Mortality: The Story of Mortanius

Chapter Sixty

Avernus was on fire. For two full days, it burned. The powerful waves of magic Azimuth set loose had spread to the rest of the city, unleashing a monumental firestorm that threatened to burn the entire city down. Mortanius stood on a hill to the south of the city, watching in horrified fascination. Whole blocks of residential buildings were on fire, making the skyline glow bright red almost like the sky of the hylden dimension. The sky roiled with thick black clouds of smoke that hung like a shroud over the blazing inferno. Huge crowds of panicked refugees packed the roads leading away from Avernus, trying to escape. Even after two days, the refugees kept coming. All attempts to put out the fires had failed.

Making his way into the city was impossible, so Mortanius instead cast the teleportation spell into the catacombs beneath the Cathedral. The place was empty. None of the cult followers were there, but of course most of them were likely running for their lives if they weren’t already dead. Even if some of the cult followers survived the inferno, they would probably not return to the ruins of the city. The hylden cult would die out, but Mortanius suspected that the hylden didn’t care. They had more important goals in mind.

He didn’t know what to expect as he made his way up into the Cathedral, but things were worse than he had imagined. Even as he reached the main stairway up to the ground floor, he could feel the overlapping layers of unstable magic that cut through the entire Cathedral, and when he finally made it upstairs, the results of Azimuth’s destructive madness became clear.

The Cathedral was in total chaos. Somehow, against all reason and the laws of nature, Azimith had successfully opened up a labyrinth of dimensional portals and turned the interior of Avernus Cathedral into a madhouse of unstable dimensional planes. When Mortanius came up from the catacombs, he found himself lost in swirling maze of intersecting dimensions, fragments and pieces of one world implanted at random across the Nosgoth like ripped sections of a dozen tapestries crudely stitched together onto a different one.

As Mortanius navigated the multi-dimensional labyrinth, he marveled at the unbelievable magical powers at play. Azimuth had long speculated the possibility of casting a spell to create a portal to another world, but she had never tried it. Had the hylden taught her the secret, as she claimed, or had she always possessed such power but merely lacked the courage to perform the experiment?

The deaths of Bane, DeJoule, and Malek had pushed her over the edge. When her own death seemed imminent, she discarded all caution and let her magic loose.

Strange alien beings hunted the halls, creatures from a dozen other worlds. The staircase leading to the second floor was on fire, but Mortanius cast spells to protect him from the magical flames. As soon as he reached the top of the stairs, the flames disappeared and he found himself in a calm landscape of white flowers. Farther down the hall, massive blue lightning bolts cracked across an alien sky. Making his way through the Cathedral was like walking through a madman’s dream.

He considered going back, but he owed her this much. Even after everything Azimuth had done, after all her lies and manipulations and destructive obsessions, he still felt he owed her this last final kindness. He should have protected her. Instead, he sent an assassin to kill her.

Mortanius found her body in the upper level of the Cathedral, curled on the floor in the middle of a room dark as night even as fires crackled in the corners. She lay on her side, one hand draped limply over the stab wound that pierced her chest. Kain’s work had been clean and thorough. There was no brutality in it. Blood pooled freely on the floor in an almost perfect circle around her body. He knelt down and placed his hand against her cheek. Her eyes were closed, and her face held the first real expression of peace that Mortanius had seen in a very long time.

Most of Nosgoth’s current misery was her fault. If she had not become so obsessed with the hylden, then none of this would have ever happened. She was the one who allowed them to gain a foothold in Nosgoth – although Mortanius admittedly had done little to stop it – and without her loyal support, the hylden could never have established their cult or sent the demon Hash’ak’gik. Azimuth, more than anyone else, was directly responsible for the current state of Nosgoth.

However, there was lots of blame to go around. Mortanius was hardly innocent. He was the first to admit that he had played a vital role in the downfall of their world. And even the other Guardians had done their part by allowing the crusade against vampires to continue for so long. In the end, it was the slow weakening of the Pillars that had truly allowed the hylden to infiltrate their world.

Mortanius realized something then. Azimuth had only been able to contact the hylden because the Pillars had grown weak. Even with her Dimensionscope, she could never have reached the hylden dimension if the Pillars had functioned at their full strength. But as the Pillars grew weaker, it was inevitable that the hylden would try to force their way back. Even if Azimuth had not contacted them, one of the other Guardians might have. Perhaps Bane, as Nature Guardian, might have come into contact with them. Or Nupraptor, or DeJoule. The hylden deliberately sought out the Guardians, and Azimuth was the unfortunate one they found first.

Mortanius couldn’t really blame her for what had happened. If Azimuth had not created a cult to worship them, then someone else would have. As long as the Pillars were weakened, the hylden would have gained a foothold on Nosgoth no matter what.

He slid one arm under her head and another under her legs, and slowly picked her up. She weighed barely anything. He cast the teleportation spell again, taking them to Mortanius’s estate.

In the overgrown garden behind his house, he built a crude pyre of sticks and dry brush. He laid Azimuth’s body on the pile and snapped his fingers to create a spark to ignite it.

The funeral wasn’t for Azimuth alone. It was for all of the slain Guardians. Nupraptor and Bane and DeJoule and Malek. None of them had received proper funerals as far as Mortanius knew. Malek had taken it upon himself to burn Nupraptor’s body, but Malek’s own remains – nothing more than some dried-out bones and a set of black armor – still lay in Dark Eden, along with the bodies of Bane and DeJoule. No one had dared go there to put them to rest. The thought that Guardians of the Pillars were simply left to rot where they died was an unforgivable insult to the Pillars themselves, but Mortanius couldn’t summon enough outrage to do anything about it. Would anyone be there to give him a proper funeral when he was gone?

He stood there to watch the pyre burn. Azimuth was the second woman in his life that he had set upon a pyre. For many years now, little affection had been shared between them, but there had been a time when he might have been in love with her. He hadn’t cared for her in the same way that he cared for Ellendra, but Azimuth was his friend and his lover and much more. Had things been different, if the Pillars had been strong enough to withstand the influence of the hylden, he and Azimuth might have had a long and prosperous relationship. Maybe in time she would have eclipsed Ellendra and become the love of his life. But deep down, he didn’t think so.

Had Azimuth ever really felt the same way about him, or was their romance just a playful diversion for her? Mortanius suspected it was the latter. Had their discovery of the hylden not made them long-term partners, she would likely have tired of him like she had done with all of her previous lovers. And yet, Mortanius still held some emotions for her. He preferred to think of the good times between them.

She was the fifth to die by Kain’s hand. Three Guardians remained.

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