[ok, mad science time! Since the MTG wiki is painfully scarce on details concerning what exactly the phyrexis pathogen actually *is*, and just describes it as a shiny and or black oily substance, I am gonna inject a little ad-libbing in here. If you dont like this description of the pathogen's basic nature, let me know, and I'll try to ninja edit it to a more satisfactory form]
Wierd nibbled on the fish. He really didnt like fish. Despite all the crazy things he had picked up in his childhood, his family had been rather poor for a fair chunk of his childhood. Their fortunes had turned around later, after he was 7 or so, but before that there was a time when they practically lived on bass and perch caught in local rivers and lakes. Just the smell of fish made him queasy.
The drizzle had subsided to a light mist now. Perhaps in another hour, maybe when the sun would come up, he could sleep.
Rikod and Udib had remained behind to keep him company (and safe from the monsters that would surely have poured out of nowhere to eat him had he been alone), but suddenly Rikod clutched his throat, and Udib fell to the ground in writhing pain.
Wierd stopped stoking the fire, and rushed to his companions. Rikod's throat was pulsing with disgusting black veins, and he was breathing hoarsely. Udib was clutching his left arm and side. Wierd ripped the shirt off, to see the same foul affliction cloying at his whole left side.
Hastily, he tore off the glove. He didnt care how tired he was, something was really wrong. Maybe it had something to do with that portal earlier... He didnt know. Closing his eyes, he held out his now naked right hand and grasped Udib, who's affliction looked worse than Rikod's.
He could feel it; tiny contaminants were multiplying and spreading through the tissue, binding to nerves, and altering the flesh like fire through dry kindling. Wierd scowled. He focused on the infection, if you could call it that-- it wasnt made of living pathogens at all, and felt more like a complex nanomachine-- and started trying to arrest its replication, but it was multiplying faster than he could destroy it. Perhaps if he just damaged it sufficiently?
He focused on the site spreading to cover nearly Udib's whole left body, and concentrated on trying to identify the pathogen's structure. It was a very complex structure comprised of
fullerenes, covalent
amine groups held together with hydrogen bonds, metal ions, silicates, and hijacked proteins from the host's own body. That must have been how it evaded being hit by the host's immune system; it coated itself in native proteins from the host, which it then used to mess with metabolic activities, and interface with cellular structures on nerve endings and muscle tissue.
[note, you
can create integrated circuits almost exclusively by introducing carefully planned truncations and additions to the normally regular structure of a fullerene cage. the fullerenes I am describing above supply both the structural skeleton of the phyrexis infection form, as well as the programming and processing system. it accomplishes it's dirty work using the amide-bound protiens it has glued to its outer surface, which it controls via inernally regulated energization through it's fullerene matrix. The fullerene cages are nested, and very complex. they are powered by ion concentration in the host's blood, like a
saline battery.]
Fullerenes were chemically inert. They were very hard to target with any known drug, because it was like trying to make something stick to teflon. He rifled through his mental collection of knowledge, grasping at straws. Thari's nastier magics involved the fusion of inorganic substances to living flesh, but he didnt have all the right reagents.. He didnt need a successful union; unsuccessful would be ideal. He wouldnt fuse the pathogens to the patient, he would fuse the protein shell these vile things had created around themselves to the surface of the buckyball cages inside, and render them inert instead. With the proteins that performed the dirtywork taken out, the pathogen, no matter how durable the core was, could be attacked by the immune system of the host, and eliminated.
But it was gonna take more energy than he had. Hesitantly... he put the glove back on....