Mortality: The Story of Mortanius

Chapter Thirty-Five

“Lord Mortanius! Please wake up!”

“We need you, Lord Mortanius!”

“Mortanius!”

He heard panicked, frantic voices cut through the ether. People shouting his name, tugging at his clothes, dragging him unwillingly from the comfortable embrace of unconsciousness. He wanted to ignore them, push them away, and remain calm and content in this safe place. But when he opened his eyes, he returned to the world of death and blood.

“Lord Mortanius!” one of the servants cried, his face wet with tears. “Oh, thank the Pillars, he’s awake!” Four Temple servants hovered over him, staring down with anguished expressions, their faces drawn and pale. They all tried speaking at once, and their voices converged into an incomprehensible jumble. Mortanius blinked and fumbled at the ground in an attempt to push himself upright. His hand came up sticky and he saw that he had placed it into a pool of congealing blood. His other hand was numb with pain, and he remembered that his wrist was broken.

Someone pushed the servants roughly aside, and Mortanius saw the face of his old friend Moebius there. His bald head was dotted with sweat, and there was a smear of blood on his cheek.

“Mortanius! You must come with me!”

“What is … what is happening?” he mumbled.

“Get him on his feet!” Moebius ordered the servants. “Carry him if you have to!”

Two servants hauled him upright and slung his arms over their shoulders to support him. He looked around dizzily and saw the corpses all around, the bodies tangled and butchered. He was back in the library. His last moments before unconsciousness slowly came back to him.

“Oh, no, no, no,” he groaned., sagging down and nearly falling.

Moebius grabbed his arms and shook him. “Mortanius! We need you right now! Malek is dying! You must save him!”

“They’re dead, all of them,” Mortanius moaned helplessly. “Ellendra … She’s gone … All of them are gone, he killed them … I wasn’t there ...”

“Listen to me! Malek is holding on, but he won’t live much longer if you don’t do something!” And then, to the servants, “Get him downstairs!”

They carried him to the end of the hall, past the bodies of Olantireth and the Sarafan soldiers, and managed to get him downstairs. By the time they reached the main floor, he could almost walk on his own, but he needed their help. Wracked with helpless sobs, he kept his eyes tightly shut as they took him past Ellendra’s body. He couldn’t bear to look at her again. Eventually, they brought him back through the intervening chambers to one of the conference rooms near the main entrance. It was the very same room where Malek had first told them about the mission to Janos’s fortress.

Now, Malek lay on the floor, his helmet discarded, his armor gruesomely dented inward, impaling him with the sharp edges of his own breastplate. Blood pooled in the crevice and dripped over the edge. His face was pale as death, his slick hair brushed to the side. Three terrified servants knelt by the body, one of them wiping his face with a cloth.

“We can’t get his armor off,” one of them sobbed. “We don’t know what to do and we can’t stop the bleeding!”

“It’s a miracle he’s still alive,” another said numbly, sitting with his hands in his lap.

They eased Mortanius into a chair, where he sat listlessly, cradling his injured arm in his lap, staring at the body on the floor. The entire Temple was saturated with the smell of blood, it was overwhelming. Mortanius breathed through his mouth, panting with a dumbstruck look on his face. The servants stared expectantly at him, but there was nothing he could do, nothing to say. Why had they even brought him here? He had a concussion and his head pounded, his vision blurry.

Moebius said, “Mortanius, you have to save him.”

“What? I can’t save him.”

“Yes, you can! You must!”

“Look at him, Moebius. What am I supposed to do? I’m not a surgeon. He’s going to die.”

While the servants were emotionally devastated and Mortanius himself was nearly numb from the pain, Moebius was angry. His eyes blazed with hatred and fury, a look that Mortanius had not seen in many centuries. “Six of our friends are already dead!” he shouted in Mortanius’s face. “Don’t just sit there and let another one die! You can use your powers to prevent his soul from leaving his body! I know you can do it!”

“You want me to save him,” Mortanius said in a grim voice. “But that’s not saving him. You don’t know what you’re asking of me.”

“I’m asking you to save his life!”

“I can’t! I can bind his soul to his body, but he’ll still be dead! He’ll be nothing but a walking corpse! No one should be forced to endure an existence like that!”

“Let Malek decide!” Moebius begged. “Do what you have to do, and let Malek be the one to decide his own fate. Please, Mortanius! We’ve lost so many already ...”

Mortanius sat up and took a deep breath. His vision shifted easily into the spirit world, and he could see Malek’s soul trembling as it eagerly waited to slip free of his body. He could tell that Malek was only moments away from death. Gently, he reached out and held the soul in place.

Guardians had two elements to their soul, the mortal soul that all living creatures had, and the secondary aspect which bound them to their Pillar. But he could not sense that second aspect at all. It remained invisible and hidden, even to him, until the moment the Guardian died. Mortanius didn’t even know if his ritual would transfer that aspect along with the soul. Would Malek still retain his connection to the Pillar of Conflict? Mortanius had no idea.

Moebius was still staring at him. “Mortanius ...”

“I’ll do it,” he said wearily, surrendering to his own morbid curiosity. “I’ll do it. But I can’t perform the ritual here. We have to take the body downstairs.”

One of the servants choked out, “But, my lord, we can’t possibly move him.”

“Well, I’m in no condition to do it,” Mortanius said. “There’s seven of you. Just carry his body. Wrap it in a curtain if that will make it easier. He’s not going to die. I’ll hold his soul in place until I can do the ritual.”

Most of the Temple servants had little knowledge about Mortanius’s experiments or the true nature of his powers, so to hear him so casually speak about holding onto a soul made some of them shiver and look even more sick than they already were. But they followed his orders just the same. They pulled down one of the curtains and wrapped it around Malek’s limp body, and then carried it down the stairs to his laboratory. One of the servants ripped a strip of cloth for Mortanius to use as a sling for his arm.

Moebius followed them downstairs. “Thank you, Mortanius,” he said.

“Don’t thank me. Once Malek realizes what’s been done to him, he won’t thank me either. What you need to understand is that once I’ve performed the ritual, Malek won’t be a person anymore. He’ll be a wraith, a revenant. An undead thing.”

“We have no choice,” Moebius said, shaking his head. “Malek will understand why we did it. I know he’ll understand.”

“Just because he understands, doesn’t mean he’ll accept it. And I will not maintain the spell without his consent. When he asks me to end the spell and set his soul free, I’ll do it immediately.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“I’ll end the spell anyway,” Mortanius promised. “Only a madman would be willing to exist like that. If Malek doesn’t want me to end it, then it means he’s gone insane.”

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