Scars Of Mirrodin_ The Quest For Karn Part 7

Elspeth and Koth stood stunned in the middle of the room. Venser was off to the side near the pulverizing Phyrexian. So still were they that the Phyrexians did not notice them at first, as the butchers had no eyes. But they had noise holes, Venser saw.

It was the pulverizer that raised the alarm. Its eyes were set spiderlike on a tiny head fused onto the trunk of its immense body. It had a toothless mouth hole, which began bellowing, with what must have been its tongue flopping around in its mouth. Its crus.h.i.+ng hand stopped, and all the butchers froze. Dripping blood from their work, and from the flaps of skin hanging cut from their left hands, they turned toward Elspeth and Koth. Venser was nearer the crus.h.i.+ng beast, but he had not been detected.

One of the bodies next to Venser moved and moaned. The artificer backed up. The body groaned and extended a bruised hand. It was an elf, Venser saw, or had been. He backed up farther, until he b.u.mped something. He turned, and towering over him was a butcher. But the creature was facing Elspeth and Koth, and had apparently not noticed him.

Venser brought the mana to him. He felt it sparking the air around him and seeping into his pores. He reached out to touch the Phyrexian, who froze stiff in place.

Suddenly the other Phyrexians were running at Koth and Elspeth. She had her sword out and it reflected the red glare of the place. Koth was positively red, with his fiery slits wide and the furnace of anger within him blazing in his eyes and at his fists. He struck the first Phyrexian, and that creature burst into flames and fell flailing off to the side. Koth ducked the swinging cleaver hand from a Phyrexian that had moved in from the back. Crouching, he planted one of his hands and swept the thing's leg with his own. It fell with a loud thud. Then another was trampling it, swinging its own cleaver down on Koth's head.

Elspeth cut a Phyrexian's head from its body, but still it fought with black oil spouting out where its neck had been. She leveled an overhand smash on the body, cleaving the left arm off, but still it did not fall. Thrusts and hacks to the torso had little effects either. Her sword was there to block each blow, and soon the butcher's cleaver was notched almost to its handle, and after another blow the pocked top of it fell off. The Phyrexian hunched its headless and armless body but still stood.

Elspeth took two steps back and lowered her blade. She took some deep breaths until her heartbeat slowed a bit. The opponent was disarmed. She could not normally attack a disarmed opponent, but the Phyrexian did not seem to know it was disarmed, and she cut it as it advanced, oil still bubbling out its neck and streaming down its body and arm.

Koth stepped between Elspeth and the Phyrexian and cast a column of fire from his hands, which ignited the hulking creature. Burning, it still charged. Koth waited until it was almost upon him, then he dropped to his hands and knees, and the lumbering beast fell over him and went sprawling. With only one arm, it had trouble getting up, and after a short while it stopped trying and burned.

Koth and Elspeth stood and turned to the other butchers. They had crowded into a loose circle around them. Venser was behind somewhere. Koth tapped Elspeth's shoulder, and when she turned she saw even more butchers staring at them. Their stillness was unnerving. She tried counting them but stopped at sixty. And there were plenty more than that.

The Phyrexians began rocking. From leg to leg they rocked. Then they started making the frenzied, mad sounds Venser had heard before. He glanced around until he located the ladder they had descended. Another quick look yielded the hole where the Phyrexians threw down the meat. Behind it was the hole where the bones were dumped. Across from him Elspeth was still breathing hard from her fight. Koth was doing a bit better, but even the vulshok looked exhausted. Venser cast his eyes over the enemy, front to back. Ninety-three, not including the huge ones. Odds were against them, based on how much they had worked to slay only four.

"Bones or meat?" Venser said.

His head down as he caught his breath, Koth looked up and then back down. Elspeth understood immediately.

"I cannot retreat in this case," she said, matter-of-factly.

"Retreat?" Venser said. "n.o.body's asking for that. Retreat would be to the ladder we climbed down, right? We simply have to find our next path."

By then Koth understood. "Meat is softer," he said, between breaths.

"Very true," Venser said. "We need to move over to our right, past the one with the dung slipping down its leg."

Koth swallowed hard. "I see it."

"Shall we?" Venser said.

They all waited for Elspeth to speak. When she said nothing, Venser started to move.

Luckily the Phyrexians had not moved forward, but continued to rock back and forth making their retching sounds. The moment the party moved they stopped rocking, put their heads down, and charged from all angles, their cleaver hands slas.h.i.+ng.

"Go," Venser yelled.

The Phyrexians converged on them when they were still a zanda beast'slength from the meat hole. Elspeth rushed forth and she and her sword became a blur as the sword attacked from every angle at one time. Six Phyrexians fell with thousands of slices crisscrossing their wizened sinew and metal.

At the rear, Koth caught a downward chop from the first Phyrexian's cleaver in a sticky pillow of fiery plasma, yanked the beast off balance, turned it, and threw it into the others. Venser teleported to the lip of the meat hole. It was so slopped with viscera that he almost lost his footing. It took him a second of flailing before he steadied himself. Then he turned and took three deep breaths of mana and blew out a thick cloud of s.h.i.+mmering air. Venser's gusted breath enveloped the Phyrexians caught in the back near him and suddenly their sinews leaped off their bodies and began to dance a mad jig amidst the gore. So surprised were the butchers that they stopped to stare...and were cut down by Elspeth as she moved like a flas.h.i.+ng blaze through them.

Still more butchers shoved and rocked in from the edges, running surprisingly fast in a convulsive frenzy to cleave the intruders' skulls and, Venser a.s.sumed somehow, drink their brains.

They were a stone's throw from the hole when the far wall quaked and a large portal in the shape of an iris diaphragm blossomed and out of the conduits and gutlike wetness of the hole stepped two ma.s.sive Phyrexians. They were near the size of the Phyrexian machine that had been crus.h.i.+ng bones with its one huge hand. But their hands, unlike most Phyrexians, had no sharp tipped fingers. Each hand was as large as their torso, and made of some metal wrapped with thick bands of sinew. The monstrous Phyrexians moved over the crowd of butchers, crus.h.i.+ng them as they planted their knuckles on the floor and swung their bodies to catch up.

The smell of the place was already rot and old blood, but with these crus.h.i.+ng creatures, the smell of singed hair joined the melange.

Elspeth stopped swinging her sword. She turned to Venser, but the artificer was not looking at the crushers or the butchers. His eyes were fixed on a place at the far end of the room.

"What is our plan with this large foe?" Elspeth yelled to her comrades. "Will we choose this point to continue on our path down that hole?"

The meat hole was within their reach. The few Phyrexians left that stood between them and the hole had stopped fighting to watch their huge cousins.

"I wonder," Venser said, ignoring what Elspeth had said. "If that is what I think it is."

Koth ran toward the hole. He reached down and seized a huge section of spinal vertebrae. He hurled the bone and it took the first Phyrexian in the eye and knocked it back and over. As the Phyrexian struggled to get up, Koth jumped on him and drove an ember-red hand down into the beast's chest, stilling its efforts. Another Phyrexian charged forward and swung. Large gauntlets of metal snapped out of Koth's forearms, which he raised as a s.h.i.+eld. The Phyrexian's cleaver bounced harmlessly off the growths.

Koth's hands went black, and the seams where his fingers bent glowed a bright red. He dived forward and plunged both hands to the elbows into the Phyrexian's body, instantaneously melting through the thing's metal framework of supports and bone shards. As he ducked the Phyrexian's swings, Koth lifted it off its feet and hurled it into the other butchers who had begun to advance.

The path was clear to the meat hole.

"Let's go," Koth said.

But Venser was not moving. In a moment the crushers would be upon them. Even Elspeth had begun to walk toward the hole.

"Oh, artificer, sir," Koth said. "You coming?"

At that moment Venser blinked out of existence to teleport to the bottom of the pit. Shrugging, Koth ran to the hole. The ground shook as the crushers advanced. They were just behind him, by the feel of it. Koth could smell their grim knuckles.

Elspeth was the first one down. Koth looked before he jumped. Darkness. The first crusher stopped and pulled back its huge fist for a punch that would surely have driven Koth back and into the metal wall. He jumped. The cus.h.i.+on of wind at the front of the punch whizzed past his head as he fell down into darkness.

The landing was soft and wet. They lay in the dark, listening to the caterwauling screams echoing from the hole above them. When Elspeth struggled to her feet a voice broke the quiet.

"Be at ease," the voice said. "We are many and you are few. Do not struggle or we will gut and leave you and the twisted ones will work through your skins. We need you as you need us to leave this dark place."

"We are not leaving this dark place," Venser said.

"Oh, you are leaving," the voice said. "You are coming with us. Furthermore, you will like like it very much. We will even take the vulshok, if he will agree not to run away." it very much. We will even take the vulshok, if he will agree not to run away."

"Show yourselves," Koth yelled, starting to glow red in the darkness.

"Loud as always," the voice said.

But many forms started to appear in the darkness at the edge of Koth's glow. They were of differing heights and sizes, but all carried weapons. There were thirty that Venser counted. An elf with etched copper arms stepped forward, with his bow half drawn and two c.o.c.ked fingers holding an arrow in place. His skin was greenish, and the smell of him was odd, Venser thought. Perhaps it was the copper growing into his skin. But the elf's hair, which seemed to be made up of segmented sections of cable or some close substance, was sweat sodden and pulled back. Deep creases surrounded both his eyes and mouth, as if he had frowned for years.

Behind the forms, vast boulders towered.

"Are we saved by the elves?" Koth laughed.

The elf at the front of the group held up one finger. "Not entirely," he swept his hand back. The outline of a vulshok, with spikes at the shoulders and head, was clearly visible behind him.

"I am Ezuri and you are saved by Mirrodin. It is a place you may remember from the old days," the elf said.

Koth was quiet.

Venser noticed for the first time that the elves in the group, and the leader in particular, had small circular parts of their arm and leg metal that glowed green.

"What do you seek?" Elspeth said, standing tall and white in the festering filth around her. Her sword was unsheathed and laid across her left arm. Venser was suddenly very glad that she was a part of the group. Koth was seething...getting redder and redder the longer he stood. There would be a fight if the situation continued.

It was the elf who spoke. "We are here to lead you out of this madness," the elf said, "if you would come."

Koth brightened. "Yes, please," he said. Then he seemed to realize that he'd spoken too quickly. "Why are you helping us?"

The elf laughed a high, shrill laugh. "One, maybe two more rooms and you would be as this meat we are standing upon," he said. He looked down at the rotting flesh. "Some of this is elf. Perhaps some of these elves were from my tribe." He lifted his foot. "That might even be my wife."

n.o.body spoke. After a moment Venser stepped forward.

"I am Venser of Urborg."

"It is I, Ezuri," the elf said. "And these are raiders against the fiends."

"Ezuri, we thank you for wanting to help us, but we must continue down from here."

"Why?" the elf said. "We have been tracking you for some time, and at every turn you seem to be uniquely able to choose the most dangerous path, and to take it."

Venser heard Koth stir next to him. He would hear from the vulshok later how they were not on the correct path, but it was time to make sure that the elf did not impede their progress.

"We search for a friend who was lost here."

"Who is this friend? I might have seen him."

"His name is Karn," Venser said.

Ezuri stared at Venser for what seemed like a full minute. "No, I have not seen anyone by that name."

"We must find him," Venser said.

"If he is any deeper than the meat room, you may forget you ever heard his name."

As if to prove the point, a chorus of gargled bellows cut the stinking air. Ezuri did not move his head, but his large ears pivoted slightly at the sound. His eyes never left Venser's.

"I cannot let you pa.s.s this room," Ezuri said. "You know this. I cannot let you stir those that tear flesh into a frenzy. We have been pressing them hard and making good progress against them. I cannot let you undo our work."

"You think you have them on the run?" Koth said. "We were just at the Vault of Whis-"

"And there were some Phyrexians around there," Venser cut in.

Sensing he was not getting the whole story, Ezuri cut his gaze from Koth to Venser, then after a quick glance at his troops, turned back to Venser before continuing.

"There are small pockets of the enemy there," Ezuri said. "That is known."

Elspeth picked up on the tone of the conversation. "Yes, some," she said.

"But what we saw come out of that mountain...," Koth began.

"Koth," Elspeth interrupted. "Would you introduce me to your kin?"

Koth cast an eye at the vulshok standing behind Ezuri. "He is s.h.i.+eld clan." Then to the vulshok, "Come forward, s.h.i.+eld clan."

The vulshok stood where he was, and looked to Ezuri. The elf nodded and the vulshok stepped forward.

"Since when do the wrought follow the bidding of those of the forests," Koth said.

"Since we lost most of our tribe," the vulshok replied.

"Do you know Ranglif or Nagel?"

The man shook his head.

Venser seemed unconcerned. "You must surely know the Lyser?"

The vulshok nodded once. "He is dead."

The small smile faded off of Koth's face. "Is that so?"

"That is so," the vulshok said. "A battle in the Tangle did him."

"What was he doing in the Tangle, with the elves?"

Venser watched the vulshok shrug his shoulders. The shoulder shrug must be one of the worst expressions in existence, Venser thought. So meaningless and yet so insolent.

The artificer looked critically at the band of rebels, as Koth argued with the vulshok. They had spread their ranks as Ezuri spoke. They would be hard to flank or evade. Still, if they could get to the other side of that large rock behind Koth, it might be possible to run through the boulder field. With a little luck they might find an exit before Ezuri and his thugs caught up. It was worth trying.

But Ezuri had been watching Venser. When the artificer moved, three of Ezuri's elves had their bows up and aimed.

"Do not move, friend," Ezuri said. "You really are going to accompany us."

Venser took a breath. In his toes and ears he could feel his mana tingling and building. He had enough mana for a very small jump. It could perhaps take him behind the large boulder. But if he made that jump he would be completely without mana and fighting all of them.

"We have watched you disappear," Ezuri said. "Do not do that here." To make his point, Ezuri had his archers point arrows at Elspeth.

Venser nodded. "Mirrodin will continue to suffer unless we find this person," Venser said.

"Then we will suffer," Ezuri said. "And to be honest with you, Mirrodin's suffering has allowed me this position of leaders.h.i.+p. So, let her suffer more, Mirrodin. I could not have risen as I have without the Phyrexians or the Vanis.h.i.+ng."

"That is blasphemy!" Koth said.

"Oh, hush, Koth, son of Kamath," Ezuri said. "We know of you and yours. You have no standing with us. If, indeed, you have any with your own people."

"Mirrodin will find herself again soon, when all machinery has been cleansed from her face and bowels," Ezuri said. "Our decline started with vedalken tinkering. If they had left the inner working of Mirrodin a great, natural secret instead of mucking around and making her into a machine."