“Those were trolls,” Koth said, pushing his toe into one of the still bodies.
“Where did they come from?” Venser said.
“They were lying down behind the throne,” Koth said. “I think they wait until prey becomes available.”
Elspeth had a queer look on her face. Venser looked for a wound, a tear in her white robe, but saw nothing. “What is it?” he said.
“I may have discovered something,” Elspeth said.
“Yes?”
“That beast did not notice me until I moved.”
“What do you mean?” Koth said.
“I froze next to you both, and that Phyrexian did not attack me initially. When I drew my weapon I was attacked.”
Venser thought back. He had not noticed that behavior. On Dominaria during the wars against the Phyrexians, they had moved quickly no matter what you did. But that was a different place. Mirrodin’s Phyrexians were different than those he’d observed in other places. That was to be expected, because phyresis incorporated differently. Certain groups took to infection very easily, he suspected. It’s the ones that didn’t take to infection that they needed to find.
“So, you didn’t move and the buggies didn’t bother you?”
“Essentially, yes.”
“This is possible,” Venser said. “I suspect.”
“I don’t want to wait and have one of them tear out my innards because I didn’t move.”
“Well no,” Elspeth said. “And I have not noticed it with the others we encountered.”
“Wouldn’t say you hung back much with those,” Koth said.
“That is true.”
Venser was staring at one of the panels on the wall, the one with all the moving Phyrexians. As he watched, they crammed together surging to move, seething.
“This room amazes me,” Venser said simply. “I can imagine all of these panels showing a different view.”
“Where are they going?” Elspeth said about the clustered Phyrexians on the screen.
“Maybe nowhere,” Venser said.
“Why do they always move?”
“Phyresis affects the nervous system. It fuses all the natural jumps of the body, making the creature very fast, but unable to fully turn off the pulses. When the stimulus comes, the body of a Phyrexian is unable to dissipate it. The charge causes movement, always.”
“Not good at ambushes, at least.”
“I wouldn’t say that. They can be quiet and they can go into a catatonic state,” Venser said. “But these states are difficult to wake from, and they are groggy for a time.”
Elspeth put her sword in its sheath. “Well, they are not so much to deal with here.”
“We have mostly encountered small guard or workers,” the guide called into the room. “Their strength is in numbers and speed. Do not feel your skills are greater than theirs. We want to avoid a direct fight, as we would be quickly overwhelmed and destroyed.”
Elspeth looked doubtful. “I have fought these beasts before. I know how they work.”
“Obviously not, if you just figured out that freezing causes them to not see you.”
“And you knew this?”
“Yes,” the guide said. “Their sight is bad. But most times it is not possible to freeze indefinitely.”
“What did we find out coming into this golden room?” Koth interjected.
“That this is older than the columns and their tendrils,” Venser said. “Can’t you see that? It’s clear.”
“Clear to you,” Koth said. “But far from clear.”
“This room is intact from the inside,” Venser said. “From the outside the tendril had grown around it. To me it means that the tendril is newer. Yes?”
Koth nodded. “Maybe. Or maybe the golden metal this room is made of has bitten deep into the tendril? It could be a special alloy.”
Venser stared at Koth a couple of seconds before bobbing his head. “Yes. That is also possible.”
“Thank you,” Koth said.
“But I do not think it is the case,” Venser said.
“Clearly, you don’t.”
Venser looked around the room. He sucked in his cheeks as he thought. “Right,” he said at last. “Should we be on our way?” He did not wait for a response, but walked over to the hole Koth had made and crawled out into the tendril-tube.
The guide led them left and proceeded down the tube in a slightly hunched gait.
They moved through the tunnel until it became thicker. Soon it became high, and then higher still. Then the passage widened into another vast cavern. They made their way down, along the crumbly ore until a floor of sorts became apparent. It was riddled with boulders and dusts of many colors, and even a couple of partial skeletons in various degrees of decomposition. Leagues passed under their feet as they walked along the bottom of the cavern, and then even the bottom of the cavern fell away suddenly. A circular hole so wide across they could not see the other side was thrust up. The bottom was similarly cloaked in darkness. Koth picked up a chunk of slag from the floor of the cavern.
“Do not think of throwing that over the side,” Elspeth warned.
Koth threw the chunk into the air and caught it easily. “Wouldn’t think of it,” he said.
In the blue light from Venser’s wisp, the air looked ghostly and distorted. Venser put his hand out over the hole. “Do you feel anything?” he asked.
The others put their hands out.
“I feel the wind,” Elspeth said.
“I feel heat,” Koth said. “And something else.”
Koth turned his hand over and then back.
“I feel mana, I think,” Koth said. “My hand is tingling. My nose hairs are tickling.”
“I feel that too,” Venser said. He looked up. The hole continued upward for a short time before stopping in a mass of slag and blacked char. The slag that stopped the top of the huge chute appeared different than the dull metal of the surrounding cavern.
“Let me see that chunk of yours,” Venser said, holding out his hand to Koth.
Koth placed the chunk of metal in Venser’s gloved hand. The artificer held the piece out above his foot and dropped it. The chunk should have fallen and crushed his toe, but instead it fell only a short distance before slowing down to float like a feather.
“Well,” Venser said. “That is strange, but it seems to be in our favor.”
“How’s that?” Koth said. He reached out and poked the rock, which spun sideways and then continued its lazy fall.
The guide watched all of this. “I do not know of this chute. If we go this way it is into the unknown.”
Elspeth shifted her weight from one thick leg to the other.
“It will allow us to travel down the shaft,” Venser said. “Otherwise it might have been a dangerous climb.”
“My way has a climb,” the guide said.
Elspeth stared at the guide as though he were mad. “A climb?” she said. “I am not in favor of that path then.”
Koth coughed. “You want us to go down that sheer hole?”
“As you can see,” Venser said. “We will float. It will be fast and safe.”
Elspeth opened her mouth but waited a moment before speaking. “That is not the point,” she said. “It is a hole.”
“Yes,” Koth said, pointing at Elspeth. “What she said.”
“This is a stroke of luck,” Venser said. “I think this shaft goes very deep. Almost to the mana core of this metal place. It’s little more than a conduit.”
“It is possible,” the guide said.
“But a blocked conduit,” Elspeth said, pointing upward at the slag plug.
“Exactly,” Venser said. “It seems it once vented, but is now plugged. That is why the mana concentration is so great. Koth can feel it and so can I. It is so dense that the normal force of matter seems interrupted, I would guess.”