Koth jumped to evade the first troll’s savage cross swing. He stepped in and seized the arm, which went red and fell from the Phyrexian’s body. It all happened quickly, but not quickly enough. The other troll swung at Koth from the side and connected with his chest, sending him flailing, his chest cut wide. The blood came but Venser did not have time to watch before the foe was on him. A second later he blinked away and appeared behind the Phyrexians. Venser rushed forward with the words of power playing on his lips. He took a breath, and with his hands glowing he plunged them up to the elbow through the metal back of the nearest Phyrexian. The mechanized insides of the creature felt odd and alien to his fingers. But he found the metallic organs and conduits and twisted. He took a strong handful and yanked. The creature threw its arms up and then convulsed. It realized what was happening and turned, pulling Venser around like a rag doll. But before the creature could fully turn, it went limp and tumbled into its compatriot, knocking it over. Elspeth was there with her sword to end the Phyrexian’s frenzied stirrings. All three lay dead a moment later.
“Those were trolls,” Koth said, pushing his toe into one of the still bodies.
“Where did they come from?” Venser said.
“They were lying down behind the throne,” Koth said. “I think they wait until prey becomes available.”
Elspeth had a queer look on her face. Venser looked for a wound, a tear in her white robe, but saw nothing. “What is it?” he said.
“I may have discovered something,” Elspeth said.
“Yes?”
“That beast did not notice me until I moved.”
“What do you mean?” Koth said.
“I froze next to you both, and that Phyrexian did not attack me initially. When I drew my weapon I was attacked.”
Venser thought back. He had not noticed that behavior. On Dominaria during the wars against the Phyrexians, they had moved quickly no matter what you did. But that was a different place. Mirrodin’s Phyrexians were different than those he’d observed in other places. That was to be expected, because phyresis incorporated differently. Certain groups took to infection very easily, he suspected. It’s the ones that didn’t take to infection that they needed to find.
“So, you didn’t move and the buggies didn’t bother you?”
“Essentially, yes.”
“This is possible,” Venser said. “I suspect.”
“I don’t want to wait and have one of them tear out my innards because I didn’t move.”
“Well no,” Elspeth said. “And I have not noticed it with the others we encountered.”
“Wouldn’t say you hung back much with those,” Koth said.
“That is true.”
Venser was staring at one of the panels on the wall, the one with all the moving Phyrexians. As he watched, they crammed together surging to move, seething.
“This room amazes me,” Venser said simply. “I can imagine all of these panels showing a different view.”
“Where are they going?” Elspeth said about the clustered Phyrexians on the screen.
“Maybe nowhere,” Venser said.
“Why do they always move?”
“Phyresis affects the nervous system. It fuses all the natural jumps of the body, making the creature very fast, but unable to fully turn off the pulses. When the stimulus comes, the body of a Phyrexian is unable to dissipate it. The charge causes movement, always.”
“Not good at ambushes, at least.”
“I wouldn’t say that. They can be quiet and they can go into a catatonic state,” Venser said. “But these states are difficult to wake from, and they are groggy for a time.”
Elspeth put her sword in its sheath. “Well, they are not so much to deal with here.”
“We have mostly encountered small guard or workers,” the guide called into the room. “Their strength is in numbers and speed. Do not feel your skills are greater than theirs. We want to avoid a direct fight, as we would be quickly overwhelmed and destroyed.”
Elspeth looked doubtful. “I have fought these beasts before. I know how they work.”
“Obviously not, if you just figured out that freezing causes them to not see you.”
“And you knew this?”
“Yes,” the guide said. “Their sight is bad. But most times it is not possible to freeze indefinitely.”
“What did we find out coming into this golden room?” Koth interjected.
“That this is older than the columns and their tendrils,” Venser said. “Can’t you see that? It’s clear.”
“Clear to you,” Koth said. “But far from clear.”
“This room is intact from the inside,” Venser said. “From the outside the tendril had grown around it. To me it means that the tendril is newer. Yes?”
Koth nodded. “Maybe. Or maybe the golden metal this room is made of has bitten deep into the tendril? It could be a special alloy.”
Venser stared at Koth a couple of seconds before bobbing his head. “Yes. That is also possible.”
“Thank you,” Koth said.
“But I do not think it is the case,” Venser said.
“Clearly, you don’t.”
Venser looked around the room. He sucked in his cheeks as he thought. “Right,” he said at last. “Should we be on our way?” He did not wait for a response, but walked over to the hole Koth had made and crawled out into the tendril-tube.
The guide led them left and proceeded down the tube in a slightly hunched gait.
They moved through the tunnel until it became thicker. Soon it became high, and then higher still. Then the passage widened into another vast cavern. They made their way down, along the crumbly ore until a floor of sorts became apparent. It was riddled with boulders and dusts of many colors, and even a couple of partial skeletons in various degrees of decomposition. Leagues passed under their feet as they walked along the bottom of the cavern, and then even the bottom of the cavern fell away suddenly. A circular hole so wide across they could not see the other side was thrust up. The bottom was similarly cloaked in darkness. Koth picked up a chunk of slag from the floor of the cavern.
“Do not think of throwing that over the side,” Elspeth warned.
Koth threw the chunk into the air and caught it easily. “Wouldn’t think of it,” he said.
In the blue light from Venser’s wisp, the air looked ghostly and distorted. Venser put his hand out over the hole. “Do you feel anything?” he asked.
The others put their hands out.
“I feel the wind,” Elspeth said.
“I feel heat,” Koth said. “And something else.”
Koth turned his hand over and then back.
“I feel mana, I think,” Koth said. “My hand is tingling. My nose hairs are tickling.”
“I feel that too,” Venser said. He looked up. The hole continued upward for a short time before stopping in a mass of slag and blacked char. The slag that stopped the top of the huge chute appeared different than the dull metal of the surrounding cavern.
“Let me see that chunk of yours,” Venser said, holding out his hand to Koth.
Koth placed the chunk of metal in Venser’s gloved hand. The artificer held the piece out above his foot and dropped it. The chunk should have fallen and crushed his toe, but instead it fell only a short distance before slowing down to float like a feather.
“Well,” Venser said. “That is strange, but it seems to be in our favor.”
“How’s that?” Koth said. He reached out and poked the rock, which spun sideways and then continued its lazy fall.
The guide watched all of this. “I do not know of this chute. If we go this way it is into the unknown.”
Elspeth shifted her weight from one thick leg to the other.
“It will allow us to travel down the shaft,” Venser said. “Otherwise it might have been a dangerous climb.”
“My way has a climb,” the guide said.
Elspeth stared at the guide as though he were mad. “A climb?�
�� she said. “I am not in favor of that path then.”
Koth coughed. “You want us to go down that sheer hole?”
“As you can see,” Venser said. “We will float. It will be fast and safe.”
Elspeth opened her mouth but waited a moment before speaking. “That is not the point,” she said. “It is a hole.”
“Yes,” Koth said, pointing at Elspeth. “What she said.”
“This is a stroke of luck,” Venser said. “I think this shaft goes very deep. Almost to the mana core of this metal place. It’s little more than a conduit.”
“It is possible,” the guide said.
“But a blocked conduit,” Elspeth said, pointing upward at the slag plug.
“Exactly,” Venser said. “It seems it once vented, but is now plugged. That is why the mana concentration is so great. Koth can feel it and so can I. It is so dense that the normal force of matter seems interrupted, I would guess.”
“If we float down how do we know there are passages like this one branching off from the stem?” It was Elspeth who spoke.
“We don’t,” Venser said. “But it would stand to reason that …”
“This is foolishness,” Koth said.
“I agree,” said Elspeth. “We could fall forever.”
“This branch is here,” Venser said. “We saw others branching off from the column. There must be other branches.”
“But we have no reason to believe that they are hollow,” Koth said.
Venser took off his helmet. “Have you ever read the Chronicles of Arrival? It has some good thoughts on the uncertainness of life. One of its revelations is this: ‘No one has promised us a tomorrow.’ ”
Koth pushed his chest out. “Are you accusing me of cravenness?”
“Not at all,” Venser said. “I’m accusing you of bad logic … and that’s worse.”
“I’ll give you logic,” Koth said. A large flame leaped from his right fist. Venser was near the edge of the huge shaft. Koth reached out with his huge flaming hand and tried to seize Venser’s shoulder. The artificer whispered a word and appeared with a sudden strobe of light behind Koth. With one finger Venser pushed the geomancer, who tripped forward and fell headfirst over the edge of the shaft. As he fell his whole body sputtered and burst into flame and the slits along his ribs yawned wide and red. But Koth did not fall far before his body seemed to stop in midair. Then he began to fall as slowly as a leaf falling from a tree in fall. His breeches bagged up as he executed a flip.
“This is amazing,” Koth yelled.
Elspeth looked back along the tube they had just traveled. “Hush, dolt,” she said.
Venser turned to her. “You are next, my lady,” Venser said. He slipped his helmet back on and smiled at her. A strange sight, Elspeth thought. A man in a helmet smiling at her. Men in helmets were usually trying to kill her. “I do not think this is wise,” she said, stepping to the edge. She undid the buckle holding her sword around her waist. Then she slipped the belt over her shoulder and fastened the buckle again. She stepped to the edge and then back again.
“I am not overly fond of heights,” she said.
“I can’t tell,” Venser said.
Koth did another flip and giggled.
“I think the problem here will not be falling too fast,” Venser said. “But rather too slowly. We have to get to Karn before the Phyrexians control the whole plane. It might be too late by that point.”
Elspeth closed her eyes and stepped off … and floated. Venser followed her. Without a sound the guide followed.
Elspeth floated lazily downward, with her white tunic billowing around her. It felt wonderful and she did not ever want to stop. If there are other columns will they also have this feature?
“I don’t know,” Venser said.
Elspeth stared at Venser. “Did you just listen to the thoughts in my head?”
“Of course not,” Venser said.
They floated slowly downward for very long. Soon they were tired of floating and lay motionless in the air. Venser watched as cavelike openings passed in the blue light of his wisps.
“How far will we go?” Koth said.
“Do you have a suggestion?”
Koth shrugged and floated away.
Venser might have fallen asleep. Sometimes he heard strange sounds, and once even music, hypnotic and repeating. At another point it was screams—hundreds of beings screaming all at one time. Still they floated. Elspeth woke, fell asleep, and woke again. Cave openings passed in the blue shadows. At one, Koth insisted that they leave the shaft, and using his hands he brought himself close to the cave mouth. But after seeing something in the cave he became very quiet and did not mention leaving again.
It was hard to know how deep they were in Mirrodin. Venser had stopped caring. Eventually the guide floated up next to Venser and pointed. “It will have to be there,” he said.
Koth paddled up beside him, as did Elspeth. A cave was passing, dark and small. No more than a tube hole.
“Why that one?”
“We are as deep as we should go,” Venser said.
“I for one am ready to leave this place,” Elspeth said. “It feels as death might. This is a sensation I am not overly interested in.”
Koth grunted. “I agree with the white one.”
“Yes,” Venser said. “Death no, squeezing down this tube, yes.”
Venser paddled to the hole. It took longer than he had thought it would, and by the time he was near his arms were tired. The side of the shaft moved past faster than he’d expected.
“Are you all ready?” Venser said. “The side here is moving fast. We’ll have to not miss the hole or I don’t know how you’ll follow. Who wants to go first?”
“I will,” Elspeth said. “I have no fear of this hole … as long as it leads me to more Phyrexians to slaughter.” She stroked closer to the wall of the shaft, which really was moving past at a fairly quick clip. Koth stroked over so he was above Elspeth, and touching the wall as he slipped downward. Venser aligned behind them both.
Elspeth caught the hole’s rim and amidst her clattering armor, she thrust into it as deep as her mid-section. She struggled for a moment as the current of the shaft caught her legs and pulled them downward. Then she was wriggling through with only her feet extending out of the hole. Then her feet were gone.
Koth did not have quite so easy a time. He could not dive as deeply into the hole. And for a desperate couple of moments, he was grasping the inside of the tube while his waist and lower body dangled out and were pulled down. The geomancer heated his hands until his fingers sunk into the wall of the tube as though it were warm butter. With a good handhold, he was able to haul himself up and into the hole. The metal walls of the hole were still hot as Venser threaded into it. He burned the palm of his right hand and cursed under his breath as he scraped his right knee on one of the five rough divots Koth’s fingers had made in the cooling metal.
The tube they found themselves in was very tight indeed. Koth had to fight a growing impulse to push outward. There was no light and any attempt at light, Venser knew, would only illuminate the area between each of them and not pass ahead. So they crawled. The tube seemed to stay fairly level and the crawling was not especially difficult. Then they started to slide a bit. At first nobody was sure if they were sliding down or up. Venser concluded that the tube was angling downward, but he could not really tell.
They turned a tight corner and Venser heard a whoosh and Koth was no longer crawling in front of him. Venser carefully crawled forward and felt a pull and then he was yanked by Koth’s suction … traveling suddenly fast enough to feel the slight imperfections of the tube banging into his elbows and knees.
It continued, the downward slide, until suddenly they shot out of the slide and into the air. Venser knew only that there was darkness one moment and light the next, coupled with the feeling of falling. He was able to see the floor for one split second before the plummet. He breathed the mana stream extending fro
m his head into him and a moment later he felt the familiar explosion in his skull and teleported, appearing in a squat on the level floor.
Koth, Elspeth, and the guide did not have as easy a time. The white warrior executed a flip and went skittering across the shiny floor on her rump. Koth tucked his shoulder and hit the ground with the tremendous clatter of metal on metal. He left a long scrape in the floor.
“That could have gone better,” Koth said, testing the rotation of his shoulder in its joint as he stood.
The guide stood and bent his neck side to side.
Elspeth was sitting on the floor, legs splayed. She was staring at the room they had jettisoned into. Other tubes met in the room and at the far end others left in the same way. But in the middle was another huge room. The metal walls, roof, and floor were shiny. The light came in organic patches that clung in irregular shapes to the walls.
Off to the right a round, human-height door woven with bars was visible. There was movement in the room—reflections on the walls shifted and moved, as though something were inside the room moving fast, casting its reflection. Venser squinted, but saw nothing.
To the left, a huge square set of meat steps extended up in a series of turns that ended at a set of what look suspiciously like a wooden gallows. There were pieces of metal hammered together unevenly and at odd angles. A single chain hung unmoving from the edge of the hammered-together structure.
A warm wind stirred their sweat-soaked hair. Venser took off his helmet.
Venser had not at first realized just how large the room was. As he looked, its walls seemed to stretch far, far away. Yet another larger room. He could see lines of smoke in the distance as if a brush fire were burning. But what was there to burn down in these metallic bowels?
Scars of Mirrodin: The Quest for Karn Page 18