The guide moved slowly to where the pieces lay. He looked carefully at the pieces before standing again and looking around the room.
He certainly looked like a guide to Venser. He certainly appeared to be genuine, and not a spy. But what was to say that the forces standing against them had not found a way to recruit a real guide?
The guide located an eyeway in the corner. After he cut it open with a long knife, they all moved through and into the darkened room on the other side.
And into another room, where they found no Phyrexians. The guide moved them along the outer side of the room and then through another eyeway. Then there were more rooms of metal and more exits. Sometimes the exits joined into long tunnels. In one tunnel the guide suddenly stopped walking. He stopped and fell to his hands and knees and began looking closely at the floor of the tunnel, using his fingernails to find any seam. Eventually he found something, and pulled up a hinged panel of metal. They clambered down through the hole and descended a strange ladder of what appeared to be ribs. After that, the guide took them along another passage, and more after that.
“I don’t understand,” Koth said. “What do we accomplish by this running around down here? We have the fleshling. Why don’t we go heal everybody on the surface?
“I am not sure there are survivors on the surface,” Elspeth said, mirroring Venser’s own thoughts.
“There are survivors,” Koth said. “And they deserve our help, but we do not help them.”
The guide raised his hand.
“Hush,” Venser said to Koth.
Koth shot him an evil face in response to the chastisement.
Next they were in another passage that descended at an angle that required them to squat to move. At the bottom was a doorway, barely visible in the blue glow from Venser’s wisps. The doorway was not an eyeway, or a rough-cut hole, but a simple entranceway with smooth sides. This kind of entranceway was uncommon enough. But as soon as they stopped, Venser heard it, the odd sound the guide ahead must have heard: a sort of skittering. At irregular intervals something heavy bounced along the ground. But at other times there was no sound but the whoosh of wind.
Wind down here? Venser wondered.
When the guide moved his hand forward, they advanced. Soon they were at the entrance, and Venser turned off his wisps, so they were once again in darkness. Silently they each felt their way into another vast room. Venser could tell by the echoes from his feet. Water dripped off to the right somewhere. The air was still and stagnant. Like almost every room they had moved through, it smelled vaguely of rotting meat. It was strange air in these underground rooms: it always felt to Venser as though some creature was crouching in it, with its twisted spine as tight as a spring, and ready to pounce.
But there was no attack, and soon Venser’s eyes began adjusting as best they could to the almost total darkness. If there was any light in the room, Venser was not sure where it would have come from. But still his eyes found enough of what they needed to make out something: white blurs.
It was hard to say how far away the shapes were. A hand grasped his, and Venser felt what he thought must be the thick glove of Elspeth’s sword hand. Understanding what was supposed to happen, Venser reached back and found Koth’s strangely smooth palm and held it.
Hand in hand in the darkness they moved. At first Venser thought they were moving toward the blurring shapes, but then they turned and walked until they bumped into the wall. Then the guide, for Venser hoped it was the guide who was leading them, turned them left and they skirted the wall.
As they walked, Elspeth’s hand squeezed tighter and tighter. A couple of times Venser had to disengage his hand and then find Elspeth’s hand again, lest she crush his knuckles and fingers.
But traveling along the wall still took them near the blurred shapes. They became larger and larger until Venser recognized them for what they were. Elspeth’s hand tightened dramatically, and then let go of his and went, Venser assumed, to the grip of her sword.
Venser could see why.
The white blurs were actually strange Phyrexian angels. All white, with what appeared to be a porcelain exoskeleton, covered with chips. Pink tendons wormed from one section of porcelain to another, apparently holding them together. They had tattered metal wings that flapped, keeping them aloft. Their heads were all porcelain, with black round holes for eyes, and a thin black line for a mouth.
And between them they were throwing something round and shaggy. They were throwing the round shape as fast as they could, in a joyless game that Venser could not begin to understand. In that vast room they stood playing catch. Venser thought back to the conversation they were having earlier. Why was any of this here?
One of the angels missed its catch, and the ball fell to the ground with a dull thump. It rolled over and Venser recognized it for what it was. He looked away from the tortured line of a mouth and a flattened nose.
The angels noticed them at that moment, and shot up into the darkness. Venser could see their blurs, and a moment later an angel shot out of the dark and raked a claw down his body armor, knocking him over with the force of the blow. The pain was sharp as he rose, but didn’t feel critical enough to stay on the ground.
By the time he was up, Koth was grappling with one of the angels, who flapped its wings, pulling Koth with it into the air. Venser snapped his mana to his raised fingers, and furls of power radiated out and softened the metal of the angel’s wings, so they drooped and the angel fell. The impact gave Koth the opportunity to wrap his hands around the angel’s head and begin beating it against the floor.
Off to the side, Venser could see Elspeth and the second angel brawling. Surprisingly quick, the angel was able to dodge Elspeth’s attacks. The white warrior began to move her own mana to her sword for a thousand-cuts-in-one strike. But the angel put up its hand and Elspeth’s weapon dropped from her fingers.
She reached down for the sword, but the angel surged forward and palmed Elspeth’s head in its claw. It turned, raised Elspeth off the ground, and threw her away into the darkness, leaving her sword glittering on the ground.
The angel looked down at the sword and cocked its head to the side. Venser began running for the sword. He did not think about what would happen if the Phyrexian had the weapon, he just ran. By the time he reached the place, the angel had bent over the sword and was reaching down with its claw. Venser kicked the sword and it went skittering away.
He’d been struck hard plenty of times in his life. He was raised in Urborg, after all, and his childhood had been far from perfect: his father had broken his nose when he was ten, and that blow had knocked him out for almost an hour. He’d fought in the insurrection there and been wounded in the abdomen with a spear that went through him, knocked him way back, and pinned him to a tree. That one had hurt.
But the blow that the Phyrexian lashed out with was worse.
Elspeth saw it from the shadows. She was on her knees feeling for her blade and happened to look up. Her own head pounded where the Phyrexian angel’s metal claw had squeezed, but otherwise she was unhurt. She looked up in time to see the Phyrexian’s strike: Venser cartwheeled limp through the air like a tossed doll, his helmet spinning off to the side.
He landed with an unsettling thud. Elspeth turned back to her search. She moved to where she thought Venser had kicked the sword. By the time she found it, the angel was tearing the armor off Venser’s chest. It did not sense her approach, which was good because she was terrified to look it once more face-to-face. But still she could not strike an opponent’s back. She tapped it on the shoulder with the tip of her sword, but it did not turn. Having fulfilled the Etiquette of the Field with the tap, she wasted no time with enchantments, but simply swiped the creature’s head neatly off its shoulders, cutting the tops of its wings off in the process.
Yet it continued to move, to claw at Venser’s unmoving form. Without eyes its movements were gross and imprecise. Such imprecision alone was enough to make Elspeth kill it agai
n. She swung again and severed it at the waist, cutting off the bottoms of its wings, and in that way it fell.
She shoved the angel’s torso off of Venser and kneeled over him. Off to the side his helmet sat with a tremendous dent the rough size of the angel’s claw. Elspeth turned back to Venser. He was breathing, she was glad to see. She felt his head and found a large lump above his ear. Koth and the fleshling appeared. Then the guide.
“What’s this now?” Koth said.
Elspeth ignored the knave. She put her hand on Venser’s forehead. Down her arm trickled the mana she had in reserve. It moved into her hand and settled into Venser’s forehead.
“This would not have happened if I were leading,” Koth mumbled. “We wouldn’t be down here with mutes and trackers, tearing angels apart.”
“I am not mute,” the fleshling said.
Elspeth concentrated more mana into Venser, trying to wake him from his slumber. Please, she thought.
Venser’s eyes popped open. They looked around wildly, and then settled on Elspeth’s face. He brought his hand to his face and wiped his hair out of his eyes. His hair is long now, she thought. Hadn’t it been short when Koth talked her into kidnapping him? How long have we been in the bowels of this place?
Venser sat up and winced. The random slashes from the where the angel tore off his chest armor bled freely.
“They are not deep,” Elspeth said, smiling. Something she had not done in days, maybe months. It felt strange to her face.
Koth scoffed and turned away. “We will all die down here,” he said. “All of us. I’m leaving. I should never have come.” He walked away into the darkness.
A strange look passed over Venser’s face, and he could feel his limbs begin to tremble. Then his cheek began to twitch. He turned and quickly, but with trembling fingers, fumbled through the pieces of metal and leather that had been his chest armor. In the torn underclothes he found the small white bottle Elspeth had seen him clutching before. The relief was obvious on his face.
“What is that really?” Elspeth said.
“This?” Venser said. “Nothing, medicine.”
Elspeth nodded. She’d never seen a medicine that glowed that color. Venser struggled to stand. With the scout’s help he finally did. Elspeth watched his twitching legs support one step, then another and then Venser was walking, looking pale and sweaty in the close air.
He noticed the pained look on her face. “I am as good as dead, you know,” he said.
“Really?”
“The sickness that is in me has no cure,” he said. “It will take me one day, and it could be soon.”
“Does the medicine help?”
“Not anymore. I lose some of myself with every teleport. For some reason I lost much more when the fleshling and I teleported into the flock of blinkmoths.”
Elspeth nodded, clearly uneasy with the direction the conversation had taken.
“Where is the fleshling?” Venser said, happy to direct the conversation away from the bottle.
Elspeth looked around. “She was just here.”
“So was Koth,” Venser said.
“She left with the vulshok,” the guide said from the shadows.
“Left?” Elspeth said.
The guide nodded.
Venser wondered if the man was perhaps a stuffed suit of skin, or he’d been kicked as a youth.
“Did you think that was strange?” Elspeth said.
The guide shook his head.
“Well, which way did they go?”
The guide pointed into the darkness.
They pursued Koth and the fleshling through the vast room. Venser put his blue wisps before them so they could see. Far in the distance the guide said he could see a slight red glow, which they understood to be Koth’s own light. Venser remarked at how someone as large as Koth could move so quickly.
“They are captured,” Elspeth said.
“Has any Phyrexian tried to capture us yet?” Venser said.
“They captured you.”
“Well, Koth is not captured. He has the fleshling.”
“Where are they going?” Elspeth said, turning to the guide, her voice raised.
Even though his chest and head were administering a fair amount of pain to him, Venser still noticed how the disappearance of the fleshling had affected Elspeth’s mood for the worse.
“I do not know,” the guide said. “I know no door that way.”
“That cannot be good,” Venser said. “How could Koth know his way down here?”
“Because he’s a spy,” Elspeth said. “I don’t know.”
To Venser the room seemed to never end. They walked for a time and then they ran. Hours passed and perhaps days, but Elspeth would not let them stop. Even when the cuts on Venser’s chest began to throb and his thinking was muddled by the blow to his head, even then Elspeth would not let them stop.
“Drink some of your magic potion,” she snapped.
He did not. But he did pat the small bottle in his torn shirt. He would be having a sip soon enough.
Elspeth’s temper shortened as the trail cooled. At one point, the guide stopped and looked back the way they had come, then forward again with a confused look on his face.
“What is it?” Elspeth said.
“It seems we are being followed,” he said.
“But where are the fleshling and the other one?”
The guide looked ahead. “I do not see the light anymore.”
“You have lost the trail?”
The guide stared ahead. He bent to a crouch and carefully removed the glove from his left hand, which was metal. He placed his fingertips on the metal floor.
“Yes, I feel the tramp of many feet from behind,” the guide said. “And none from ahead.”
“How many behind?” Venser said.
The guide was silent with his fingers to the metal. “Many,” he said at last. “Very many are running, metal on metal.”
“Like Phyrexians?” Venser said.
The guide said nothing.
Elspeth shook her head. All they needed right now. More Phyrexians.
“What is ahead of us?” Venser said to the guide.
“As I said earlier, I know of no doors ahead.”
“And the wall?” Venser said. “Is just ahead, I suppose?”
The guide nodded.
“So we are flanked,” Elspeth said.
“It seems so,” the guide said.
“Then let’s run and see if there is a new doorway in the wall,” Venser said.
But Elspeth barely ran. She jogged along behind Venser and the guide, and when they reached the wall she stood staring behind. Venser and the guide began feeling for inconsistencies on the smooth wall, but found none. Elspeth continued staring back.
“I won’t go back into their care,” Elspeth said.
Venser and the guide had moved on to the floor, and found nothing. When Elspeth spoke, Venser stood and walked over to her. By then he could feel the tramp of metal feet and heavy machinery through his boots. Elspeth turned as Venser approached.
“I will not go back into their prisons again,” Elspeth repeated.
“So you say,” Venser said.
Elspeth looked down at his belt, where his dented helmet was strapped. “What will you do with it?”
“Mend it when I have more energy,” he said.
The floor was starting to vibrate hard. The guide appeared out of the darkness. “They are a very large force,” he said, breathless from running. “And they are looking for something.”
“They are looking for the fleshling,” Venser said. “At least she is away with Koth and not here.” Venser looked over his shoulder, half expecting the fleshling and Koth to step out of the shadows at his pronouncement.
Elspeth drew her sword out of its scabbard. She felt better than she had in years, and her sword gleamed brighter than ever.
“This is a force we cannot hope to prevail against,” the guide said.
“
What other options do we have?” Venser said.
“You can jump away,” Elspeth said.
“But I won’t.”
“But you should. Go. Attack them from the rear if that gives you the justification you need. As I remember, you were able to give me justifications for retreat earlier in this quest. I am giving you the same for teleporting.”
Venser cocked his head at Elspeth. “Are those tears on your cheeks?”
“Heroes shed no tears,” Elspeth said.
From beyond Venser’s blue wisps came the calls of the enemy. As Elspeth watched, a horde broke into view. They were all shapes and sizes, legs and elbows jabbing out and eyes iridescent. Long-legged shanks and howling mouths filled with chipped and jagged teeth—all charged the small circle of blue light.
Elspeth, her teeth gritted and tears streaming down her face, charged. Her cry was so fierce and her form so terrible, that the first line of Phyrexians shied and fell back at her advance. Her sword was held above her head and it shined like the very essence of metal in the darkened room. When she struck, the sword’s blade became a blur. Phyrexians fell around her, first three then more. Soon there was a pile of twisted, skeletal bodies around her. But still she did not stop.
Venser breathed four breaths, and with these he pulled every ounce of mana he could tether or muster from the world around. His ears became full with the ringing of its arrival, and soon his brainpan felt as though it would overflow. Phyrexians ran to him and Venser reached out and seized the first one’s arm, bending its body so it fell, baying, to the floor. In the next moment he blinked away and appeared in the very middle of the horde, where he began tapping. Each tap sent a pulse through the metal exoskeleton. The pulse traveled the raceway of metal, picking up speed and amplifying itself. By the time it reached the brains of the creatures, it was powerful enough to cause a massive attack. The creatures fell seconds after he touched them.
Scars of Mirrodin: The Quest for Karn Page 20