Mortality: The Story of Mortanius

Chapter Fifty-Six

Avernus Cathedral was as empty and desolate as a tomb. Mortanius blinked into existence in the main hall, the crackle of magic announcing his arrival. He shivered suddenly in the cold air and could see his breath puff out like mist. Arms at his sides, he slowly looked around, as if expecting something to pop out of the shadows. He rubbed his chin and resigned himself before heading to the staircase that led down into the laboratory, and beyond that, the secret temple.

He’d been away from the Cathedral for several days now. Azimuth would be looking for him, and now that he was back, she would know right away. He had put off meeting her for as long as possible, but now it was time to face her once again.

His private chambers were stark and threadbare, hardly appropriate living quarters for a man of his station. The carpet on the floor was filthy from decades of tracking in dirt from the catacombs. The furniture was rickety and poorly-made. Better furniture was upstairs in the Cathedral proper, but it would have been impossible to bring down here, and the few carpenters involved in their cult were not the most skilled ones. Mortanius didn’t mind the poor living conditions. It served to remind him of how low he had fallen.

He removed his outer cloak and tossed it on a chair. He heard rushed footsteps in the hallway outside and leaned on a table, closing his eyes as the footsteps halted at the doorway to his room.

“Where have you been?” came a shrill voice.

He didn’t bother to turn around. “I’ve been away. It’s no business of yours where I’ve been.”

“I’ve led the past two ceremonies by myself! You have responsibilities to perform!”

Mortanius kept his hands on the table and merely turned his head enough to see Azimuth out of the corner of his eye. “I have no responsibility to you or that vile creature we keep imprisoned in the pit. You should consider yourself lucky that I’ve stayed here as long as I have. If I was smart, I would have left you long before now.”

“But you haven’t,” Azimuth snapped. “Wallow in your stupid guilt all you like. You can’t escape any more than I can. You’re a part of this whether you like it or not!”

He finally turned to face her. “Leave me,” he said coldly. “I’ll be down later and we can feed the beast together.”

“Its name is Hash’ak’gik! And it is a God! It is more powerful than you could ever imagine yourself to be!” she shrieked before stalking angrily away.

Mortanius leaned against the table and let out a trembling sigh. Azimuth had changed much in the years since Ariel’s murder. She had once been a woman of elegant beauty, passionate energy, and boundless humor. But the madness infecting their minds had affected her more drastically than Mortanius. Azimuth had lost her humor, lost her passion, and become a nagging witch that shrieked at him like a harpy.

Her long and luxurious dark hair was gone now. She had cut it short at first and then shaved her head completely, and now she was as bald as Moebius. She still wore the same revealing dresses, but they were dirty and frayed from lack of repair, and she no longer had the figure for them. Poor diet and stress had caused her to lose weight, and her once lovely and form-fitting wardrobe now hung loosely from her bony shoulders.

And she was far from the worst case. It was Nupraptor, ironically, who suffered the most from the madness which had corrupted the Circle. Perhaps it was because that madness had originated in his own mind, or because Ariel’s death had affected him the most, but of all the Guardians, Nupraptor was the most incurably insane. Years ago, he sealed himself away in a distant estate in the northwest, dwelling on his delusions and his misery. But Mortanius knew the truth about Nupraptor, as did everyone. The Guardian of Mind, hopelessly distraught over the death of his lover and corrupted by madness, had brutally mutilated himself, cutting out his own eyes and sewing his lips shut.

Azimuth and Malek were the only two Guardians that Mortanius had any real contact with anymore. He had not personally spoken to any of the other Guardians since before Ariel’s death. In the aftermath of her murder, Mortanius had retreated from the other Guardians for a time, but so had a few of the others, so his own actions did not warrant suspicion. And now, the Guardians were scattered to the winds, having succumbed to their own madness in different ways.

Anarcrothe, Bane, and DeJoule – the Guardians of States, Nature, and Energy, respectively – had joined forces many years before and retreated to the northern mountains to create what they called their “New Eden,” although most of the people of Nosgoth referred to it as “Dark Eden.” Bane used his powers as Nature Guardian to warp and distort the animal life into new forms, Anarcrothe used his abilities as States Guardian to alter the natural qualities of the land and water, while DeJoule’s powers as Energy Guardian were used to instill the land with uncontrollable energy, resulting in volcanoes and earthquakes. The billowing smoke from the numerous volcanic eruptions was partly to blame for the changes in Nosgoth’s climate. The entire region was almost uninhabitable now, twisted and altered to fit the whims of the three corrupted Guardians. It was said that strange mutated beasts stalked the land, while the trio of corrupted Guardians ruled it from a magical dome that glowed blood red.

Moebius, meanwhile, had simply disappeared. Mortanius had neither seen or heard from his old friend since before Ariel’s death. The last time they spoke was at William’s funeral in Winterheim. As far as he knew, Moebius still worked with the vampire hunters to track down the few remaining vampires on Nosgoth, but his own efforts to track Moebius down always met with failure. Wherever Moebius was, he preferred to remain hidden.

Strangely, or maybe not so strangely, the only member of the Circle to appear unaffected by Nupraptor’s spreading madness was the Conflict Guardian, Malek. His personality had changed little since the corruption began, although Malek had little personality left after so many centuries as nothing more than an animated skeleton. In many ways, Malek had gone insane long before Ariel died.

Sometimes, Mortanius fooled himself into thinking that Malek was the only Guardian other than himself to avoid the effects of Nupraptor’s madness. But in his lucid moments, he knew the truth. As Ariel said, he was just as insane as the others, but his own madness manifested itself in more subtle ways. Was his plan to save Nosgoth nothing more than the ravings of a madman? He preferred not to dwell on it.

For the most part, Mortanius stayed at Avernus Cathedral with the increasingly-unstable Azimuth, reluctantly participating in the strange cult that had grown up there. They had more than a thousand followers now, although the cult was still very secretive. As far as Mortanius knew, none of the other Guardians even knew it existed. However, hushed whispers and chilling rumors of the dark rites that took place there filtered up into the rest of the city. Whispers of blood sacrifice. Rumors of a terrible demon locked deep underground, worshiped by its deranged, maniacal followers.

Azimuth was bound to the hylden. She was ever their faithful servant. Over the years, they rewarded her with tantalizing hints of magical knowledge, but all of the “wisdom” that she claimed the hylden possessed amounted to very little as far as Mortanius was concerned. The hylden demanded worship and sacrifice, and offered little in return. Other than a few magical trinkets, the only thing they ever gave Azimuth was a demon to feed.

Mortanius still didn’t believe their explanation of how the demon came to Nosgoth. If the hylden could send creatures from another dimension, why send only one? Why not bring Azimuth herself to meet with the hylden in their own dimension? If such a thing was possible, Azimuth would have jumped at the chance to speak with them face to face. So where did the demon come from? There was no convenient answer. The only possible solution was that Azimuth possessed a device that created portals between different dimensions. But if she had such a magical device, she had never showed it to him, and he had seen no hint of it in all their years working together.

They called the demon Hash’ak’gik, but Mortanius didn’t even know if that was the monster’s true name. The hylden spoke through it during their dark rituals, as they spoke through Mortanius and Azimuth, but when it believed no one could hear it, the demon spoke in a different voice. Its mutterings were little more than delusional nonsense, however. Mortanius often heard it mutter and mumble about vague plans to break free from its imprisonment in the pit, when it wasn’t babbling about its “brothers” and its “lord.” Mortanius had no idea who the demon was referring to, and he didn’t really care.

In a way, the demon was as much a prisoner of the cult as Mortanius was. It was trapped down in the bottom of the pit, surrounded by bones and debris, manipulated and controlled by the hylden, unable to escape. The dirt and stone comprising the walls of the pit were scored and gouged with claw marks from its many futile attempts to climb out. Fortunately, the dirt walls of the pit were far too loose and softly packed to support the demon’s weight. The demon was never going to climb out, Mortanius was sure of that.

But they still had to feed it. The first few sacrifices to the demon had been criminals and vagabonds abducted from the streets of Avernus. The thought of killing innocent people made Mortanius sick, but it seemed there was a never ending supply of wicked people to give to the demon, especially in the years since the corruption of the Pillars, as Nosgoth fell deeper and deeper into ruin. All kinds of vile and depraved men and women found their way to the dark altar in the catacombs underneath Avernus Cathedral. And when such people could not be found, one of their fanatic worshipers would volunteer.

Looking back, Mortanius could not help but wonder where he had finally crossed the line. When had he surrendered his conscience? At what point had he crossed the point of no return? Was it before the demon had appeared? Was it before the hylden had first contacted them? Was it all the way back when Azimuth had first shown him her Dimensionscope? Maybe if he had convinced Azimuth to reveal her creation to the other Guardians, things would have gone differently. Maybe if he had never come to Avernus in the first place and stupidly let himself be seduced by Azimuth, none of this would have happened. But he could not have known.

It as too late to change the past. But maybe, just maybe, he could change the future.

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