Mortality: The Story of Mortanius

Chapter Forty-Eight

Mortanius descended the steps into the subterranean catacomb beneath Avernus Cathedral. He went slowly, taking one step at a time. He was in no hurry. In fact, he was stalling.

The catacombs, once a dark maze of uneven dirt passages and tunnels, had been greatly expanded. The section which connected it to the Cathedral basement was now a wide staircase lined in red brick, leading to a broad hallway that branched off to several rooms and private quarters. The floor was still mostly dirt, but it was now packed down and smoothed out evenly across most of the catacomb. The ceiling was reinforced with wooden arches in some places, with stone in others. The catacomb was still not a very welcoming place, but at least it was better than the gloomy cavern it had once been.

Ten years had passed since their first contact with the hylden. Mortanius, for reasons he could not adequately articulate, consented to Azimuth’s desire to keep their discovery of the hylden from the rest of the Circle. In ten years, he still had not told anyone, not even Moebius.

He really didn’t know why. It wasn’t because of a sense of loyalty to Azimuth, and it wasn’t because he cared about her or anything so sentimental. Even though he did care about her. And he didn’t keep the hylden a secret because he was embarrassed by his involvement in their discovery. If anything, it was the opposite. Azimuth’s Dimensionscope was one of the most magnificent magical artifacts that Mortanius had ever seen, but they kept that a secret from the other Guardians as well. Mortanius didn’t know why. Every time he tried to explain it to himself, he came up with nothing.

In the end, Azimuth wanted to keep knowledge of the hylden between the two of them, and Mortanius submitted to her wishes without argument. She said that she wanted to continue her research before telling the others. She wanted to learn as much as possible before revealing their discovery to the rest of the Nosgoth. She wanted to improve her magical device until it worked flawlessly. Those were just some of her excuses, but Mortanius knew the real reason.

Azimuth liked being in control. She didn’t want the other Guardians to be involved with the hylden because she coveted the power that their interactions gave her. The hylden shared knowledge, both historical and magical in nature, and Azimuth wanted it all for herself. Azimuth liked being in charge, and she kept Mortanius around because he let her be in charge.

He didn’t know why he stayed. He originally intended to leave Avernus a long time ago, and in the years since they first found the hylden, he made plans to leave many times. He had his own work to do, his own experiments, his own lines of research. He wanted to be free of all of this. But he kept coming back. For ten years, he kept coming back.

Every time he spoke with the other Guardians, it was harder and harder for him to hold his tongue. It grew increasingly difficult to keep track of his numerous omissions and outright lies. Sometimes, he found himself casually mentioning his work with Azimuth and nearly blurting out something the hylden had told them, or mentioning Azimuth’s device by accident. He had to constantly monitor his own thoughts and words when the other Guardians were around.

Not that he saw much of them these days anyway. The Guardians no longer met every year, and in fact they had only gathered once in the past decade. Mortanius occasionally spoke with Moebius, but he had little contact with the rest of them.

It had not only been ten years since their discovery of the hylden. It was also ten years since the assassination of William of Winterheim. Those two major events had coincidentally occurred right around the same time, changing the course of Nosgoth’s history, and neither of them necessarily for the better.

William’s death, as Moebius had predicted, led to a renewed crusade of vengeance against the vampires. According to the most recent report from Malek that Mortanius had bothered to read, more than six thousand half-breeds had been killed in the past decade. Families no longer helped to conceal their half-breed relatives, communities no longer hid them away or protected them. The half-breeds were on their own now, tracked and hunted down relentlessly by Malek’s organized guilds of vampire hunters. Sometimes they were caught alive and executed for the mobs to watch. Sometimes they were staked and left to burn in the sun.

Vorador was still a fugitive, hidden somewhere in the deepest region of the Termogent Forest. All attempts to track him down had failed, just as they had failed for centuries before. Whatever ancient magic was used to conceal Vorador’s lair, it was beyond the ability of Malek and his vampire hunters to penetrate. Perhaps if all the Guardians united together, they might be able to determine exactly where Vorador was hiding, but for whatever reason, the Guardians had declined from cooperating in that manner, much to Moebius’s and Malek’s frustration.

The rallying cry of the vampire hunters was “For William!” In fact, the legend of William had grown to ridiculous lengths since his death. William the Just, the people called him. William the Beloved, William the Pure, William the Good. If anything, he became more famous in death than he had in life. He was a shining paragon of virtue who healed the sick with a touch of his hand. He was a legendary warrior who slayed hundreds of vampires in an attempt to rid the land of their menace. His birth was marked by a prophecy that he would someday come to rule all of Nosgoth. He died defending his family from a dozen vampire assassins, only succumbing to his wounds after he had slain them all. Lies and complete nonsense were his legacy now.

However, William’s great legend had not helped Winterheim. Once a rising province, prosperous and peaceful, it quickly descended into internal squabbling amongst William’s relatives in the wake of his assassination. Mortanius didn’t even know who ruled Winterheim now. The province was all but ignored by the surrounding region, returning to its former place as a disorganized northern land not worthy of mention.

The death of William and the ongoing extermination of the vampires had one positive result, at least. The brewing conflict between the major cities, which Mortanius had feared for some time, had yet to occur. The city governments had formed a loose alliance in the intervening years, partially as a way to combat the possibility that one particular city might gain too much power. Trade was good, disagreements were hashed out in monthly conferences, and the populace enjoyed a long period of peace and prosperity.

Mortanius wished his own private life was so peaceful.

He reached the bottom of the stairs and walked silently down the hall to the main catacomb chamber. Every week, sometimes more than once a week, he made the trek underneath Avernus to participate in cult rituals.

That’s the only thing he could call it. A cult. The tiny, fringe religious group founded by Azimuth started with a handful of peasants. Within a year, she had perhaps twenty regular followers. In another couple of years, the number swelled to fifty. Still a small number, but every month it grew by another person or two. The current number was more than one hundred.

Mortanius had no involvement whatsoever in recruiting new members. In fact, neither did Azimuth at this point. The cult spread by word of mouth to all the darkest, poorest corners of the city, to the ears of those who had little to lose by embracing a strange new god. Members of the cult gained no wealth or personal power by joining. They were not fed or given shelter, even though Azimuth probably could have afforded to do so if she wished. They received nothing except the belief that they were the chosen ones, the special few who the hylden chose to grant their wisdom. They were lonely and desperate, and wanted nothing more than to be a part of something special and important.

Sometimes, Mortanius pitied them. Most of the time, he despised them. They were the pathetic refuse of society, and what little sympathy he had for their plight was outweighed by his disgust at the entire cult, and his own participation in it. He hated that he was involved in this lunacy, and hated the cult’s fervent followers even more, for being drawn into it willingly. And deep down, he hated Azimuth for all of it.

But still, he kept her secrets. He told no one of the cult, or Azimuth’s magical device, or the existence of the hylden. He felt smothered by all his secrets and deceptions. Sometimes he wished he had never agreed to come to Avernus in the first place. But something kept holding him back, kept him from informing the Guardians, kept him returning to Avernus again and again. He had long since stopped trying to make sense of it.

Azimuth met him in the corridors beyond the main chamber. She wore a sensual black and purple gown with a long cut up one leg. Glittering gold bracelets dangled from her wrists. She looked positively radiant beside Mortanius, who wore a plain maroon cloak. It was always a bit chilly down in the catacombs for some reason, and he wondered if she ever got cold in such revealing clothing.

“You’re late,” she said, not looking at him.

“Yes,” he agreed.

“They’re waiting for us. If memory serves, it’s your turn to speak.”

“I’d rather not.”

She shook her head. “I can’t believe it still makes you uncomfortable after all this time. By now, you should be used to it.”

“I’ll never be used to it. It’s not natural.”

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic. I’ve told you a hundred times, it’s nothing to be worried about.”

Mortanius wasn’t so sure about that, but he let the subject drop. The hylden had never explained exactly how they were able to possess human bodies, and what that possession truly entailed. Could the hylden access their memories during that time? Why could they only seem to possess Azimuth and Mortanius?

At first, Mortanius believed that they could only possess someone when Azimuth used the Dimensionscope, but that theory was soon proven false. What exactly were the limits of the hylden’s power? They refused to say, and Azimuth refused to ask, saying it was irrelevant, although Mortanius thought it was anything but.

Finally, Azimuth turned to look at him. She reached up to smooth out the collar of his robe, and pursed her lips as she inspected his appearance.

“Hmm,” she said with a hint of a smile. “I guess you look presentable.”

“That’s all I aim for,” he replied.

She let out a little chuckle. “Okay. I’ll let you off the hook, I suppose. I’ll be the speaker.”

“Thank you,” he said sincerely.

“How do I look?”

“Beautiful, as always.”

She smiled at him and then walked down the hall to the main chamber. After a moment, Mortanius slumped his shoulders and walked out after her.

The central chamber of the catacomb was an enormous cave, at least two hundred feet at its widest. The high ceiling was dotted with stalactites that sometimes dripped water. When Mortanius or Azimuth spoke, their voices echoed in the vast room.

In the center of the chamber was a deep pit fifty feet across and at least that far down. The pit was already there when they first found the catacombs, and they never bothered to fill it in because it would have been too difficult. Constantly-burning magical fires were lit on brazers all around the perimeter of the pit. On a secondary level another ten feet beyond that was a curved hallway balcony almost like an interior mezzanine. The railings were crudely-carved stone, made by the same workers who built the stairs and ceiling arches. Right now the balcony was packed with bodies. By Mortanius’s reckoning, most of their followers were there.

The cultists whispered and murmured amongst themselves, shifting nervously on the dirt floor. They wore shabby gray or brown cloaks with the hoods raised up to conceal their faces as much as possible. Members of the hylden cult kept their identities a secret, but they needn’t have bothered. None of them were important enough for anyone to recognize. They were vagabonds and beggars, petty criminals and unskilled laborers, the unwanted and the disposable, the homeless and the needy. They were the sad, neglected underworld of Avernus and the surrounding regions, some of them coming from as far away as Willendorf.

Sometimes Mortanius spoke for the hylden and sometimes it was Azimuth. It really didn’t matter which one of them served as the mouthpiece to the hylden, since the words were the same.

Azimuth stood at the edge of the dark pit, arms raised. “Welcome!” she called out. “Welcome all! You have come to here as witnesses to powerful beings from another world! You have come to hear the voice of the great hylden! Call to them with me!

“Hylden!” the cultists called back. “Hylden!”

“Speak to us, great hylden!” Azimuth shouted, her voice reverberating across the chamber. “Give us your wisdom and knowledge! We are in need of your voice!”

It made Mortanius sick to think how fully Azimuth had embraced her role as a servant of the banished hylden. When Mortanius said the words, he just said them in a monotone voice devoid of emotion. But not Azimuth. The passion in her voice was unmistakable. She was not just repeating words, she was speaking from the heart. Ever since the very first day they had heard the voice of the hylden, she was fully dedicated to them. Her obedience to the hylden was complete.

He watched in familiar horror as Azimuth’s body suddenly went rigid and her eyes flashed an eerie green color. Her movements became jerky and unstable, like someone suffering from muscle spasms. She almost looked as if she was going to fall into the pit, but she remained upright, her arms extended straight out at her sides.

Her voice was no longer her own. “We will now speak,” the hylden said through her in a deep, rumbling voice. “Hear me, people of Nosgoth. We have no name. We are ancient. We have been gone from Nosgoth for an age, but now we are returned.”

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