Mortality: The Story of Mortanius

Chapter Fifty

He slowly came to, lying on the floor of the hallway leading from the main chamber. He trembled and rolled onto his side, breathing heavily. His arms and legs felt numb, but sensation soon returned and he managed to get his arms under him in an attempt to stand up.

He heard voices in the main chamber. The cult followers were chanting, although the voices were getting softer. By the time Mortanius managed to stand, the chamber was mostly silent except for the shuffle of feet and murmur of whispers.

Azimuth’s voice rang out, “The gods are pleased with our sacrifice! Remember this day and remember the power of the gods! For we are the chosen ones, and our sacrifice to Hash’ak’gik will be rewarded! Hail to Hash’ak’gik!”

“Hash’ak’gik!” the cultists responded.

Mortanius slumped against the wall and tried to clear his head. How long had been under their control? Somehow, he felt as if hours had passed. When he succumbed to their influence, the chamber was empty except for himself and Azimuth, but now the cult followers were there, so it must have been some time. He felt tired and disoriented, as he had the very first time the hylden had possessed him.

“There you are,” Azimuth said. She stood a few paces away, her arms crossed.

“How long?” Mortanius croaked, leaning forward with his hands on his knees. “How long was I under their control this time?”

She shrugged. “A little while, I don’t know. You should be grateful. They saved you from doing something foolish.”

“Foolish?” he said with a grimace.

“Yes. You’ve been acting foolishly for some time now, in fact. Ignoring your responsibilities here at the Cathedral, openly contradicting our benefactors –”

“Benefactors? Azimuth, listen to yourself. The hylden aren’t benefactors, they aren’t gods, and they aren’t our allies. They’re a species even more alien to us than the vampires. We know nothing of their motivations, their intentions, or their goals. When you brought me along to help you with this project, it was to study the other dimensions, not to worship their inhabitants!”

“The hylden are from Nosgoth, or have you forgotten? This is their home, Mortanius, stolen from them by the vampires. Is it any wonder they seek to reconnect with it after so long?”

“Do we know for certain that they’re from Nosgoth?” Mortanius asked seriously. “All we know is that the vampires and the hylden went to war. For all we know, the vampires banished the hylden back to their original home dimension!”

“The murals make no mention of that. Not even the vampire murals make any such claim.”

“That’s my point! All we have are those damned murals, telling two sides of the same story, without any context or explanation. We don’t even have writings, only images that we try in vain to interpret. We don’t know where they came from, we don’t know why they went to war, we don’t know anything! We still don’t truly understand how the Pillars even work or how they were made!”

“And the hylden can teach us!” Azimuth said, reaching out to him. “The vampires kept the truth hidden from us. You’ve said it yourself how they hoarded their knowledge and treated humans as inferiors. The hylden just want to return home, Mortanius, can’t you see that? In return for our help, they’ll share their wisdom with us.”

Mortanius sneered and jabbed a finger toward the chamber. “Is that beast in the pit an example of their great wisdom? Tell me again how they brought it here? By opening a portal from its own home dimension?”

“Yes, the hylden –”

“The hylden are lying,” Mortanius said. “We’ve spoken to them a thousand times and never once did they mention they can breach the dimensional barrier.”

“They are not lying,” Azimuth swore. “They have no obligation to tell us everything. They don’t owe us anything at all. They sent Hash’ak’gik here to serve as their representative, as their messenger on Nosgoth”

“It has a name now?”

“Yes, it has a name! And when the others saw it for the first time, they were in awe, just like you should be! It’s easy for them to listen when the hylden speak through us, but they know that we’re sorcerers and could fake the voice of the hylden if we wanted to. But Hash’ak’gik is living proof that the hylden are real and their powers are real, and they can manifest here on Nosgoth.”

“They didn’t need to send some demon to Nosgoth to accomplish that! All you have to do is bring the other Guardians here and show them! Then all of Nosgoth would know the truth! Why haven’t they asked you to do that? Bringing the Guardians here to see them would serve their purposes far more than talking to a bunch of ignorant peasants!”

“The Guardians are biased,” Azimuth said simply. “You’re a perfect example of that, aren’t you? They value their own status too highly. Do you think for a moment that someone like Ariel would accept the hylden with an open mind? Or a fanatic like Malek? No, the Guardians would only get in the way. The hylden want to have their existence revealed to the common people of Nosgoth. Once we succeed in spreading the hylden’s message to the people, only then will the Guardians be informed.”

“Then set that demon free, like I said before. Let everyone in the entire city see their messenger with their own eyes. Did the hylden explain why they sent a dangerous beast like that?”

“They did, as a matter of fact. You know as well as I do how many dimensions there are in the universe. We’ve looked at hundreds and only scratched the surface. The hylden said that even they haven’t explored more than a few hundred dimensions. They admit that Hash’ak’gik is perhaps not the ideal messenger, but he is a member of one of the only other intelligent species the hylden have encountered. The other species were unacceptable for a variety of reasons –”

“How convenient,” Mortanius spat. “I told you, they’re lying. They can travel freely to other dimensions but they’ve seen barely more than we have? I still don’t believe they needed to send a messenger here at all, but I refuse to believe that a blood-drinking demon like that is the best they could find!”

“And I already told you, just because it drinks blood means nothing.”

Mortanius paused at that, suddenly remembering something. In the first hazy moments after he regained control of his body, he heard Azimuth speaking to the cult followers, but he hadn’t really registered what she said. Now, he thought back and remembered her words.

“When you were talking to the others, you said something about a sacrifice. What were you talking about? What happened?” He looked at her intently. “What have you done?”

Azimuth returned his gaze, studying him coolly. “I think what you mean to ask is, what have we done? You and I performed a new ceremony. We revealed the existence of Hash’ak’gik to the others. The hylden spoke through us and also through him. And afterward, we delivered a willing sacrifice to Hash’ak’gik as a further demonstration of his power.”

The thought chilled Mortanius’s blood. “You … sacrificed someone to that thing?”

“Yes. We are Hash’ak’gik’s caretakers. He must be fed.”

Mortanius pushed past her, feeling as if he was going to be sick. He ran out into the main chamber, the sickness rising until the entire world seemed to spin around him. He stopped at the edge of the pit and tottered there, staring in horror at the scene below.

Blood was splattered here and there, although not as much as there should have been. The ragged corpse tossed against the dirt wall would have held more. It was a man dressed in a shabby brown tunic, now ripped and torn, his gray hair matted with gore from his shattered skull.

The demon stalked in a circular path around the bottom of the pit, probing at the walls, seeking an exit. Somehow, it sensed Mortanius standing there and tilted its head upward to gaze hatefully at him. It jammed its front claws into the wall and climbed until it stood nearly upright. Its mouth was smeared with blood.

“Not enough!” it growled. “Want more! Give me more blood!”

Mortanius staggered backwards as if struck with a physical blow. His nausea overwhelmed him and he fell to his knees and vomited on the chamber floor, although it had been hours since he’d eaten and there wasn’t much to vomit up but bile. Azimuth watched him and laughed in cruel amusement.

“Oh, Mortanius, don’t be so damned squeamish. That man down there isn’t worth it. He was a criminal. Do you think I would send an innocent person to their death?”

He spat out the foul taste in his mouth. “A criminal? Really? What crime did he commit? Was it so heinous that he deserved to be fed to a demon as punishment? I don’t even care what he did. It doesn’t matter. You still murdered him.”

“We,” Azimuth said, the single word echoing off the cavern walls. “We did this, Mortanius. You and I. We’re in this together, whether you like it or not. Or did you really think that you could just stand by and only bear responsibility when it suited you?”

“The hylden are responsible for this!” Mortanius insisted. “Not me! They’ve corrupted our minds and taken control of our bodies! And the worst part is that you seem to welcome it! How can you willingly take part in this demented cult and not see it for what it is?”

“We are the chosen ones!” Azimuth replied fanatically. “Everything I’ve ever done my entire life has led up to this! I had a vision of the Dimensionscope in my dreams, and I strove for decades to make it a reality! Contacting the hylden was my destiny, Mortanius! You should be sharing the glory with me, not pushing it away like a coward!”

“A coward?” Mortanius stared at her in disbelief. “We are Guardians of the Pillars. Our loyalty lies with Nosgoth, or have you forgotten that?”

“The hylden are from Nosgoth.”

“What difference does that make? The vampires are from Nosgoth too, and I don’t see you worshiping them.”

“The vampires tried to enslave us –”

“No, they didn’t,” Mortanius shot back. “And even if they had, how can you be sure that the hylden don’t have the exact same goal? If they could return to Nosgoth, do you think they’ll be content to treat us as equals?”

“They can’t return to Nosgoth, so it’s a moot point.”

“Are you so sure about that? Why else would they do all of this? Why create a cult to bring in people to worship them as gods? To feed their ego?”

“This group was my idea, not theirs,” Azimuth said. “I wanted to show them how much we respect them and appreciate their wisdom and counsel. The hylden haven’t asked us for anything in return for their knowledge.”

“Except to feed their pet demon.”

“He was nothing but a lowly criminal,” Azimuth said exasperatedly. “Nobody will miss him and Nosgoth will be better without men like him.”

“And what about the next time?” Mortanius said. “Will you conveniently be able to track down another criminal the next time it gets hungry? How often does that thing have to feed, anyway? Every day? Every week? Eventually, you’re going to run out of criminals, Azimuth. Who are you going to sacrifice then?”

Azimuth had no immediate response. She looked stunned, as if the question had never even occurred to her, and she was only now realizing the implications. She tried to stammer a reply, but Mortanius didn’t care to listen.

Without another word, he cast the teleportation spell and disappeared from the chamber.

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