The organicity made Venser relax somehow. “Why is this room different?” Venser asked, his head still spinning with tiredness.
“This is one of the many passages and rooms that have been growing,” the guide said, “creating themselves since the Phyrexians. None of the guides know why.”
Venser stopped to look at the walls. “What is the green material?” he said, pinching the dark green strands hanging from the walls. “It’s not metal.”
The guide shrugged, but the fleshling approached the wall for a closer look.
“This is lamina,” she said. “A growing material we revere in the Tangle. It is an effect of the True Sun,” she said to the bewildered faces around her.
“Why is it down here?” Koth said.
“It is commonly found in these depths,” the guide said.
A tremendous crash thundered through the room, followed by the creaking sound of bending metal.
“They have broken through,” Koth said.
They began running. Venser was the last to stand. His legs had felt like boiled eggs before the Phyrexians had broken into that cavern, and he would have to run more. To top it off, his mind had started to drift to the empty bottle in his shirt. The empty bottle. He could already feel his arms and legs quake at the thought of the empty bottle. He’d tried living without sips once before, and that hadn’t worked out too well, had it?
The clatter behind became the booming of many scrambling feet as the Phyrexians charged along the passage and then into the large room, which they found empty.
The guide led them along branchways, where the passages were growing sideways in long tubes. As they ran, they passed places where new passages shot through one another and they crumbled, leaving large rooms. Lamina, as the fleshling called it, hung randomly.
There were so many small passageways and crumbled walls with holes in them that the Phyrexians had trouble following their trail, though not for lack of trying. As they ran, Venser could hear the enemy crashing through walls and retching out their screams.
Venser stopped.
“Keep running,” Elspeth said.
“I can’t,” he said. “Let me rest for a moment.” His legs were so wobbly that he felt he would trip with each step. Tripping would not be advised just then. The growing metal of the passage they were running in was jagged and strangely colored.
“Why is it different colors?” Venser panted.
But the guide was watching behind them. He did not hear Venser.
“Now we go,” the guide said.
They kept running. Sometimes the Phyrexians sounded far away. Sometimes they sounded as if they were in the same passage. They kept running. Eventually the walls took on different lines of color. Some of the rings were yellow and others were green. They looked like minerals and base metals. At one point Venser stopped running and touched a wetted finger to one of the rough lines. He put the finger in his mouth, then spat.
“Valatitium,” Venser said. “This is found on other planes.”
Koth stopped and looked at the line of yellow. “These are deposits,” he said. “If the vulshok could delve this deep we could haul quite a lot of good minerals and metal.”
“Keep running,” the guide yelled.
But soon Venser could not run anymore. He stopped again. The Phyrexians had dropped back, farther than they had been. Still, their banging movements were clearly audible.
“We cannot stop,” The guide said. “There are branches ahead that may afford us a way to lose our pursuers.”
“I cannot run anymore,” Venser said. His legs were so tired that he sat hard on the floor. He had run so hard that his lungs burned and a metallic taste was at the back of his throat. “I cannot.”
“You must,” the guide said.
But Venser’s eyes were on the color bands in the wall. There was a new color he had not seen before. He inched closer to the wall and put a finger to it. A bit of the color crumbled easily at his touch. Venser turned to Koth.
“Do you know this mineral?” Venser said.
“We call it ker,” Koth said.
“I know it as kaachmine,” Venser said, his mind racing. He suddenly snapped his fingers. “We need to collect as much of it as we can.” He took out the knife that lay in his boot and began chipping chunks of ker from the wall. It came off easily.
“We must go,” the guide said.
“Stand away,” Venser said.
As he worked, Koth glowed slightly. Venser noticed it and frowned. “Don’t get hot around this material,” Venser said.
“Let us run,” Elspeth said.
“I have no more energy or mana,” Venser said, as he crumbled some of the ker chunks into powder. “If this works, it will require neither of those.”
By the time he had a good-sized pile, the Phyrexians were quite near, their thrashing made them sound like they were in the next passage.
Venser led Elspeth, the fleshling, and the guide down the passage. Koth stayed near the pile. When the rest of them were a good distance down the passage, Venser pushed each one of them into a depression in the wall, and then waved to Koth.
The vulshok tore a strip off his cloth shirt. He wound the strand of cloth up tight and placed one piece in the pile of ker, which reached to the height of his knee. He trailed the other end of the cloth away from the pile.
Then the Phyrexians appeared at the end of the passage. When Koth saw them he casually leaned over the end of the cloth. He made a motion, and sparks flew off the flint and steel in his hand. Soon he’d lit the end of the cloth, which flamed strangely well. As it burned, Koth backed up carefully, watching to see if it would go out. When it was obvious that the flame had caught and caught well on the fabric, Koth turned and sprinted faster than anyone had ever seen him run. The Phyrexians, seeing him running, bounded ahead.
“Down,” Venser yelled.
There was a huge pop and a whoosh of air, and in the next moment Venser found himself facedown on the metal floor, far from where he had been standing. He shook his head as he sat up. A high ringing filled his skull. Nearby Elspeth was already on her feet and looking down at him. Her mouth was moving, but Venser could not hear any of her words.
Where the mound of ker had been, there was only the tangled mass of many parts of many more Phyrexians. Venser doubted if he could climb over the pile, it was so high. Some of the enemy had been torn asunder while others had their metal parts melted to the floor. All was still.
Elspeth put out her hand and helped Venser to his feet. The guide was mysteriously on his feet and unscathed. Elspeth had black powder burns on her arm and face. Venser could only imagine how he looked. If how he felt was any indication, then it was bad indeed. His head still hurt from the attack that had dented his helmet, as the ringing in his ears began to subside, he felt like lying down and sleeping for sixty rotations of a Dominaria sun.
But it wasn’t to be. From beyond the heap of destroyed Phyrexians came a series of grunting gags that sounded very much alive.
Venser turned to Elspeth. He was the very essence of depleted. He had nothing left. Well, he had the knife he kept in his boot with which to fight off all attackers. So, really, he had nothing. Even Elspeth, who was always willing to slay Phyrexians, looked around helplessly.
“Did you hear that?” Venser could once again hear himself speak, though the echoing in his skull sounded strange. He could more feel his words’ echo than properly hear them.
Elspeth was looking around. “Where is Koth?” she said.
They found him farther down the passage, lying on his side, groaning. A piece of twisted metal, which could have fit on a Phyrexian, had pierced the side of his abdomen.
Elspeth carefully took hold of the piece of metal and yanked it out. Koth grunted through gritted teeth. The piece was slathered with blood and Elspeth threw it clattering away. Koth relaxed and rolled over on his back. From behind them another Phyrexian call echoed.