Mortality: The Story of Mortanius

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Moebius had rented a room at a very exclusive hotel in Willendorf, and Mortanius agreed to meet him there after the gathering at Anarcrothe’s mansion subsided. Ariel and Nupraptor had departed first, leaving barely an hour after Moebius finally arrived. A little while later, DeJoule and Bane bid everyone farewell and left together. Moebius and Malek followed afterward, leaving at around midnight. Mortanius chatted with Azimuth and Anarcrothe for a bit longer and then left as well, but not before Azimuth made him promise once more to visit her in Avernus as soon as possible.

“Mortanius, come in and have a seat,” Moebius said when entered the room. It was lavishly decorated with hand-painted wallpaper, ornate wooden furniture, four plush chairs arranged around a small table in front of the small fireplace, and golden trim on the walls and around the mantle, where Moebius stood, pouring himself a drink from the well-stocked wine cabinet. “Would you like a drink?”

“No, thank you. I’ve had enough wine for today.”

“Wine is the only thing that makes our little gatherings tolerable anymore,” Moebius quipped, replacing the cork on a bottle. He was dressed in a shimmering purple and blue cloak, with the hood down to reveal his hairless pate. Like all the Guardians, with the exception of Malek, he still looked roughly in middle age, although his face seemed somewhat more narrow and creased than Mortanius remembered it being. But his piercing blue eyes still sparkled with life and energy, and he laughed to himself as he took the seat opposite Mortanius.

Malek stood by the window, looking out into the dark city street. He had not bothered to turn when Mortanius entered the room.

“For the love of the Pillars, sit down, Malek. You’re making me nervous,” Moebius said.

Malek turned and then stiffly walked over to an unoccupied chair. He sat down awkwardly, as if unfamiliar with the position, resting his gauntleted hands on his thighs. His armor creaked with the motion.

Mortanius crossed his legs and folded his hands in his lap. “So what’s the occasion?”

“Oh, nothing special,” Moebius said, taking a drink. “I just wanted to get together and catch up. Just the three of us, without the children around.”

“Children?” Mortanius said, raising an eyebrow.

Moebius set down his glass. “Oh, you know what I mean. Even after all these years, I can’t help but think of them as a bunch of spoiled and immature children. They don’t know what the three of us went through. They don’t understand how the world used to be.”

Malek spoke up, “I prefer to think the opposite. The other Guardians are a part of the modern world in ways that we are not. We are ancient relics from a bygone age. We are too set in our ways. The younger Guardians have adapted to a changing society.”

“Or maybe it’s the other way around,” Mortanius said. “Maybe the modern world has adapted to them.”

Moebius scoffed. “If the world is changing to match the personality of a witch like Ariel, then I weep for the future.”

“If anyone can test that hypothesis, it would be you,” Mortanius pointed out. “Do you have any visions of the future that you wish to share with us?”

Moebius swirled his wine in his glass, looking at nothing in particular. “Not at the moment,” he said. “Nothing that I haven’t discussed with you before.”

Malek leaned back slightly, his armor creaking with the movement. “The world is changing. That much is undeniable. It’s not just the Guardians. The people of Nosgoth no longer struggle to survive, and so they have turned inward to more selfish pursuits. They have grown lazy and complacent. They have no respect for the Pillars or the Guardians, and no understanding of the past.”

“I was in Brubek recently, staying at a tavern,” Mortanius said. “I overheard some people talking about the vampires. It was all myth and rumor to them, not anything based in reality. They think the vampires were ten feet tall and breathed fire.”

Malek nodded. “I have heard similar stories. The events that we lived through – events that you and Moebius shaped yourselves – have become little more than legends.”

“The last vampire died four hundred years ago,” Mortanius said. “That’s almost fifteen generations. We can’t expect normal people to comprehend that span of time.”

“The last vampire,” Moebius repeated with a trace of bitterness. “The commoners don’t know the difference. They think that Vorador and his kin are vampires.”

“Some people call Janos and his kind ‘elder vampires’ or ‘vampire gods,’” Mortanius said.

Moebius gulped down the rest of his wine and angrily tossed the glass into the fireplace. “Gods? Bah! It would better to forget that vampires ever existed than call them gods!”

Very long ago, Janos had told Mortanius that he disliked the term “half-breed,” and preferred to simply call humans “vampires” if they were turned. Now, it seemed that the rest of Nosgoth had come to feel the same way. Nobody called them half-breeds anymore. Once the original race of vampires had died out, the term “vampire” came to be used for the spawn they left behind. To Mortanius, it made no sense to call a creature like Vorador a vampire, but then again, he had known the real thing. To a normal person who had never seen a true vampire, a creature like Vorador was close enough.

The leader of the half-breeds still lived deep in the Termogent Forest. According to what little information Malek had been able to torture out of the half-breeds he captured, the assassin responsible for the Slaughter of the Circle lived in an ancient mansion cloaked in illusory magic that made it nearly impossible to detect. Only half-breeds could find it. Malek had spent centuries searching the vast forest, sometimes gathering hundreds of people to help, and yet they found nothing but trees.

The only other person who might have been able to help Malek in his quest was Bane, the Guardian of Nature. But he had so far proven unwilling to assist in what he deemed a “premeditated genocide.” Like so many others, Bane simply could not understand what the vampires and their half-breed spawn represented, but in his particular case, Mortanius was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Bane was the Nature Guardian, after all. He could not abide the extinction of any living creature.

“How goes your hunting, Malek?” Mortanius asked in the sullen silence that followed.

“Fairly well. Last month, one of our teams tracked down a small group of half-breeds. One or two escaped, but the hunters killed six of them. I believe the current count is sixteen in the last year.”

“How many do you think are still out there?”

“Less than a thousand. Perhaps considerably less.”

Still looking into the fireplace, Moebius said, “I believe the half-breeds are at their weakest point since the years after the Guardians were killed. If only we could have finished them once and for all.”

After the Slaughter of the Circle, public opinion had turned heavily against Vorador and his half-breeds. Led by Malek and Moebius, the outcry following the assassinations led to a record number of half-breeds killed or arrested and executed. Several hundred half-breeds were hunted down and killed in retaliation for Vorador’s murderous act, which had itself been instigated by the death of Janos. Back and forth, the humans and the half-breeds perpetuated the cycle of revenge.

But memories were short, and eventually the public desire to punish the half-breeds waned. After thirty or forty years, anyone who was an adult at the time of the Slaughter had grown old, if they were even still alive. It was hard for Moebius and Malek to instill righteous anger in the citizens of Nosgoth who had been babies when the Guardians died. Once again, the Guardians’ long life worked against them.

What few half-breeds still lived in Nosgoth kept their existence hidden if at all possible, although every time a new victim was discovered drained of blood, the search for the perpetrators began anew. And there were still lonely and desperate people willing to be turned into half-breeds for the promise of power and a long life. Malek and his vampire hunters killed every half-breed they found, but they could not stop willing volunteers from taking their place.

“As I said, the people of Nosgoth have grown complacent,” Malek said. “They view the half-breeds as a simple nuisance. If they ignore them, they will go away.”

“If we could get the populace truly unified once more,” Moebius muttered, “then maybe we could finally exterminate the half-breeds.”

“We’ve been trying for a thousand years,” Mortanius said.

“And we will try for a thousand more, if need be,” Malek said.

“It was easy to convince people to fight against the vampires,” Mortanius said, looking at Moebius. “They were creatures utterly different than us. But half-breeds are still part human, remember.”

“Even to this day, people choose to help them,” Malek said, shaking his head. “I’ve discovered families willingly helping their half-breed relatives. Hiding them during the day, even finding new victims for them. I find such actions reprehensible.”

Mortanius sighed. “It’s hard for us to understand. We don’t have families, after all.”

“You almost sound like you’re defending them,” Moebius said.

“I’m just pointing out the difficulties in trying to eradicate the half-breeds. For centuries, we’ve kept them in check, but I think that’s all we can really hope for. Even after what Vorador did, we couldn’t maintain public pressure long enough to wipe them out. There would have to be some kind of drastic shift in public sentiment for the commoners to rise up against the half-breeds again.”

“Then they’re all fools,” Moebius snapped, sitting up straighter. “Do we really have to have another senseless tragedy in order to motivate the people of Nosgoth to fight the half-breeds? They’re monsters, they drink blood and kill innocent people! Is that not enough of a reason to eradicate them? I simply can’t understand how anyone can tolerate the existence of such twisted freaks of nature.”

“The commoners lack perspective,” Malek said. “Their lives are simply too short for them to worry about such things. It is enough for them to believe the half-breeds are scarce, and the chances of ever becoming a victim are slim.”

Mortanius got up from his chair and walked over to get a drink. “If we haven’t been able to exterminate the half-breeds after a thousand years, then maybe it’s simply not possible. They’re like insects. You can burn the entire hive, but if even a few escape, then they can create another hive somewhere else. If I were you, I’d focus all my attention on killing Vorador.”

“Believe me,” Malek said, his voice betraying a rare glimpse of the anger that had once so defined him, “Vorador is never far from my thoughts.”

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