Mortality: The Story of Mortanius

Chapter Forty-Five

No one had explored the vampire temple for over five hundred years. Originally, the Circle planned to return there and fully investigate the outer chambers and explore the central tower as well, but the tragic death of Galhonen soured their feelings toward the whole enterprise. There had only been two short trips to the island since then, and neither had been very thorough. A wooden staircase had been built into the rock, but it only reached halfway up to the summit of the island, and was never finished. Now, all that remained of it were the rusted metal bolts that once held it in place, the wood having rotted away ages ago.

Mortanius, thankfully, did not need a staircase this time, or even a grappling hook and a rope. He didn’t even need a boat. Instead, he used a flight spell to soar over the surface of the water. It took a significant amount of concentration to remain airborne for so long, but he reached his destination easily and levitated up the fifty feet to the top of the island. He ended the spell when he could stand solidly on firm ground.

He took a deep breath and shook drops of water from his cloak. The vegetation on the island was thick and overgrown. Mortanius pushed his way through the plants until he came upon the ruins of the vampire temple.

The passing centuries had eroded the structures even more, and sections of wall were now crumbled and covered with growing vines. Mortanius walked gingerly around the ruins, remembering what they had discovered so long ago. The murals which, for the first time, showed them images of the race that battled the vampires in the distant past. The race that had been banished from Nosgoth by the power of the Pillars.

A race that Mortanius now knew were called hylden.

At first, he thought the name belonged to the individual creature that had taken control of Azimuth’s body, but it was the name of their entire species. The one who spoke to them did not give a name at all, and Mortanius soon came to realize that they had little concept of individuality. They viewed themselves as an entire species, and spoke in such terms.

Hylden. The species that the vampires had waged war against in ancient times, the species that had been banished from Nosgoth, the species imprisoned in a foreign dimension for thousands of years. And all that time, awaiting the moment that they might regain contact with their lost world.

Thanks to Azimuth and her Dimensionscope, that moment had finally come. Even now, she was hard at work communicating with them. For the past two weeks, she had barely slept, barely eaten. Every waking moment was either spent at the Dimensionscope looking into their world, or spent under their control, so that they could speak directly. As long as the Dimensionscope was activated, the hylden could possess either of them and use their body to speak. Sometimes Azimuth served as their vessel, and sometimes Mortanius.

But today, Azimuth would do her work alone. Mortanius had returned to the vampire temple because he had questions that needed answers, and if there was anywhere on Nosgoth those answers might be found, it was in the central tower of the temple, which had still never been explored.

Mortanius looked up. The domed stone roof of the central tower had a jagged split along one side, and part of it had collapsed. If he had to guess, he would say that it had been struck by lightning at some point in last century or so.

He had intended to force open the main entrance, with a blast of magic if necessary. But the collapsed roof gave him a simpler method of entry, so he levitated again and rose up above the tops of the trees. The gap in the roof was more than enough room for him to get inside. The floor was covered in slimy leaves and other detritus, and he had to wait a few moments for his eyes to adjust to the darkness.

The walls were made of slabs of flat stone about two feet wide, set in a curved pattern so that the room was basically circular. A huge round table, also made of stone, was right in the middle. A conference room of some kind. Was this where the vampires made their plans of war against the hylden? Is this the room where they decided to create the Pillars? When was the last time a living creature stood in this room? Two thousand years ago? Mortanius guessed that it was longer than that, maybe much longer. Five thousand years? The span of time between the vampires’ empire and the rise of the human race was a matter under debate among the few people who still cared.

Decayed remains of wooden boards on the floor were all that remained of the small stools which once circled the table. The vampires rarely sat in regular chairs because their wings got in the way, Mortanius remembered. It had been so long since he’d seen structures designed for vampires that the entire place felt strange to him. The doorways were too wide, the furniture too crudely built, the entire building too clearly made for a race other than humans.

He lit a glowstone and took a slow walk around the perimeter of the room. There wasn’t much to see. Maybe if he had gotten here before the roof collapsed, there might have been more, but even ten or twenty years of rain and wind getting inside would have been enough to ruin much of the interior.

A doorway led to a staircase spiraling down to the second floor. Mortanius walked carefully, since the floor was slick. At the bottom, he emerged into a room cloaked in darkness. There were some stone benches, but the room was relatively clean. Had the roof not collapsed and let air inside, this room would have been coated in millennia of dust. His glowstone cast feeble light across the stone walls, but it was enough for him to see what he had privately hoped would be there.

Four murals were on the walls, two directly across from him and one on each side. He stood in the doorway for a few moments, mentally preparing himself. So much had changed since they had first found this island and discovered the other murals. With the knowledge he had now, what would these additional images reveal?

He stepped closer until he could see one of them clearly. The mural was in better condition than the ones in the other buildings, the paint still bright, the details still sharp. Mortanius had the urge to touch the paint to make sure it wasn’t still wet.

Vampires were gathered around the Pillars in the middle of some sort of ceremony. It took Mortanius a minute to realize that they were creating the very first Guardians. He had never thought about it before, but how had the first Guardians been chosen? Had the vampires actually decided for themselves who would become a Guardian? As he looked at the mural, he got the feeling that something else was going on in the image, something that perhaps a vampire would instinctively understand, but he was at a loss to figure it out.

When he went to the next mural, he was stunned to see a nightmarish landscape composed of shades of red, and a huge group of hylden gathered in the center, writhing in torment. How could the vampires have known what the other dimension looked like?

Had they known? When they cast the spell that sent the hylden away, did the vampires already know the destination? Until now, Mortanius assumed that the vampires had simply created the Pillars and banished their enemies without knowing or caring where they were banished to. But this mural seemed to imply otherwise. Did the vampires deliberately send the hylden to the nightmarish world they now inhabited?

The last two murals were unlike any of the others that Mortanius had seen before. He stood between them and cast the light of his glowstone back and forth, studying the two paintings. A strange feeling of dread seemed to wash over him, like a whisper of foreboding from an unknown watcher looking over his shoulder.

The other murals always showed a group of figures, either vampire or hylden, acting out some sort of scene or tableau. But these last two paintings each portrayed exactly one figure, painted nearly full-size in incredible detail.

One was a hylden warrior wearing jagged silver armor over his withered green skin, painted in motion as if he was running into battle. He was a terrifying, monstrous figure, and yet there was a sense of power and dominance in the artist’s representation. One hand was lashing out with long red claws, and the other held a huge sword wreathed in flames. His twisted, bestial face was frozen in a growl of fury, and his eyes burned bright red.

The second mural showed a vampire figure in a similar pose, facing the hylden in the other mural, as if the two of them were enemies about to clash blades. The vampire was dressed in a flowing white and yellow robe, his eyes glowing white and his fangs bared in a sneer of righteous battle fury. Like the hylden, he was armed with a huge sword, but it was not just any sword that this mural depicted.

It was the mysterious blade that the Sarafan Knights had taken from Janos, the one that Moebius had just recently given as a birthday gift to William of Winterheim. There was no mistaking it. The sword the vampire wielded in the mural had the same serpentine blade and the huge skull decorating the hilt. It was the same sword, it had to be.

Mortanius could only stare in bewilderment. The sword, lost for centuries, conveniently reappears out of nowhere, and now shows up in ancient murals dating a thousand years before Mortanius was even born? Just where had that sword come from? It wasn’t just some fancy vampiric sword, it was much more than that.

But if it was such an important relic to the vampires, then why had Mortanius never seen it – never even known of its existence – before the night Janos died? None of the vampires had ever mentioned a sword like that, at least not that he could remember. Was it just another secret the vampires kept from the human Guardians?

Mortanius stared at the two figures as if entranced. Then he cast his gaze back at the other murals in the room. One clearly showed the vampires gathering at the Pillars, and one showed the hylden in the other dimension. Each group of figures was joined together – perhaps in discussion, perhaps in prayer – but the purpose of their respective meetings was vague. And then the other two murals showed one particular figure representing each opposing species. Were they legendary heroes from the war between the vampires and the hylden, or were they something else?

The background behind the vampire was a place with a blue sky and a landscape full of trees, but the hylden was in a world bathed in dark red. So that meant the hylden was from the other dimension. Besides, why would have the vampires have commemorated a hylden champion with his own mural? The figure must represent something else.

Mortanius stayed in the room for several hours, studying the images and writing down details. He explored the lower levels of the central tower but found nothing of use, just chambers full of dust.

He came to the vampire temple to seek answers, and instead found more questions. Their only clues to the conflict between the vampires and the hylden were the murals at the temple. The vampires had never written down anything on scrolls or parchment, and Mortanius never could understand why. Before the rebellion, they had promised to reveal the truth to the human Guardians, but how could they have honored that promise without even the barest written records for humans to read? Was the truth of the Pillars something they only recited out loud, like some kind of peculiar oral history?

The vampires had abandoned the temple long before the rebellion, long before Mortanius had even been born. Why leave this place to fall into ruin? Had the vampires somehow been ashamed or horrified by their own history, and hoped to forget the painful truth? And if so, had they ever truly intended to reveal the truth to the human Guardians? Mortanius believed that the vampires would never have told them the whole truth, either out of fear or superstition or just a sense of superiority over the weaker human race.

He took more long look at the two murals – portraying the vampire and hylden heroes, or champions, or whatever they were – and returned to the top floor to leave the same way he entered. He doubted he would ever return to the this place again. He knew that the two murals were obviously of great importance, but he could only speculate as to their meaning.

And there was the sword. Moebius said it was magical, but for what purpose? And if it was such an important artifact, then why had Vorador discarded it in the first place? Why throw it into the lake where it might be found? So many questions. There was absolutely no doubt in Mortanius’s mind that he had to study that sword as soon as possible. He’d make plans to travel to Winterheim right away.

He levitated back across the lake and set his feet down on the sandy shoreline, where he had left his horse to graze freely on the grass growing just beyond the beach. He could have continued to use his flying spell to return home, but he was mentally exhausted from using to travel to the island and back, and had ridden a horse to the shore to preserve his strength. Besides, he wasn’t concerned about someone stealing his horse, and after a few minutes of searching, he found the animal resting contentedly near some trees. It was almost sundown, the sky growing dark. He climbed wearily into the saddle and started his long trek home.

Not long after he began riding, he felt a faint echo of pain wash over him. It was not the overwhelming blast of psychic pain that accompanied the death of a Guardian, but it was enough to jar him uncomfortably. Shaking his head to clear it, he realized that something terrible must have happened. Somewhere, one of the Guardians had experienced something painful, and their pain had spread to the others, just like the old vampire Guardians had shared Mortanius’s pain on the night that his family died. But Mortanius could not be sure which Guardian it originated with.

By the time he made it to his estate, it was long after midnight. Before he even dismounted, the front doors came open and his servant Harlis hurried outside to meet him.

“My Lord, thank goodness you’re finally home.”

“What’s going on, Harlis?” Mortanius asked as he climbed down.

“A messenger came by this evening. It’s terrible news, my Lord, simply terrible.”

“What happened?”

“It’s about Lord William, the ruler of Winterheim. He’s been assassinated by a vampire.”

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