The Quest for Karn

Chain. A puce haze drifted in the valleys. The mountains themselves seemed more spiky and contorted, with edges sprung in wide, torturous curves that made Venser’s stomach churn. There was not one sound to be heard in the utter silence. Each of their footfalls echoed loudly away.

Koth took in the new appearance of the Chain with his mouth pressed tight in a line. He stopped and squatted next to what had been a plantlike growth of oxidized metal, barbed thin, and stirring very slightly in the heated breeze. It had become a blackish green color, and sticky to the touch. And it stunk … smelling mostly like burned lead. Koth stood and spat.

“It is worse than when I left. I thought it was bad then.”

Venser was squatting next to the metal plant. He took the frond between his fingers and tried to break it from the rest of the plant. It bent and he had to wipe his fingers on his leg before standing.

“Well,” Venser said. “It is not very good. I’ll say that.”

“And,” Koth said in a lower voice, “I believe we are being followed.”

Venser looked to the side before turning to evaluate the claim. Koth stared at the plant an extra moment before shaking his head and looking back down the valley.

“There is no life on this plane, it appears,” Venser said. “I would take even the enemy rather than this vacant place.”

Koth looked back the way they had come. He nodded once, and then looked down at his feet before speaking. “The Oxidda was not always as you see it. It had life once,” he said. He took a deep breath before continuing. “Not too long ago in the annals of the vulshok, our elders disappeared. This happened all over Mirrodin, I am told. But other creatures lost their elders and segments of their people. The filthy goblins rebounded quickly, of course, as they had little-to-no knowledge to pass on. To us the loss was very great. Our skill with ore, and smelting too, was compromised.

“Then the metal failed altogether. A flaw found its way into the molten ore and the ingots lost their vigor. Conflict among the tribes erupted. Armed conflict followed.

“And you?” Venser said. “Where did your loyalties lie?”

“I am an alloy,” Koth said. “And because of that I have always been … apart. But my bones ring with metal and I was able to drive from the ore the contaminants, but only in small batches. A day’s worth at a time. This proved enough ore to give each tribe good metal to work, and they stilled their hands from fighting and took once again to working.”

“That was before Phyrexia?” Venser said.

It was as though the word Phyrexia itself made the metal beneath their feet tremble. Each of them glanced around, half expecting to see scourge-beings materialize from the clear air.

Koth nodded.

Venser coughed. With a start he noticed that his hand was shaking. He stowed it in his tunic. Hopefully his tic wouldn’t present itself, as it sometimes did in times of stress. He drove the thought from his mind and looked down at the ground.

“Here is why we cannot leave this place,” Venser said. He ran his finger along the underside of the infected plant. Then he held his finger up. It dripped with dark oil of a slight greenish tinge.

“Oil?” Koth said.

“The spawn of Phyrexia …” Venser said, “seethes with infection.” Venser wiped the sticky substance on his breeches. “Only one drop can yield legions of Phyrexians.”

Koth took this information in without expression.

Mirrodin is lost, Venser thought.

“We will win,” Koth said.

Venser did not look so sure. He turned toward the path. “Only Karn can stop the Phyrexians, if such a thing can be done here. He created this plane of yours.”

“When I am leader non-Mirrans like Phyrexians will be first against the wall,” Koth said.

Koth stood and started walking. When Venser heard Koth’s words he stood. “I will be sure to be gone by that time then.”

Elspeth took the blacksmith’s tongs the woman offered. Clasped in the tongs was a crucible full of steaming soup. It had roughly the look and consistency of molten lead, and Elspeth’s stomach did not welcome its arrival. “My thanks,” Elspeth said, eyeing the soup uncertainly. She put the tongs and the soup down on the table where she was seated.

The woman sat opposite, her eyes lingering on Elspeth’s armor, which was carefully laid out on the metal floor.

“It is well wrought,” the woman said, her eyes still on Elspeth’s armor. “I would not ever take it off.”

“Truthfully, I do not feel fully clothed without it,” Elspeth said. She pulled her robes tighter around her and took in the surrounds of the hut. Chunks of various rocks swayed on lanyards from the hammered ceiling. The bones and full skeletons of metal creatures were posed and welded to the metal walls around the hut. The air smelled of lead solder and brimstone.

The woman took a fire tool and poked the dung fire in the middle of the floor until flame licked up. “I am Vadi,” she said.

“Elspeth.”

“Well, Elspeth,” Vadi said. “You are paler than any auriok should be. You had better drink my ore stew.”

Elspeth looked at the soup, but did not move to pick it up. “How long has the Mephidross swamp been advancing?”

“Who can say? Forever.”

“But faster lately?” Elspeth said.

“Yes.”

“Are you concerned?” Elspeth said.

The woman shrugged. She was not old, as Koth had made her seem. She was wide-beamed and robust. “Why be concerned?” the shaman said. “I lived through the advent of the green sun, and the disappearance of our elders. What can hurt me now? We are vulshok. We adapt.”

Elspeth felt the blood rising to her face. “You will all die, you know.”

For the next day the suns above Koth and Venser’s heads moved in their prescribed paths. Night was punctuated by the desperate screams of the Phyrexians wandering the rank canyons. But Koth kept their path on small byways known only to him, he said, and they saw none of the enemy for that day. That night they slept in the nostril of an immense statue of metal buried to the top lip. Venser asked who the statue was modeled after and Koth shrugged. “I have never seen its like on Mirrodin,” Koth said. “Ours is not a plane of monuments.”

“I could teleport us to that mountain,” Venser said, gesturing to a distant gas-chimney. Koth fixed him with an even gaze.

“I don’t teleport well,” Koth said. “I tend to be detrimental to the teleporter’s health.”

Venser shrugged. “Can I wait for you at the next rise?”

“Without Elspeth I think we should stay close, don’t you?”

Again the shrug.

By that time the water situation had become dire. As they drew nearer to the leaden horizon where Koth said the Vault crouched, the air had become more toxic, burning their lungs and the water was not potable in the extreme. Late afternoon found them collapsed in a high crevice. Returning to the valley long after sunset. With visions of choking Phyrexians in the backs of their minds, they prowled until Koth dropped into a low crouch behind a jagged boulder. He pointed ahead.

“Be very still,” the vulshok said quietly.

Ahead the valley widened slightly and approximately thirty small treelike forms shown in the crepuscular light. They had been wrought, that much was obvious to Venser, but how long before? The whole plane had been made by the hands of Karn, and so the tree forms must be the same. From their hard boughs hung large white balls that glowed with a greenish tinge.

“Gel fruit,” Koth croaked, walking around the barbed boulder and toward the trees in a low crouch. “Water.”