“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, 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
