Mortality: The Story of Mortanius

Chapter Fifteen

“Well?” Moebius asked as they walked back outside. “What do you think?”

“How long have you been coming to these meetings?” Mortanius asked in reply.

Moebius turned to wave goodbye to Loman and Elianne, who emerged from behind the waterfall and headed off to where their own horses were waiting. Mortanius learned that most of the members in their group lived in a cluster of villages about an hour’s ride to the north. The others had already left.

“It was good to meet you, Darvos!” Loman called out. “I hope you’ll come to next month’s meeting as well!”

Mortanius smiled and waved back, and then dropped his arm once Loman was out of sight. It was nearly pitch dark out now, and the only light was from the two sputtering torches and a sliver of moonlight.

“Two years,” Moebius answered. “Actually, I’m the one who started this group.”

“What?”

Moebius looked at him. “I heard about the Cult of Sarafan almost five years ago. To get away from the vampires, I traveled to scattered villages all over Nosgoth. I wasn’t really looking for anything specific, but I heard rumors and gossip about secret meetings and things like that. Two years ago, I met a few people who felt the same way I did, and we got this group started. Loman runs the group for the most part, but I’m the one who founded it.”

“And they haven’t figured out that you’re a Guardian?”

“How could they? They know almost nothing about the Pillars. As far as they know, I’m just a young man named Timenius who lives by himself in the woods.”

“And the vampires haven’t discovered this little project of yours?”

“No. At least I don’t think so.”

Mortanius didn’t know what the vampires would do if they learned Moebius was attending meetings like this. If they would bother to do anything at all. After all, they already knew how much he disliked them, and they knew that most humans feared them as well. What would they care if he spent his private time meeting with other people who felt the same way he did? The vampires would probably allow him this minor rebellion, knowing that the meetings would cease when he was transformed into a half-breed in a few years anyway.

“So,” Moebius said. “Tell me your thoughts. Do you want to join us?”

“I think all these people have valid complaints,” Mortanius said. “I’m certainly not going to disagree with them, or with you. But what do you hope to accomplish by doing this?”

“Accomplish?” Moebius asked, giving Mortanius a mischievous smile. “Revolution, my dear friend. I want to accomplish a revolution.”

“With nothing but a handful of scared villagers?”

“We have far more than a handful. There are other groups like this. Dozens of them, all over Nosgoth. The Cult of Sarafan has over a thousand members.”

“A thousand people won’t be enough.”

“Then we’ll convert more people to our cause. Revolutions take time.”

“We don’t have enough time either,” Mortanius said. “In two years, maybe less, they’re going to turn me into a half-breed by force. And a couple years after that, they’ll do the same thing to you. By the time your revolution comes to pass, we won’t be human to take part in it.”

“I think we will,” Moebius said calmly, a strange certainty in his voice. “I made a promise many years ago that I would never let them turn me, and I meant it. If I remember correctly, you made that very same promise.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Don’t break your promise, Mortanius. You and I can change the world if we work together, but we have to start right now. I mean this very night. We can bring the human race to its rightful place as the rulers of Nosgoth. We can achieve our destiny.”

“Again with that destiny stuff,” Mortanius muttered, rubbing his forehead. “I don’t believe in destiny. It wasn’t destiny that made me into a Guardian, it was stupid random chance. And it wasn’t destiny that murdered my parents right in front of me, it was just terrible, bad luck.”

“You say you don’t believe in destiny, but you believe you have no choice but to surrender your humanity to the vampires. Getting turned into a half-breed isn’t your destiny either, so why don’t you do something about it?”

Mortanius sighed, feeling helpless. “We can’t fight them, they’re too powerful.”

“The vampires aren’t as strong as you think they are,” Moebius said. “But I’ll tell you this: I would rather die than live as a freak like Romanen and Lora. I’ll slit my own throat before I’ll let them turn me into a half-breed.”

Mortanius looked into the dark forest around them, remembering back to the day he first began to experience his powers. When he first saw the realm of death surrounding him, he cried because he didn’t want to see it anymore. He didn’t want to live that way. But in time, he learned to control his abilities. Could it be possible that he could learn to live as a half-breed too, the way he learned to live with his powers as the Guardian of Death?

No, it was not. He could never accept such a twisted existence. He was more certain of that than almost anything else in his life. No matter what, the vampires were never going to change him. Lora and Romanen might have surrendered their humanity, but Mortanius would never let that happen.

“I’d rather die,” he said softly, to himself as much as to Moebius.

“Then you have a choice,” Moebius said. “You can die, or you can fight.”

“They’ll destroy us.”

“Then we have nothing to lose.”

“How can we fight them? Whatever magic you and I can summon is practically nothing compared to what Aleph and the others can wield. They probably have powers we don’t even know about. They have thousands of years of experience. We’re just babies compared to them.”

“What if we had a weapon we could use against them?”

“A weapon? Like what?”

Moebius put his hand on Mortanius’s shoulder. “Come with me. I have to show you something.”

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