Mother of Midnight

Chapter 208 – Needed For Speeding

The silence stretched, thick and absolute, pressing in on her like the weight of the cold night air.

Vivienne couldn’t help the sharp pang of jealousy curling in her gut. Yenhr always seemed so present for Caelum, murmuring guidance like a mother tending to her favored child. Free insight, a gentle hand nudging him forward whenever he asked. Far more than Akhenna had ever given her.

Not that she’d ever say as much aloud. What would be the point? A goddess had no reason to coddle her, and Vivienne had never asked for anything.

Would she even answer if she did?

Total coin toss.

Still, as her claws dug into the earth and the trees blurred past in streaks of shadow and moonlight, she dipped her head in a brief, murmured prayer.

"Don’t know if you’re listening, or if you ever stop listening, but I’d appreciate some directions to my daughter and Renzia."

No pleading. No desperation. Just a request tossed into the void.

The silence stretched—so long that Vivienne nearly scoffed and gave up. Figures.

Then, like a whisper slipping through the cracks of a dream, an amused voice curled into her thoughts, smooth as polished stone.

"Southeast."

Vivienne startled mid-stride, nearly tripping over her own feet. The voice wasn’t spoken. It wasn’t heard. It simply was, sliding into her mind with all the weight of inevitability.

Vivienne grinned, sharp and wild. “You are listening. Pervert.”

No response. No further guidance. But she didn’t need it. The direction was enough.

She tore through the undergrowth, her body a blur of dark scales and silent purpose. Her tail lashed behind her, slicing through low-hanging branches, her claws biting into the dirt as she ran. She stretched her senses, searching for something—anything—familiar.

Vivienne’s eyes narrowed as she approached, every sense attuned to the rigid tension in the air. The sight of Renzia, standing there in the darkness, was both familiar and unsettling. The mannequin was perfectly still, a dark silhouette against the trees, her expressionless face stark under the moonlight. Liora was in her arms, fragile and unmoving, her face an empty canvas of despondency.

Vivienne's breath caught, the hollow ache in her chest growing tighter. Liora's vacant gaze—empty, blank, lost—struck her harder than anything. But she didn't have time for emotions. She had no more time to waste.

Without hesitation, Vivienne reached out and took Liora into her arms. Renzia had done what she could, but Liora... Liora needed warmth. She needed her touch, her strength, even if it felt like everything was slipping through her fingers.

She held Liora tighter, cradling her like something precious, feeling the cold weight of the girl's stillness.

“Thank you, Renzia,” Vivienne said, her voice steady, but there was something in her gaze that softened as she looked up at the mannequin. “You did well.”

There was no response at first. Just the eerie quiet, broken only by the soft rustle of leaves and the distant sound of the wind stirring. Vivienne glanced at Renzia, and what she saw made her frown.

Renzia was stiff, her posture unnaturally rigid, her eyes unfocused. The mannequin's mouth didn't move, but Vivienne could see her trembling in the moonlight. The words came, disjointed and broken, like they were fighting to leave her throat.

“No.”

Vivienne paused, staring at her. She could feel the weight of Renzia’s unspoken pain, hanging in the air like an unshakable shadow. “I am a bad doll.”

The words hit her like a slap to the face, cutting through her indifference. Bad doll.

Vivienne stepped closer, her grip on Liora tightening, her sharp eyes locked onto Renzia’s rigid form. There was something painfully raw about the mannequin’s voice, something almost desperate in the way she spoke, even if it wasn’t fully audible. Something lost in the sound.

"Renzia," Vivienne murmured softly, her words almost an afterthought, "You’re not a bad doll. You're more than that. You... you did the best you could. You did good."

“I fa-iled. I am a bad do-ll. You sho-uld throw me aw-ay.” Renzia bowed down low, and didn’t budge from her position.

“No.” said Vivienne. “You might have failed, or perhaps I failed in my instruction.”

“N-no I am a bro-ken doll. I am bad.” Said Renzia.

“I won’t lie and say I am not furious, but I don’t know where I should place that blame. For now though, what matters is what we do going forward. Right now, I need you by my side so I can take Liora to safety, and I need your help to do that.” Said Vivienne

“Bad bad bad bad bad bad.” Said Renzia, maintaining her bow.

Vivienne stood there, a deep breath stolen from the airless moment, staring at the twisted figure in front of her. She shifted Liora’s weight in her arms.

“I fa-iled. I am a bad do-ll. You sho-uld throw me aw-ay.” Renzia’s voice cracked, each word a weight too heavy to hold.

Vivienne’s lips twisted into a tight line. “No.”

Renzia’s posture didn’t shift, and Vivienne could almost feel the coldness radiating from the mannequin’s silence. “I don’t know if I should be angry with you, or angry with myself for expecting you to do more than I asked. But you’re still here. I still need you. And we still have things to do.”

Renzia stiffened at the words but didn’t respond, her silence louder than any protest.

Vivienne knelt beside her, fingers pressing into the canvas-wrapped shoulder with a firm, grounding weight. “I’m not throwing you away. Not now, not ever.”

Renzia didn’t move, didn’t breathe—she never did—but something in the way she held herself shifted, as if bracing against a collapse.

“Yes, mis-tress,” she murmured, voice quiet, yet thick with something Vivienne couldn’t quite name.

“Good girl.” Vivienne gave her shoulder a squeeze before rising. “Now we need to find Kivvy. Come along.”

Renzia didn’t hesitate, didn’t question, just fell into step behind her as they moved. Liora remained limp in Vivienne’s arms, unresponsive, her body little more than dead weight. The night would not last forever, and the brighter the sky became, the more urgency clawed at her heels.

They ran.

Shit!

Kivvy hadn’t expected them to get found this fast. Had Vivienne not thrown them off the trail? Had someone tipped off the soldiers? No time for questions—later, later, if there was a later.

She braced, fired. A crack split the air, but her celestial shot never left the barrel. Not visibly, at least. It simply disappeared—and then, half a heartbeat later, the soldier in its path seized up, eyes widening, mouth parting in a wordless gasp—before dropping like a rock, a neat, gaping hole where nothing should have been.

She had made something terrifying.

The burnstick had been simple. Destructive, yes, but predictable—charged with raw dawn affinity, it burned, it blasted, it killed. But celestial aether? That shit got weird.

With this gun, the shot didn’t just move—it ceased, then resumed existence somewhere else. Inside a target, if she aimed right. Which, judging by the increasing pile of bodies, she was doing just fine.

Downside? It drained charge fast. Far more than the burnstick. Probably because of the rods she loaded into it—less energy lost to heat, less wasted in the firing mechanism. Good for precision. Bad for longevity.

And she was running out of shots.

“Run! I will buy you time!” Caelum bellowed, bracing as an Aegis soldier slammed into his shield, the impact rattling through his frame.

“And leave you to deal with all of these guys?!” Kivvy shot back, ducking as an arrow whizzed past her head.

They’d managed to set up a firing line, using the trees as cover, but it was far from perfect. Most of her sisters’ shots went wide, their hands unsteady, their aim wild—understandable, given they barely knew how to handle the weapons they carried. Kivvy wasn’t faring much better. Her experience was mostly with larger aetherbeasts or full-scale battles, where precision hardly mattered—just aim in the general direction and let the devastation do the rest. This? This was different.

“I can take them on! I am a champion!” Caelum roared, shoving back against the soldier in front of him. He caught the briefest opening—there, in the gap of their armor—and his sword punched into the man’s armpit. A choked cry, a stagger, then a collapse.

Caelum wrenched his blade free, already turning to meet the next enemy.

Kivvy grit her teeth, but there wasn’t time to argue. Caelum was holding the line, and the longer they stood here debating, the more likely it was that all of them would die.

“Fine! Don’t get yourself killed, golden boy!” she shouted.

“Not planning on it!” Caelum barked back, parrying a strike and ramming his shield into another soldier’s face with a sickening crunch.

Kivvy turned, her sisters hesitating as they fired off another volley, most of their shots still missing. “Fall back! Now!”

She fired one last blast from her scrapgun. The celestial aether disappeared the moment it left the barrel, and then—just like before—a soldier jerked violently, a hole suddenly appearing in their chest as they crumpled. Effective. Terrifying. But not enough to win this fight.

The goblins finally began to move, slipping between the trees, vanishing into the undergrowth. Kivvy lingered a second longer, heart hammering, before she spun and bolted after them.

Behind her, Caelum fought like a man possessed. He moved like a golden flare against the dark, his shield catching the dim light of the rising sun, his blade flashing as he carved through the enemy. The Aegis soldiers were skilled, but Caelum was a champion, and for now, he held the line.

They had dozens of pursuers, swarming after them like angry bees, and no matter how good Caelum was, one man could only hold so many at bay.

Kivvy ducked behind a tree, steadying her breath as she took careful aim. She squeezed the trigger, and a blast of loam aether sent a soldier flying, hitting the ground with a crunch. Damn. Loam aether really did hit like a runaway carriage.

She checked her aether crystal. Two shots left—maybe three if she was lucky. Not enough. She’d either have to make every shot count or grab one of her sisters’ pistols.

She really wished she had Burnstick.

Kivvy kept moving, sticking to the back to make sure none of her sisters lagged behind. They had to keep going. Faster.

Kivvy nearly tripped when Vivienne came barreling out of the trees, Liora in her arms, Renzia close on her heels.

For a split second, Kivvy’s gut twisted—had Aegis gotten ahead of them? No. It was just Vivienne, moving like she had fire at her back.

She didn’t even slow down. She reached Renzia, pressed Liora gently into the mannequin’s waiting arms, and said, “Take her. Keep her safe.”

Renzia held Liora like she was made of spun glass. “Ye-s, mist-ress.”

Then Vivienne was gone.

She surged forward, past Kivvy, past the other goblins, straight toward the fight where Caelum was being swarmed.

Kivvy wasn’t sure what hit harder—the fact that Vivienne moved fast, or the way Aegis soldiers reacted when she crashed into them. It was like throwing a boulder into a flock of birds. Bodies went flying, soldiers barely had time to register the threat before she was on them, tearing through their formation.

Caelum, to his credit, didn’t hesitate. He adjusted, shield up, sword flashing as he took advantage of the sudden chaos.

Kivvy grinned, leveling her scrapgun.

Two shots left. Better make them count.

Vivienne tore through the pursuing soldiers like a living storm. Bodies flew—some sent tumbling through the air, others reduced to red smears against trees and jagged rocks.

Then she shifted.

A monstrous form of six snapping, writhing heads surged forward, their obsidian fangs crunching through flesh and bone. Four of them tore into anything that dared come close, while the other two tilted back and sang.

The melody was haunting, layered—an echoing harmony that sent ripples of aether through the snow. The ground trembled, and crystalline beasts burst forth, their jagged forms glinting in the dim light. They didn’t hesitate. They never hesitated. They lunged at anything she deemed an enemy, tearing through flesh with crystalline claws, gnashing their razor-edged maws.

And when they felled a soldier, they dragged the corpse back to her.

Vivienne didn’t pause. Tendrils erupted from her inky bulk, lashing out and latching onto the fresh kills. Armor clattered to the ground as bodies simply disappeared, swallowed into her. More fuel. More strength. More.

Vivienne didn’t waste time admiring her handiwork. The first group lay in ruin—shattered bodies, crushed armor, and the remnants of her songbeasts prowling through the wreckage, seeking anything that still twitched. But there were always more.

She thundered forward, her massive form bounding through the winter-stripped forest. Trees cracked and splintered underfoot, smaller trunks snapping as she barreled through them. The cold air bit at her exposed skin, but she barely felt it. Her focus was ahead—on the cluster of armored figures surrounding Caelum.

Steel flashed as he twisted, parried, and struck, cutting down one opponent before pivoting into another. There were too many of them, and yet he still stood. That was the power of a champion, she supposed. She had never truly watched one fight groups before—only herself, and the duel she and Rava had fought against Aegis' champions.

Her throat tightened. She shoved the memory away. This was not the time.

Instead, she opened her mouths and sang.

The air rippled with layered harmonies, each note vibrating through the snow-laden ground. Aether shimmered like fractured glass, and her crystalline beasts erupted forth, summoned by her call. They wasted no time, bounding ahead, snapping at exposed throats, ripping into plated armor with unnatural ease.

Then she crashed into the enemy line.

Bodies crumpled beneath her weight, thrown aside like ragdolls. Her heads struck out, fangs tearing through flesh, shattering bones, leaving ruin in her wake. Clawed tendrils lashed out from her form, dragging the dying to her, their empty armor clattering as they were devoured.

“Go. I will take care of this,” she hissed, her voices layered and inhuman as she turned to Caelum.

“But I can help!” He twisted away from another strike, sword flashing as he ran a soldier through.

“Protect the goblins. I will be with you soon.”

Caelum hesitated, his stance firm, unwilling to back down. But then he saw it—the way her summons surged forward, filling the gaps he left, the way her heads snapped and howled, grinning through the slaughter. He took a step back. Then another.

Finally, he turned and ran.

As soon as he was gone, Vivienne let loose.

There was no reason to hold back now. No need to temper herself for an audience.

Her song swelled, and the ground quaked beneath her. Tendrils of shadow and crystal burst from her form, lashing out in wild, jagged arcs. Her summons fought with the fevered precision of a choir in perfect harmony—each movement in step with the cadence of her voice.

The soldiers stood no chance.

Vivienne grinned with too many mouths and fell upon them, her symphony of slaughter reaching its crescendo.

Vivienne took a slow, steady breath as the last echoes of her crystalline song faded into silence. The battlefield was still, littered only with empty armor and the remnants of what had once been men. Her summons had long since dissipated, their purpose fulfilled, and she stood alone amidst the ruin.

Then, without hesitation, she shifted.

Obsidian scales melted away into thick, dark fur, limbs restructuring into something lean and powerful. Her many eyes faded until only five sharp, black ones remained. Where once stood a monstrous hydra, now there was a massive black wolf.

She took off at a sprint, bounding through the forest with fluid, effortless speed. Snow sprayed behind her as she weaved between trees, avoiding the thicker trunks with practiced ease. The wind howled past her ears, but it was nothing compared to the rush of power in her muscles.

She found the group quickly.

They weren’t nearly as fast as she was—no surprise there. The goblins were built for bursts of speed, but endurance was another matter entirely. Renzia, of course, wasn’t bound by mortal limitations, and Caelum had the strength of a champion, but even they wouldn’t last forever.

Vivienne didn’t slow down until she was just close enough for them to hear.

“Stop.” Her voice was lower now, rough and guttural in this form. She hated it.

Kivvy and Renzia halted immediately, without question. The goblins, however, hesitated, panting from exertion, shifting on their feet.

Vivienne flopped onto her side in the snow, rolling slightly before settling. “Get on.”

Kivvy didn’t hesitate, scrambling up onto Vivienne’s back in a practiced movement. Renzia followed quickly, her lithe form leaping with surprising ease to land atop Vivienne, cradling Liora securely in her arms.

The others did not move.

One of them—Jayce, if Vivienne remembered correctly—shifted uneasily. “Are we really trusting her to carry us?”

“She just ate an entire squad of soldiers,” another whispered.

“I don’t wanna get eaten.”

Vivienne huffed, a low, rumbling sound that sent a puff of mist curling into the cold air. “If I wanted to eat you, you’d already be gone.”

Not exactly the most comforting thing to say, judging by the looks they gave each other.

Kivvy groaned. “Oh, for fuck’s sake. You just watched her tear through those bastards for us. She’s faster than anything chasing us, and you’re really gonna stand here whining?” She jabbed a finger toward Vivienne’s massive form. “Either get on or get left behind.”

The goblins exchanged glances, still hesitant.

Liora, still in a dazed, despondent state, was gently passed off to Renzia, who held her securely against her canvas-wrapped arms. The mannequin didn’t seem to care about the goblins climbing onto Vivienne’s back; she just continued holding Liora, a blank expression etched on her face.

One of the younger goblins swallowed hard. “How the hell are we even supposed to get up there?”

Vivienne rolled her many eyes. “Climb.”

They hesitated again, until Kivvy growled, “Just move already!”

That got them going.

Scrambling up her fur wasn’t exactly graceful—a few nearly lost their footing, and at least one got yanked up by a sister when she slipped—but eventually, they managed. Soon, a cluster of goblins were gripping onto her back, small hands tangled in her thick fur.

Caelum, however, remained on the ground, watching with his arms crossed.

Vivienne flicked an ear back toward him. “Think you can keep up?”

He smirked. “I ran halfway across the empire in two weeks. I can keep up.”

Vivienne huffed, half-exasperated. “Fine then.”

She lifted her head, gaze flicking back toward the goblins. “Hold on. I will not be stopping if one of you falls.”

A few swallowed hard, tightening their grips.

And then Vivienne moved.

With a single powerful leap, she shot forward, sending snow flying in her wake. The goblins yelped, clinging on for dear life as she tore through the forest, weaving between trees and bounding over fallen logs like they weren’t even there.

Renzia, still cradling Liora, did not budge. The mannequin held the girl tight as Vivienne sprinted, her wooden arms locking around Liora’s body to make sure nothing would happen to her.

Kivvy whooped, exhilarated. “Now we’re talking!”

Jayce, meanwhile, shrieked, “This is not normal! I hate this!”

“Shut up and enjoy it!”