Scars of Mirrodin: The Quest for Karn

by Robert Wintermute

  “Why are you in the dark like that?” Koth said.

  The figure stepped forward. Venser could easily see where the blotches had covered his body, and where his skin had been peeling away in the most advanced stage of phyresis he had seen in the settlement so far. But he had obviously received the cure from the fleshling, for the blotches were no longer black, but pinkish. The places where his skin had been peeling had shiny pink scars. Still, he was disturbing to see.

  “I will not lie to you,” the figure said. “I know what I know because I had an arrangement with Glissa in the depths.”

  “That was before you were healed by the fleshling?” Venser said.

  “Yes,” the human said.

  “And you know our plan, I am sure?” Venser said. It was a test. If he acted ignorant, then that would tell Venser certain things.

  “If I were you I would take Melira to Karn and try to heal him, if he is infected.”

  “Why would you take us back down if you are now healed?” Elspeth said. “You are free now.”

  “I have my own debts to repay,” the human said.

  Venser had already decided to go with the man, but he wanted to know where the human’s allegiances lay. It was acceptable if he was a spy for the Phyrexians or Ezuri, as long as Venser knew it. A spy could be very useful, if properly utilized. But the uneasy feeling in Venser’s stomach did not leave when the man had stepped out of the shadows. It did not leave even when the man bowed and stepped away to let Elspeth, Koth, and Venser talk.

  “He is a spy,” Koth said. “I am sure.”

  “How are you so sure?” Elspeth said. She has no trust in him anymore, Venser thought.

  “It is too good,” Koth said. “He gives us everything we want.”

  “I do not think so,” Elspeth said.

  “You trust him?” Koth said.

  “Yes.”

  “But you are a fool,” Koth said. “You trust too easily and see everything as good and bad.”

  True again, Venser thought.

  “But why would he be the spy you say he is?” Elspeth said.

  “It is hard to understand another’s motivation,” Venser said. “They may have his wife or child. They may have promised him certain things as reward for his efforts.”

  “Or they may have killed his parents,” Koth said grimly.

  “The point is, we do not know,” Venser said.

  “But we travel with him anyway? A potential enemy?” Elspeth said.

  “He is only an enemy if he thinks we know he is an enemy,” Venser said. “If he thinks he has fooled us, then he will inadvertently tell us everything we need to know.”

  “Assuming he is actually an agent of Phyrexia,” Elspeth said.

  “True.”

  “If he is not an agent, then your thinking will lead us to confusion and delay.”

  “I suppose that is true.”

  “Really,” Koth interjected. “What other choices do we have?”

  “Also true. But everything is true if you ponder it the right way.”

  That night they slept against the wall. The dim light in the room never went out, and when they woke it was to the eerie feeling that they had never rested at all.

  The guide did not appear. They began to walk and after a time they found the guide. He was alone and sitting in a dark hollow chewing on something and spitting around his boots.

  “Are we ready?” he said, standing. A plain-looking human, Venser thought. He had no sword but carried a strange geared bow, a canteen, and a small pack. His boots were newly made, Venser noticed. New boots could mean all sorts of things, most of them bad.

  New boots or not, the guide took them along the wall for a while until they found a hole. It was cut out of the wall and as large as a human man. The guide ducked his head and walked through the darkened hole.

  They walked in darkness for a time. A choked call echoed through the vast cavern they were walking in. The guide was sometimes by their side and sometimes nowhere to be found.

  “How do we hear the Phyrexian’s calls but they do not find us?” Elspeth said.

  No one answered.

  “It is strange,” Venser agreed.

  “They do find us, or haven’t you noticed?” Koth said.

  “I have not seen any other passages or doors,” Venser said, changing the subject. “But they must be here. Where is the guide?”

  “I have not seen him in …,” Elspeth said.

  It was hard to judge time and Elspeth let her words hang unfinished.

  They walked back to the door they had just come through.

  “Do you remember how many hearts were in the room with the small Phyrexian?” Elspeth asked.

  “There were thirty-three,” Venser said.

  “What were they used for?” Koth pressed. He had perked up remarkably, Venser thought, after being cast out by his people again. What a strange being, Venser thought.

  “Who is to say?” Venser grunted.

  “What if something took them?” Koth proposed.

  “Something might have. Maybe that small silver creature that led us for a time,” Venser said.

  “And now we have another guide,” Elspeth said. “Who is also leading us unbidden.”

  “I too am suspicious,” Venser said.

  They searched the walls for another door. Covered with metal and flesh, the veinlike tubes that glistened and squished when they parted them to look for a door made Venser feel as if he were searching through the intestines of a huge creature. And he found nothing.

  “Why would the silver creature lead us and then disappear?” asked Elspeth. She turned to Venser—dark, sticky oil covered her hands and arms. The more time he spent around the white warrior, the less he felt he knew about her, and the more nervous she made him. The way she shook when she fought Phyrexians put his hairs up. They were the enemy, there was no doubt of that, but that someone could harbor such a complete hatred of anything made him uneasy. What did you have to do to get on Elspeth’s list of hated things, and what would you do if you did?

  “Have you found something?” Koth said.

  Venser turned back to his search. He looked and looked but it was Koth who finally found a small hole behind a bank of articulated columns of shiny metal, which swayed slightly to an unheard rhythm. The columns moved to the side when he pushed on them. The door that lay behind was perhaps the perfect size for a seven-year-old human child. Except its handle was smeared with blood and clots had formed in the drip line that stretched to the floor.

  “It stretches,” Koth said, reaching down and pulling the edge of the fleshy hole wider. “Even I can fit.” The small door was merely a plug. They pulled it off and propped it against the ductwork.

  “Do we go down this?” Elspeth said.

  “Why not?” Koth demanded.

  The guide stepped out of the shadows. Venser had the strong feeling that he had been watching them the whole time. But why would that be?

  “We may travel that way,” the guide said.

  Koth nodded at him and then turned to Elspeth.

  “We go this way,” Venser said, with more force than he meant.

  Elspeth nodded.

  Koth looked away.

  “Are we ready?” Venser repeated.

  “Yes, I am ready,” Koth said. “But I do not follow your orders.”

  “You don’t follow my orders,” Venser repeated. “Then will you take a suggestion and tell fair Elspeth and myself if you are ready to walk through this door and confront what may be there?”

  “As I said, I am ready.”

  “All right, I will go first.” Venser went through the door feetfirst. It was not a pleasant sensation pushing through the space, which seemed to close in on you from all sides, as if there was water on the other side. He could hear the echoed reverberations of movement all around him, and he could hear strange modulations of sound. For one moment he thought he heard the deep boom of Karn’s voice crying out in rage. But he had never k
nown his old mentor and friend to make sounds like those. They had to have been made by something else.

  The door Venser exited was massive—easily as large as seven humans standing feet on heads—and it stank of rotting flesh. Stinking or not, it was tiny in comparison to the space it opened into. They were on a ledge that looked over an absolutely massive cavern of metal. Colossal columns of metallic material stood at its center and long tendrils attached each to the other like rope to a pole. Sometimes many tendrils met at a huge chunk. The chunks were easily as large as rooms.

  “What is that?” Venser said, his voice echoing away across the enormous space.

  “Don’t know,” Koth said. “Don’t have any idea.”

  “How large would you say this cavern is?” Venser said.

  Elspeth shrugged. “Leagues,” she said. “Perhaps larger.”

  “And yet these columns continue. Look there, that column seems to have grown into the metal of the wall. I wonder if it keeps its shape under the metal? I wonder if the strands do?”

  They all looked to the guide, who stood back a bit. He looked back at them.

  “The center of Mirrodin is solid,” Koth said. “We vulshok know this. It is the heart of our ore. We explore and use our geomancy to delve with sound through the core.”

  “This does not appear solid,” Venser said.

  “How can we ever know the truth of this situation?” Elspeth said. “We waste time surmising.”

  “This place is Phyrexian corruption,” Koth said. Clearly disgusted, he turned away from the view.

  But Venser did not turn away. “Very strange,” he said. “Very strange.”

  “Where do we go?” Koth said.

  “There. This trail before us leads that way … to where that strand is melted and its inner tube is exposed,” the guide said, pointing.

  “We walk into one of those strands? I think not,” Koth said.

  “It is through these that one moves around the core of Mirrodin.”

  “How do you know?” Elspeth said.

  “I know,” the guide said, his face expressionless.

  “It makes sense,” Venser said.

  “How does that make sense?”

  “Well,” Venser said. “Do you see how the top of that column is dark and crumbling? It is clearly dead. Yet below it the metal is greenish and healthy.”

  Koth nodded slowly, as if he knew what he was about to hear would be as ridiculous as the artificer himself.

  “It seems that whatever flows up along that column can’t go up any longer. Up is plugged by that dark, dead-looking material. It must go sideways. Sideways is those tendrils. They are of different lengths. What if they are of different ages as well?”

  Koth shook his head as he listened.

  Venser did not seem to notice. He kept speaking. “What if those tendrils are caused by whatever is traveling up along the column? Perhaps when enough of those tendrils come together and connect with another column, they form a layer. A new layer under the crust.”

  Koth was narrowing his eyes as he gazed across the vast expanse before them. “A crazy idea, I’ll give you that. I don’t believe a word of it. And how would you explain that?” Koth pointed.

  It took some time for Venser to spot what he was looking at. The vastness of the cavern was all made of metal of one sort or another. There were inclusions of dark ore and marbles of lighter metal. But as his eyes moved over the calico of colors, they stopped on a flash. He looked closer. The flash came from what appeared to be a golden bubble. It clung to the wall near the column half-melted into the metal wall.

  “What is that?” Koth said, gloat in his voice.

  “I don’t know,” Venser said. “But we can get to it to find out. If we travel to that tendril and walk through it we should come out near the column, very near that bubble. It appears to be older than the column, which has grown around it, as you can see.”

  “Yes,” Koth said, reluctantly.

  Venser stood up straight and looked right to left. “Yes, right.”

  Venser nodded. Koth looked down at his feet. There were many drips in the vast expanse. Some sounded closer than others. There was also the sound of movement … of rusted movement and metal banging into metal. But there were no Phyrexian cries.

  The guide was already walking ahead. Elspeth walked along the precipice after the guide. The precipice continued until a small lip appeared and the path they were walking on began to sink as the lip rose. They walked until, had they been on the surface, the suns would have moved significantly in the sky. At that point they were walking in a half tube. A small trickle of water appeared running down the middle of the curved path.

  “Where does the water come from?” Elspeth said.

  Venser remembered the rain above, and the holes it ran down. At the time he wondered where the holes led. Now he knew. “The surface has holes and the rain runs into them.”

  Elspeth nodded and wiped her mouth.

  “I could have told you that,” Koth said.

  “Noted,” Elspeth said.

  Koth pulled his cracked lips into a smile. “When do we begin walking down the tendril, artificer?” Koth said.

  “Unless I’m wrong,” Venser said, “we’re on it right now.”

  The path had become wider as they walked. It was curved and as wide as ten men lying lengthwise. The lips at the edges were as high as Koth’s chest. To the right was a solid wall that had a smooth surface of cooled ore. Far ahead their path seemed to disappear into a hole that extended half in the wall.

  “We travel through the wall for a short time and come back out again,” Venser said. “But we won’t see that we are out of the wall, because the tube will be complete. From the point ahead, we will walk about a league. Then we should be at the golden bubble we saw.”

  Koth stared blankly at Venser, who moved his eyes to Elspeth.

  “How will we know when we are near the bubble?” Elspeth asked.

  Venser gestured grandly at Koth. “We have a geomancer, who is familiar with alloy and true metals. He will begin to taste the gold in the air.”

  Koth looked doubtfully at the artificer. “There is no smell in the dark of a tube.”

  “Of course there is,” Venser said. “Let us have light and we’ll have a look.”

  Venser raised his finger, and the glowing blue wisps crept from it and twirled into the air.

  “Guess I’ll be able to see the gold inclusions in the native metal,” Koth grumbled.

  They walked the rest of the distance in silence. They stopped where the path came together overhead and peered into the darkness.

  “If I were Phyrexian I would lay a trap here,” Elspeth said.

  Their guide was squatting and staring ahead. He was very still for some time. Then he stood. “There is no Phyrexian there,” he said.

  Venser sent his wisps into the hole. Soon it was bright within. The tunnel was strangely uncluttered and smooth. Venser leaned close and could see the grow lines on the side of it. The lines reminded him of those he’d seen on shells near the ocean. “I don’t know how long it took the tube to grow this distance, but I can’t think it happened slowly.”

  “Why?” Elspeth said.

  “Neither the old nor the new sections show any oxidation,” Venser said. “But the very old parts, like just here, they show discoloration.” The artificer walked a distance farther and pointed. “These happened a good time ago. Without knowing what type of metal this is, I cannot tell how long it takes to oxidize.”

  They entered the hole. Venser went first and Koth came second. Elspeth drew her sword and its glow cast light enough for all to walk. They walked until the air in the tube became oppressive and close. Venser could feel the heat in the tube collecting around his face. Sweat trailed down his neck and forehead. His sleeves were wet by the time he stopped.

  “Koth,” he said. “What do you smell?”

  “Rust,” Koth said. “And metal.”

  “Do you smell gold?�
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  “No,” he said. “And you know I cannot sniff out metals like a dog, don’t you?”

  “How does gold smell?” Elspeth said.

  “Sweet, sort of,” Venser said. “Would you mind melting us an escape, Koth?”

  The geomancer scrambled over to where Venser pointed. The roof of the small passage was low and twice already Koth had hit his head.

  But he did not straighten as he placed his hands on the warm metal of the tube. Soon it began glowing and then it disappeared from around his hands. The dark void of the vast chamber was visible. Koth moved his hands to another part of the metal. Soon there was a rough opening.

  “Not there,” Koth said. He moved his hands down and did the same thing. The second hole revealed not the darkness of the cavern, but a bright shine. Koth cleared the edges so the hole was large enough for him to crawl through. The guide stood by the hole and waited as Elspeth and Venser crawled through.

  The room they crawled into was large and made out of a golden metal. It shined, and by some power there was light enough to fill the entire room. Cracked orbs floated in the dusty air. At one side of the room was a very large throne of tiny gears and machine works. The walls were covered with crackling images that moved. Blurred moving images of the surface of Mirrodin. Some of the walls were dark. Most were dark. Another panel showed an absolutely vast horde of torn and twisted phyrexianized soldiers with huge metal claws and limbs of snaking metal intertwined with what appeared to be pulsing pink nerve clusters wound into tubes. There were hundreds of them, thousands, all marching across the bleak terrain.

  “This must be part of the Panopticon,” Venser said. “Destroyed at the green sun’s ascent. I read about it.”

  “What did you just say?” Elspeth said.

  “Memnarch, the Father of Machines, the annals on Dominaria say. He had an observation room. This might be where the Father of Machines looked through the eyes of his spies.”

  They heard a shuffling sound and spun on their heels. Three forms charged out from behind the throne. They were huffing, with black oil dripping in globs from their mouths and eyes. Their mouths were huge and tooth crammed and their eyes were tiny. Their bodies were covered with runes. In places, the runic metal was peeling away to show the duller metal underneath. Their claws were huge and of pocked, greenish metal. And they wasted not a moment in their attack. They scrambled forward, swinging their claws.