Mother of Midnight

Chapter 192 – Rage Against this World

Kill.

Kill.

Kill.

Eat.

Kill.

Kill.

Kill.

Eat.

Eat.

EAT.

KILL.

EAT.

The madness clawed at her from the inside, gnawing away at her sanity with every pulse of hunger, every fleeting thought of destruction. She was a thing of rage, her mind a twisted frenzy of insatiable need. The beast inside her roared louder than her own consciousness, louder than anything else. There was only the urge to consume, to tear, to rip—kill.

The moment her eyes opened, the world was wrong. Every shadow twisted in ways it shouldn’t, every noise made her skin crawl. But through the madness, one thing stood out. Two voices. Their words, cold and calculated, barely even touched her senses—they didn't matter. They were noise. But they had names. Names she couldn't ignore. Names she was starting to remember.

Akhenna’s beast.

A name. It clawed at her thoughts, wrapping around her mind like a strangling vine. Akhenna. She was hers. She was born from that chaos, that destruction. She was nothing less than a force of nature, untouchable, unstoppable.

But they had touched her.

They had taken her.

Something inside her snapped. Her eyes flashed, black as void, filled with the fire of a thousand suns. She heard their words again, like whispers in the back of her mind, irritatingly distant. She couldn’t focus on them. Couldn’t focus on anything except—

Hunger.

“So this is Akhenna’s beast.” A voice, smooth, cold, unfeeling. The words didn’t matter. The voice was nothing but a reminder of something to destroy.

But then, another voice.

"Yes. She was difficult to capture. I thought her weak at first, a mistake."

Capture?

The words came at her in waves, distant but sharp, like cold water splashing in her face. She was not weak. She was a storm. A beast of destruction. A thing of terror.

She was—

Hunger.

“You are newborn, and as far as I know, you came through. Praxus must be proud, Zerathiel.”

The name Zerathiel flickered in her mind like a dying spark. Zerathiel. She didn’t know why, but it felt wrong. It twisted something inside her, made her skin crawl, made her mind churn.

Zerathiel. Zerathiel.

The name kept coming, clawing at her thoughts like a deep, jagged wound that wouldn’t heal.

Another name. Another thing she had to destroy.

Kaelen.

Kaelen.

The name rang in her head like the toll of a bell, sharp, insistent. She couldn’t understand it. Couldn’t make sense of it. But it filled her mind, drowning out everything else.

They were enemies. All were enemies.

Her body twitched, preparing to lunge, to tear them apart, to feast. But before she could move, before her instincts could take over, she felt it. The barrier. A wall of invisible force that stopped her cold. She slammed into it with the force of a freight train, her body rattling, her claws scraping uselessly against the air.

No.

The barrier held.

She would break it. She would tear it down.

But her body couldn’t move.

Kaelen’s voice again. Calm. Cool. He was speaking, but she couldn’t hear him. His words were like flies buzzing in her ears.

“Quite feral, isn’t it? I was under the impression it could speak and think.”

Speak? Think?

She was think.

She was a creature of thought. She was not a pet. Not a beast.

She was—

HUNGRY.

She snarled, her teeth gnashing, tendrils and teeth scraping against the barrier, but it didn’t budge. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except them.

Her thoughts scattered again. The hunger was too strong, too consuming. The beast was in charge. The beast was always in charge. And it wanted them.

She opened her mouths, a guttural roar tearing from her throat. A sound so primal, so filled with fury, that it shook the very air around her. Her eyes burned with rage, and every fiber of her being screamed to destroy, to burn, to rip everything apart.

But they were standing there. Watching her.

Kaelen. Zerathiel.

They were there, and they weren’t scared. They weren’t even concerned.

She was nothing to them. Just an animal. A thing to be contained.

A thing to be controlled.

Her body trembled. Her mass quivered with the effort of restraint. The hunger, the beast, was overwhelming, but something—something inside her—was still fighting, still clawing, still trying to hold onto something.

And then, Kaelen’s voice, detached and uncaring, drifted in again.

“I was under the impression it could speak and think.”

It could speak.

It could think.

But all she could feel was the hunger.

The beast.

Kill.

The thoughts bled together, and the world around her was nothing but red-hot fury, rage, and hunger. The world seemed to narrow, focus, and all she could sense was the searing urge to kill. She would eat. She would kill. Tear. Devour. Rip.

The voices drifted to her through the haze of madness, cutting through her madness like a thin, cold blade.

“You also captured another one, yes?” Kaelen’s voice was calm, cool. Almost too perfect. Too controlled. It was wrong, all of it. The air felt thick with the weight of their indifference to her pain.

Zerathiel, the angel of metal and cold, responded with a quiet, mechanical precision. “That one was much smaller. It almost acted like a human child. It seemed to regard this creature as its mother.” His mechanical hand gestured toward Vivienne with eerie grace, like she was a thing. A thing to be used.

Mother?

The word caught her in a vice, crushing her heart with a force far greater than the fury tearing at her chest. Mother?She was a mother, wasn’t she?

The idea was foreign, like a distant echo of something that had long since faded into the dark. Her daughter. Her child. Liora. She had been a mother. She was once someone who held and protected, who nurtured.

The rage surged again, hot and furious, as the thought of her child, of the thing she loved, swirled in her mind.

She was a mother. She had a daughter. A sweet, curious, kind daughter, full of life and light. But now... now there was only this, only rage.

Her thoughts fragmented, shattered like glass. She slammed her body against the barrier again, gnashing her maws in frustration, hunger, pain.

Kaelen and Zerathiel barely acknowledged her thrashing. They were speaking as if she weren’t here, as if she were just another animal in a cage.

Kaelen stroked his chin, his voice smooth and calculating. “Very good. I think both will serve the project well. We were close, but the artificial aetherbeasts were all weak and insipid. Both specimens should push us over the line.” His words were like poison seeping into her mind, more insults disguised as praise.

Her body shook with the urge to kill. End them.

But there was a sharper edge to her thoughts now—Liora. Her daughter. Her sweet, gentle child. Was she here? What was happening to her? What were they going to do to her? Her mind snapped, thrashing against the barrier, body trembling with the effort.

The men kept talking, their voices detached, casual. Their presence twisted something in the air, like they didn’t even care to recognize her suffering.

Kaelen continued, his voice carrying the weight of something incomprehensible. “I will get started on this immediately. Would you be able to arrange the other one to be delivered here?” His words fell heavy, like the chains of a prison Vivienne couldn’t escape.

Liora.

Liora.

Zerathiel’s cold response followed. “By Praxus’ will, it will be done.” The clang of his metallic fist crossing over his chest rang out like a bell tolling in the silence, echoing in the confines of Vivienne’s shattered mind.

They would take her. They would take her daughter.

She could feel it, that cold certainty washing over her, and the rage, the hunger, the need to tear it all down overwhelmed her again. She fought. She was nothing but a wild thing now, a creature of madness and primal fury.

Kaelen’s voice continued, drifting in like a whisper. “I look forward to working with you. May you continue to live under the grace of the Father.” His bow was shallow, but it was still a mockery. A mockery of her, of everything she had once been.

Her mind snapped. The rage was louder now, drowning out everything else, and the hunger… the hunger could not be sated. She could not think, she could not feel beyond this. Only rage. Only hunger.

The world blurred around her.

Kivvy still paled at the thought of what had happened weeks before. The memory clung to her like a sickness, a weight pressing down on her chest, making it hard to breathe if she thought about it too long.

She had found Renzia and Liora in their room, the air thick with the scent of death. The assassins lay crumpled at the door, lifeless. Blood pooled around their bodies, dark and still.

She had rested, briefly, as much as one could when the world outside was collapsing. Sleep had been shallow, haunted by the echoes of screams and the distant, sickening rumbles in the air. Even now, she could still hear them if she closed her eyes—the sound of buildings being flattened, walls crumbling under an unimaginable force, armies breaking apart like sand in the wind.

Then, silence. That had been the worst part. The eerie, unnatural quiet, the moment when the storm had passed but the devastation remained. The city had felt dead.

And then the shouting had begun.

The castle was breached.

Civilians were cut down or dragged away screaming. Sovereignty soldiers stormed the halls like a flood, their steel glinting in the dim torchlight. And leading them—

A golden man.

They had been quick to find the room she was hiding in.

Renzia had been the first to move. She had fled—bolted without hesitation, abandoning them to the mercy of the golden man and his soldiers. Kivvy hadn’t understood. She still didn’t. What had she been thinking? Had she panicked? Had she known something they didn’t?

The moment was burned into her mind, seared there with the helplessness and rage that followed.

She had acted on instinct, raising her pistol and firing. The shot had been true—dead center in his chest.

It had done nothing.

The bullet struck and bounced off as if she had shot a damn statue. Maybe she should have aimed for the head. Maybe that would have worked.

Probably wouldn’t have, though.

She’d barely had time to think before they were on her, wrenching the gun from her hands, forcing her down, binding her wrists like she was a child fighting against a bear. She had fought, of course. She had screamed and cursed and kicked, but it hadn’t mattered.

And all the while, Liora had wailed.

She had called for her mother, sobbing, pleading.

Kivvy had wanted to tell her to stop, to shut up before they hurt her for it. But even then, she hadn’t had the heart to.

Did the girl even know what her mother was? What kind of monster she was calling for?

Then again, Liora was probably a monster in her own way, too.

At least she was nice about it.

Kivvy sighed, shaking herself from the thoughts as she refocused on the present.

After that long, miserable march, she was back in the Sovereignty, shackled to the life she had tried so hard to escape. Forced back into the work of an artificer, surrounded by her sisters, breaking her fingers over delicate machinery for the people who had stolen everything from them.

At least this time, she wasn’t being whipped.

Small mercies.

But she hated the way her new master looked at her.

With those leering, hungry eyes.

It wasn’t new. The big folk had always looked at her kind like that. She was used to it.

She just had to pray—to whatever gods still bothered listening—that he didn’t act on it.

Kivvy still felt restless. Even now, trapped under the Sovereignty’s boot, she could feel the weight of her old life pressing down on her chest, like a caged animal snarling to be let loose. She had tasted freedom. Not just survival, not just a different kind of servitude, but real, unshackled freedom.

She had been allowed to be the complaining grouch she always wanted to be, not some meek, servile little thing forced to keep her head down. No pretending to be passive. No bowing her head in submission. No working on useless, hollow projects she had no passion for.

Just traveling.

Traveling with a warrior twice her height who laughed too loud and punched too hard.

Traveling with a monster who ate other monsters and looked at the world like it was hers to devour.

It had been a travel trip, to be sure. Dangerous, chaotic, half the time spent running for their lives.

But she had loved it.

Every damn moment of it.

Once she got over Vivienne, of course.

She shook the thought away as she moved across the workshop, grabbing a tool from the other side of the room. The space was dimly lit, the air thick with the scent of oil and hot metal. Machinery whirred around her, the rhythmic ticking of gears and delicate instruments filling the silence like a heartbeat.

Her sisters sat hunched over their stations, their hands moving with eerie precision, their eyes vacant.

They didn’t talk. They didn’t think.

They just worked.

It infuriated

her.They had been broken.

Years of service. Years of obedience. Years of learning that there was nothing else for them, that resistance wasn’t just pointless—it was impossible.

Her fingers clenched around the wrench in her hand, knuckles whitening.

Kivvy stared down at her latest project, a delicate, stupid little clock with stupid little gears, made for some stupid human who would put it in their stupid oversized house.

She wanted to smash it.

Crush it under her boot.

See how delicate it really was.

“Break time, darlings,” their master’s voice rang out, sickly sweet and laced with amusement.

Each goblin immediately put their tools down and stood, shuffling into a single-file line like well-trained animals.

Not one of them lifted their head as they passed their master.

Not one of them flinched at the way his eyes lingered.

But Kivvy did.

She felt his gaze crawl over them like slime, like something heavy and wet and wrong.

Her stomach turned.

She hated that goblins were made this way.

She had learned the truth when she was just a runt, clinging to her mother’s side, listening with wide, fearful eyes as she explained.

Created.

Not originally born.

Made by some hedonistic exomancer to be perfect little assistants for his experiments.

All female.

All curvy.

All designed to be pretty.

She wanted to be more than that. More than a pretty little face. More than a soft, pliant thing meant to be owned, to be used, to be set aside when no longer needed.

She wanted to create.

But not for them. Never for them.

She wanted to build something for herself.

Screw the Sovereignty.

Screw the humans.

Screw the whole damn world.

Life had been better when she travelled with a gods-damned, people-eating monster.

She dropped into her seat in the rundown cafeteria, staring down at the gruel in front of her. The room was filled with the quiet, mechanical sounds of chewing. Her sisters ate without thought, without emotion. Just another function to complete before returning to their stations.

Kivvy’s fingers tightened around the edge of the table, her anger simmering, bubbling, boiling.

Vivienne had given her something.

Not just freedom.

Not just a taste of a better life.

She had given her knowledge.

She had given her weapons.

And Kivvy was going to use them.

She was going to escape.

And she was going to bring every damn sister she could with her.