Venser thought, they would have seen a coward’s motive.
They walked in silence. Eventually the wall of the cavern became apparent. The crew leading them trailed ahead in a ragged line that made its way to a particular part of the wall. As they neared it, Venser could see where someone had cut a jagged hole out in the metal wall with concentrated fire. It was through that hole that they walked, ducking their heads slightly.
Behind the wall were gridworks and supports, but no Phyrexian conduit guts. A ladder extended upward, and they climbed.
Many times they found other cutout doors leading to other hot, metal rooms connected with ladders. Venser lost count as to how many. But eventually they came to a smaller room that smelled of roasted meat, singed fat, and unwashed humans. Coal fires burned near ragged shelters scattered here and there. Some shelters were made of the thorax shells of large Phyrexians. Others were metallic skins stretched over a framework of the other parts of a Phyrexian. As they approached, every occupant of the small camp came out to stare as Venser, Koth, Elspeth, and the fleshling passed.
Venser heard whispers and some hisses as Koth passed. Eventually the loxodon stopped in front of a shelter made of only the rounded pieces of Phyrexians’ belly armor that was raised off the ground slightly. An elf stuck his head out of the round hole in the side of the structure, and turned his milky white eye to them.
“Ah, yes,” said Ezuri. “I recall these machine lovers. Wherever did you find them?”
The loxodon spoke up. “They were in furnace room minor wandering around.”
Ezuri nodded slowly. To Venser it looked as though the elf had added a little weight onto his frame. The creases around his eyes were also not quite as deep as he remembered.
“You have prospered, Ezuri,” Venser said.
The elf turned and looked him up and down. “You have not, artificer,” he said. “I take it you have not found the one you seek. What was his name, Kurt, Kam?”
“Karn.”
“Karn, just so,” Ezuri said. In a moment the elf hopped out of the hole of his structure and stood before them in a robe of shimmering material that draped to his ankles.
“We have not found the golem, no,” Venser said. He opened his mouth to tell the elf about Tezzeret telling them where Karn can be found, and to tell him about the fleshling, but something in the way Ezuri was staring at him made Venser close his mouth.
Ezuri’s eyes moved over the rest of the companions, until it stopped on the fleshling leaning on Elspeth’s shoulder.
“You are new. Who are you?”
The fleshling said nothing
“Speak up,” Ezuri said.
“Melira,” the fleshling said softly.
Melira? Venser thought.
“The disgusting flesh of an outlander?” Ezuri said. “Yet you have the mark of a Greenshank sylvok to my eyes.”
Venser said nothing. Nothing at all.
Ezuri’s eye did not leave the fleshling.
“Are you still prevailing against the forces of Phyrexia?” Elspeth said.
That made Ezuri’s eye move off the fleshling and rest on Elspeth. “Why, hello, white lady.”
“So, you have vanquished the Phyrexians from the surface?” Elspeth said, repeating her original question, which she could tell was a sore spot for the elf.
“We are making headway,” Ezuri said casually.
Venser stepped forward before any more words could be spoken on the subject. “Ezuri,” he said. “Could we stay here for a time, until we have rested?”
Ezuri glanced at Koth before curling his lip. The vulshok pretended not to notice. “All enemies of Phyrexia are welcome here,” Ezuri said. “But I warn you that you may be asked to help our efforts.”
“Thank you, Ezuri,” Venser said.
The elf nodded. “Leaving will be your trick. But you are welcome to stay.”
“Leaving will be our trick,” Elspeth said.
Ezuri’s eye drifted back to the fleshling before he turned and climbed back into his shelter.
The loxodon led them to another part of the settlement. He stopped at a small shelter-nothing more than a Phyrexian crusher’s back panel leaned against the metal wall.
“This was a friend’s place,” the loxodon said. “Gone to shadow now. He had to be put away.”
Elspeth wasted no time leading the fleshling into the shelter, and helping her lie down on her stomach.
“Water is found over there,” the loxodon said, gesturing to an indentation in the metal where water dripped. “The latrines are over there.”
Venser walked over to the water pool and took a long drink. He filled up his canteen, aware that all of the eyes of the small settlement were on him. Three children appeared at the water pool. They watched Venser from a safe distance, but eventually came closer. He smiled at them and they trailed him as he walked back to the shelter. He noticed that some of the children had dark stains blotching their metal parts. Some even had the stain on their skin parts. One girl who walked with the other children behind Venser, giggling as she copied his walk with long loping steps, had more than a dark stain on her arm. Her stain had worn away skin, and appeared to be spreading up her arm.
The children followed him all the way back to the camp. Koth stood to shoo them away, but Venser frowned. “Leave them be,” he said.
Koth glared at the children before sitting down next to Venser. The little girl stuck her tongue out at Koth, and then the children began to run after one another.
“You see the dark patches,” Venser said.
“Phyresis,” Koth said.
“Many show the sign,” Venser said.
“Yes,” Koth said. “It’ll take them all.”
Venser suddenly understood the loxodon’s cryptic words from earlier when he described the occupants of their current shelter as “gone to shadow.”
From inside, Venser heard Elspeth chanting. He stood and went into the shelter, which was open on two sides. He placed his full canteen next to Elspeth and then returned to sit next to Koth.
The children, having seen where Venser went, skirted around and poked their heads into the other entrance of the shelter. They stood and watched Elspeth chant. After a time, all the children ran away but the girl with the large blotch on her arm. She inched closer and closer until she was sitting at the head of the fleshling.
Venser could not see what was happening in the shelter, but he heard Elspeth stop chanting. There was talking in the shelter.
“Why are you shunned here by these people,” Venser said.
Koth said nothing at first. “For caring about Mirrodin,” he said. “I disappeared, and my own tribe spoke against me. Their words echoed. Now my name draws harsh words.”
“And you think you can gain their trust back by leading them against the Phyrexians?”
Koth nodded. “I know I can.”
Venser heard the little girl’s voice rise, as though she were telling a story.
“If I can show them that I am still a vulshok,” Koth continued. “A Mirran that did not leave his mother and family to the nim and Phyrexians.”
Venser forced away the images of Koth’s mother in her hut. The terrible way her body jerked, controlled like a puppet by a Phyrexian. “There are other ways, you know,” Venser said. “To show that you are not a coward.”
The vulshok’s eyes flashed at the word coward. “What would an artificer know about it?” Koth said, suddenly defensive.
“Nothing,” Venser said.
They sat staring at each other. Suddenly the little girl in the shelter screamed.
Venser was up and to the entrance of the shelter in an instant. He met the girl as she virtually exploded out
