Chapter 18
Mortandagh was a man of multitudes. There were a thousand different things people said about him, and the truth was that most of them were true. However, what was not true was that Mortandagh was impulsive when he had first waged the Necromancy War. Fifty years ago, he had done so meticulously.
He was not a perfect man, and therefore had made his share of blunders in that first war.
But he had planned around those blunders as well.
The powers that he had unlocked as a devout of Aeterna had allowed him to cheat death.
That’s why he hadn’t died when the first necromancy war had left him all but spent, and that’s why he had disappeared and chose to appear again as the Grath Nomad, until such a time came that it did not matter whether people called him the Nomad or Viktor, because they were one and the same.
The truth of the matter was, he was never pierced by the Spear.
Everyone had seen him fall with the spear in his flesh, but that had been a projection.
A projection real enough that everyone had thought it was real.
He had cast several projections of himself during that battle, so people would think that he was everywhere at once.
Doing so had drained him. And then, when the tide of the battle had turned, he had lost men, and the fortitude to fight.
The Sunflame Spear was an enigma he intended to resolve.
What power did it contain that gave Eldric such great confidence?
With the responsibility that was upon his shoulders, he was also burdened with great pragmatism.
After the events of Wilted Hamlet, resulting in the abduction of Lesya and the death of Cassian, Viktor had not sat idly.
He had continued the excavation of Aeterna’s temple in Wilted Hamlet, and put Cassian’s body in cold storage, deep in the basement of the town hall that he was occupying as his headquarters.
As for Clive Bane, Freya Drummond, and Theo Cohen, he had them imprisoned, held hostage, but he had been benevolent in that he had not tortured them nor starved them.
As time went by, Mortandagh realized that his efforts were better spent if he took control of the rejuvenation project once more and forgot about Lesya.
It had not slipped his mind that she was the prophetess of Aeterna, and that she held great power—power that he could use to turn the tide of this war.
But Eldric was a powerful wizard, a powerful mage, and he had made sure to hide his headquarters in such a way that no matter whatever Mortandagh tried, he could not locate where Lesya was being kept prisoner, even though he had interrogated all three of his prisoners and had located the location of the manor.
But when his scouts had gone there, they could not find it.
Such was Eldric’s magic of deceptions and subterfuge.
And so in the week that followed, Mortandagh gathered more followers by going to the Fray and Dorish Town and Glenshire and addressing the issues that plagued those places.
He repaired the roads, restructured the infrastructure from the ground up, gave funds to the mayors of these towns, filled their granaries, stocked their pantries, and promised them a better future—one where they wouldn’t have to hide their religion or their true identities.
Such was his charisma that people flocked to him, revered him as their leader, and pledged their allegiance.
There were elements still out of Viktor’s control, such as the Parliament and the Aladrian prime minister, but those were diplomatic matters that could be tended to.
As of yet, the prime minister and the government of Aladria had yet to approach Viktor at the negotiation table.
So he turned his attention to other, even more pragmatic matters.
He traveled across the country, true to his name of Nomad, repairing what needed to be repaired, helping those in need, and providing support both moral and financial to the destitute.
He was glad to see that more and more people signed up to be his Deathless, and he blessed them with his hand and trained them.
His efforts of trying to find the old books were in vain. He could not find them, no matter how hard he looked in old libraries, in the ruins of old institutes and churches and chapels and temples. Eldric had been thorough about those books.
Every time he came back to his headquarters at the Wilted Hamlet, he did not come alone, for he always traveled with his Deathless, and wherever he did not induct more followers into his ranks, he arrested and imprisoned Vanguard soldiers from all over the country.
Anybody who came in his path as a spy or as a hurdle was taken prisoner.
And so, on the day upon which he would start the second battle of the second Necromancy War, Mortandagh came from the Fray with even more Vanguard prisoners.
“Take them and lock them up with the rest,” he said to Edda.
Edda nodded and ordered the Deathless to escort the Vanguard soldiers into the prison.
The prison was the building next to the town hall, repurposed to accommodate a large number of hostages and prisoners of war.
Compared to the Doldrum Isles, this prison was far more humane—a prison with windows, with hallways that breathed.
Smaller too. Just one floor, ten jail cells.
He'd go inside in a moment. First, he needed to do something else.
In anticipation of the excavation, Mortandagh had brought Wilted Hamlet back to its former glory.
No longer was the city in ruins. Roads were paved, the buildings rebuilt.
Greenery populated the green belts that ran between each road.
Parks, fountains, and flowers. Birds came back to the hamlet, and following them, so did the rest of the fauna that once called this place home.
In time, the people will come back too, Viktor thought to himself. He hoped.
And yet, no matter what he did, he couldn’t shake off the bitterness he’d felt at the loss of the man he called brother.
He lay in the basement, preserved in cold.
Viktor had wanted to bring him back to life.
But there was a truth to one of the many things the people said about him—his was not true Aeternumancy.
Not just yet. He could bring people back from the dead, true, and in the case of Crenshaw, he had even managed to bring back his personality, his mind.
He could do the same to Cassian, but in his heart, Viktor knew that it would not be the same.
Aeterna had not granted him her gift.
She had granted that to Lesya.
He accepted that. And he revered Lesya for it, but she was in Eldric’s hands at the moment. No matter how much he’d tried to locate her, it had been a futile effort. He had other avenues of magic at his disposal, and perhaps he would use them, but he would only use them as a last resort.
Today was an important day. Word had reached him that today, Lesya Rosefield would be taken to the Doldrum Isles for her sentencing. Viktor had been waiting to visit Doldrum and free his old comrades. But he had been waiting to gain enough followers in numbers to do that.
Now, he had enough followers. His campaigning was successful across the entire country, and every day more and more people were signing up to become Deathless. Some of them, even students of Umbrveyl.
In the northern district, the same place that Clive Bane had tried to destroy, Mortandagh had built a training compound for his followers. He could hear their loud chants and the stomps of their feet. He could hear them sparring and marching. It was music to his ears.
Deathless patrols walked the perimeter of the city, keeping an eye out for any more Vanguard soldiers. Sometime last week, several Vanguard soldiers had tried to break in and free the prisoners. Needless to say, they’d become prisoners themselves.
He wanted to go in for a headcount, see if there were enough prisoners for what he had planned. But the sight of the statue of Aeterna looming larger than life over the excavated temple held his attention.
The statue showed her in all her glory, presiding over the dead, sitting upon her throne, pale-faced Mother of Death. Mortandagh was overcome with great reverence, and bowed before her, then knelt on one knee at the altar at the entrance of the temple.
He’d gone inside the temple and had expected to discover old books, but there was only buried ash.
It did not bother him as much anymore, for what was the use of books when a living prophetess walked amongst them?
She could write new books. He only had to rescue her.
But there was something in those books that he coveted.
The truth about himself. The scholars of the Old Religion had written something about him.
Mortandagh had wanted to find out if it was a prophecy, or a truth about his past. It was a mystery that he’d greatly wished to unravel, hoping that it would contain the truth as to why he wasn’t able to ascend in the eyes of Aeterna.
Death Mother, Mortandagh prayed, eyes closed, feeling for any signs of Aeterna.
Guide my hand even if you may never speak to me.
Help me bring balance to this world of rot.
Let your name be called from the top of every temple tower—and the people remember what they have forgotten.
Please, Blessed Mother, help me. I only ask for the strength to do what needs to be done.
He hadn’t expected her to answer. He wasn’t shaken in his faith that her continued silence would weaken his resolve.
Perhaps it was the rot inside him that prevented any communication between them. He hadn’t exactly come back to life completely after his defeat during the first Necromancy War. He was undead, and he knew what he lacked.
That’s why Lesya was so important.
She was his salvation.
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