He remembered the day he had started to need the potion on a daily basis. He and another artificer had traveled far afield in Dominaria looking for Phyrexian artifacts. There were still many battlefields where the forces of the scourge and Dominaria had clashed, but Venser had long since learned that such battlefields did not yield what he searched for.
Sure, one could find fragments and severed parts, but what Venser looked for was fully intact Phyrexians or the ships and vehicles they traveled in. He’d even found largely intact pieces once or twice, but he’d never seen anything like what he saw that fateful day.
He had been deep in the most remote wastes on a multi-day expedition. On the last day, the younger artificer he’d been traveling with had found a strange pile of black stones. At least they had felt like stones. They were hard and of the deepest color. Afus, the junior artificer, had found them piled perfectly into the shape of a tiny pyramid.
Against his better judgment, Venser had taken them, taken them all. He had known it was not wise to come into contact with objects of power that were unidentified. And they were powerful. Venser had felt the mana seething in them. They were worth coin anyhow. That was how he had rationalized taking them. They were worth gold.
And then he had made the worst mistake of all. He had teleported with them. Afus was traveling overland, but that was not how Venser chose to travel. He had learned early after developing his ability to teleport that it was not wise to travel with anything powerful that you did not want to become in some way enmeshed with. Inevitably whatever you traveled with ended up part of you after the mana put you and it back together. The black stones immediately affected him, causing the palsy. It was incurable and fatal. Afus, even though he had never teleported with the stones, had died shortly after finding them. His body had lain for a day in his studio before Venser had gotten up the courage to open him up and take a look inside. What he’d found still haunted his deepest nightmares: The young artificer’s organs and lungs had become shriveled and transparent, as if they were ceasing to be.
Venser had no doubt that his organs would end up looking the same way. He just had not thought it would begin while he was on Mirrodin. The blinkmoths had somehow accelerated the effect.
He had later figured out that the substance was in all likelihood some of the material residue left when Yawgmoth had been vaporized after the explosion that ended the Phyrexian invasion on Dominaria.
“You coming?” Koth said.
Venser blinked out of his ruminations. He had fallen far back from the rest of the group.
“Yes,” Venser said, and started walking faster.
Koth walked ahead.
“Koth,” Venser said. “Why did Maalan address you as ‘son of Kamath’?”
The vulshok slowed his step. “Because my sire is Kamath.”
“Yes, but how did he know?”
“I am known here.”
Venser remembered the expression the loxodon had on his face when he addressed Koth. He was known all right, but not honored. For some reason Venser remembered Koth’s mother. Koth’s people could not have understood when he disappeared. They could not have known that he had left to find help for Mirrodin. To them, Venser thought, they would have seen a coward’s motive.
They walked in silence. Eventually the wall of the cavern became apparent. The crew leading them trailed ahead in a ragged line that made its way to a particular part of the wall. As they neared it, Venser could see where someone had cut a jagged hole out in the metal wall with concentrated fire. It was through that hole that they walked, ducking their heads slightly.
Behind the wall were gridworks and supports, but no Phyrexian conduit guts. A ladder extended upward, and they climbed.
Many times they found other cutout doors leading to other hot, metal rooms connected with ladders. Venser lost count as to how many. But eventually they came to a smaller room that smelled of roasted meat, singed fat, and unwashed humans. Coal fires burned near ragged shelters scattered here and there. Some shelters were made of the thorax shells of large Phyrexians. Others were metallic skins stretched over a framework of the other parts of a Phyrexian. As they approached, every occupant of the small camp came out to stare as Venser, Koth, Elspeth, and the fleshling passed.
Venser heard whispers and some hisses as Koth passed. Eventually the loxodon stopped in front of a shelter made of only the rounded pieces of Phyrexians’ belly armor that was raised off the ground slightly. An elf stuck his head out of the round hole in the side of the structure, and turned his milky white eye to them.
“Ah, yes,” said Ezuri. “I recall these machine lovers. Wherever did you find them?”
The loxodon spoke up. “They were in furnace room minor wandering around.”
Ezuri nodded slowly. To Venser it looked as though the elf had added a little weight onto his frame. The creases around his eyes were also not quite as deep as he remembered.
“You have prospered, Ezuri,” Venser said.
The elf turned and looked him up and down. “You have not, artificer,” he said. “I take it you have not found the one you seek. What was his name, Kurt, Kam?”
“Karn.”
“Karn, just so,” Ezuri said. In a moment the elf hopped out of the hole of his structure and stood before them in a robe of shimmering material that draped to his ankles.
“We have not found the golem, no,” Venser said. He opened his mouth to tell the elf about Tezzeret telling them where Karn can be found, and to tell him about the fleshling, but something in the way Ezuri was staring at him made Venser close his mouth.
Ezuri’s eyes moved over the rest of the companions, until it stopped on the fleshling leaning on Elspeth’s shoulder.
“You are new. Who are you?”
The fleshling said nothing
“Speak up,” Ezuri said.
“Melira,” the fleshling said softly.
Melira? Venser thought.
“The disgusting flesh of an outlander?” Ezuri said. “Yet you have the mark of a Greenshank sylvok to my eyes.”
Venser said nothing. Nothing at all.
Ezuri’s eye did not leave the fleshling.
“Are you still prevailing against the forces of Phyrexia?” Elspeth said.
That made Ezuri’s eye move off the fleshling and rest on Elspeth. “Why, hello, white lady.”
“So, you have vanquished the Phyrexians from the surface?” Elspeth said, repeating her original question, which she could tell was a sore spot for the elf.
“We are making headway,” Ezuri said casually.
Venser stepped forward before any more words could be spoken on the subject. “Ezuri,” he said. “Could we stay here for a time, until we have rested?”
Ezuri glanced at Koth before curling his lip. The vulshok pretended not to notice. “All enemies of Phyrexia are welcome here,” Ezuri said. “But I warn you that you may be asked to help our efforts.”
“Thank you, Ezuri,” Venser said.
The elf nodded. “Leaving will be your trick. But you are welcome to stay.”
“Leaving will be our trick,” Elspeth said.
Ezuri’s eye drifted back to the fleshling before he turned and climbed back into his shelter.
The loxodon led them to another part of the settlement. He stopped at a small shelter-nothing more than a Phyrexian crusher’s back panel leaned against the metal wall.
“This was a friend’s place,” the loxodon said. “Gone to shadow now. He had to be put away.”
Elspeth wasted no time leading the fleshling into the shelter, and helping her lie down on her stomach.
“Water is found over there,” the loxodon said, gesturing to an indentation in the metal where water dripped. “The latrines are over there.”
Venser walked over to the water pool and took a long drink. He filled up his canteen, aware that all of the eyes of the small settlement were on him. Three children appeared at the water pool. They watched Venser from a safe distance, but eventually came closer. He smiled at them and they trailed him as he walked back to the shelter. He noticed that some of the children had dark stains blotching their metal parts. Some even had the stain on their skin parts. One girl who walked with the other children behind Venser, giggling as she copied his walk with long loping steps, had more than a dark stain on her arm. Her stain had worn away skin, and appeared to be spreading up her arm.