Mortality: The Story of Mortanius

Chapter Thirty-Four

Mortanius returned to his laboratory and placed Janos’s heart on one of his work tables. The heart was stiff and cold. The brief sensation of warmth he thought he felt earlier was probably just his imagination. He dug around in his supply room and found a small wooden box lined on the inside with black cloth. Before he placed the heart inside, he cast a few minor spells to keep the box airtight and hopefully prevent the heart from decaying any more than it already had.

He switched his vision over to the spirit world and studied the heart closely, but detected no trace of a soul or anything out of the ordinary. Would Janos’s body still retain his soul? Mortanius assumed it would, but maybe not. Maybe all that was required for the soul to depart was extreme physical trauma, more than just being stabbed to death, as the original vampire Guardians were.

Aleph and the others had been burned shortly after Mortanius realized that their souls were still trapped in their bodies. He never got to check to see if their bodies would heal. But more importantly, he never got to see if the bodies would even decay. Would the soul prevent decomposition? Mortanius didn’t think so, based on his own experiments, but those experiments had been on human bodies, not vampire ones.

For now, the heart would remain stored in his laboratory. Once Janos’s body was delivered to him, he would perform more tests. However, he had a paranoid fear that someone might come and steal the heart, perhaps Raziel trying to reclaim his trophy. And so he rearranged one of his cabinets and hid the box in the back.

By the time he was done, it had been more than an hour since he came to the laboratory, and he remembered that Ellendra was still waiting for him upstairs. He walked over the door.

And was nearly knocked off his feet by a psychic blast that hit him like a lightning bolt. He stumbled and leaned heavily against a shelf near the door, gasping for breath as a surge of panic struck him.

One of the Guardians was dead! It wasn’t possible!

He pushed away from the shelf and reached for the door when another wave slammed into him, like a knife slashing across his mind. He cried out and fell to the floor, curling into the fetal position. The pain was over in a moment, but the aftereffects of the mental blow left him shaken as he tried to get his feet back under him.

What was happening? The Guardians were all here at the Temple!

He opened the door and rushed into the hallway on unsteady legs. And then, he heard the screams coming from upstairs, screams of absolute terror. Still shaky, he hurried up the steps as fast as he could, grabbing the hand rail to keep his balance.

“Malek!” came a shrill female voice, reverberating along the stone walls. “Malek! Maleeeeeeek!”

Mortanius ran up the stairs two at a time, his heart pounding in his chest. He knew her voice, and the sounds of her terrified screams filled his heart with ice. He could feel her fear, he could feel all of them now, their combined terror pressing upon his mind.

He felt it a split-second before it hit him. Another wave of pain washed over his soul, another death among the Circle. He doubled over and nearly vomited, the pain was so intense. His mind swam as he tried to make his way up the rest of the stairs. The top of the stairway was just ahead. He could barely fathom what was happening.

Three Guardians were dead. Impossible, impossible.

Head spinning, he staggered into the hall. Two corpses lay in his path, Temple servants soaked with blood, their bodies broken and slashed open with incredible force. He barely looked at them as he continued down the hall to the foyer at the main doors to the Temple. More blood decorated the walls, splashed in such quantities that it had doused two of the torches by the entrance.

Kelredar was there, sprawled with his arms at his sides, his face splattered with blood. An assassin had impaled him on a blade and then brutally wrenched it free, cutting open the side of his body. Four Temple servants lay clustered right near the door, their bodies twisted and bloody. Just a few paces away lay Sirine, also slain by the assassin, her dress soaked in blood, her eyes staring at nothing. The entire floor was one huge pool of spreading blood, almost ankle-deep.

Mortanius did not remain there long. He moved through the next doorway into one of the other main hallways leading down the center of the Temple. He barely registered his own legs moving, he felt like he was being drawn as if by a magnetic pull. Distantly, as if it was only in his imagination, he heard more screams and cries for help. The muffled clang of swords striking, the sizzle of magic, something that might have been laughter. Hideous, inhuman laughter.

At the end of the hall, he found five Sarafan soldiers, all slaughtered with brutal ferocity, their limbs cut away, their armor shattered and sprayed with blood. Mortanius knew what he would find beyond the doorway, but he had no choice, his body moved against his own volition.

He found her in an antechamber just outside the conference rooms. Slumped against the corner, the bare skin of her arms cracked and smoking, the front of her elegant blue dress a charred ruin, her long blonde hair matted with gore. The assassin hadn’t used a sword on her like with Kelredar and Sirine. No, nothing so simple as a sword. A blast of foul corruption magic had taken her life.

Falling to his knees, he gagged on the smell of burned flesh and squeezed his eyes shut, his body heaving with sobs. He wanted to touch her, to apologize, to say something.

To tell her he loved her.

But nothing came out except a groan of despair. He swayed to his feet and turned away, unable to look any longer. The knees of his trousers had her blood on them. His hands were clean, but when he looked down, he imagined that her blood stained them as well.

The trail of dead continued into the next room, where three more servants were dead, slain from behind as they ran away. He heard screams ahead, from up the stairs leading to the second floor, and tried to hurry his pace, but his whole body seemed to rebel against him and he barely made it to the stairwell before losing his footing.

As he rose, he felt it coming before it hit him. Another wave of pain and anguish seared across his mind, another of the Guardians dead. And then another, right on the heels of the last one. Two in a row, how many in total? Five or six? He had lost the ability to count the deaths, as they all blended into one agonizing moment of torture upon his psyche. He went up the stairs, his mind reeling, unable to think straight any more. His face was wet with tears that he didn’t remember crying.

He found Olantireth in the corridor, slain by a bolt of deadly magic, recognizable only by the clothing he wore because his faced was scorched away to the bone. Six dead Sarafan were scattered his body, those who died trying to protect him.

Mortanius grabbed one of their swords and dragged it after him, the tip of the blade scraping across the pools of blood. His own feet left bloody footprints down the hall as he made his way into one of the Temple’s libraries. Two more dead Sarafan in the doorway, one of them cut nearly in half at the waist. Mortanius nearly fell again, holding his hand against the wall to hold himself steady. Some of the books burned from blasts of stray magic, filling the room with smoke.

Palton and Rashard were together, surrounded by the corpses of servants and Sarafan alike, their bodies smashed and discarded with a fury that no human could ever maintain. Rashard’s body was a bloody mess, but Palton was relatively untouched except for the brutal slash across his neck that nearly severed his head.

The doors on the other side of the library were gone, ripped off their hinges. The doorway led to a wide balcony overlooking the lake. Mortanius knew who he would find there, but he staggered across the library anyway, his heart full of dread and his mind numb from the deaths of so many of his fellow Guardians. He forced himself through the doorway and onto the balcony.

It was a lovely night, the sky clear and the stars shining. A cool breeze blew off the lake, blowing away the stink of death and blood. Mortanius walked out, his chest aching and his breath coming in painful gasps.

A figure stood by the railing thirty paces away, facing the lake, the breeze rustling his dark blue cape. The sleeves of his white silk shirt were unmarked by even a drop of blood. He wore the clothes of a nobleman, but he was no nobleman. He wasn’t even human.

“Vorador,” Mortanius croaked.

The leader of the half-breeds turned to face him, and Mortanius felt his blood run cold. In seven-hundred years, he had never actually met the leader of the half-breeds, the first human to ever be turned by the vampires. Vorador may have been human once, but he was no longer even a half-breed like his kin, he was something else entirely.

His skin was dark green and looked as rough as leather, and his eyes were yellow. Two large ears protruded from the top of his head like those of a bat, and his elongated face ended in two sharp points at the end of his chin. His face was bestial, not like a human or even a vampire. The centuries had turned him into something alien and terrifying.

Mortanius raised his sword in a pathetic show of defiance. He hadn’t used a sword in centuries, not since the years after the rebellion. He knew it was futile to fight, but he didn’t care any more. The deaths of his fellow Guardians left his brain muddled and unfocused, barely able to think straight. He felt numb, as if his emotions had been scoured away, leaving him just a shell of a man.

Vorador gave him a vicious, predatory smile and lifted his own blade.

In the blink of an eye, he leaped forward. The thirty paces between them was crossed in an instant, and the sword in Mortanius’s hand was battered away, flipping over the balcony. The impact was so jarring that it shattered his wrist, leaving his hand dangling uselessly. He tried to stumble away but Vorador grabbed him by his throat and lifted him effortlessly into the air.

“Ah, Mortanius,” Vorador growled, baring his fangs. His breath was rancid, like the smell of rotten meat. “It’s so nice to finally be introduced.”

He pushed and Mortanius went flying. He struck the ground and rolled to a stop in a trembling heap, his entire body wracked with pain. The bones in his broken wrist crunched against each other when he tried to push himself upright, and the pain made him cry out.

“Do you appreciate what I have done here?” Vorador said, walking toward him. “Once upon a time, you murdered all but two of the Guardians. Now, I have done the same. What you brought to the race of vampires, I have now given back to you. I have settled the score.”

Mortanius spat at him. “You’re nothing but a monster,” he whimpered.

“Did you really believe that you could assassinate my master, the very one who gave me life, and I would not retaliate? Your precious Sarafan have hunted and killed my people for centuries. They impale them on spikes and leave them to burn in the sun. And you call me a monster?”

He grabbed Mortanius again and lifted him up. Weak and desperate, Mortanius kicked at him and scratched at his hands. In response, Vorador shook him with such ferocity that he thought his neck would snap. His head lolled to the side and he struggled to remain conscious.

“Perhaps you think I should kill you too,” Vorador said, pulling him close. “But no, it’s better that you live. I’ve delivered to you death on a scale such as you have never seen, but I won’t grant you your own. It is your curse to be alive. You must live with the shame and regret that you failed those you cared about most. Just as I do.”

With that, he hurled Mortanius away. He felt himself flying, his robe flapping wildly around him, the world spinning in circles. And then he finally slipped into the peacefulness of oblivion.

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