ability to strike from every angle at once. Elspeth took exactly two swipes with the glittering blade. The first separated the Phyrexian’s neck and arm from its body and sent it caterwauling away, and the second was a downward strike that split the other’s head and shoulder from the neck offering up a virtual geyser of black, frothy material from the cut.
The smell of the material that poured from the thrashing Phyrexians’ bodies put Venser in mind of the acrid reek of a crushed bug.
Elspeth moved to the elf next. The wretch watched her approach with black ichor clouding her eyes. With a flick of her wrist, the white warrior knocked the elf’s head away.
Elspeth stared down at the headless body jerking around on the floor. She turned and went back to the fleshling, who put her arm over Elspeth’s shoulder.
Chapter 10
Venser made it light when he blew out a puff of wispy shapes that danced and flickered blue before their eyes. In the ghostly light Koth looked at Elspeth and Venser and spat. They were reeking and sweating, with a crazed look about them.
The smell was nearly unbearable. Koth began breathing through his mouth.
The artificer stood and followed Koth, and the blue will-o’-the-wisp followed him. “It is getting warmer. We are on the right path, obviously.”
Small metal creatures, no larger than hummingbirds, suddenly appeared around a fallen Phyrexian, eating the meat on it. There were hundreds of them. Venser squatted down to watch them work. There was no sign of phyresis in these small metal creatures. They were neither sharp looking, nor possessing of tense, asymmetrical bodies laden with teeth.
“So this is how cleanup occurs on Mirrodin,” Venser said. “I knew the ecosystem had to clean itself somehow.”
“Breakdown artifacts,” Koth said. “They devour whatever is small enough to be devoured. I have never seen so many in one place.”
“Are these found on the surface?”
“Fewer and fewer lately.”
“I wonder why?” Venser said. “And why they have no taint of phyresis on them?”
Koth shrugged. He looked closely at Venser. The artificer did not look well. His helmet was off and his sunken cheeks and pale skin unnerved Koth, who thought flesh looked disgusting enough even in the best case.
Elspeth stepped up next to Koth. She gazed around the huge room. So large was the room that Venser’s wisp did not even reach to its edges-shadows formed and disappeared among the intestinelike pipe work that made up the walls.
“You think that the little silver demon went this way?” Koth said.
“I have to think not,” Venser said.
“It could be following us,” Elspeth ventured. “It did before.”
“You mean Tezzeret sent it to keep an eye on us before,” Koth said.
“That could be,” Venser said.
“Do you smell that?” Koth said. He held his nose between two thick fingers.
They looked down at the Phyrexians. “All that smell cannot be coming from them,” Elspeth said.
“They must have been guarding something to have been standing there,” Venser said.
“Don’t think I want to find it,” Koth said.
But Venser was already at the wall, pushing and probing as he looked for the door that must surely be there. After a
“Why would we go into that place?” Koth said.
“Because they were guarding it,” Elspeth said, drawing her blade and glancing at the dead Phyrexians.
“Exactly,” Venser said. “And this may be the correct way, for all we know.”
Holding their noses, they entered.
Unaccountably, they were walking through festering meat that reached a depth of mid-calf in places. The smell was absolutely disgusting, and Venser found himself breathing tiny breaths through his mouth. All words came out with a nasal numbness. Still Venser felt the gore pushing up from his stomach.
“This way,” he said, pointing into the blackness ahead. Far ahead Elspeth thought she could see a faint light. When she pointed it out to Venser, he snapped his fingers and the blue wisps disappeared. There was a glow in the huge room-a white glow that sifted up through the darkness of the far corner.
“We should advance on this carefully,” Venser whispered. “There might be many rooms like this one, and if we start a fight now, it might raise an alarm or follow us all the way to the furnace level.”
“The alarm we must assume has already been raised,” Elspeth said.
“Maybe,” Venser said.
Koth stopped walking, or at least Venser could not hear his footfalls squishing next to him anymore.
“Wait.” Koth said. “How far are we going?”
“We are finding Karn.”
“And let me guess, you know where he sits?”
“I have ideas where my friend and ally would choose to sit, yes.”
“And where would that be?” Koth said from directly behind, his voice raised a decibel.
“I think Karn would favor a room deep in the middle of his creation. A nerve center position,” Venser said.
“I am needed on the surface,” Koth said. “That’s where I’m going. My people need me. My people are fighting a foe …”
Elspeth and Venser stopped walking.
“How will you leave?” Venser said.
“How will you ascend?” Elspeth said.
Koth was silent for a moment. “I will jump.”
Venser put up his hand. “Quiet,” he said. “We are nearing the glow.”
But Koth was not quiet. “You know, you are not the leader of this group. I am. I organized this expedition. I talked Lady Elspeth here into coming. I did all of that. I direct this little nightmare.”
Venser shook his head in the darkness. “This is larger than you and yours,” he said. “This could concern more planes than a few. We must contain the spread.”
“That is all fine and good,” Koth said. “But don’t try to yank my culpers. You are here for Karn. I don’t think you care a bit for this plane. You made some pledge to this golem and you mean to keep that promise.”
When Venser said nothing, Koth continued. “I’ve never met an artificer with a sense of duty, but there are wonders under all suns, we vulshok say. Why not be honest and tell us both that you are here for personal gain?”
“Why would you think that,” Venser challenged, “when you brought me here?”
Elspeth was quiet. Venser could not be sure if she was on the edge of gagging in the fester, or if Koth’s words had struck a chord and she was reevaluating his motivations. But he could not ask her at that moment, for they neared the lighted area.
At that side of the room the piles of meat were quite old, and the breakdown artifacts covered them from top to bottom. Their iridescent backs rippled and clicked in the dim light as the party neared. But the small machines were not what they looked at. A single glow orb hung in the air. Behind the orb, set back in the overgrown walls of conduit and ridges, like the spinal run of some unfamiliar creature, stood a round doorway. There was no handle that Venser could see. A long table stood in front of the doorway, mired halfway up its legs in the sloppy fester. On the table stood many dented metal bowls of differing sizes. A large bowl sat at the end of the others. It was of a very dark metal. As Venser watched, tiny motes of yellow, like fireflies, spun around its edges in seemingly perpetual orbit.
“Darksteel,” Koth hissed beside him.
