Scars Of Mirrodin_ The Quest For Karn Part 8

Venser yawned. "Mirrodin is metal, in case you haven't noticed."

"Mirrodin is alive," alive," Ezuri said, and then a sneer crossed his face. "We have no need of artificers here, my friend. Tinkering has got us to this impa.s.se. Phyrexians are tinkerers." Ezuri said, and then a sneer crossed his face. "We have no need of artificers here, my friend. Tinkering has got us to this impa.s.se. Phyrexians are tinkerers."

"They are not artificers," Venser said, unconcerned by the red face of the elf. "Artificers create."

Elspeth, who had been standing a bit back from the rest, stepped forward. She spoke simply, with no expression on her smooth face. "We are here in this place to help, for the good of this plane. If you force my hand, I will be compelled to slay you all. You are not thinking about the good of your plane, about what is good for all. Only for yourselves. So, for you own good, I will be compelled to teach you humility and discipline at the edge of my sword." She held her sword up, glittering, in the vast room of piled boulders.

All of Ezuri's force nocked arrows and pointed them at Elspeth. "Suit yourself," Ezuri said, but his voice betrayed a certain unease.

"This will not go well for you," Koth said offhandedly.

"What would a coward know?" Ezuri said. "You leave your people alone and undefended. Your home is overrun, rock man. Your people are scattered and they died calling your name, but you were away on your merry travels."

Koth was instantly bright red. "You might slay me, but I will kill at least three quarters of your numbers. And you first," he said, pointing at Ezuri.

"Oh really?" Ezuri squinted and spat at the nearest rock. He stepped forward.

"Shall we see?" Koth said.

Elspeth nodded. "Ready."

Ezuri turned to one of his men and seized his bow. He turned back to Koth and Elspeth.

"Gentlemen!" Venser bellowed. "Wait." The artificer opened his hand and a bright flash popped. Venser rushed forward and knocked the bow from Ezuri's numb fingers.

Taken by a sudden terror caused by Venser's magic, the other rebels turned and ran. Yet Ezuri did not run. He stood looking from Venser to Elspeth. "You will bring the Phyrexians storming up," Ezuri said.

"That has already come to pa.s.s," Elspeth said. She was gasping between words to keep her battle l.u.s.t abated. "You should flee to your home and prepare for the worst."

But the elf did not seem convinced, Venser thought. As long as his hand did not stray to the sword on his belt he would live.

He stared at them a moment longer, before turning on his heel and following the other rebels.

Venser sat down hard on the nearest boulder. All of a sudden, he felt a familiar pinch in his brow. His stomach tightened. His skin began to s.h.i.+ver. He felt like he was succ.u.mbing to the onset of a sudden sickness, but he knew he was not. It was a familiar feeling and he knew its cure. He also knew what would happen if he did not cure it within the next hour.

He began patting the many pockets sewn into the leather tunic under his loose-fitting armor. His britches were similarly accoutered and he felt those as well. The vial was in a pocket sewn onto the back of his pants. Koth's eyes were fixated on Ezuri's last position. The vulshok was still as red as fire, and grumbling under his breath. Elspeth watched as Venser drew out the vial.

"Leave me," Venser said. "Let me have my peace."

"Why?" Elspeth said, forgetting all about Ezuri, who she had only minutes before been willing to kill.

Venser shook his head, his patience waning. His stomach ached and he could feel the mana on his brow bubbling and seething for what he was holding in his hand. As soon as the white warrior left he would be able to...

"You want what's in that bottle, don't you?" Elspeth said.

Venser said nothing.

"You should see yourself. Your skin has gone to the color of ash. Have you seen that your left hand is trembling?"

Venser knew that more than his hand would start shaking if he didn't have what was in the bottle.

"Leave!" Venser yelled suddenly. He did not know he would yell. Yet when he opened his mouth it was indeed a yell that came out. It didn't stop there. He continued to yell with such force, spittle came out of his mouth. "I will make that metal in your armor writhe like a snake and melt itself through your very flesh."

Elspeth blinked at his words. "What is in that bottle?" she said.

Venser's head was suddenly pounding. It always happened so quickly. "I will give you to the count of five before I begin working with your armor. I am an artificer-it is easy for me to talk to the metal in you. One, two, three."

Elspeth put up her hands and began walking backward. "What will happen to you when you use all that is in that bottle of yours?"

"I will use the next one." Venser mumbled, working on the cap of the vial.

Keeping their distance, Elspeth and Koth watched as Venser took a sip from the bottle. He tried not to be greedy, but when his need reached the point it was at, it became difficult to keep composed. One sip was enough. He felt the raw mana course through him and his senses tightened and then bloomed and he could feel the energy of the metal of that place pumping all around him. He felt as if the power in him was circling his head and tapering up toward the sky.

"I feel better now," Venser said.

Elspeth raised one of her eyebrows.

Venser put the small vial back in its pocket. He patted it and pulled a deep breath.

"What is that fluid?" Koth said.

"It's a personal concoction," Venser said.

Koth nodded.

"It contains the extract of the sap of a corkscrew tree from the plane of Zendikar," Venser said. "Plus minerals rendered from certain material pulled from a disintegration hollow I know of in Dominaria, and something from Mirrodin, as a matter of fact."

"Yes?"

"Moth extract, it is called."

Koth's mouth tightened. "Blinkmoths. There not many of those left on Mirrodin anymore. They were harvested to decimation, I have heard. But who knows these things-all I've heard are old stories. Rumors."

"Of what?"

"Of the vedalken, the indigo experimenters, who became obsessed with that fluid, and the power they believed it brought. They still exist deep in the Lumingrid where the Knowledge Pool ripples. But they delved too deep, the myths say. This was so long ago. I would not ever touch what is in the blinkmoth."

"You are not me," Venser said, patting the vial through his armor.

"Clearly."

To the center of Mirrodin, down holes riven through solid metal, along runways both twisted and forgotten, moved Geth-commander of the Vault of Whispers. He scuttled in his bulky exoskeleton of barbed alloy, ducking low-hanging veinlike tubes that had torn free from the wall and hung varicose in the dim pa.s.sage.

Geth's skull, surrounded up to his ears with a body that glinted and grew, turned neither right nor left. He knew the way to the throne room.

He imagined what he would report when questioned about the weekly progress. All fairly routine, a similar meeting to many of the others: good progress, pockets of resistance that will shortly be absorbed. Issues with furnace-level discipline, suggest harsh punishment. No significant problems encountered. Geth felt his mouth grin, a feeling that was becoming more and more difficult as his Phyrexian transformation continued. Skin is the thing he lacked. The skin that was left on his face was hard to move, leaving him with a permanent expression of stretched rage. He shrugged. It had always been his favorite expression anyway. It was what he'd become, and he was great.

Glissa the meddler would be there, asking him questions that she already knew the answers to, testing him. Imagine that he, the Lord of the Vault, would be weak to the words of the likes of her. A former elf. It was she who told him to find a solution to the problem they were having fully a.s.similating the red ones. Him? What control did he have over how phyresis overtook, or didn't, as the case was? Why didn't she turn her dripping eyes and ask the tinkers, the cutters in their halls of blood and blades? She was always consulting with them anyway. Ask them.

He was Geth-Lord of the Vault. His job was to bleed Mirrodin until she was pale and then fill her full of the black oil. Make her one of the chosen.

And his job was almost complete.

He neared the final pa.s.sage, never his favorite. He struggled between the wet tube works, the barbs from his new body catching on stringy parts and stopping him until he found the part caught and freed his body. It smelled like emptied bowels. Glissa had designed the pa.s.sage, he was sure. She had made it just for him. She made it impossible for him to arrive clean, without being covered in recyclate and stinking like a festering corpse.

Whereas Glissa was always clean and s.h.i.+ning when Geth arrived, and that day was no exception. Geth was sure she had a special pa.s.sage all to her own.

He entered the hall and fell to one knee and bowed to the nascent Father of Machines on his throne. Glissa was in her usual place at the base of the high throne, and Geth did not look at her.

"Ah," Glissa said, projecting her voice so the golem would be sure to hear, if he was listening, which Geth doubted. "Our lord of the Vault has arrived." She clearly hated him at least as much as he hated her.

"I am here to give successful tidings," Geth said.

The chancellor minion scurried over to him, tink-tink-tinking tink-tink-tinking the metal floor with its claws. The creature's robe was still rotting off its miserable little body, Geth saw. The hood it wore was still low over its eyes, showing only its stubby, cleaverlike teeth. A book was clutched in its metal claws. the metal floor with its claws. The creature's robe was still rotting off its miserable little body, Geth saw. The hood it wore was still low over its eyes, showing only its stubby, cleaverlike teeth. A book was clutched in its metal claws.

"Maybe, Lord, you are not familiar with the time The Father of Machines called this meeting?" It said, opening the book and moving one fingertip down the page.

Geth swatted the book from its claws. The minion scrambled across the floor to collect the book off the ground.

"If there was anything written in that book, anything but the scribbles you make with your bloodied fingertips, then I would pay more attention," Geth said.

It was the same every time. The little theatrical play they put on for the golem's benefit.

But it was somehow different. Geth could feel it. The minion scrambled but did not pick up the book. It stood over it without bending. Geth had forgotten why the little creature was always in the chamber.

A howling cry cut the air, making the very walls shake. The cry was filled with some of the most exquisite angst and pain Geth had ever heard. But for one severe moment Geth thought the chamber would fall in on itself.

His eyes went to Glissa, who was looking up at the throne.

The golem bellowed in frustration and anger as he tried to stand. Geth knew that the throne was bound to his metal spine, ingrown, but the golem was strong and pulled until the throne released him and he stood to his full height.

The minions that held his throne column on their backs readjusted their stances.

Karn crumpled into a crouch, sobbing. Then he tipped forward and tumbled off the top of the throne column. It was a high column, and Geth watched as the golem hit the floor with a tremendous thud.

Moments later Karn stood out of the dent and fell to his knees, raving in a language Geth could not hope to understand.

"Father of Machines," Glissa said, her voice as smooth as the oil dripping out of her eyes. "We have council with you today." She snapped her fingers at the minion, and the little creature scrambled over with the book, which it popped open and held up before Karn's wide-eyed face. The silver golem looked down at the book, his face jumping to an expression of pain and then to one of anger and then to tears.

Geth could clearly see the rivulets of black oil popping out on his brow. Glissa noticed it too, Geth was sure of that. More fuel to the fire for those that said that Karn was not the true Father of Machines, no matter how much Glissa wanted to make him thus.

His body was fighting the oil, that much was certain. More times than not Geth found him that way at their councils. He found him raving mad, teetering between clarity and instability.

The oil could do that as it was moving through the pathways of the chosen's neurological workings, Geth had been told. But that period in the transformation only took a couple of days at most. Karn had been volatile for months. His body was simply not accepting what they all were offering. At least that was what those in command said of Karn, when n.o.body was listening.

Glissa would not hear of it. Brothers had lost their hands and then heads. Sisters had disappeared. Since Glissa had become fully Phyrexian, with a right hand wrought and strong, and a dull scythe for a left, she listened to zero backtalk. She even refused to allow Karn his tantrums, if she could help it.

The minion, all silver and sculpted smooth, snapped his book closed and skittered away into a shadow. Glissa sauntered over to Karn and helped him stand straight. He looked down at her arm before peering around. "What is this place?" he bellowed.

"This is your throne room, Father," Glissa said.

"Who is that?" Karn pointed.

Tezzeret stood at the end of Karn's pointed finger.

"Father," Tezzeret said. "It is I, your Tezzeret. Here to counsel you away from these bootlickers." Tezzeret smiled and flexed his arm.

Geth wanted to look away. Truth be told, that arm with its bonelike claw caused him great worry. He imagined it crus.h.i.+ng his skull when he was trying to sleep.

"Oh look, the toady of Bolas calls us bootlickers," Glissa said. "You are late as usual."

Tezzeret bowed slightly. "Guilty as charged. Please accept my most sincere apology."

Karn fell to his knees with a clank. "Machines," he said. "Machines."

"I can see that today we have filth," Tezzeret said. "This is Karn's weakness leaving his body."

"Father of Machines, I think you mean," Glissa said. She watched Karn kneeling on the floor. Then she turned to Tezzeret. "Your contributions on Father's well-being, one-arm, are both useful and valuable. Thank you." Glissa said icily.

"Only trying to help."

"What is a machine," Karn was whispering. He reached down to the floor and as easily as Geth might tear a human's skin from his body, Karn pushed his finger into the metal of the floor and tore out a head-sized sheet. He held it up before his face.

"This is flesh," he said. "But where is metal?"

"He is not himself today," Glissa said.

"Really, do you think not?" Tezzeret said.

Glissa ignored him. She bent down to help Karn to his feet, but he would not cooperate, and Glissa could as easily lift Karn as she could the Oxidda Chain. He remained on his knees regarding the flat metal piece.

"How do we fix him?" Geth said.

"He is not broken, dunce," Tezzeret said. "He is not a machine."

"But he is metal," Geth growled, his own exoskeletal framework swelling with anger.

"So are you, and n.o.body's been able to fix what's wrong with you."

Geth moved to swipe Tezzeret's neck with his huge claw. Tezzeret merely grabbed Geth's claw with his etherium hand and in a moment the claw was bent into the form of a five-petal flower.

Geth bellowed and raised his other claw.

Tezzeret held up one finger. "Attention. I will turn your other hand into something more, shall we say, anatomically correct for where I will insert it if you continue this."