Mortality: The Story of Mortanius

Chapter Forty-Three

Mortanius set down the quill and leaned back in his chair, rubbing his eyes with his hand. If he had to guess, he figured it must be very late, but it was hard to determine time down in the basement of Avernus Cathedral without windows to reveal if it was night or day. He pushed himself away from the desk and stiffly stood up.

He’d been copying down notes from Azimuth’s experiments. When she activated her Dimensionscope to look into other worlds, Mortanius usually stood by and wrote down details about the dimension’s landscape, estimated climate and weather, and the existence of any plants or animals, and any other interesting or noteworthy features. Each night, he or Azimuth would make a more detailed copy of his notes in a high-quality grimoire.

Every one of the dimensions they viewed was catalogued and recorded for future reference. Of course, if there were truly hundreds of thousands of other dimensions, as Azimuth believed, then they still had centuries of work ahead of them. Mortanius didn’t actually think they’d be still working on this project in a century’s time, but Azimuth was still very much dedicated to it, and so Mortanius decided to go along.

They’d been viewing and recording other dimensions for five years now, and Azimuth’s library held dozens of thick books filled with information regarding her discoveries. Using the Dimensionscope was the only thing she was really interested in. She no longer took on students, since they took too much time away from her experiments. Ever since they started studying the other dimensions, Azimuth had focused entirely on that work and pushed aside everything else.

On and off for the past five years, Mortanius helped Azimuth with her work during the day, and shared her bed at night. A few times a year, he returned to his own estate for a few days to make sure everything was still in order. A few things had changed at his estate during his extended absences. His household servant Silenar had retired three years ago, and his other employee Algon had succumbed to a sudden heart attack just the year prior. Mortanius’s newest servant was a young man named Harlis, who cared for the house and the property while Mortanius was away.

He expected to wrap up his work with Azimuth within another few years. In truth, the monotonous nature of the work was starting to bore him. He could only see so many other dimensions before the experience lost its fascination. He enjoyed spending time with Azimuth, but he wanted to move on and start working on his own experiments again.

He went upstairs to get something to eat from the Cathedral kitchen. It turned out to be earlier than he expected, the sky outside light gray and pedestrians still walking the streets. The city of Avernus was still thriving and prosperous, just as most of the surrounding cities were. Despite Mortanius’s concerns about brewing war, Nosgoth was still at peace.

Fresh bread and butter sated his hunger, and to wash it down he brewed some tea while he looked out the kitchen window. Normally he would ask a servant to do it for him, but at the moment there were no servants about. Right around the time the tea was ready, he heard a door close behind him.

“Oh, Mortanius,” Azimuth said lazily, stretching her arms toward the ceiling. “There you are. I didn’t know if you were still here.”

“I was downstairs copying notes. You look like you just woke up.”

She smiled and rubbed her eyes. “Yes, I was reading on a couch and must have drifted off. Usually I don’t take naps like that, but I must have needed it. I must have been asleep for a couple of hours. What are you up to right now?”

“Nothing, just making some tea.”

“Ooh, that sounds lovely.”

Mortanius poured them both a cup as Azimuth sat down. Instead of joining her at the table, he took his tea over to the window and set it on the sill to cool off. Azimuth liked her tea very sweet, and scooped sugar liberally into her cup before taking a sip.

“I think I might take a trip up north in a couple of weeks,” Mortanius said. “I’d like to return to Winterheim to meet with Lord William again.”

“What for?” Azimuth asked, and then quickly waved it off. “Oh, wait, I remember. That sword you told me about. You wanted to study it.”

“Yes. You could come along, you know. We could take a short vacation together.”

She laughed. “Darling, if I wanted to take a vacation, it would be somewhere warm and bright and sunny. You go have fun in the snowy north, I’ll stay here.”

He smiled back and took a sip of tea. “Well, don’t say that I never offer to take you places.”

“Besides,” she sighed, “there’s so much work to do. I feel like I should always be working, looking into other worlds. I suppose I’m a bit obsessed with it, aren’t I?”

“You said it, not me,” he chuckled.

“A vacation does sound nice, though. Once you’re done with your trip north, maybe you could talk Anarcrothe into lending us his yacht and we could go sailing.”

Mortanius nodded. “Sure, I could do that.”

Azimuth finished her tea and stood up. “Wonderful. Of course, if we’re planning a vacation, that means I’ll have to get ahead on my work. If you aren’t busy at the moment, let’s go down to the lab and search for another new dimension.”

“I was actually planning to take a walk outside before it gets too dark. I feel like we’ve been cooped up in here for days. Getting some fresh air would do us both some good.”

“I agree, and we’ll get plenty of fresh air when we go on vacation.”

“Did you suggest a vacation just to guilt me into getting more work done tonight?”

She gave him a mischievous grin and took his hand. “Oh, come on. I have a feeling we’ll be able to locate something really interesting. I’ll let you sleep in tomorrow,” she added with a laugh.

Mortanius let her lead him back downstairs, even though what he wanted to do most at that moment was sit down in a comfortable chair and take a long nap, just as Azimuth had. It figured that he would stay awake doing work while she slept, but he didn’t feel like complaining about it.

Azimuth, with a spring in her step, went up to her device and slid her fingers across the golden handles to activate it. The silver viewing disc shimmered and swirled like liquid metal as she closed her eyes and let the powers of the Dimension Pillar flow through her. Standing a few feet behind her, Mortanius felt the familiar sensation of static electricity tingling on his skin.

Normally, he stood back with a scroll in his hand to write down the details of the dimension revealed in Azimuth’s device, but he was too tired for that, so instead he stepped up onto the dais and crossed his arms, watching the disc closely. He vaguely wished that there was a railing or something he could lean against.

“I feel something,” Azimuth whispered in a tight voice.

The disc seemed to bubble, as if the surface was boiling. It turned cloudy red and then darkened until it the image was a bloody maroon color. Mortanius took another step forward, intrigued. In all their studies, they had never seen a dimension with a red sky. As the image cleared, he could just barely make out the line of mountains in the distance, but it was still blurry and indistinct, the sky full of dust or mist or something else he couldn’t quite see. Even as Azimuth focused her energies, the dimension was still hard to make out, as if they were viewing it through a sheet of clouded glass.

Mortanius stared, transfixed. The sky in the other dimension looked like it was on fire, the landscape beneath it a charred expanse of cracked red stone. And in the distance, shapes moved, distorted by waves of heat emanating from the ground, like images in a mirage.

Azimuth opened her eyes. “It’s … it’s beautiful.”

“No,” Mortanius said quietly, his head shaking almost imperceptibly. “It’s terrible.”

She didn’t hear him, or else she wasn’t listening. “Look. Something ...”

From the edge of the disc, something came into view, something not quite human but not animal either. The blurred sky of this alien world made the figure hard to see clearly. It walked like a hunchback, its spine bent forward and arms hanging down so low they almost scraped the ground. Its whole body seemed misshapen, with pointed knobs on its elbows and strange fin-like growths on its shoulders and hips. Mortanius couldn’t tell if the creature’s body was covered in skin or scales.

“Look,” Azimuth whispered. “It’s coming closer, almost like ...”

“Like it can see us,” Mortanius said. “Close the Dimensionscope.”

“What? Don’t be absurd.”

Still, the alien figure came closer. In all of their other experiments, the creatures and animals they saw never made any movement to indicate that they noticed they were being watched. Mortanius didn’t even know if the Dimensionscope created any visible effect in the dimensions they viewed, although Azimuth implied that it did not. However, this alien seemed to be walking with a purpose directly at the space the Dimensionscope occupied.

“Close the window,” Mortanius said. “That thing can sense us somehow.”

“And I’m telling you, that’s impossible,” Azimuth insisted.

“Just look at it. It knows the Dimensionscope is there.”

She shook her head, staring in fascination as the strange being walked almost right up to them. And then from the edges of the viewing window, Mortanius spotted movement. More creatures, perhaps as many as eight, were edging closer.

He was about to say something else, but a strange noise buzzing in his ear distracted him. He shook his head and cupped his hand over one ear, but the noise didn’t go away. If anything, it got louder. The buzzing sound changed pitch and he put both hands over his ears this time.

“Do you hear that?” he asked, feeling like he had to yell to be heard.

“Yes,” Azimuth said, a twinge of panic in her voice. “What is it?”

“I don’t know. It sounds like ...”

The sound became a plaintive, warbling echo, and Mortanius found himself looking back at the Dimensionscope to see at least half a dozen alien creatures standing right in their field of view, all of them motionless, seemingly staring right at Azimuth and him. Transfixed by their haunting presence, the noise twisted and began to form discernible sounds.

“Ka … Mek …. Dra … Nos … Goth … We … Nos ...Goth ...”

Azimuth shrieked in a voice that might have been elation or terror. “They’re speaking to us! I can hear them! They’re speaking to us!”

“Stop it!” Mortanius shouted, fighting a wave of dizziness.

The entire world seemed to go black around him, and the last thing he remembered was losing his footing and falling to the floor.

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