All of Ezuri’s force nocked arrows and pointed them at Elspeth. “Suit yourself,” Ezuri said, but his voice betrayed a certain unease.
“This will not go well for you,” Koth said offhandedly.
“What would a coward know?” Ezuri said. “You leave your people alone and undefended. Your home is overrun, rock man. Your people are scattered and they died calling your name, but you were away on your merry travels.”
Koth was instantly bright red. “You might slay me, but I will kill at least three quarters of your numbers. And you first,” he said, pointing at Ezuri.
“Oh really?” Ezuri squinted and spat at the nearest rock. He stepped forward.
“Shall we see?” Koth said.
Elspeth nodded. “Ready.”
Ezuri turned to one of his men and seized his bow. He turned back to Koth and Elspeth.
“Gentlemen!” Venser bellowed. “Wait.” The artificer opened his hand and a bright flash popped. Venser rushed forward and knocked the bow from Ezuri’s numb fingers.
Taken by a sudden terror caused by Venser’s magic, the other rebels turned and ran. Yet Ezuri did not run. He stood looking from Venser to Elspeth. “You will bring the Phyrexians storming up,” Ezuri said.
“That has already come to pass,” Elspeth said. She was gasping between words to keep her battle lust abated. “You should flee to your home and prepare for the worst.”
But the elf did not seem convinced, Venser thought. As long as his hand did not stray to the sword on his belt he would live.
He stared at them a moment longer, before turning on his heel and following the other rebels.
Venser sat down hard on the nearest boulder. All of a sudden, he felt a familiar pinch in his brow. His stomach tightened. His skin began to shiver. He felt like he was succumbing to the onset of a sudden sickness, but he knew he was not. It was a familiar feeling and he knew its cure. He also knew what would happen if he did not cure it within the next hour.
He began patting the many pockets sewn into the leather tunic under his loose-fitting armor. His britches were similarly accoutered and he felt those as well. The vial was in a pocket sewn onto the back of his pants. Koth’s eyes were fixated on Ezuri’s last position. The vulshok was still as red as fire, and grumbling under his breath. Elspeth watched as Venser drew out the vial.
“Leave me,” Venser said. “Let me have my peace.”
“Why?” Elspeth said, forgetting all about Ezuri, who she had only minutes before been willing to kill.
Venser shook his head, his patience waning. His stomach ached and he could feel the mana on his brow bubbling and seething for what he was holding in his hand. As soon as the white warrior left he would be able to…
“You want what’s in that bottle, don’t you?” Elspeth said.
Venser said nothing.
“You should see yourself. Your skin has gone to the color of ash. Have you seen that your left hand is trembling?”
Venser knew that more than his hand would start shaking if he didn’t have what was in the bottle.
“Leave!” Venser yelled suddenly. He did not know he would yell. Yet when he opened his mouth it was indeed a yell that came out. It didn’t stop there. He continued to yell with such force, spittle came out of his mouth. “I will make that metal in your armor writhe like a snake and melt itself through your very flesh.”
Elspeth blinked at his words. “What is in that bottle?” she said.
Venser’s head was suddenly pounding. It always happened so quickly. “I will give you to the count of five before I begin working with your armor. I am an artificer-it is easy for me to talk to the metal in you. One, two, three.”
Elspeth put up her hands and began walking backward. “What will happen to you when you use all that is in that bottle of yours?”
“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
