“Well, it’s not something you forget seeing,” the human said. “It’s disgusting. Like this.”
They eat sausage on Mirrodin? Venser thought. He turned to look at his group. Koth was eyeing the strangers warily. Venser turned back. The humans were vulshok, he could tell by their spiky, metal hair. Why isn’t Koth greeting them? Venser wondered.
“Where does your way take you?” the elephantine said.
“That is our own business,” Koth said.
The elephantine one squinted to see Koth, who stood back a bit. “Ah, yes, a vulshok,” he said.
“Loxodon,” Koth said. “Why are you here?”
“We are looking for friends to resist what is happening on the surface,” the loxodon said, scratching its trunk with its club. “Are you friends?”
“We are not enemies,” Elspeth said. “And this one I have is wounded. She needs to lie down.”
“Our assignment is to bring friends,” the loxodon repeated.
“I am Venser and this is Lady Elspeth and Koth,” Venser said. The loxodon’s eyes stayed on the fleshling for a moment before looking back at Venser. “We are friends.”
“Maalan they call me,” the loxodon said, curling his trunk. “Follow me, friend.”
They walked between the Phyrexians that were attached to the ground, receiving the molten ore of reprocessed Phyrexians. The heat was overwhelming. Soon they were all drenched in sweat. Venser’s head was pounding.
“Do you have water?” Venser asked the loxodon.
“Yes,” Maalan said. “For friends.”
“We already said we were friends,” Koth said.
The loxodon took a canteen from a lanyard over his shoulder. Venser, Elspeth, and Koth took turns with it. Koth gulped more of the iron tasting water than the others, Venser noticed.
Maalan led them between the ore reprocessors. Many times large, wasplike creatures larger than themselves stopped to regard them. The creatures seemed to move ore from one processor to the other with willowy scoops sprouting from their thoraxes. The wasp Phyrexians seemed to look through the group. At one point the loxodon shooed a group that was blocking their path.
“Why don’t they attack?” Koth said.
The loxodon regarded him coolly. “As near as we can tell, they do not regard us as a threat, son of Kamath.”
Koth shrugged. “Every other Phyrexian does.”
“That is true,” Maalan said, and walked ahead.
The room seemed larger than any they had been in yet. It went on and on. All along what must have been the edge, Venser could see more of the wasp Phyrexians and other, stranger forms moving. The ore streamed down along the veins into the tops of the reprocessors.
“Where are the new Phyrexians created from this ore?” Venser said.
“That does not happen here,” the loxodon said. “And not in that way.”
“How does it happen?”
“I do not know that, friend. If I knew that I would tell you, I promise you that.”
Venser watched Maalan walk next to him. What he really wanted to know was how the loxodon knew Koth’s father’s name. He wanted to know why Koth said nothing when the loxodon addressed him with his father’s name.
Venser fell back from the group. When the others were some steps ahead, he put his hand under his armor and took out his vial. He held it up to the glow. His heart jumped into his throat when he saw how little was left. Less than a finger in height of the precious fluid glowed in the bottom of the bottle. He carefully removed the cork and took a tiny sip, feeling the energy impart itself into the contours of his mouth and make its way to his brain- causing it to glow, or so he always thought.
He looked at how much of the fluid remained before putting it back into the special pocket he had stitched in the cloth under his armor. There were other times he’d drained a bottle. But that was before he had depended on the distillation so much. And those times were bad. If he ran out down there, in that place, there would be great problems for him. And after his teleport with the fleshling, even his potion did not put his head right. He knew the day would come, but he had doubted it would be so soon. The teleport into the flock of blinkmoths must have exacerbated something. It had made him worse, just as it seems to have affected the fleshling in another way altogether.
He had run out of his potion other times. Once he had been unable to leave his bed for two days. Another time had found him at the mercy of psimortifiers, in their “exploration chambers.” He had prevailed in each circumstance, but only through luck.
And all for what? Venser thought as he patted the bottle where it lay under his armor. For a fluid that really did nothing for him? It actually did less than nothing even before the teleport. It gave him a mana boost at first, and then depleted him later. Venser suspected that it depleted him more than it boosted. The boost was slight, and did not last for very long. But it felt like a large boost. It felt good.
He remembered the day he had started to need the potion on a daily basis. He and another artificer had traveled far afield in Dominaria looking for Phyrexian artifacts. There were still many battlefields where the forces of the scourge and Dominaria had clashed, but Venser had long since learned that such battlefields did not yield what he searched for.
Sure, one could find fragments and severed parts, but what Venser looked for was fully intact Phyrexians or the ships and vehicles they traveled in. He’d even found largely intact pieces once or twice, but he’d never seen anything like what he saw that fateful day.
He had been deep in the most remote wastes on a multi-day expedition. On the last day, the younger artificer he’d been traveling with had found a strange pile of black stones. At least they had felt like stones. They were hard and of the deepest color. Afus, the junior artificer, had found them piled perfectly into the shape of a tiny pyramid.
Against his better judgment, Venser had taken them, taken them all. He had known it was not wise to come into contact with objects of power that were unidentified. And they were powerful. Venser had felt the mana seething in them. They were worth coin anyhow. That was how he had rationalized taking them. They were worth gold.
And then he had made the worst mistake of all. He had teleported with them. Afus was traveling overland, but that was not how Venser chose to travel. He had learned early after developing his ability to teleport that it was not wise to travel with anything powerful that you did not want to become in some way enmeshed with. Inevitably whatever you traveled with ended up part of you after the mana put you and it back together. The black stones immediately affected him, causing the palsy. It was incurable and fatal. Afus, even though he had never teleported with the stones, had died shortly after finding them. His body had lain for a day in his studio before Venser had gotten up the courage to open him up and take a look inside. What he’d found still haunted his deepest nightmares: The young artificer’s organs and lungs had become shriveled and transparent, as if they were ceasing to be.
Venser had no doubt that his organs would end up looking the same way. He just had not thought it would begin while he was on Mirrodin. The blinkmoths had somehow accelerated the effect.
He had later figured out that the substance was in all likelihood some of the material residue left when Yawgmoth had been vaporized after the explosion that ended the Phyrexian invasion on Dominaria.
“You coming?” Koth said.
Venser blinked out of his ruminations. He had fallen far back from the rest of the group.
“Yes,” Venser said, and started walking faster.
Koth walked ahead.
“Koth,” Venser said. “Why did Maalan address you as ‘son of Kamath’?”
The vulshok slowed his step. “Because my sire is Kamath.”
“Yes, but how did he know?”
“I am known here.”
Venser remembered the expression the loxodon had on his face when he addressed Koth. He was known all right, but not honored. For some reason Venser remembered Koth’s mother. Koth’s people could not have understood when he disappeared. They could not have known that he had left to find help for Mirrodin. To them,
