew the answers to, testing him. Imagine that he, the Lord of the Vault, would be weak to the words of the likes of her. A former elf. It was she who told him to find a solution to the problem they were having fully assimilating the red ones. Him? What control did he have over how phyresis overtook, or didn’t, as the case was? Why didn’t she turn her dripping eyes and ask the tinkers, the cutters in their halls of blood and blades? She was always consulting with them anyway. Ask them.

He was Geth-Lord of the Vault. His job was to bleed Mirrodin until she was pale and then fill her full of the black oil. Make her one of the chosen.

And his job was almost complete.

He neared the final passage, never his favorite. He struggled between the wet tube works, the barbs from his new body catching on stringy parts and stopping him until he found the part caught and freed his body. It smelled like emptied bowels. Glissa had designed the passage, he was sure. She had made it just for him. She made it impossible for him to arrive clean, without being covered in recyclate and stinking like a festering corpse.

Whereas Glissa was always clean and shining when Geth arrived, and that day was no exception. Geth was sure she had a special passage all to her own.

He entered the hall and fell to one knee and bowed to the nascent Father of Machines on his throne. Glissa was in her usual place at the base of the high throne, and Geth did not look at her.

“Ah,” Glissa said, projecting her voice so the golem would be sure to hear, if he was listening, which Geth doubted. “Our lord of the Vault has arrived.” She clearly hated him at least as much as he hated her.

“I am here to give successful tidings,” Geth said.

The chancellor minion scurried over to him, tink-tink-tinking the metal floor with its claws. The creature’s robe was still rotting off its miserable little body, Geth saw. The hood it wore was still low over its eyes, showing only its stubby, cleaverlike teeth. A book was clutched in its metal claws.

“Maybe, Lord, you are not familiar with the time The Father of Machines called this meeting?” It said, opening the book and moving one fingertip down the page.

Geth swatted the book from its claws. The minion scrambled across the floor to collect the book off the ground.

“If there was anything written in that book, anything but the scribbles you make with your bloodied fingertips, then I would pay more attention,” Geth said.

It was the same every time. The little theatrical play they put on for the golem’s benefit.

But it was somehow different. Geth could feel it. The minion scrambled but did not pick up the book. It stood over it without bending. Geth had forgotten why the little creature was always in the chamber.

A howling cry cut the air, making the very walls shake. The cry was filled with some of the most exquisite angst and pain Geth had ever heard. But for one severe moment Geth thought the chamber would fall in on itself.

His eyes went to Glissa, who was looking up at the throne.

The golem bellowed in frustration and anger as he tried to stand. Geth knew that the throne was bound to his metal spine, ingrown, but the golem was strong and pulled until the throne released him and he stood to his full height.

The minions that held his throne column on their backs readjusted their stances.

Karn crumpled into a crouch, sobbing. Then he tipped forward and tumbled off the top of the throne column. It was a high column, and Geth watched as the golem hit the floor with a tremendous thud.

Moments later Karn stood out of the dent and fell to his knees, raving in a language Geth could not hope to understand.

“Father of Machines,” Glissa said, her voice as smooth as the oil dripping out of her eyes. “We have council with you today.” She snapped her fingers at the minion, and the little creature scrambled over with the book, which it popped open and held up before Karn’s wide-eyed face. The silver golem looked down at the book, his face jumping to an expression of pain and then to one of anger and then to tears.

Geth could clearly see the rivulets of black oil popping out on his brow. Glissa noticed it too, Geth was sure of that. More fuel to the fire for those that said that Karn was not the true Father of Machines, no matter how much Glissa wanted to make him thus.

His body was fighting the oil, that much was certain. More times than not Geth found him that way at their councils. He found him raving mad, teetering between clarity and instability.

The oil could do that as it was moving through the pathways of the chosen’s neurological workings, Geth had been told. But that period in the transformation only took a couple of days at most. Karn had been volatile for months. His body was simply not accepting what they all were offering. At least that was what those in command said of Karn, when nobody was listening.