Mortality: The Story of Mortanius

Chapter Sixty-One

Mortanius stood in his laboratory and took a long look around. Surrounding him were the works of his lifetime. Dozens of shelves of books and magical grimoires, cases of old biological specimens, tables full of equipment, boxes and cases full of prototype magical gems and other artifacts, and thousands of random items, mementos, trinkets, and other paraphernalia collected over his centuries of work as a scientist and mage. Over a millennium of collected knowledge.

He considered stacking all of it in a huge pile and lighting it on fire. Maybe it would be best to just destroy it all, to burn his home down just as Avernus had burned down, to erase every fragment of evidence of his life as Guardian.

But he had to think of the future. Once the Guardians were dead, Kain would be the sole Guardian left to stand watch over the Pillars, and it would be his duty to train and raise the new Guardians. It would be a monumental task, but he would have to do it, and his job would be made easier by finding the records and private notes from the slain Guardians and passing them on. Mortanius’s successor as Guardian of Death, whoever that might be, would benefit greatly from his centuries of acquired knowledge.

Mortanius knew he was not long for this world. Kain would be coming for him soon. How long did he have, a few days at most? If Kain chose to track down Anarcrothe or Moebius first, then maybe he would have longer to prepare.

He had no qualms about death. He had lived intimately with it ever since he was ten years old. Death was no stranger to him, and when it finally came, he would embrace it. His own death was an insignificant price to pay for everything he had done.

As he walked around the lab, picking up random books and exploring the centuries worth of notes on half-finished experiments, he suddenly stopped cold.

Something prickled the back of his neck. He set down the grimoire he had been flipping through and turned toward the door to the laboratory. Someone was coming down to see him. But not Kain.

A few minutes later, a figure emerged from the dark hallway and stepped into the laboratory. Mortanius hadn’t seen him in almost fifty years, and like him, the years had not been kind to his unexpected visitor.

Moebius had never been a stocky individual, he was always on the thin side. But now, he seemed positively emaciated. His hood was up, and his cloak’s voluminous sleeves disguised just how skinny he was, but Mortanius could tell. His skin had a yellowish tinge and his eyes were deep and sunken, like a man deprived of sleep for too long. He leaned on his staff, his footsteps faltering and weak, but he smiled when he saw Mortanius, his eyes glinting in the shadow of his hood.

“Ah, how are you, my dear old friend?” Moebius asked.

Mortanius opened his mouth to say something, but changed his mind. Instead, he shrugged and said, “I’m still alive.”

“So I see.” Moebius took a long look around Mortanius’s laboratory and said, “I thought you had abandoned this old place. But it looks like you’ve been doing some work down here lately.”

“Yes, I’ve done some experiments recently.”

Moebius nodded and clicked his tongue, continuing his long gaze around. “I’m sorry about Azimuth, you know. Terrible shame about her. Of course, she wasn’t the woman she once was. I heard that your relationship with her had become strained of late.”

“You heard that, did you?”

“Oh, yes,” Moebius finally made eye contact, his smile returning. “I may have hid myself away these past few decades, but I haven’t cut myself off from the rest of the world. Not at all. I’ve been paying very close attention to current events. Very close attention.”

He hadn’t taken a step closer since he came in, and the distance between he and Mortanius was at least twenty feet. But it seemed much larger than that. Mortanius felt like the distance between he and his old friend was a vast gulf spanning miles and miles.

“Why have you come here, Moebius?”

“To give you an invitation.”

“An invitation to what?”

“An execution.”

“What are you talking about?”

Moebius took a breath and placed both hands on his staff, gripping it tightly as he leaned forward, his eyes sparkling. “We caught him.”

Mortanius felt a spike of panic. “Caught him?”

“Vorador,” Moebius said intensely. “We captured him yesterday.”

Mortanius blinked stupidly and shook his head. “You … you caught Vorador? You actually have him? You took him alive?”

“Yes. He’s sitting in an iron cage as we speak.”

“How?”

“With difficulty,” Moebius said. “But it was worth it. Malek’s vampire hunters have been systematically exploring every inch of the Termogent Forest ever since William was assassinated. Vorador kept his lair hidden all these years, but his magic was not infallible. We finally determined where his mansion was, and gathered over two-thousand volunteers to surround it and finally break in.”

Mortanius was speechless. It occurred to him that he never really thought that Vorador would ever be captured. The ancient half-breed was simply too powerful and too careful. His location within the Termogent Forest had been a mystery for millennia, known only to other vampires. Of course, those vampires numbered few and far between now, thanks to the ongoing crusade led by Malek and Moebius for the past half-century.

Even with so many people searching together, Mortanius didn’t believe it was possible. And for it to happen right now, in the midst of all of Mortanius’s other plans, almost seemed like an impossible coincidence, as if it had been planned.

“Malek,” he said. “His only wish was to see Vorador captured.”

Moebius nodded and cast his eyes downward. “Yes, it’s a shame that Malek didn’t survive to see this. But he had his chance. In the end, Vorador was too strong for him after all.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t you know?” Moebius snickered. “Malek was destroyed by Vorador’s hand. Appropriate, really. Vorador’s the one who killed him to begin with. I guess he was just finishing the job he started centuries ago.”

“Vorador destroyed him?” Mortanius sputtered. “But … I thought that an assassin ...”

“Oh, yes, the assassin was there. He’s the one who slew Bane and DeJoule. But when Malek was summoned to defend them, the assassin managed to summon Vorador to his side. Vorador took care of Malek while the assassin killed the Guardians. In fact, you might say that Malek played a part in Vorador’s capture after all. It was only because Vorador left the safety of his lair at that moment that we were able to get close enough to capture him. It was a bloody fight, but we came through victorious.”

“How many men died taking him captive?”

“Two or three hundred,” Moebius said with a shrug. “I lost count. It doesn’t matter. They gave their lives for a great cause. Vorador is finally going to pay for his crimes. He’ll be executed tomorrow. The last vampire on Nosgoth will die. And you’re invited, old friend. You can have a seat in the front row.”

“The … last vampire?”

“Yes,” Moebius beamed. “He’s the last one. All his kin are dead. He is the very last.”

“I heard that there were only a few left ...”

“We have hunted them all down,” Moebius said proudly, tapping his staff on the floor. “Finally, after all these centuries, we’ve done it. Once Vorador is executed, the entire vampire race will be eradicated once and for all. Vorador was the first half-breed, and now he’ll be the last.”

“But Malek said that the assassin was a vampire ...”

Moebius snickered again. “Oh, yes, the assassin. I nearly forgot about him. Don’t worry about that one, old friend. He’s served his purpose, but he’ll be dealt with in due time.”

Mortanius felt like he was a child again, listening in vain to the vampires as they spoke in riddles about events and history far beyond his comprehension. It seemed like nothing Moebius said made any real sense to him, and he struggled to maintain some semblance of understanding.

“What do you mean … served his purpose?”

Moebius leaned on his staff and studied Mortanius with glimmering eyes. If Mortanius had harbored any desperate hope for Moebius’s sanity, it evaporated in that instant.

“Did you really think that I didn’t know?” Moebius asked, his voice as sharp as a razor. “Did you think you could ever keep a secret from me? I know everything, old friend. I know all about your little vampire errand boy, the one you resurrected to slay us all. I know about him, I know about the monster Azimuth brought to Avernus, and I know that you are the one who murdered dear Ariel.”

“How?” was all that Mortanius could say. He didn’t have the strength left to be surprised anymore.

Moebius continued to stare at him. His expression reminded Mortanius of how Azimuth looked when she spoke of the hylden. “I see the past and the future and everything in between. I hold the mysteries of time right in my hand. Everything has transpired exactly as I predicted that it would.”

“You can predict the future now?”

“With perfect accuracy. I built a device that allows me to sift through hundreds – thousands – of possible futures and see how each of those possibilities can come to pass. I don’t merely predict the future, old friend, I create the future according to my whims.”

“You told me once that you were working on a device like that,” Mortanius said in a flat tone of voice. “But I didn’t know you finished it.”

“I completed it centuries ago. I call it the Chronoplast.”

“And you can … choose what future suits your interests?”

“Yes, exactly!” Moebius cackled.

“So the world that we live in right now,” Mortanius said. “This is the one you wanted? Nosgoth is overrun with violence and crime. The Guardians are corrupted with madness. The Pillars are weakened and unstable. This is the world you chose for us?”

“It had to be this way,” Moebius said intensely. “Sacrifices had to be made. I don’t expect you or anyone else to understand, but this is the future Nosgoth needed to eradicate the vampires once and for all.”

“The vampires,” Mortanius sighed. “It always comes back to the vampires, doesn’t it?”

“Do you think me mad, old friend?”

“We’ve all gone mad.”

“Indeed. But I did what I had to do. Because I serve a cause greater than any government, greater than the Circle of Nine, or even Nosgoth itself.”

“And what cause is that?”

Moebius straightened and stood proudly, tapping the base of his staff against the floor. “I serve God. The true God of Nosgoth, the Creator of Life and the Master of the Wheel of Fate.”

Mortanius looked at his old friend and wondered when he had gone insane. Was it when Nupraptor infected them all with his grief and anger, or was it long before that? He had always been eccentric and peculiar, but Mortanius had known him for so many years that he sometimes forgot just how strange Moebius behaved. When had Moebius truly slipped into madness? Was it when William was assassinated? Or earlier still? Was it when Vorador slaughtered the Guardians, or maybe even earlier than that? Was it the day that he had first laid his hands upon the Pillars and become the Guardian of Time? Mortanius began to wonder if Moebius had always been this insane, and he had simply never noticed.

“And how long have you served this … God?” he asked.

“Since the beginning,” Moebius declared. “Since before the rebellion. He first spoke to me when I was still a young man. It was God who directed me to find the staff.” He held it out, as if showing it to Mortanius for the first time. “It was God who gave us the weapon we could use to overthrow the vampires. Without God’s guidance, we could never have risen against them.”

“And you never shared this information with me before?”

“I wanted to, many times. I wished that you might join me in His service. But my first loyalty is to God, and He forbade me from revealing this truth to anyone else.”

“How convenient.”

“Besides, I know you too well. You would not have believed me, just as you do not believe me now. Unless God spoke to you himself, you would have always doubted. It is in your nature to be skeptical of everything, even the most obvious of truths.”

“So all of this,” Mortanius said, making a vague gesture with his arm that encompassed all of Nosgoth, “was in order to get rid of the vampires? That was your ultimate goal? And what of the Pillars? Without the vampires, the Pillars have grown weak. What of the hylden?”

“Irrelevant,” Moebius scoffed. “They are at the limit of their power. The Pillars are a symbol, nothing more. Those hylden creatures cannot harm us.”

“You’re wrong,” Mortanius said. He shook his head just a little, his eyes drifting to the floor, as if the effort of looking at his old friend had worn him out. “Maybe this God of yours doesn’t have all the answers. Or maybe there’s no God at all, and you’re truly insane. But the Pillars are the only thing holding the hylden back. If the Pillars fail, the hylden will sweep through this world like a plague. They’ll destroy Nosgoth.”

“No, old friend. I’m afraid you’re mistaken. Your vampire Kain is the one who’ll destroy Nosgoth. He is the real enemy. Granted, he was a necessary part of my plan as well as yours, but now he’s outlived his usefulness, and he must be destroyed along with Vorador. Only then will Nosgoth be safe.”

“I don’t believe you. I don’t care what you’ve seen in your crystal ball. Kain will restore the Pillars and save Nosgoth. I know it.”

Moebius snickered again and sighed. “Oh, well. I suppose I could show you the Chronoplast and you could see it with your own eyes, but I don’t think I will. Perhaps it would be better if you heard it from Kain himself.”

“Really? Kain’s going to tell me that he’ll destroy Nosgoth?”

“Not exactly. I’m sure you’ll run into Kain again very soon. When you do, take a close look at the weapon he wields. Then you’ll see.”

“What are you talking about?”

Instead of answering, Moebius turned and stepped back into the hallway, blending into the shadows. “I would love to stay and chat some more, but I really must be going now. I have so much work to do before the execution tomorrow. I hope I’ll see you there.”

“I’ve seen more than my share of death,” Mortanius said.

Moebius chuckled at that. “Yes, and I’ve seen more than my share of time.”

He looked back at Mortanius and leaned upon his staff once more. His face softened its expression. “It’s been good talking to you again, Mortanius,” he said. “Almost like old times. But in case I don’t get to see you again, I want you to know that I’ve always valued your friendship.”

“And I yours,” Mortanius replied honestly.

“We changed the world, you know. You and I together.”

“Yes, we did.”

Moebius smiled again, and walked off down the hallway. Eventually, Mortanius could no longer sense him anywhere nearby.

Mortanius chose not attend Vorador’s execution. Part of him wanted to see Vorador die, to watch the creature responsible for the Slaughter of the Circle burn for what he had done, but he knew too much now about the vampires and the hylden to seek revenge anymore. The Circle had sanctioned the death of the last true vampire on Nosgoth. Perhaps Vorador was right to murder them.

Much later the following night, after the execution, Mortanius was struck by a wave of pain that announced the death of his oldest friend. Kain had struck again. Moebius was dead.

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