Mortality: The Story of Mortanius

Chapter Fifty-Two

He opened his eyes. Lying on his back, he found himself staring up at the night sky and the Pillars towering over him. For a fraction of a second, he forgot where he was. Then, panic seized him and he jerked upright into a sitting position, a cry for help on his lips.

About twenty feet away, a crumpled body in a white dress lay against one of the Pillars. Dimly, Mortanius was aware that it was his own Pillars, the Pillar of Death, the one farthest to the right. Gasping for breath, he found that he could not stand. He could only get onto his hands and knees and crawl in misery, a crushing weight constricting his chest like the fist of an invisible demon clutching his heart. The position of the moon in the sky told him that hylden had controlled him for only a few minutes, but a few minutes was more than enough time.

With a trembling hand, he touched Ariel’s shoulder and rolled her over.

Half of her face was gone, shredded down to the bone, the eye missing to reveal a bloody socket. Drops of blood splattered across the front of her dress. Her hand was scorched black as well, as she had instinctively raised her hand to defend against the bolt of magic that killed her.

“Ariel ...” he moaned.

As he held her shoulder, he saw smears of blood on his own hand. He let go and she slumped back onto her side, her intact eye looking out at nothing.

Somehow, he felt a strange psychic disturbance shake him out of his paralyzation. It was like nothing he had ever felt before. His vision switched almost involuntarily to the spirit world and he looked upon the Pillars, now reaching up into an ugly, neon green sky.

What he saw was impossible. A soul, but restrained in place, thrashing at unseen bonds. It hovered in space, unable to move on. And then, an ethereal shape seemed to blossom around the soul until it took the shape of a person.

“This cannot be,” Mortanius whispered, his eyes fixed on the ghostly figure. “This cannot be, this is impossible, impossible ...”

“Where … am … I ...” the soul hummed in Ariel’s voice. “What … is … going … on ...”

“No, no, no,” Mortanius choked out.

The soul seemed to fade away into nothingness, and in its place floated a spectre that looked like Ariel, the Guardian of Balance. Her face was disfigured, as it was in death. She looked around in confusion and then raised a hand to touch her cheek. Realization dawned upon her face.

“Mortanius,” she said, looking down at him. “Mortanius, what have you done?”

“I … I didn’t,” he tried to say.

“What have you done to me?!” she shrieked. “Mortanius! What have you done to me?!”

Terror gave him strength. He jumped to his feet and ran.

“Mortanius!” Ariel screamed at him from the spirit world. “Mortanius! Damn you!”

He ran blindly, his mind barely functioning. He simply ran as fast and as far as he could, trying to get away, get free, get anywhere else. He ran across the grass, leaving the Pillars behind him. He believed he could still hear Ariel screaming his name, cursing him, haunting him.

She was dead. The hylden had possessed his body and murdered her. He had murdered her.

Beyond the meadow surrounding the Pillars was sparse woodland, dark and shadowy as their branches blocked the moonlight. Mortanius plunged head first into the trees, barely able to see where he was going. But still he ran. Branches snagged at his clothes and leaves battered his face as he ran blindly through the trees.

Ariel. Her screams had gone silent but still they nagged at him. She was lost in the spirit world, her soul trapped at the Pillars, chained there by cosmic forces beyond his reckoning. That was impossible by itself, but somehow her departed soul had regained its awareness and taken on a spectral form. She had become a ghost, a banshee, but it went against everything Mortanius knew about souls and the afterlife. There was no explaining it.

He had to get away. Think and figure out what he was going to do. The other Guardians would know, they would find out. By now, they would all know that Ariel was dead. Mortanius knew he could not hide his guilt from them. They would know the truth right away. What could he say? Would they ever believe him?

There was only one thing he could do. Confess right away. Tell them everything, tell them about the hylden and the cult beneath Avernus, tell them how the hylden possessed him, tell them –

Something struck him and he slammed into the ground, the wind knocked from his lungs. But it was not a physical blow. He tried to scramble back to his feet, but instead he slapped his hands against the sides of his head and whimpered pathetically as an explosion of psychic torment rushed into his mind. Not the death of a Guardian. This was far, far worse.

It was Nupraptor, the Guardian of Mind. Ariel’s lover. He had discovered her body. Mortanius knew it. Nupraptor must have known that Ariel had gone to the Pillars and teleported there when he felt her die. This pain was Nupraptor’s pain, unleashed upon them all.

“Nupraptor!” Mortanius cried.

A tidal wave of pain washed over him and he began to drown in it. Pain, unbelievable pain, imprinted on every synapse. Suffering and agony like he had never known swept down on him like a landslide, setting his every nerve ending on fire.

He could not move, the pain overwhelmed him. His face contorted into a grimace of unbearable agony, his body shaking so hard that he felt his spine would snap.

“Nupraptor!” he screamed again, his voice ragged. “Stop! Please!”

But it would not stop. The Guardian of Mind unleashed his pain upon the world until the world was corrupted with it. The pain pressed upon Mortanius relentlessly, squeezing him in a vice of guilt and grief and misery. He lost all understanding of time, the world around him ceased to exist, all that he could feel or know was the pain, the hatred and anger and the all-encompassing pain, until it smothered him and infected his very soul and finally drove him mad.

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