The Quest for Karn

“I’m sorry?” Elspeth said.

“Are the Phyrexians cruel, by nature?”

Elspeth thought for a moment. “The prison I was in was little more than a factory. Conveyer belt ran from room to room. They like organs and flesh. They like to hold them and play with them. One of their loves is interchanging parts for other parts.”

“I see.”

“You do not,” Elspeth said. “I was eight years old and I saw people ripped apart … slowly. The beasts are semisentient. They can play with you. They understand how to hurt and cause fear. They would force me to watch, only to see the look on my face.”

“They are that aware?”

“Oh yes.”

Koth had walked up to listen. “This has made you stronger. Now you are mighty.”

Elspeth said nothing. She wiped the blade of her knife on the leather of her underjerkin before slipping it back into the scabbard in her boot. Then she looked over at the round portal next to the barred window. “Shall we look at that situation?” she said.

The guide had watched them, as he always did-unspeaking and very still. When they moved toward the door, he followed.

Unlike the other doors they had approached, the door opened to reveal a dimly lit room. There were three large holes in the metal floor that looked strangely fleshy, organic. They quivered slightly as the party stepped in the room. Another circular door opened into another, vast room. That other room was filled with large objects, hundreds of them. Each object was made up of an arm attached to a large cylindrical tank with a spine fused to it. There were literally hundreds, maybe thousands of the devices, and each arm was pushing down on something, keeping whatever was in the tank down.

Each tank had a small set of eyes near its top. The top of its tank was rimmed with sharp teeth, all pointing downward.

“What are those arms holding down?” Koth said, stating the question playing over each of their tongues.

Without warning a head sputtering black fluid popped out of the nearest cylinder. The arm attached to the device immediately moved its claw and shoved the head back down.

But not before Venser recognized an elf’s ears.

“These must be propagation tanks,” Venser said. “Breeding tanks.”

“Phyrexians don’t need to breed,” Elspeth said.

Venser thought for a moment. “Perhaps they want to turn more beings to Phyrexians faster than normal,” Elspeth said.

“I have never heard of such a thing,” Venser said.

The guide was silent, watching.

“We should destroy them,” Elspeth said.

“But how?” Koth said. “It would take countless hours. What we should do is move toward the surface and find others and then return.”

“Koth is right,” Venser said.

The vulshok turned with a shocked look on his face. “Did you just say I was correct?”

“Only in that we have to leave this place now,” Venser said. “Not that we should travel to the surface.”

“Oh,” Koth said. “Well then, artificer, now that you’ve decided not to assist these poor beings,” Koth’s voice was rising as he talked. Venser had noticed that that was happening more and more frequently with the geomancer. The sweat had collected on his face, and the iron dust stuck to it. He looks like he’s losing his mind, Venser thought.

“Which of the three holes will you take us down?” Koth said.

“We cannot help these creatures. Their fate is already decided. Destroying these tanks would only slow our path,” the guide said.

The arm on the nearest tank flexed and its spines clicked as the tank readjusted its hold.

Chapter 16

The guide led them along pathways hewn in the metal walls and ways hidden to all eyes save his. There was a quietness about the sylvok that made Venser uneasy. When he spoke, it was with an accent that he had never heard before. That made sense, as Venser was not a Mirran, but when he watched Koth out of the corner of his eye as the guide talked, the vulshok’s face pinched itself in confusion at his accent. The fleshling blinked when he spoke, but she did that when anyone spoke, so it was hard to glean anything from that.

But the guide was certainly from Mirrodin. His coppery legs, green with patina, gave that away. However, he bore none of the signs of infection they had seen in the camp, and he was not what Venser would ever have called shifty or evasive. He merely never spoke or made noise. He was as silent a creature as a romei buck.

Once, after they had spent hours descending a series of foot- and handholds in the honeycomb support structure between two walls, they encountered a brace of Phyrexians and the guide did something unusual. They had finally found the floor and, with legs wobbling from their climb, Venser and the others moved toward a hole cut in the wall. Light showed from the hole, telling Venser that it led to yet another vast cavernlike room. Koth arrived at the door first. He caught sight of a pack of Phyrexians struggling over something just outside the doorway.

Elspeth pushed to the front-ready to fall upon them and quickly make good of the thing. But the guide put a light hand on her arm and pulled her back. He held one finger up to his lips and squatted against the inside of the wall.

They waited that way for what seemed like days. When the troupe of the enemy moved away, Koth was snoring softly on the floor, and Venser was quickly on his way to sleep. But the guide was on his feet and tugging on Koth’s sleeve.

The room was of medium size. They entered it by cutting into a Phyrexian’s intestine tube and forcing open the eye at the bottom. Standing in the middle of the room was a beast that reminded Venser somewhat of a horse, but with shiny metal plates for skin, and a head of glinting metal. Still, its eyes had the same dim expression of boredom he’d always disliked in horses. They entered the room and heard the tip tap of small feet scampering away. The guide froze, his expression blank. He looked around quickly and his nostrils flared.

He may not have heard anything more, but there was plenty to see, Venser thought. The edges of the room were piled high with the neatly cut parts of Mirran creatures. What flesh they had on them was festering, and the air in the room was foul enough for the guide to pinch his noise. The horse in the middle of the room stood still, regarding them with pupilless eyes.

After the sound of the scampering feet, the room was absolutely silent except for what appeared to be a clock on the wall, ticking lightly. But Venser could not understand what it was timing. There was one hand, which was moving toward a red circle.

Elspeth moved forward, until she stopped near the creature at the center of the room. It did not move and Elspeth began to move around it.

The hand on the clock moved closer to the red circle.

What is the red circle? Venser thought suddenly.

The question had occurred to the guide also. He moved forward and motioned Elspeth back. She ignored him and looked intently instead at the shiny metal along the creature’s back.

The fleshling, who was standing between Venser and Koth, watched the proceedings with as much of an impartial face as the guide. But her eyes jumped from the cut pieces, to the creature, and then back again.

The hand was four ticks from the red circle.

Suddenly the fleshling surged forward, ran to Elspeth, and shoved her hard away from the creature at the center of the room. Elspeth fell and so did the fleshling. The hand on the clock clicked to the red circle. At that moment there was a tremendous whooshing sound, and air blew in their faces as something large moved through