“There is no life on this plane, it appears,” Venser said. “I would take even the enemy rather than this vacant place.”
Koth looked back the way they had come. He nodded once, and then looked down at his feet before speaking. “The Oxidda was not always as you see it. It had life once,” he said. He took a deep breath before continuing. “Not too long ago in the annals of the vulshok, our elders disappeared. This happened all over Mirrodin, I am told. But other creatures lost their elders and segments of their people. The filthy goblins rebounded quickly, of course, as they had little-to-no knowledge to pass on. To us the loss was very great. Our skill with ore, and smelting too, was compromised.
“Then the metal failed altogether. A flaw found its way into the molten ore and the ingots lost their vigor. Conflict among the tribes erupted. Armed conflict followed.
“And you?” Venser said. “Where did your loyalties lie?”
“I am an alloy,” Koth said. “And because of that I have always been … apart. But my bones ring with metal and I was able to drive from the ore the contaminants, but only in small batches. A day’s worth at a time. This proved enough ore to give each tribe good metal to work, and they stilled their hands from fighting and took once again to working.”
“That was before Phyrexia?” Venser said.
It was as though the word Phyrexia itself made the metal beneath their feet tremble. Each of them glanced around, half expecting to see scourge-beings materialize from the clear air.
Koth nodded.
Venser coughed. With a start he noticed that his hand was shaking. He stowed it in his tunic. Hopefully his tic wouldn’t present itself, as it sometimes did in times of stress. He drove the thought from his mind and looked down at the ground.
“Here is why we cannot leave this place,” Venser said. He ran his finger along the underside of the infected plant. Then he held his finger up. It dripped with dark oil of a slight greenish tinge.
“Oil?” Koth said.
“The spawn of Phyrexia …” Venser said, “seethes with infection.” Venser wiped the sticky substance on his breeches. “Only one drop can yield legions of Phyrexians.”
Koth took this information in without expression.
Mirrodin is lost, Venser thought.
“We will win,” Koth said.
Venser did not look so sure. He turned toward the path. “Only Karn can stop the Phyrexians, if such a thing can be done here. He created this plane of yours.”
“When I am leader non-Mirrans like Phyrexians will be first against the wall,” Koth said.
Koth stood and started walking. When Venser heard Koth’s words he stood. “I will be sure to be gone by that time then.”
Elspeth took the blacksmith’s tongs the woman offered. Clasped in the tongs was a crucible full of steaming soup. It had roughly the look and consistency of molten lead, and Elspeth’s stomach did not welcome its arrival. “My thanks,” Elspeth said, eyeing the soup uncertainly. She put the tongs and the soup down on the table where she was seated.
The woman sat opposite, her eyes lingering on Elspeth’s armor, which was carefully laid out on the metal floor.
“It is well wrought,” the woman said, her eyes still on Elspeth’s armor. “I would not ever take it off.”
“Truthfully, I do not feel fully clothed without it,” Elspeth said. She pulled her robes tighter around her and took in the surrounds of the hut. Chunks of various rocks swayed on lanyards from the hammered ceiling. The bones and full skeletons of metal creatures were posed and welded to the metal walls around the hut. The air smelled of lead solder and brimstone.
The woman took a fire tool and poked the dung fire in the middle of the floor until flame licked up. “I am Vadi,” she said.
“Elspeth.”
“Well, Elspeth,” Vadi said. “You are paler than any auriok should be. You had better drink my ore stew.”
Elspeth looked at the soup, but did not move to pick it up. “How long has the Mephidross swamp been advancing?”
“Who can say? Forever.”
“But faster lately?” Elspeth said.
“Yes.”
“Are you concerned?” Elspeth said.
The woman shrugged. She was not old, as Koth had made her seem. She was wide-beamed and robust. “Why be concerned?” the shaman said. “I lived through the advent of the green sun, and the disappearance of our elders. What can hurt me now? We are vulshok. We adapt.”
Elspeth felt the blood rising to her face. “You will all die, you know.”
For the next day the suns above Koth and Venser’s heads moved in their prescribed paths. Night was punctuated by the desperate screams of the Phyrexians wandering the rank canyons. But Koth kept their path on small byways known only to him, he said, and they saw none of the enemy for that day. That night they slept in the nostril of an immense statue of metal buried to the top lip. Venser asked who the statue was modeled after and Koth shrugged. “I have never seen its like on Mirrodin,” Koth said. “Ours is not a plane of monuments.”
“I could teleport us to that mountain,” Venser said, gesturing to a distant gas-chimney. Koth fixed him with an even gaze.
“I don’t teleport well,” Koth said. “I tend to be detrimental to the teleporter’s health.”
Venser shrugged. “Can I wait for you at the next rise?”
“Without Elspeth I think we should stay close, don’t you?”
Again the shrug.
By that time the water situation had become dire. As they drew nearer to the leaden horizon where Koth said the Vault crouched, the air had become more toxic, burning their lungs and the water was not potable in the extreme. Late afternoon found them collapsed in a high crevice. Returning to the valley long after sunset. With visions of choking Phyrexians in the backs of their minds, they prowled until Koth dropped into a low crouch behind a jagged boulder. He pointed ahead.
“Be very still,” the vulshok said quietly.
Ahead the valley widened slightly and approximately thirty small treelike forms shown in the crepuscular light. They had been wrought, that much was obvious to Venser, but how long before? The whole plane had been made by the hands of Karn, and so the tree forms must be the same. From their hard boughs hung large white balls that glowed with a greenish tinge.
“Gel fruit,” Koth croaked, walking around the barbed boulder and toward the trees in a low crouch. “Water.”
Venser was unsure if they should eat the fruit from a Mephidross gel-fruit tree, even if it had been part of the Oxidda Chain recently. It looked sick. Its form had begun to twist and effect the torturous aspect of the Mephidross. Off to the right, Venser heard the skittering of something. He crouched and ran behind Koth. Whatever had made the sound had quieted. Venser and Koth reached a scattered pile of tubing and stopped.
“Something is afoot,” Venser said. “There are sounds I have not heard before.”
“What do they sound like?” Koth said, his voice little more than a whisper.
“They scratch.”
“Do they whine?” Koth said.
“I did not hear them make that noise. It was a dry metal noise.”
Koth was silent.
“It could be blinkmoths,” he said. “There are still a few around. Or ink moths, their Phyrexian version.”
“I like the first one better,” Venser said. He had found the metal carcass of some creature with the articulated back plates of an insect. It was lifeless and limp, but he held it up, flopping before Koth’s eyes.
“Could it be one of these?”
“A dung disposer?” Koth said, glancing momentarily at it. “You disgust me.”
Venser dropped the small carcass.
Koth hardly seemed to notice, so intently was he gazing at the tree forms and their low-hanging fruit. “The sounds are not made by a dung disposer. But something is most likely watching us at this moment. Gel fruit groves are found in some of these canyons, and they are always dangerous places, even before the Phyrexians. Whatever lives makes its way to these. Either to gain water and food or to eat what comes here to gain water and food. I generally avoid these areas, but we need what they can give.”