Mortality: The Story of Mortanius

Chapter Fifty-Nine

After another screeching argument with Azimuth, Mortanius had enough. He left Avernus and returned home to his personal estate. He did so partially to get away from Azimuth for a little while, but also to possibly make both of them a more tempting target. Perhaps Kain was hesitant to face two Guardians at the same time. If Mortanius and Azimuth were separated, Kain might be more likely to strike. He still had other targets to choose from, but all of them were difficult for a variety of reasons. Nupraptor had been comparatively easy, but the rest of the Guardians would be far more challenging. Mortanius found himself constantly thinking about Kain’s progress, what Guardian he might choose to go after next, what problems he might run into, what his next move would be. He had to continually resist the urge to interfere.

To clear his head, Mortanius walked his property, which was completely overgrown with weeds and tall grass. Without a housekeeper to maintain the yard, it had mostly returned to nature over the past few decades. The house was in worse condition. Part of the roof was near to collapse, and ivy and other plants had grown up around the outside walls. Mortanius spent so little time there that he didn’t think it was worth it to pay someone to do the necessary maintenance. Especially now that he didn’t expect to live much longer anyway.

He laid down in bed and tried to sleep, but it would not come. He couldn’t stop thinking about the vampire assassin he had loosed on the world. Was there any other way? Could he have done things differently? Perhaps it was just his own madness clouding his mind, but he still believed that this was the only possible course of action. The Pillars needed vampire Guardians in order to strengthen the binding that kept the hylden trapped in another dimension. Turning Kain into a vampire was the only solution. And the corrupted Guardians had to die in order to purify the Pillars. Maybe it would have been better to hire assassins to slay the Guardians, instead of relying on Kain to perform such a dangerous task? Mortanius didn’t know, and it was too late to stop what he had started.

After several hours of sleepless tossing and turning, he finally got back up. It was past dawn. He hung a cloak over his shoulders and went in search of something to eat, but of course there wasn’t anything at the house. The cupboards were empty except for dust and cobwebs. He thought about returning to Avernus, but he didn’t want to deal with Azimuth again. The nearest village was a two hour walk, and he didn’t even own a horse anymore, so he would have to teleport.

As he prepared to cast the spell, a wave of psychic pain suddenly washed over him and he fell to his knees. Combined with lack of sleep, the rush of pain was overwhelming,

It was Bane. He knew right away. Bane, the Guardian of Nature, was dead. Mortanius staggered upright and took a deep breath. Before the Circle became corrupted, Bane had been a good man. Jovial, honest, and forthright, and some deep part of Mortanius mourned him.

If Bane was dead, then that meant Kain was in Dark Eden, the northern region transformed into a wasteland of mutated animals and flowing lava. Bane was not alone there, he ruled with two of the other Guardians, DeJoule and Anarcrothe. Could Kain really hope to slay them all?

Mortanius didn’t know what to do. Should he attempt to contact Anarcrothe? He could innocently ask what was going on, in the guise of concern for his friends. After all, it was possible that Bane had not been killed by Kain, but in an accident of some kind.

Should he contact Malek? No, of course not. Malek was probably already in Dark Eden, summoned there by either DeJoule or Anarcrothe. Mortanius found himself terrified of what might occur. He supposed that Kain might be able to slay all three of the Guardians in Dark Eden, but he could not possibly hope to kill them and Malek as well. Kain would be hopelessly outnumbered.

Mortanius considered immediately teleporting to Dark Eden himself, again in the guise of helping his fellow Guardians, and giving Kain what aid he could. Perhaps he could kill Dejoule or Anarcrothe himself, leaving Kain to focus his energy on Malek. But no, that was too dangerous, and if Malek defeated Kain anyway then he’d know that Mortanius had betrayed them. If Kain failed in his mission, then Mortanius needed to survive in order to raise the next Guardian of Balance as a vampire. Mortanius could not risk having his actions revealed to the other Guardians.

While he was wracking his brain, trying to decide what he could do, he felt another wave of pain coming, and braced himself for it. Still, it was enough to make his legs weak, and he moved over to his bed to sit down.

DeJoule was dead. The Guardian of Energy, gone. Kain had managed to kill two Guardians in one night. It was like the Slaughter of the Circle all over again.

Mortanius made up his mind. He grabbed his cloak and stuffed his arms into the sleeves. He would return to Avernus and see if Azimuth was okay. That seemed like the best course of action, the thing that would raise the least suspicion.

He felt it coming again, another rush of psychic torment, this one somehow more powerful than the others. Mortanius grabbed a chair and leaned into it as the pain flooded across his mind, terribly familiar, but this time he welcomed it. The three Guardians of Dark Eden were dead, Bane, DeJoule, and …

Not Anarcrothe. Incredibly, unbelievably, this wave of agony signaled the death of Malek, the undead Guardian of Conflict. Mortanius sat down again, his head spinning. Just moments ago, he’d been concerned that Kain would fall to Malek’s sword, and now the opposite had occurred. Somehow, a fledgling vampire had slain the greatest warrior in Nosgoth.

Three of the Guardians, dead. All that remained now were Mortanius, Moebius, Azimuth, and Anarcrothe, who would likely be the next if he hadn’t escaped already.

Mortanius prepared himself once more and cast the teleportation spell. He disappeared from his bedroom and reappeared in the main hall of Avernus Cathedral.

And was immediately thrown backwards onto the floor by a powerful blast of lightning-charged wind. Wooden benches went flying over his head, splintering into the walls. Mortanius flailed around and grabbed hold of one of the stone columns that lined the main hall. Squinting against the wind, he got onto his knees and looked in shock at the scene before him.

Azimuth was in the center of the room, standing with her arms outstretched as the winds whipped around her, as if she was standing in the middle of a tornado. Lighting sizzled at her fingertips and her whole body seemed to glow with magical intensity. Mortanius shouted, but he couldn’t be heard over the roaring wind.

Near the front of the hall, a sphere of crackling, unstable energy floating a few feet in the air. It was so black that it seemed to darken the space around it, and yet it shone so bright that Mortanius could barely look at it. Like an ominous opening eye, the black sphere expanded and split open to reveal a blindingly bright light behind it, filling the entire hall with brilliance. At the edges, the disc shimmered and swirled with multiple colors, occasionally bursting with sparks or flickering lightning.

Mortanius stared in disbelief as the sphere continued to expand until it was ten feet in diameter, like a huge flat disc similar to Azimuth’s Dimensionscope. It was then that he realized what he was actually staring at. The thought was so terrible that he prayed he was asleep in his bed, and this vision was one of his nightmares. But no, this was real.

“Azimuth!” he screamed, bracing himself against the pounding wind.

She must have heard him, because she turned to look. Her face was lit up in a look of insane euphoria, her eyes glowing all white. All around her, magic surged and fluctuated unpredictably.

“Mortanius!” she cried back joyously, her voice somehow booming over the deafening sounds around her. “Look what I have created! The hylden have granted me the power to breach the dimensional barrier! I told you it was possible and now I’ve done it! I’ve opened a portal to another world!”

“Close it!” he screamed back. “Close the portal!”

But she wasn’t listening to him. She was in ecstasy, under the influence of her own incredible new magical abilities. “No other Guardian in all of history has wielded such power!” she announced. “I am the chosen one, Mortanius! You were wrong to doubt the hylden! They are gods and I am their divine vessel!”

With a sweep of her arm, a succession of lightning bolts ripped through the Cathedral and the windows exploded in a rainbow of multi-colored shards of glass. The very ground seemed to rumble underneath their feet, as if Azimuth’s magic had caused an earthquake. But Mortanius heard the booms even above the howling wind, and he knew it was no earthquake. The rumble he felt was an explosion outside. Azimuth’s wild lightning had struck one of the buildings next to the Cathedral.

“Azimuth, stop!” he cried in vain, knowing it was useless. “It’s too much! You can’t control it!”

In response, she laughed maniacally and spun around, the magical forces around her twisting and contorting the very fabric of reality. The dimensional portal pulsed and rippled like the surface of a lake after a stone was thrown in. Mortanius could not take his eyes away, and he stared into it as if hypnotized by what lay beyond.

It was not the world of the hylden, as he had first believed. He saw fuzzy blue plantlife and blooming orange flowers unlike anything on Nosgoth, and there was more. A groan of despair bubbled from his throat as something else came into view. An animal of some kind, with a long snout and horns, its hide mottled gray and green. It stood as tall as Mortanius. Curiously, it sniffed at the shimmering portal and poked its snout through.

“I have the power of the entire universe at my fingertips!” Azimuth cried, heedless of the danger. “No human being has ever wielded this much power! The hylden have made me a god! No pathetic vampire assassin can touch me!”

Another black sphere popped into existence, this one on the opposite side of the main hall, near to the front doors. Mortanius gripped the edge of the column for support and tried to lift himself to his feet, pushing against the wind. He could only watch in abject misery as the second portal opened up, revealing another new dimension, this one a shadowy gray landscape with tall red stalks like tree trunks rising from the ground. A two-legged beast with purple skin, like some kind of mutated gorilla, stood before the portal, staring at it intently.

Azimuth laughed insanely. “Come to me, beings from another world! I am the master of all dimensions! Be the first of your kind to step foot on Nosgoth! From now on, all dimensions are one! I will make Avernus the center of the entire universe!”

Mortanius ran for it. Pushing against the wall to keep himself upright, he bolted across the hall, past Azimuth and the second portal, and went for the doors. They were already open, having been nearly blown off their hinges by the force of the wind. Mortanius fell through the doorway and rolled down the steps to the sidewalk.

He heard screams for help. Blinking away dizziness, he looked up to see flames rising into the sky from the buildings next door. In the light of early morning, people ran for shelter. Mortanius stumbled to his feet and followed them, turning back to look upon Avernus Cathedral.

The entire Cathedral was glowing with an aura of dark magic. Bolts of lightning erupted from all sides, striking nearby homes and businesses, each blast setting off massive explosions of flame. Everywhere, people were screaming and running for cover. Families poured out of their homes and ran crying for help that would never come. Avernus was now the center of a storm of terrible magic the likes of which Nosgoth had never witnessed before, and there was no force in the world able to stop it now. In her madness, Azimuth had unleashed hell.

From the doors of the Cathedral came the huge beast with purple skin that Mortanius had glimpsed in the second portal. Its shoulders and back were lined with curved gray horns like razor-sharp hooks, and its hands ended in enormous claws. It growled like a demon and loped off down the street. Seconds later, two more came after it. One of them spotted Mortanius standing there, and ran in his direction.

Mortanius already had the words of the teleportation spell on his lips. He cast it and instantly appeared back in his home, falling to his knees and collapsing to the floor.

He was in shock, utterly exhausted, drained of emotion, and sinking into the depths of despair. He wanted to curl up and die at that moment. He wanted to cry, but tears would not come. All of his grief and misery, all of his regret and self-hatred, everything that he had done and all of the terrible crimes he was guilty of, seemed to crash upon him like an avalanche.

If Azimuth could open portals to other dimensions, then the binding that protected Nosgoth was falling apart right before his eyes. Would it fail completely before Kain was able to complete his quest? Would all of the Guardians die for nothing? If the Pillars failed, then the hylden could freely return to Nosgoth. If that happened, the unfolding catastrophe in Avernus would be merely a taste of what was to come. Mortanius believed with every fiber of his being that if the hylden returned to Nosgoth, it would be the end of the world as they knew it.

Azimuth believed herself a new god. She thought she would be spared, but Mortanius knew better. If the hylden flooded into their world, Azimuth would die along with the rest.

But as it turned out, that did not happen either. Two days after Azimuth opened up her dimensional portals and set demons free in Avernus, Mortanius felt the familiar psychic blow that announced the death of a Guardian.

It was Azimuth. Instead of becoming a new god, she became Kain’s fifth victim.

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