The experimenters fled backward, howling.
Koth ran to Venser. The device on the arm seemed to sense Koth’s movement. It turned toward him and as he came near enough, clamped onto his neck with a metallic snap.
Venser’s eyes fluttered open. Above him the sinewy arm of the device was extended into Koth’s neck. The vulshok struggled, pulling against the device that gripped him.
In one fluid motion, Venser teleported to Koth’s side, took hold, and began to pull at the clamper near its mouth pincers. Then he started snapping parts off the device in a mad attempt to disable it.
“I’m taking us out of here,” Venser said. Koth’s face was blue as he nodded.
Venser closed his eyes and took hold of Koth’s upper arm. A blue mist began to filter out of his pores.
The device attached to Koth’s neck clicked and a panel displaced in its side. A curved, armored syringe slid smoothly out of the panel and pointed its dripping tip at Koth’s right eye.
At that moment the walls of the chamber began to tremble, and then shake thunderously. The right wall began to vibrate. Venser turned to the wall, a look of resignation pulling at his face.
A cut appeared, shearing off the conduit-work walls. Bright white light flooded in the dark room through the cut. Then another cut appeared and more light glinted in. With a deafening smash a hole appeared and the room became blindingly bright. In the light the forms of the two Phyrexian experimenters disintegrated to nothing. Silhouetted in the new entrance stood the shining form of Elspeth of Bant.
Dull gray hills showed behind her and Venser could smell the necrogen gas of the Mephidross around her as, with her sword shining like a rising star, she charged forward. Koth was motionless on the floor. With a sweep of her sword, Elspeth sheared the device in half. The two parts that fell away shrieked and writhed on the pocked metal floor, leaving Koth gasping and holding his neck.
Elspeth stepped back into a ready pose and surveyed the room. Seeing no other danger, she stood up and sheathed her sword.
“Elspeth,” Koth choked. “… of Bant.”
Elspeth pursed her lips and nodded. “There are more of these beasts near a cave on the outside. Let us end this now and see if we may hammer them once and for all.”
“Where were they?” Venser said.
“There,” Elspeth said. She pointed to one of many holes in the very center of the mountains, at base level.
“I have been here once before on reconnaissance,” Koth said. “And that doorway seemed to be used more than most, but vermin creep out of any hole. You know how vermin are. Let us move closer,” Koth said.
“They are here,” Elspeth said. “Be ready.”
They crept along a dell until it trenched, and then they crawled on hands and knees to a place close to the base of the mountain. They lay in the warm, scum-covered water until Venser finally spoke.
Then they felt it. The ground began to shake slightly. The filthy water began to ripple. Soon small waves were coursing its banks. The mountain above them began to groan. Venser sunk as deep as he could in the black water. Everything about his being said fly. But he mastered himself and did not move. The banging became rhythmic and strong, like a battering ram on the door of a castle, and then it turned to a deafening thunder. The ground trembled.
And the Phyrexians came. First one stumbled through a hole in the mountain and stood blinking in the open air. Then another came from another hole. A third appeared from yet another hole. More came after them. Soon a steady line of bulky, toothy beings of skeletal angularity with long tooth-crammed mouths were streaming out of each entrance. Then the flow increased again. Phyrexians were crawling out of the holes, one over the other, clawing forward. It stayed that way for a time, with the entrances pressing out shadowy, hairless beings like material through a sausage press. Some survived, and those stood outside screaming their guttural choking cries into the green murk, while other Phyrexians fell upon their wounded brethren in a mad feast.
“Is that all there are?” Koth murmured. “They are not a large force.”
But there were more. Soon the cave entrances split at the corners and still larger amounts of Phyrexians came pouring out. Larger and larger beings emerged: twisted trolls with long bony faces, tiny eyes and huge mouths sheltering long teeth. They swatted other Phyrexians out of the way. Hulking great soldiers made of tattered metal and raw flesh with tiny, stitched together skulls lurched from the bowels with long fingers of glittering metal. Behind them a vast array of strikers that the companions had seen earlier, with heads formed into the notched tip of a spear, and broken, gnashed teeth chipped and bleeding black. At the head of the mass swaggered a herald with a grim standard held aloft: its own small head impaled on a spike. Wispy scouts hopped from head to head, and behind them all tumbled wave upon wave of massive brutes as large as three men with claws as long as legs, which they swung as they walked, laying open their own kind and themselves in the mayhem.
“We must get closer,” Venser hissed.
Koth turned and stared at the artificer.
Venser leaned forward in the water, so his stomach scraped the bottom of the slough. The artificer walked himself with his hands along the slough. Reluctantly, the others followed. Soon they were close enough to the menagerie to smell the filthy reek wafting from their rot and rust in their moist folds. And the sound. They made the oddest creaking as they walked. It was an ominous sound that Elspeth remembered well. The sounds and the smells brought back such memories that she could not make herself move along the slough to join the others. As soon as she did, by touching her sword, she wished she had not. The closer she got to the Phyrexians, the more she felt again like a little girl, held captive in their oubliette.
The gross, twisted expressions that played across the Phyrexian faces were what affected her most. For something with half-sentience, at best, Elspeth thought, that leer was unnerving. It spoke of all manner of callousness … of slyness and cruelty. Of extreme, painful carelessness coupled with playful curiosity. She put her head under the filthy slough water and held it there until she thought she would burst.
When she raised her head the others were gone. She spied them sheltering in a raw divot where they must have crawled from the slough. They were not farther than two lengths of a human body, but she would not follow, not with them on the move.
She realized too late that she had risen to her knees to look for the others. That, coupled with her soiled white garb, made her easy to see. A single, garbled cry went up from a marching Phyrexian, and Elspeth fell back into the water. She walked herself backward along the slough and behind a slight turn, and dropped lower in the water.
A moment later the beast appeared. A brute trooper, as luck would have it, with tiny, glittering eyes set close together in a head stitched more than once it appeared. Layer upon layer of armor crisscrossed every part of its body so it squeaked as it fell remarkably fast to its knees next to the water. It smelled the slough and bit at the water until it ran out between its transparent teeth.
Another, rougher cry went up and the trooper stood and dashed back to the ranks. Elspeth rested her head against the metal bank and took deep breaths until her heart stopped feeling like it might beat up and out of her throat. When her breathing was normal, she carefully tore off her white tunic, so her tarnished armor showed.
And so it was. By later in the day the flow of Phyrexians had not lessened in the least, but the light from the suns had changed. Shadows appeared, and Elspeth was able to crawl to the divot the others were sheltering in.
“… An invasion,” Koth was saying.
Venser nodded.
“I am not going into the camp of the enemy. Our numbers aren’t enough. Our battle is in the hills with the others, snapping off parts of the main force. This is how a smaller force …”
“I know how to fight a large force,” Venser said, cutting off the geomancer. “But you cannot hope to save your plane with that technique. Not with a foe like thi
s.”
Elspeth agreed with Venser. But, to be fair, she was not altogether sure that any technique could save Mirrodin after the display of numbers and strength she was seeing.
Venser continued. “Only Karn has even the smallest chance of setting this straight.” Now the artificer looked directly at Koth to speak. “Your people and all the beings of this plane will fall to this force. This number is larger than any I have ever heard of. They must have been spawning under the surface for years.
Koth squinted back the way they had come. The entrance Elspeth had hacked through the leaden side of the mountain was a small dark hole far behind. But in that moment Koth saw a shiny form standing in it.
“We should travel into the Vault through the room where Elspeth found us,” Koth said absently, his eyes still on the silver creature. He blinked and it was gone.
“Why?” Venser said.
“I have just seen the creature that was following us, I think. I saw it in the room when I first awoke also.” Koth pointed. “It is in the hole that Elspeth cut when she came for us.”
Venser turned to look, but the creature was gone.
Koth stood in a crouch and began moving back along the slough toward the hole. Venser watched him go.
“You who are such tight comrades?” Venser asked Elspeth.
Elspeth watched as the Phyrexians continued moving. There were fewer of them than before, she noted. “Not that such things are your business in the least,” Elspeth said. “But we met only days before he kidnapped you.”
“Where did you meet?”
“Fighting for coin in a pit.”
“You?”
She smiled. “Yes, me. I have need of coin as does anyone.”
“Did you win against the geomancer?”
“As a matter of fact, I did,” Elspeth said. “Does that surprise you?”
Venser shrugged. “A bit.”
“There are other parts of me that you may find shocking.”
“Such as?”
“I was imprisoned by the Phyrexians once.”
“How did you escape them?”
Elspeth looked back before speaking. “Through despicable means,” she said. “I am embarrassed to speak of it now. It was long ago.”
“You were a child?”
“Yes.”
“Children do not act despicably,” he said. “They are simply children doing childish things.”
Images flashed suddenly into Elspeth’s head, images of blood and intestines strung across a large room. The length of the intestines shocked her as a little girl, but still they strung them across the room when a new prisoner arrived. They inserted their sharp fingers into the belly and out came a line of intestine, which they drew out as thread from a spool. And she, she moved from cell to cell, relatively free, pointing out the ones who would die soon to the Phyrexians, who lacked simple common sense. She aided them. Even though they did not speak, they followed her for some reason, maybe because she had been there so long that they saw her as part of the prison and not a fun toy to be experimented upon. But she saw it all. Every horrible thing that can be done to a human.
“Children are children,” Venser said.
Elspeth blinked. If he only knew. Perhaps he should. It had been with her for so long, carried on her shoulders during all her travels so that, perhaps, with almost certain death approaching, she should relieve herself of the weight.
“When they became interested in me, I would divert their attention by pointing out better candidates to be experimented on. Sometimes women, even children. Old men. They all cried. They all wailed.” She felt like covering her ears from the wailing she heard when she closed her eyes to sleep at night, the same sound she heard first thing when she woke.
Words had escaped Venser. He opened his mouth to say something, only to close it again.
She could tell by his shocked expression that he was expecting another story—perhaps the story of the brave child helping the other prisoners, only to end up the subject of experimentation herself. Truth was, she managed to evade being cut or molested in any way. Countless others took that burden for her. And the children were the cries that stayed with her the longest.
Sound came back to Venser’s lips. “How did you escape?”
“I escaped,” she gulped. “By cutting open a large corpse and slipping inside and staying still in its reek until it was tossed into the rot heap. I was small and still the fit was tight.” She didn’t tell him that it took many days for the Phyrexians to move the corpse; they were not good housekeepers. She lay in the corpse for at least two days, but it could have been more. She was almost dead herself of thirst when she finally crawled out. But the smell never left her. It was always in her nose, waking her in the morning and turning her stomach and making it difficult to eat.
“But you survived,” Venser stammered. “You persevered. You were unbeaten.”
“Unbeaten,” Elspeth said hollowly.
Venser looked away, out to the darkness. She could see the evident disgust on his face. Still, there was a certain lightness building in her stomach. “I can tell you more,” she said.
Venser shook his head. “I have heard enough.” He turned back to the Phyrexians. They watched the revolting combination of decomposing metal and sinewy flesh of all shapes and sizes march from the holes. Elspeth found herself wondering where they all slept, and how. Were they able to talk to each other? Her time in one of their prisons had not left her with a strong impulse of find out more about the Phyrexians. They were the essence of cruelty, with a child’s desire to experiment and play.
She glanced away from Venser’s eyes at the Phyrexians. One tripped and fell and the one behind it stepped squarely on its head and laughed its chortling laugh. “It seems to me that their numbers are decreasing,” she said.
Venser peered back over the edge of the divot they were sheltering in. The dark smudge of the main body of the Phyrexians was spread out in the green haze filling the large valley.
“Are you ready?” Venser said. Without waiting for an answer, the artificer began crawling down the slough after Koth.
The experimentation room looked as it had before, with one exception. On the far wall as they entered was an area where the wet gut-works had been spread. A hole was revealed. Koth was squatting next to it with a smile on his face.
“Something is guiding us,” he said.
Venser stepped closer, and suddenly a shake caught him. He put his hand out to the wall, and it sunk into the wetness. Venser lurched sideways and fell to his knees, shaking over half his body. From experience he knew to wait. When enough time had passed, and Venser could open and close his fingers, he struggled to his feet. The others watched him wide-eyed.
“We will not speak of this,” Venser said. “It happens sometimes.”
“But why?” Elspeth said.
“It happens because of my foolishness. Because of a great mistake I made.”
They moved through the darkness, skidding their feet across the strangely smooth floor for a long time without the least sense of where they were going.
“Can we dare light?” Elspeth whispered.
Venser nodded.
It took Elspeth some moments to cull the mana she needed in that black place, but eventually her suit of armor began to glow slightly and they could see more of their surroundings.
“I hear its movements ahead,” Koth whispered. “This is the way.”
“It makes me nervous to follow something I’ve never met,” Venser said.
A loud hissing sound broke the stillness behind them. Elspeth dropped the charm on her armor, and the light blinked out. Shadows were moving in a passage in front of them.
The passageway opened into a very large cavern. An eerie green light filtered weakly to the edges of the large space. At the far end a group of beings stood, tapping on the wall with their knuckles or whatever they had that passed for knuckles. They were Phyrexians, yes, but somehow different. They moved with the jerky, s
udden movements of the Phyrexians—had the same frantic speed and carelessness as they bumped into one another, seeking something in haste.
“Are they sick?” Elspeth said.
“Vampires,” Venser whispered. “Succumbing to phyresis.”
Elspeth nodded at that, and tried hard not to let Venser sense her disgust.
Standing a bit back was their leader. The first thing that struck Venser was the size of the being. Its body was a massive shell of flesh and metal, one substance wound into another, with jags of metal jutting off the carapace. Two huge, tipped claws hung on robust arms at its sides. And the head, the head looked tiny atop the mountainous torso. A black line of hair ran from the front forehead in a crest to the back.
“Keep looking,” the leader yelled.
Venser watched the leader very carefully—when he walked, his body jerked to the side and the head was momentarily sideways.
The creatures kept knocking on the walls and floor until at last one of the Phyrexian vampires found what they were looking for. They all bent around something on the floor, until the leader lumbered over. They moved out of the way and he looked down at the floor with eyes that glittered in the low light, even from where Venser was standing across the room.
“Pull it up,” he said.
“Yes, Master Geth,” one of the Phyrexians hissed.
It was a door, but one that had to be torn from the floor. Ragged, bloody flaps of skin hung around the door’s circumference when it was raised.
“Get moving,” Master Geth bellowed suddenly. “The silver one’s temper makes mine look pleasant. Move.”
The silver one, Venser thought. Was he making reference to the silver creeper they were following, or was it the silver golem Geth?
The Phyrexians dropped one at a time down the trap door. Geth kicked the last one, sending him careening through the hole. Before Geth stepped into the secret door, he looked around the room. Venser jerked his head back, but for a moment Geth’s eyes froze in his direction. Eventually he turned and hopped down the hole.
Scars of Mirrodin: The Quest for Karn Page 6
