Mortality: The Story of Mortanius

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The Sarafan fort was located on a lake a few hours’ ride southeast of the Pillars. There were plans in place to construct a vast stone fortress overlooking the lake, but for now the fort was a loose compound of buildings surrounded by a high wooden wall.

During the trip by carriage, Mortanius explained everything that they had discovered at the vampire ruin. The identical towers, the secret altars and the free souls trapped within, and most importantly, the beautiful paintings that told the history of Nosgoth. Moebius listened to the entire story, interrupting or asking questions a few times, but mostly absorbing the information with a pensive look on his face, staring out the carriage window as it rattled down the dirt road.

Mortanius had finished by the time they reached the fort. Moebius invited him up to his private office, where they sat down beside a fireplace and shared a bottle of wine.

“I always knew,” Moebius said vaguely, swirling his wine and then taking a sip. “I knew they must have existed.”

“This is our first real evidence,” Mortanius said, sinking deep into his chair, feeling incredibly tired after such a long day. His arm hurt in the sling and he shifted in the chair to find a more comfortable position. “None of the other vampire records make even the slightest mention of another race.”

“I wonder what they were called,” Moebius pondered. “The paintings didn’t have any text at all? No written descriptions or anything?”

“Not that I saw. We didn’t check out the central tower, though. We’ll arrange another trip to the island in a few weeks. We’ll bring some painters with us to create copies of the murals.”

Moebius sipped his wine again. “Did any of the paintings show the staff?” As he spoke, he glanced back to where his staff was leaning against the doorway.

“No,” Mortanius said. “But maybe upon closer inspection, we’ll find some reference to it.”

“They must have created it.”

“I believe it. If the murals are correct, the other race was powerful enough to curse the vampires with bloodlust and immortality. Creating a staff like yours would have been simple by comparison. Perhaps they used staffs like that in the war.”

“Do you remember the first time I used it? Janos knew what the staff was. He knew, they all knew. They must have believed all the staffs had been destroyed.”

“I wonder if there are other artifacts like the staff, just waiting to be discovered.” Mortanius drank the rest of his wine and reached for the bottle to pour another glass.

“I’m curious about those altars as well,” Moebius said. “You said the souls inside are vampire souls. You’re sure about that? Absolutely sure?”

“As sure as I can be. Normally, I can detect significant details about the souls I encounter in the spirit world. These ones were harder to discern, but they were definitely vampire souls. I think whatever magic keeps them contained prevents me from studying them better.”

“Not that I doubt your abilities or knowledge in this matter, but I can’t help but wonder if those souls aren’t from the other race. The last of their kind, imprisoned in those stones as some form of eternal punishment.”

Mortanius could only shrug. “It’s possible, I suppose. If the other race was related to the vampires somehow, perhaps their souls could be mistaken for vampire souls. But I strongly doubt it. If the images on the murals are even close to accurate, they were nothing at all like vampires.”

“There must be some reason they were placed there. You said the temple, or whatever it was, looked like it had been abandoned for a millennia. So those souls must have been there at least that long. Why would the vampires do that?”

“I don’t know. Let’s go find Janos and ask him.”

Moebius’s face curled into a snarl and he sighed bitterly, staring at the crackling flames in the fireplace. Mortanius expected him to launch into an angry tirade, but instead he brushed away the mention of Janos and said, “Could you release the souls in the altars if you wanted to?”

“Yes, I believe so. But until we know why they were placed there, I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“Could you imprison a soul like that?” Moebius asked.

“I’m sure I could figure out a way to do something like that. Why?”

“Oh, nothing. I was just thinking about … well, Galhonen.”

“What do you mean?”

Moebius set his glass aside and leaned forward in his chair. “I was thinking about Galhonen and the others we’ve lost. Even though we don’t age, we’re clearly not immortal, not in the same way the vampires were. Their souls remained in their bodies, remember?”

“Yes, I remember.”

“Do you think that you could ever find a way to … permanently bind our souls to our bodies? I hate to bring up such a painful memory, but when your family was killed, when we were still children, you forced the soul of that murderer back into his body, essentially bringing him back to life, if only for a minute. If you had been able to reach Galhonen in time, could you have kept his soul in his body and prevented him from dying?”

Mortanius did not answer right away. He leaned back and absentmindedly rubbed at his injured arm. He hadn’t thought about his family in over a hundred years. The events of that terrible night – the brutal murders of his father, mother, and sister – had haunted him for a long time, but so many years had passed that it almost felt like it was just a story he had heard from someone else. But Moebius was right; he had forced the soul of a dead man back into his body and returned him to life. He had done so in order to force the man to experience his own death over and over. But could that power be used to keep someone from dying long enough for them to be healed? Could it actually return the dead to life?

He had considered it, of course. But the implications were too uncomfortable, and so he never attempted to perform any experiments to test the theory. It was one thing to see into the spirit world and interact with the souls of the dead, but the power to actually bring the dead back to life was something else entirely.

“I don’t know,” Mortanius finally answered. “For a short time, perhaps. I could have prevented Galhonen’s soul from leaving his body. But Galhonen would still have died, just as the man who killed my father died. As soon as I stopped exerting my powers on the soul, it would leave the body, as it was meant to do.”

Moebius nodded. “But your powers and abilities are far greater than they were when you were still a young boy. I wonder if you could figure out a way to permanently keep the soul in place, to keep someone alive even after they should have died?”

“For what purpose?”

“To achieve true immortality,” Moebius said. “Or maybe just to prevent one of the Guardians from dying in such a senseless tragedy. It’s something to think about, at least.”

Mortanius finished his glass of wine, but this time did not reach for the bottle again. He sighed and slumped in his seat, his arm dangling off the side. “Well, as long as we’re on the subject of our magical powers, I have a question for you.”

“Go ahead.”

“I’ve asked you before if you can see into the future.”

“Yes, and I’ve told you about my visions.”

“Have you ever had visions about the past?”

The question seemed to surprise him. “I don’t think … No, I don’t believe I have, but maybe I just didn’t recognize them as such.”

“If you were able to see into the past, we could learn everything we need to know about this other race. We could solve all these frustrating mysteries.”

Moebius rubbed his chin. “Yes, you’re right.”

“Do you think you could someday control your powers enough to intentionally look into the past or future?”

“I’ve tried,” Moebius said with a frown. “Believe me, I’ve been trying for centuries, but that’s not the nature of time, you see. It’s not so easy as simply looking forward or back. It’s not like retracing your steps down a path. I’ve come to view time as … as a pile of straw.”

The comparison was so unexpected that it made Mortanius laugh. He knew that Moebius was being completely serious, but it seemed like such a ridiculous statement that Mortanius found it funny. Or perhaps that was just the wine making him laugh.

Moebius smiled good-naturedly, and then explained. “Each piece of straw is like a potential event, or a potential sequence of events. And all these events are mixed together, sometimes crossing and intersecting each other. What we view as linear time is in fact a series of tiny changes in direction, like an ant walking across a pile of straw. It walks along one piece of straw to the next, but from its own perspective, it is simply following a direct path.”

“I see,” Mortanius said. “So your visions might be ...”

“Other pieces of straw. Events that might happen at some point in the future, or perhaps events that might never take place at all, because we’ve already passed the chronological intersection which might have led us there.”

“And there’s no way to know for sure?”

“Not right now,” Moebius admitted. “But I have some ideas.”

“Go on.”

Moebius leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. He stared into the fire, the light reflecting off his eyes. “My connection to the Pillar clouds things. It’s overwhelming, really. I’m too closely linked to it to be able to step back and look at the passage of time objectively. But what if there was a device, a magical artifact, that I could imbue with some tiny fragment of my powers?”

“Is such a thing possible?”

“Perhaps,” Moebius shrugged.

Mortanius thought the idea was fascinating, but impractical. However, with their long lifespan, who knew what might be achieved, given enough time to work on the problem? Surely, as their magical skills grew, and they became even more knowledgeable about the nature of their powers, they could do almost anything they set their minds to.

“Exactly what do you have in mind?” Mortanius asked. “A crystal ball or a magical staff?”

“No, I was thinking about something larger. A window, or an aperture of some kind that I could look through. I could use it to focus my abilities, sift through the scattered visions in order to see things more clearly.”

“That sounds amazing,” Mortanius said seriously.

“Well, I haven’t started work anything,” Moebius said. “It’s just an idea at this point, something for me to pursue later. Maybe once we finish eradicating the last of the vampires, I’ll begin working on it.”

“Keep me informed of your progress,” Mortanius said. “Maybe I could help you in some way.”

“Certainly,” Moebius replied, nodding. “Of course.”

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