Robert Wintermute - The Quest for Karn

Off to the side, Venser could see Elspeth and the second angel brawling. Surprisingly quick, the angel was able to dodge Elspeth’s attacks. The white warrior began to move her own mana to her sword for a thousand-cuts-in-one strike. But the angel put up its hand and Elspeth’s weapon dropped from her fingers.

She reached down for the sword, but the angel surged forward and palmed Elspeth’s head in its claw. It turned, raised Elspeth off the ground, and threw her away into the darkness, leaving her sword glittering on the ground.

The angel looked down at the sword and cocked its head to the side. Venser began running for the sword. He did not think about what would happen if the Phyrexian had the weapon, he just ran. By the time he reached the place, the angel had bent over the sword and was reaching down with its claw. Venser kicked the sword and it went skittering away.

He’d been struck hard plenty of times in his life. He was raised in Urborg, after all, and his childhood had been far from perfect: his father had broken his nose when he was ten, and that blow had knocked him out for almost an hour. He’d fought in the insurrection there and been wounded in the abdomen with a spear that went through him, knocked him way back, and pinned him to a tree. That one had hurt.

But the blow that the Phyrexian lashed out with was worse.

Elspeth saw it from the shadows. She was on her knees feeling for her blade and happened to look up. Her own head pounded where the Phyrexian angel’s metal claw had squeezed, but otherwise she was unhurt. She looked up in time to see the Phyrexian’s strike: Venser cartwheeled limp through the air like a tossed doll, his helmet spinning off to the side.

He landed with an unsettling thud. Elspeth turned back to her search. She moved to where she thought Venser had kicked the sword. By the time she found it, the angel was tearing the armor off Venser’s chest. It did not sense her approach, which was good because she was terrified to look it once more face-to-face. But still she could not strike an opponent’s back. She tapped it on the shoulder with the tip of her sword, but it did not turn. Having fulfilled the Etiquette of the Field with the tap, she wasted no time with enchantments, but simply swiped the creature’s head neatly off its shoulders, cutting the tops of its wings off in the process.

Yet it continued to move, to claw at Venser’s unmoving form. Without eyes its movements were gross and imprecise. Such imprecision alone was enough to make Elspeth kill it again. She swung again and severed it at the waist, cutting off the bottoms of its wings, and in that way it fell.

She shoved the angel’s torso off of Venser and kneeled over him. Off to the side his helmet sat with a tremendous dent the rough size of the angel’s claw. Elspeth turned back to Venser. He was breathing, she was glad to see. She felt his head and found a large lump above his ear. Koth and the fleshling appeared. Then the guide.

“What’s this now?” Koth said.

Elspeth ignored the knave. She put her hand on Venser’s forehead. Down her arm trickled the mana she had in reserve. It moved into her hand and settled into Venser’s forehead.

“This would not have happened if I were leading,” Koth mumbled. “We wouldn’t be down here with mutes and trackers, tearing angels apart.”

“I am not mute,” the fleshling said.

Elspeth concentrated more mana into Venser, trying to wake him from his slumber. Please, she thought.

Venser’s eyes popped open. They looked around wildly, and then settled on Elspeth’s face. He brought his hand to his face and wiped his hair out of his eyes. His hair is long now, she thought. Hadn’t it been short when Koth talked her into kidnapping him? How long have we been in the bowels of this place?

Venser sat up and winced. The random slashes from the where the angel tore off his chest armor bled freely.

“They are not deep,” Elspeth said, smiling. Something she had not done in days, maybe months. It felt strange to her face.

Koth scoffed and turned away. “We will all die down here,” he said. “All of us. I’m leaving. I should never have come.” He walked away into the darkness.

A strange look passed over Venser’s face, and he could feel his limbs begin to tremble. Then his cheek began to twitch. He turned and quickly, but with trembling fingers, fumbled through the pieces of metal and leather that had been his chest armor. In the torn underclothes he found the small white bottle Elspeth had seen him clutching before. The relief was obvious on his face.

“What is that really?” Elspeth said.

“This?” Venser said. “Nothing, medicine.”

Elspeth nodded. She’d never seen a medicine that glowed that color. Venser struggled to stand. With the scout’s help he finally did. Elspeth watched his twitching legs support one step, then another and then Venser was walking, looking pale and sweaty in the close air.

He noticed the pained look on her face. “I am as good as dead, you know,” he said.

“Really?”

“The sickness that is in me has no cure,” he said. “It will take me one day, and it could be soon.”

“Does the medicine help?”

“Not anymore. I lose some of myself with every teleport. For some reason I lost much more when the fleshling and I teleported into the flock of blinkmoths.”

Elspeth nodded, clearly uneasy with the direction the conversation had taken.

“Where is the fleshling?” Venser said, happy to direct the conversation away from the bottle.

Elspeth looked around. “She was just here.”

“So was Koth,” Venser said.

“She left with the vulshok,” the guide said from the shadows.

“Left?” Elspeth said.

The guide nodded.

Venser wondered if the man was perhaps a stuffed suit of skin, or he’d been kicked as a youth.

“Did you think that was strange?” Elspeth said.

The guide shook his head.

“Well, which way did they go?”

The guide pointed into the darkness.

They pursued Koth and the fleshling through the vast room. Venser put his blue wisps before them so they could see. Far in the distance the guide said he could see a slight red glow, which they understood to be Koth’s own light. Venser remarked at how someone as large as Koth could move so quickly.

“They are captured,” Elspeth said.

“Has any Phyrexian tried to capture us yet?” Venser said.

“They captured you.”

“Well, Koth is not captured. He has the fleshling.”

“Where are they going?” Elspeth said, turning to the guide, her voice raised.

Even though his chest and head were administering a fair amount of pain to him, Venser still noticed how the disappearance of the fleshling had affected Elspeth’s mood for the worse.

“I do not know,” the guide said. “I know no door that way.”

“That cannot be good,” Venser said. “How could Koth know his way down here?”

“Because he’s a spy,” Elspeth said. “I don’t know.”

To Venser the room seemed to never end. They walked for a time and then they ran. Hours passed and perhaps days, but Elspeth would not let them stop. Even when the cuts on Venser’s chest began to throb and his thinking was muddled by the blow to his head, even then Elspeth would not let them stop.

“Drink some of your magic potion,” she snapped.

He did not. But he did pat the small bottle in his torn shirt. He would be having a sip soon enough.

Elspeth’s temper shortened as the trail cooled. At one point, the guide stopped and looked back the way they had come, then forward again with a confused look on his face.

“What is it?” Elspeth said.

“It seems we are being followed,” he said.

“But where are the fleshling and the other one?”