“How is it there are mouths now when there were round, lidded doorways before?” Elspeth said. “When we started this trip.”
Venser shrugged. “I think we are deeper than we were when we started. It seems we travel inside Phyrexians after we pass some point. That would be my guess.”
But the mouth that had carried them out opened. From down its gullet, they heard the struggling cries of many Phyrexians.
“They are coming up after us,” Koth said.
The next mouth appeared the same as the last they had used, and Elspeth went first. Koth followed and then Venser.
The trip was much the same as before, only longer. The mouth dropped them in a small fleshy room with a doorway into another vast cavern, the walls of which were covered in pipes and tubes.
The temperature was noticeably hotter. A glow emanated from far away across the cavern, and they walked that way. The fleshling walked between Elspeth and Koth, with her arms over both of their shoulders. Venser would not get too near the unwashed human.
They walked until Elspeth called a halt. The glow in the room only lit the lower portions, but upper reaches were dark. It was into that darkness that Elspeth pointed.
“What is that?” Elspeth said.
Venser squinted into the darkness. High up in the shadows a small form moved. It appeared to be flapping, but was very small and far away. As his eyes became accustomed to peering into the darkness, another form flapped itself into focus. Still another small thing was flying lower and the artificer made out its general form. It was very small, about as long as the last digit of his thumb. It had fleshy, beige membranes that it flapped, trailing bits of itself behind. Its body was round and oval shaped.
Next to Venser, Koth stared up at the same form. “It can’t be,” he said.
“What?” Elspeth said, looking at the vulshok.
“It’s impossible.”
“Do speak, vulshok,” Venser said, staring at Koth.
“That,” Koth said, “is a blinkmoth, unless I am a fool.”
“I will not comment on whether or not you are a fool,” Venser said, looking back at the strangely saggy little form flying at the edge of the darkness above. He had heard of the elusive creatures, of course, from Karn. He even happened to know that the drink he took to stave off the palsy contained some of their potent distillate.
They were farmed to near extinction long ago, Karn had told him. He had also told him how sad it made him that the only native life-form on Mirrodin had been used so poorly. But looking upon the rare creatures all he could think was how ugly they looked.
“How many are there up there?” Elspeth said.
Koth was beyond words, staring up at the moths.
“Four perhaps,” Venser said. “Should we see? I think we can risk some light.” Without waiting for an answer, Venser snapped a blue wisp into existence. He flung it up. The strand traveled up and up, and up some more. The ceiling was exceedingly high, but soon the wisp stopped. Venser concentrated on it and it began to glow brightly.
“Blazing ore!” Koth hissed.
The entire upper portion of the cavern was thick with the moths, flapping and bumping into one another. Koth looked around the room.
“Was this a farm?” he said. “I did not know they existed underground. They are never found in numbers such as this anymore. Never.” He looked back to the blinkmoths.
“They are the only natives to this place and were made by Karn’s hand,” Venser said. “Therefore, they are living manifestations of his creative essence.”
“Well, they do not fill me with awe,” Elspeth said. She squinted at the other side of the huge space. “They are rather runty little things, in fact.” She kept squinting.
“They were supposed to be gone long ago,” Koth said. “Gone to vedalken harvest.”
“They live, all right,” Elspeth said. “It is us I worry about. I see shapes advancing on us.”
Koth’s eyes instantly turned to where Elspeth was staring. Many dark shapes no larger than the blinkmoths were loping toward them across the wide room.
“They are Phyrexians,” Venser said, still watching the blinkmoths. The more he watched them the more he wanted some of his potion. The more his chin began to shake.
“How do you know?” It was Koth who spoke.
“I can feel their metal feet vibrating the floor.”
The others were quiet as they felt for the vibrations. The floor trembled under their feet.
“There are very many of them,” Koth said.
They were advancing from all sides, and in large numbers. The Phyrexians surged toward the island of blue light cast by Venser’s wisps.
Koth was already as red as an ember. He cracked his neck and stretched his arms behind his back in preparation. Elspeth’s sword was out. She held it loosely at her side watching the howling hoard advance on them. Venser was fighting hard to resist the desire rising in his chest to pull the tiny cork out of his flask and drain the few drops remaining down his throat. The three Planeswalkers had formed a triangle around the fleshling, who stood watching the advancing Phyrexians with a look of resolute detachment.
“How many are their numbers?” Koth asked.
“Plenty for all,” Elspeth hissed.
Then they were close, the Phyrexians, and Elspeth raised her sword and began running. She crashed into the first line of the enemy at a brisk trot-cutting three down with strikes too fast to see. The Phyrexians in her area trampled one another as they struggled to form a dense clump around her while she moved about her grim work, chopping each and every one of them down. In the red-tinged light, with Venser’s blue wisps overhead, her sword blazed a bright white, and many of the Phyrexians fell back, screaming.
Koth had grown long columns of loosely held rock out of his wrists which he used as whips. With these he was able to crush lines upon lines of Phyrexians.
But still more of the gabbling, dripping abominations pushed forward.
Venser fell back to stand next to the fleshling. When seven Phyrexians got too near, Venser blew out a cloud that caused their metal substructures to turn to the consistency of warm lead, and they fell apart into messes of writhing skin and sinew.
The pile of Phyrexian dead around Elspeth got higher and higher until Venser could not easily see the white warrior. But he could see her bright blade, and unless he was very wrong, it was not swinging as fast as it had been. Koth too was letting his rock whips rest on the floor as he huffed.
Venser watched a force of perhaps twenty Phyrexians break away from the group awaiting Elspeth’s attention and circle around to him and the fleshling. Venser looked past them. He noticed that the darker, far away parts of the huge room were without Phyrexians. He could teleport them there and stage attacks from that relative safety.
With the fleshling’s hand in his, Venser closed his eyes. He mouthed the words of power and felt the pull, then pop that told him he had left. But something was wrong. When he opened his eyes, both he and the fleshling were floating momentarily high above the ground, in the flock of blinkmoths. Far below, Venser saw Elspeth and Koth battling the Phyrexians in two pools of light. A blinkmoth flew into his check and another against his leg. The fleshling was convulsing and jerking on the end of his arm and Venser himself felt a tremendous fluttering all through his body like he would vomit three hundred times at once.
Then they began to fall.
He closed his eyes, but found it difficult to find the words that had come so easily before they appeared in the group of blinkmoths. As they picked up speed Venser set his mind on the floor, imaging what it looked like.
They were plummeting downward.
Venser took a last breath. He had only moments, he knew. He forced the words out of his mouth and with a sudden
Off to their side, Elspeth’s sword flashed and the Phyrexians screamed in the rosy light. Koth’s rock whips boomed on the floor. But Venser knew he could not stand. He lay with all of his limbs trembling so that he could not
