Once again on the boulders, Koth turned them north and led them above a small path into the rougher country. Soon the metal under them became steep and they made their way to a higher plateau. Elspeth held her sword close to her chest, still shivering at the thought of the shackle she’d imagined around her ankle.
Koth was down with his ear against the ground. “There are sounds,” he said finally.
“How far are we from the Vault?” Venser said. He was standing nearer to the wisp lights that he had brought out to light their way, looking closely at an area in the side of the Oxidda, where jags of metal were jutting out.
“Perhaps ten angles of the sun,” Koth said with his ear still to the ground. “Perhaps less.”
“I smell smoke,” Elspeth said.
“We are near the hut of a shaman,” Koth said. “It is her fire you smell. It is a good sign. It means she is not gone to the nim or Phyrexia, but I will not stop there.”
“Why?” Elspeth said.
“She is mad, that is why.”
“And what are the sounds you hear?” Venser said.
“It is hard to say,” Koth said.
“And their numbers?”
“Twenty at least. Accompanied by something I have seen in a nightmare, I think.”
“Nim, Phyrexians, villagers?”
“These are not villagers. These are creatures. They drag parts as they wander.”
Venser went back to looking closely at the metal cliff face they were standing next to. Then he said, “Come help me with this.”
Venser had them scrape at the metal cliff face, which crumbled easily.… Koth with his igneous forearm growths and Elspeth with a boot knife. Venser used the edge of his helmet. A strange, crumbly material sifted down as they scraped. A bluish brown hue.
“Irrenphor,” Venser said. “A byproduct when certain metal alloys are heated and cooled. This material grows on slag. It is part mineral and part mana life.”
Just then Elspeth made a small spark when her knife caught some of the iron as she scraped. Venser stayed her hand with one of his.
“It is part metal, part life, and all explosive,” he said. “Work carefully.”
Elspeth and Koth chipped, digging out chunks and culling them with the edge of their gloved hands into small piles, which they moved into larger mounds. The whole time Venser stood back, watching the process and making small marks with a thin metal quill on a wad of papers he kept tucked away, as a breeze ruffled the hem of his tunic.
Finally the piles were painstakingly pushed together into a single as high as a man’s shin. Venser carefully tucked his papers away before he got down on his knees beside the pile. It glowed slightly in the dark night. Venser began crumbling the thicker chunks of material between his fingers. When the others stooped to help, Venser motioned them away. When he was finished a pile of gritty powder lay before him.
“This will give them something to remember,” Venser said.
A long, guttural sound, like an animal being choked, cut the night. So shocking was the cry that a group of small mouselike creatures on metal legs burst from a hole in the mountain and fled disturbed into another hole. Koth ran to the edge of the plateau.
“Where will they come?” Venser asked, calmly. “And how?”
Koth did not move his gaze. “They will come here,” the vulshok pointed to his left. “And here.”
“I have not seen much of Phyrexia,” Elspeth said. “Their numbers are surely smaller.”
Venser looked up briefly. He was separating the pile in to many smaller piles again. “Do not think what you see reflects the extent of the phyresis.” He shook his head. “We could all be surprised.”
Venser stood and brushed his hands down the front of his leather and metal tunic.
“Will it work?” Koth said.
“Well,” Venser said. “I do not run fast. On the other hand, I don’t have to run faster than them. I only have to run faster than you.”
Koth looked at Venser before chuckling. Venser smiled.
“Well, I am quick like ionized lightning,” Koth said.
“Then help me move these piles to the edge.”
They could hear more strangled sounds and a strange grinding scream in the darkness as they moved the piles. There was a sudden metallic clambering.
“Quick,” Venser said.
There were three piles, each the size of Koth’s foot. They stood near the precipice. A moment later two claws topped the edge and a head followed. Red eyes glowed in deep sockets as the creature jerked and convulsed for better purchase. Black oil streamed over a face composed almost entirely of mouth, with huge, looping fangs jutting at strange angles. It shuddered and regurgitated a jet of blackness at Elspeth who raised her foot for a kick at its head. The Phyrexian snapped open the mechanism of its mouth, which popped to double its size and caught Elspeth’s foot and jerked back. She fell, but managed to bring her sword down and split the creature’s skull in half.
“Back,” Venser yelled. Elspeth crabbed backward just as the creatures, with eyes of blood, began clambering over the edge of the plateau.
What scrambled over the edge was terrible to view. Koth inhaled sharply with the shock of the moment. Venser fought to keep from fleeing. At the head of the Phyrexians was a creature double the size of a man but stooped and with massive skeletal shoulders of metal and stretched skin. A black spine twisted through its body, and rough jags jutted out at irregular intervals from the grotesque twist. The thing’s huge claws and teeth dripped with black vomitus and it shook as though caught in the throes of a most violent fit.
“I never thought,” Venser managed to say. “That they would be so …”
“Awful?” Elspeth said.
Venser nodded. Before this sojourn on Mirrodin, he had never seen a live Phyrexian, had seen only their artifacts and remnants, and with the handful of the beasts that stood before him, he wished he could still say that. They were more haphazard than he thought they would be. And they appeared smarter than he would have believed. Their dark eyes glittered in their deep sockets. He turned his head in disgust and stepped back.
But none of the Phyrexians moved. Their red eyes stared until the large one raised its mouth and began to make the noise they’d heard earlier: the sound of choking and screaming. A moment later the others joined in, and then farther away another chorus. Then another, very far away. Soon the Phyrexians were gargling their black oil in unison all around. At that moment Venser realized fear. It came slowly to the artificer. But when he heard the full extent of the infection echoing around them, how many of the scourge frolicked freely in the surrounding terrain, he felt a deep grimness settle on him.
Elspeth was shaking in her own right. But it was not from fear. When Venser glanced to his side, he saw that she could barely hold herself back. Sweat had broken upon her brow, her eyes were wide and wild, and the promise of deep violence surrounded her. He noticed, as he had in Koth’s mother’s house, webs of spittle at the corners of her mouth. Her blade was drawn in the shining blackness. Elspeth started forward.
“Wait,” Venser hissed. For one dire moment he thought the white knight would charge, and they would all be lost. But she stopped.
Irrenphor was known even on Dominaria as one of the most powerful naturally occurring explosives. Venser tugged a thread of mana into him, and flicked a spark at the feet of the Phyrexians. The effect was instantaneous. Colors popped and flashed and everything jumped together and burned. A moment later Venser appeared with a snap on a distant precipice. Teleporting always left him with a slight queasiness, but that time it was worse.
A concussive blast shook and the side of the plateau where he had stood a moment earlier.. There were no more gargled calls. There was nothing except the aftermath sound of falling bits of metal. The hole opened by the detonation was as dark as a maw and about the same shape. Koth and Elspeth were alive and struggling to stand at the other end of the high plane.