Mortality: The Story of Mortanius

Chapter Forty-Nine

Mortanius was in the middle of an experiment when Azimuth contacted him. Lately, he had been spending more and more time away from Avernus. It took him years to finally put some distance between himself and Azimuth’s hylden-worshipping cult, but he had done it. It felt like removing a chain that had been tied around his neck for too long. He was not entirely free, however. He returned there about once a month to participate in the cult rituals, guilted into doing so by Azimuth, but he spent the majority of his time at his own estate.

“Mortanius!” Azimuth’s voice announced suddenly from the air around him. “You must come to Avernus and meet with me at once! Something amazing has happened! Our benefactors have given us a sample of their power! You must come and see it in person!”

Mortanius sighed and stood up straight, stretching his back. His hands were covered in blood. On the examination table before him lay a pair of dead dogs. One of them was nothing but a corpse, the soul having already left the body and moved on. The other dog, however, was in magical stasis, its soul contained in a gem not unlike the one which held the soul of the Guardian Malek.

He was currently in the middle of performing a heart transplant. Such operations had long been theorized by physicians as a way to save lives, by taking a healthy heart from a recently-dead individual and placing it in the chest of someone whose heart was defective or damaged.. However, medical knowledge had not reached a point where it was possible to keep a person alive long enough to do the operation. Mortanius hoped to change that.

He had removed the heart from the dead dog and was now in the middle of sewing it into the chest of the other. Once he was done, he would return the dog’s soul to its body and use his magic to reactivate the biological functions as much as possible. If his experiment was successful, the dog would be alive and healthy once more, and Mortanius would move on to human subjects.

He wiped his hands clean on a towel and then cast a quick incantation. A magical red aura surrounded him and he said, “Azimuth, I’m in the middle of an experiment right now. I’ll come to Avernus in a few hours, once I’m finished.”

The Guardians had recently begun using a new messaging spell developed by Anarcrothe. For the first time, they could communicate easily over long distances. The spell had a few limitations, but it worked well most of the time.

A minute later, Azimuth’s reply came. “I don’t care what you’re working on! It can’t possibly be as important as this! We’re on the forefront of the greatest development in the history of the human race! Drop what you’re doing and come to Avernus right now!”

Mortanius sighed heavily and leaned against the examination table. He debated what would be more troublesome, traveling to Avernus for a few minutes to see whatever nonsense Azimuth was so excited about, or ignoring her summons and dealing with her fury later. If he came running at her every beck and call, she’d come to expect it and he’d never make a clean break. He was not her employee or her servant, and she had no right to make any demands of him. He was a Guardian of the Pillars, her equal in status, and her vast superior in age and experience. For that reason alone, he wanted to block her from contacting him again.

But he had to know what was going on. One of the reasons he continued to participate in Azimuth’s cult was to keep an eye on it, to make sure it wasn’t getting out of hand. The cult had been active for twenty years now, and Azimuth boasted more than five hundred followers. If Mortanius had anything to say about it, that was as large as the cult would ever be. If it grew beyond their ability to contain it, he would go to the other Guardians and damn the consequences. At least, that’s what he kept telling himself.

She said the hylden gave her a sample of their power. What exactly did that mean? Some new spell, or maybe a magical item? Had they revealed the location of another hidden ruin? Or something even more unexpected?

Frowning, he cast the spell again and gave his one-word response. “Fine.”

He looked down at his two test subjects. He could try to leave the experiment in place, but he doubted that he could maintain the stasis all the way from Avernus. Making up his mind, he released the dog’s soul from the magical gemstone and threw a gray sheet over the bloody bodies. Later, he’d call upon one of his local contacts to remove the dogs and find him some more so he could start the experiment from scratch.

He cleaned up, washed his hands, and changed into a clean robe. Once he was ready, he went outside into the yard and prepared another spell. Speaking to people over long distances was not the only recent magical development. After several years of experimentation and practice, as well as magical information gained from the hylden, Azimuth had successfully created a reliable teleportation spell. The Guardians had been fooling around with the idea of instant travel for centuries, but attempting such a spell without knowing the results was a dangerous proposition. They might well reappear fifty feet underground, or a thousand feet in mid-air.

Mortanius would go to Avernus as requested, but he was not going to travel the long way. Going by horse would take more than a day, and even flying would take hours. He didn’t want to waste that much time.

An aura of glowing magic embraced him as he finished the incantation. He blinked out of existence and reappeared in the middle of the main hall of Avernus, surrounded by a billowing fog as the warm air that teleported along with him came into contact with the almost freezing air of the Cathedral. It was uncomfortably cold inside, as usual. Mortanius had mentioned the temperature to Azimuth several times but she disregarded it. Some strange side affect of the Dimensionscope seemed to suck the heat right out of the air, leaving it shiveringly cold inside.

“There you are!” Azimuth snapped from the other end of the hall. She stalked towards him, her eyes were ablaze with intensity, as if she was under the effects of a stimulating drug. “You took your time getting here!”

“Did you want me to come here covered in blood?” Mortanius snapped back. “I was in the middle of an operation. I had to clean up first.”

She waved his explanation away and spun her heel to walk back to the stairs. “Whatever,” she said over her shoulder. “Come downstairs. You have to see this.”

Mortanius swallowed his annoyance and followed after her. “What can possibly be so important that it couldn’t wait until tomorrow?”

“They sent something to us,” she said, hopping down the steps two at a time.

Mortanius halted in mid-step, one foot on the top stair and one foot on the stair below. “What are you talking about?”

Azimuth reached the bottom and turned to look up at him. Her eyes seemed to glow. “They sent us a messenger! A symbol of their power! Can you even comprehend what this means for the future of our world? They are truly gods, Mortanius. Gods in physical flesh!”

“How could they send anything?” he asked firmly. “The barrier between the dimensions can’t be breached. You’ve said this many times. We can see and communicate, but nothing can travel from one dimension to the other.”

“Damn it, Mortanius!” Azimuth groaned, raising her hands. “Listen to me! The hylden have bestowed upon us an incredible gift, and still you doubt them! Our knowledge of the dimensional barrier is paltry compared to theirs, so if I ever said it was impossible to breach, then clearly I was wrong!”

“How did they sent it through?”

She turned and stomped down the hallway. “Come and see for yourself!”

Warily, he made his way downstairs. It was colder in the basement, and colder still in the catacomb beneath Avernus, which made no sense. It should have been warmer. His breath puffed out in white clouds as he made his way to the central chamber. The cold was not merely a low temperature, it was something more than that. It was like the coldness of death. Mortanius felt himself shiver down to his core, as if the cold had penetrated his very soul.

“Azimuth,” he said.

“Here!” she shouted from deeper within. “Come and see what the hylden have given us! A messenger to spread their words! A being unlike anything that walks the world of Nosgoth! Undeniable proof of their power!”

He found her on the very edge of the huge pit in the center of the main chamber, facing him with arms spread wide and a look of pure exultation on her face, which looked flush with sweat even in the coldness of the chamber. None of the other cult followers were in attendance. The chamber was empty and silent.

Mortanius said nothing as he came forward. He almost asked her where the hylden’s “messenger” was, but he already knew. The cold seemed to seep straight into his bones as he walked to the pit. He edged forward and leaned over to see down to the bottom.

He had the paranoid thought that Azimuth had lured him here in order to murder him. It would be a simple thing to push him down into the pit. The fall might not kill him, but it would surely injure him, and even if he was strong enough to cast a spell to levitate or fly out, Azimuth could cast spells of her own to wound him or kill him outright. If he died down here, the other Guardians would never find his body or know what had happened to him. And if the hylden had ordered Azimuth to end Mortanius’s life, he had no doubt that she would follow their instructions, so deep was her loyalty to them.

She did not push him in, but as Mortanius’s eyes made out what was shrouded in gloom down at the bottom of the pit, he almost wished that she had.

It was a creature of immense size, at least fifteen feet wide at the shoulders and longer than that from head to tail. Coarse brown and black fur covered most of its body, and Mortanius saw what he thought was some kind of webbing connecting its front limbs to its torso, almost like bat wings. The creature could not fly, however, and instead walked on all fours, the front limbs longer and more jointed than the rear. A stubby tail emerged from its back, looking more like a vestigial growth rather than anything functional. At the sound of their voices, the creature reared its head up and glared at them with huge yellow eyes. Its face was neither human nor beast, but some demented combination of the two. The sight of that hideous face chilled Mortanius’s bones.

And then it spoke. Its voice was like the rumble of thunder, and at first, Mortanius thought that it was nothing but a roar of displeasure. But then he realized with growing horror that the creature was saying a word.

“Blood! Blood!” Its demand echoed across the cavern. “Give me blood!”

Mortanius stumbled back, away from the edge of the pit. He felt like his legs were going to give out from underneath him. Azimuth remained where she was, looking down at the monster with something like wonder in her gaze.

“It has traveled very far to be here,” she said vaguely. “We have been entrusted with its care.”

“We must kill it!” Mortanius blurted out, in shock. The sight of those yellow eyes, glaring at him and shining with cruel intelligence, burned into his memory. He retreated further from the pit, trying to escape. “It’s a demon! It has no place in this world!”

“It’s not from this world!” Azimuth cried triumphantly. “We are the sole guardians of a new life form, given to us by beings more powerful than we can ever imagine! How can you not be awed by the sight of such godlike power?”

“Are you insane?” Mortanius said in disgust. “It’s a monster! Did you not hear it call out for blood? There’s only one being I know of that craves blood, and it’s not the hylden!”

Azimuth looked at him and shook her head pityingly. “You have such a small view of the universe, Mortanius. How many other dimensions have we looked upon, you and I? Hundreds? Thousands of other planes of existence? And yet you still think that Nosgoth is somehow normal, or even average. That Nosgoth is the correct dimension by which all others are judged.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The hylden opened up a rift to another dimension in order to find this messenger. The fact that it requires blood to live is irrelevant. For all we know, the majority of intelligent beings in the universe drink blood like the vampires did. Maybe what they thought was a curse was just a return to the natural order of things. Maybe we humans are the freaks.”

Mortanius shook his head. She was just trying to distract him. He took a step towards her and pointed toward the pit. “How did they send it here?” he demanded to know. “How did the hylden manage to transport such a huge creature to Nosgoth?”

“They opened a rift from its home dimension and sent it through,” she replied in a flat tone of voice, looking him right in the eyes. “In its disoriented state, I was able to lead it into the pit, where it will remain until –”

“Why didn’t they come through themselves?” Mortanius asked. “If they could breach the barrier between worlds, then why not come through to Nosgoth?”

“You know they can’t return here,” Azimuth said carefully. “The Pillars ...”

“The Pillars banished them. We know the place they were banished to. It’s a hellscape with a burning red sky. But if the hylden can breach the dimensional barrier, then they didn’t they leave that place ages ago? Why not find some other dimension similar to Nosgoth and live there instead?”

“We can’t presume to know their motivations,” Azimuth said, crossing her arms arrogantly. “If they wanted to leave, then they would have.”

“But they did, right? They had to leave their dimension in order to find a creature to send to our world. So why did they choose such a horrifying beast to be their messenger? If they can leave their dimension, then they could have gone anywhere. Of all the creatures in all the dimensions of the universe, why did they choose that damned thing?”

“It’s a symbol of their godlike power!” Azimuth insisted. “It will inspire awe in everyone that lays their eyes on it! Look at it, Mortanius, and tell me that the beings who sent it here are not as powerful as gods! That creature –”

“Drinks blood!” he finished for her. “You said it will remain in the pit, but why? Why keep it there? If it’s a messenger of your precious hylden, then shouldn’t we march it right outside the Cathedral for everyone to see? All of Nosgoth should see the evidence of their godlike power.”

“We can’t …” Azimuth said hesitantly. “I mean, the creature is … untamed and ...”

“Untamed?” Mortanius laughed. “Is that how you describe it? You’re not blind, Azimuth, you can see how dangerous that thing is. If it ever got loose, it would murder hundreds of people before it was brought down. Why would the hylden send a demon like that to Nosgoth? Why not send something easier to control? Why not send some other intelligent race to be their messenger?”

For a brief second, Mortanius thought he was getting through to her. Azimuth blinked and stuttered, trying to come up with something. She rubbed her forehead and looked back uncertainly towards the pit. For the first time in a very long time, she seemed to harbor doubts.

“Tell me the truth,” Mortanius said more gently. “Where did that demon come from? I don’t believe for one second that the hylden can open up portals to other dimensions. They didn’t send it here, so where did it ...”

He gasped and stepped back as he felt the hylden force their will upon him. Resisting them was pointless, but he tried anyway. Azimuth’s momentary look of confusion faded away and she smiled knowingly as Mortanius blacked out.

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