The wind swirled through the room's open windows, quietly disturbing the drapers that hung heavily on either side of the massive openings. If he closed his eyes and listened closely, he could just make out the soft rustling of the pages he should have been studying. But at that particular moment, confusing Prophecies about messiahs did not interest him. Nor did seeking someone who understood the dense language better than he. Moebius could have told him, he was sure, but that human Guardian was less interested in reading stale divinations than he. So the brittle leafs were abandoned on the desk. Moebius would chide him later about neglecting his studying; Moebius did not study anything, instead spent his time scrying. Moebius expected him to know the Prophecies for the both of them. Because "one of us ought to know and I have better things to do."
But so did he, such as sitting in the window that over looked the Ancients' graveyard. It seemed it was fate that he would be forced into this particular room. Normally he would study on the other side of the Citadel where the heat of the sun would slowly cook him in his ridiculous robes. But as that room faced east, the Pillars were visible from that room. Apparently the view of his Pillar would give him the proper drive to complete his work. The Ancients had told him on numerous occasions just viewing the Pillars ought to fill him with pride and determination to do what was right and was needed despite any challenges or hardships that may be encountered. So far, to his teachers' disappointment, the sight of the Pillars had not filled him with anything with the exception of the occasional feeling of being overwhelmed. Perhaps they had been right on one aspect; the room with the Pillar view did not distract him nearly as much as this one did.
He was not aware of what it was he found so compelling about the graveyard until he had been staring at the markers until his eyes burned. Then he made a discovery so alluring that he had forsaken the Prophecies and perched in the window. His eyes quested the yard but he was unable to find what he was looking for. He groaned softly and closed his eyes, shook his head. It was then he heard it again. It was so faint and light on the wind he could have imagined the whole affair. This time he did not open his eyes or move for the rustling of his robes would surely mask what he was barely hearing. Something was whispering to him. The sound was disjointed as if coming from leagues away. As he stilled his breathing, the sound became a voice speaking words that were still too far-gone for him to comprehend. It seemed to be carried to him on the wind.
He opened his eyes and stood on the window's framework. Careful to not misstep, he worked his way out onto the stone ledge as far as he dared. The relocation promised better results; the voice on the wind had become voices. They were talking over each other almost to the point of incomprehension but he could catch parts of single whispers.
… Pillars finally raised. No longer …
He frowned and leaned farther out, hand on the stonework of the wall. If he could just get a bit closer, he was sure he could make the rest of it out. If he could only get farther out. His hand slipped and (or was is as?) the gentle wind that he had been so carefully listening to transformed into a raging deluge. His heart, his weak human heart, was not used to such dizzying heights and it lurched painfully into his constricting throat. His equally weak human fingers clawed fruitlessly at the granite, trying to find a purchase to halt his descent, even as he felt his body fall, even as a shadow too dark for the time of day rushed up to meet him. A shadow that was coming too quickly to be the earth. Was it his death coming to meet him before it happened? If it truly was his death, the shadow was much warmer than he had expected. Even in the relentless heat of Nosgoth days, not even stone became as hot as whatever was reaching out to him. It radiated heat as a furnace would. What little breath was left in his lungs was knocked from them as he was impacted by the too hot shadow. His trajectory was violently altered as the shadow forced him back up the way he had come, rapidly retracing his fall and exceeding his previous perch in favor of the roof of the Citadel several hundred feet beyond. The momentary flight was scorching and he feared his robes would be burned beyond repair.
Solid ground was suddenly under foot as he was dropped roughly. He looked up and saw only a silhouette. His saving shadow was clearly an Ancient and just as clearly not. He was ignorant of what to make of the thing standing in front of him with huge wings like an Ancient's but too many of them fanned out from its body to be one.
… victory will give us peace…
"Who are you?" he wondered softly, unsure if he even wanted the non-Ancient yet Ancient to hear him.
You are Mortanius. At first he thought the sound came from the wind like the other voices, but it cut too clearly into his mind to be the same as those garbled utterances.
"And you are?" He spoke louder, unsure if it was the most prudent course of action to take but saw no other available to him, seated on a roof that was at least a thousand feet in the air. Recalling his exact location make him wonder just how he would be retrieved from his most recent perch as he could not call to any Ancients; while the human guardians were meant to have learned that particular trick, Moebius had not attended and Mortanius had been unable to retain any of the lesson after the too vague sermon on how to call upon an ally with the use of only one's mind.
You can hear them too.
"Who?" Mortanius held a hand up attempting to see what was standing before him which was proving to be extremely difficult as whomever had saved him was now standing with the over powered sun at its back making it impossible to find any features inside the black shadow.
The others.
And the shadow knelt allowing the human guardian to see. "I have heard of you." He smiled as he realized just what his saving shadow was and why its embrace had burned so harshly. "You are Baal, the blacksmith." He looked over his robes, assessing the damage only to find there was none. They were as they had been that morning; overly rich and heavily embroidered with thick gold threads. "Who are the others?" Baal cocked his head to one side, making him appear even more bird of prey than normal, and Mortanius clarified, recalling this Ancient was not natural. "Who are the others that we hear?"
The dead. The dead whisper to you as they whisper the has happened and the will happens whisper to me. Baal leaned forward and touched Mortanius' headband, a garish stripe of cloth and metal wrought by some ages passed for the one of his position. His heat was felt even through the thick material and the human felt dizzy for an instant after the claw was removed. As you work with them, they talk to you. Baal looked up, his dark hair falling around his ceaselessly young face, and fanned his oversized wings out, catching the sun's brutal beams of heat in their span. Do you hear them?
Mortanius closed his eyes and listened as the wind swept around him, faster and harsher than it had down thru the window of his most recent study and the voices came back to him, whispering half phrases that were just as impossible to understand as they had been previously. "I hear them but they do not make sense. They are not clear to me," he sighed and opened his eyes. "I cannot tell what they say." Without sparing a look at the human, Baal placed a blistering hand on the boy's head and, somewhere under the intense heat, Mortanius could hear them.
I hope that the Binding will hold them forever. We have forsaken too much to have it fail.
Do you know the one thing I wish I had done before going into battle that day?
They will not stay there. We have only won for the moment. I can feel it.
Mortanius' pulled away, taken back by the raw emotion of the words that were now coursing through out his mind and body. He could feel the same pain they had felt when they had perished, from the pain of the battlefield, from the sorrow of the deathbed of aliment, or from the spiraling depression of taking their own life. The sensations washed over him like a torrent, threatening to drown him in it. Then Baal removed his hand and the voices were merely voices, just sound that echoed without any physical impression. Confused, the human looked at the Ancient. "What happened?"
The dead are the only who speak the truth. Listen to them. And Baal stood up with wings wide, preparing for take off. The sun was once again behind him and Mortanius was forced to scramble to his feet so he could look at the Ancient before he left.
"Wait! What do you mean?" As Baal let his wings relax, so did Mortanius as it meant the blacksmith would not be leaving immediately. "What do you mean only the dead speak the truth."
Even Oracles may lie. The reason why you were placed in this room."I don't know why. My teachers didn't see fit to tell me."
Listen.
Shaking his head a little at the impossibility that was the being before him, the human did as he was bid and listened for a voice that would tell him what his teachers would not. He found it easily enough, and was shocked to find he knew whom the voice once belonged to. The voice had been one of his tutors, a broken terrified man who had to be talked down from fits of deep depression every few hours.
It is done. I have made my attempt to join the Wheel at last. I wonder who will find my body in the room. I wonder if it will be one of the new human guardians. I wonder if they will know why.
Alkor's passing would be felt through out the Ancient community and would fill the Citadel with sorrow for months to come. His body must have been found by a human servant for, if it had been another Ancient Mortanius was sure, there would have been another body lying along side Alkor's; the winged vampires seemed unable to cope with the suicide of their fellows and had a disturbing tendency to follow in death's footsteps more frequently than anyone liked to mention. As for the human guardians, Mortanius was sure neither he nor Moebius would be overly wrought with grief at their tutor's death.
"Only the dead speak the truth. Should I not head living council?"
Baal cocked his head to one side but stayed silent. His whole body stiffened and suddenly Mortanius was hurled back by the force of Baal's initial snap of his massive wings. The second kept the human down, an arm thrown over his head to protect against the vicious wind generated by the movement of those wings. By the third beat, Baal was far enough away allowing Mortanius to sit up and watch him start to fade from sight. He sighed, saddened that the only Ancient to come clean was the best at speaking in riddles.
Feeling a bit silly but needing the release, he shouted after the Ancient with all the might his frail frame could muster, "You did not answer my question!" For a moment he was convinced that not only was Baal not going to answer, but the smith had passed beyond hearing until a whisper on the wind came to him, too clear to be from the dead.
Sometimes, for Fate to move forward, we must let ourselves be pulled into what we do not trust. We are pawns, you and I. We will be used then tossed aside. But as a pawn it is our duty to have done what ever it is that is needed from us before we are tossed into that sweet oblivion.
AN: Wanted to try out a new style of writing. How did it work? You guys must be getting sick of Baal. I needed him for this though. *cough* Anyways, I think Mortanius gets the fuzzy end of the lollypop far too often for what he does in Legacy of Kain. So, as Fate never rewards and only punishes, he got to get stuck up on the top of the Vampire Citadel with Baal. Gotta feel sorry for the little guy.