Mother of Midnight

Chapter 253 – Wartable Announcements

Rava pulled out a seat for Vivienne with surprising care, the wood creaking faintly under her clawed grip. The nightmare gave a nod of thanks, then lowered herself slowly into the chair. Her weight settled with a soft thud, the kind that turned heads, not for its volume, but for what it meant. Rava gently pushed her in, then took the seat beside her, shoulders squared, gaze forward.

Across the clanhall, eyes turned. Conversations faltered.

More than a few stared, not just family heads, but ranking warriors, elders, and even a few of the Skol. And at the far end of the chamber, the High Fang herself looked up from the scroll she was reading, her expression still, unreadable. Her gaze lingered on Vivienne and Rava a moment longer than protocol allowed.

The summons had come swiftly. The message had been clear: the Aegis army was no more than three days out.

There’d been no time for formalities. Clan leaders, their heirs, and trusted kin had streamed into the hall in armor and travel-worn leathers, some still brushing snow from their cloaks. The air was thick with tension—anticipation, uncertainty, and the quiet dread of what was coming.

Low chatter swirled through the room. Some spoke in hushed voices, trying not to be overheard. Others argued openly over what little information they had. Maps lay unfurled across stone tables. A few warriors stood by the door, hands never straying far from their weapons.

And still, many eyes kept drifting back to the two of them, the stranger cloaked in shadow and crystal, and the warrior at her side who no longer looked entirely like one of their own.

But Rava didn’t flinch. And Vivienne didn’t care.

The last of the clan representatives slipped through the great hall doors—an aging woman with a braid nearly to her knees, flanked by two younger kin bearing her family’s crest. As they took their place near the back, the heavy doors groaned shut behind them, sealed by the pair of guards stationed there. Their spears clacked into place in unison, the sound crisp and final.

Silence did not come immediately.

It crept in, slow and inevitable, like frost claiming glass.

Then—

Korriva cleared her throat. Just once.

And the room obeyed.

The hush that fell was instant and absolute. No snapping command. No raised voice. Just that quiet, unassuming sound—and every head turned. Every mouth closed. Every argument and whisper died on the tongue. The High Fang stood where she always did, beneath the iron-bound sigil of her office, with one hand resting on the hilt of her blade and the other curled loosely at her side. She hadn’t even looked up.

Vivienne’s many eyes narrowed, the faintest flicker of amusement tugging at one corner of her lips.

That, she thought, is a kind of magic I’d kill to study.

“As you all know,” Korriva began, her voice calm but firm, “the forces of Aegis have been approaching for weeks, ever since their victory at Drakthar. We have not been idle in that time.”

She paced slowly before the gathered clan heads, armored coat sweeping behind her like a shadow, her hands clasped loosely at the small of her back.

“We’ve used exomancy to hasten this year’s harvest. It will be smaller, yes—but our food stores were already abundant. We will not go hungry. Not for a long while.”

A few murmurs of approval rumbled through the chamber. Heads nodded. But none relaxed.

“Our soldiers will be outnumbered,” she admitted, stopping just short of the war table. “But we are Serkoth. This city has stood for longer than the empire has existed. It has never fallen—and this battle shall be no different.”

That claim, old as it was, carried weight. A quiet pride rippled through the room like a held breath. Serkoth was not built on comfort, but on refusal. Refusal to bow. Refusal to break. The kind of pride that didn't need banners or horns.

A grizzled lekine stood, his posture upright despite the cane at his side. His fur was more grey than black now, braided at the chin and tied with bone rings. “How many do they number?” he asked, voice gravelly but clear.

Vivienne’s eyes flicked toward him. He looked ancient by her standards, but age had proven itself a strange, fluid thing among Nymorians. Korriva alone was more than eight times Vivienne’s age, and yet she carried herself with the strength of someone in her prime. Even with human-like faces, Vivienne found herself relying more on scent, posture, the way one's aether hummed, but she still hadn’t quite gotten the knack for reading them.

“They number about fifteen thousand,” Korriva said simply.

The reaction was immediate.

A sharp intake of breath swept the room. Murmurs turned to raised voices. One woman, tall and broad-shouldered, stood with her hands braced on the edge of the table. “We only have two thousand soldiers!”

Her voice cracked with disbelief and fear. Honest, raw fear.

“And yet,” Korriva replied without turning, “Drakthar withstood an assault by twenty thousand. They lost nearly half their force before the walls even cracked, and that was with a titan at their back.”

She turned to face the room fully, golden eyes sweeping across the gathered clans like a blade.

“Are we lesser than those silk-draped Drakthar fops?”

The silence that followed was sharp. Pride warred with fear in the eyes of many. No one answered immediately, but the quiet that followed wasn’t the same kind that had come before. This one simmered.

Vivienne shifted slightly in her seat, glancing sideways at Rava. Her warrior looked as calm as ever, but her tail had begun to twitch, just faintly, where it coiled under the bench.

Korriva let the silence linger, just long enough to settle into bone. Let them feel it—the weight of the moment, the gravity of what was coming. Then she spoke, not loud, but with the kind of clarity that cut through armor and hesitation alike.

“We are not going to die behind these walls.”

Her words fell like stone.

“We will bleed them before they even reach the gates. We are not just soldiers. We are not just clans. We are Serkoth. We have in this city some of the most powerful people in the world—mages, bladesingers, beastwalkers, exomancers. We do not break. We do not yield. We do not fall.”

She stepped forward, eyes sweeping the room. Each word was a hammer.

“We are indomitable. We are Serkoth. Anyone who doubts that… raise your hand now.”

The silence that followed wasn’t fearful. It was solid. No one moved. Not a breath out of place. Eyes met hers, steady and hard. A few jaws clenched. One or two fists tightened against the table. But no hands rose.

“Good.” Korriva gave a single nod of approval, then glanced to her left. “Korven.”

At her word, her eldest son stepped forward. A towering man in lacquered armor that didn’t quite hide the sheer size of him, Korven was all muscle and toothy charm. He scratched at the scar that split one eyebrow, then grinned wide enough to show his canines.

“This will be the biggest battle in fifty years for Serkoth,” he said, voice rough and booming. “They’ve got us outnumbered seven to one. Fifteen thousand to our two.”

He let that sit for a moment.

“Personally,” he added with a smirk, “I think that’s unfair. I’m tempted to give them a handicap. Maybe tie one arm behind our backs, eh?”

That earned a few laughs. Dry and bitter, but genuine. One or two smirks passed between old rivals. The pressure eased—just a little.

But most in the room were still too focused. Too sharp-eyed. They knew what was coming.

Korven’s grin faded into something harder. He gestured to the war table behind him, where a map of Serkoth and the surrounding countryside was spread wide and pinned with markers.

“They’re marching from the northwest. Scouts say they’ll reach striking distance in three days, maybe less. They’ll likely set up a forward camp once they’re close enough to test our response. They’ve got enough force to make a hard push on half the city at once. That means we need high-mobility units watching the other sides—southern and eastern walls especially.”

He raised a brow, scanning the room.

“Any volunteers?”

For a heartbeat, there was nothing. Then a hand rose—scarred, calloused, and certain.

“Aye.” The speaker stood with a faint grunt, her voice like cracked stone. An older woman, fur gone silver in streaks and thinned in patches where deep scars had taken root. She wore armor like a second skin, her family crest burned into the shoulderplate.

“House Fenrik has some of the quickest feet in Serkoth. We’ll take the southern wall.”

Korven nodded, the grin returning, tempered this time with respect. “Wouldn’t trust it to anyone else. You’ll have two full packs under your command. I’ll see to their orders personally.”

He turned back to the others.

“Eastern wall’s still open,” Korven said, scanning the room. “Don’t make me pick someone.”

The silence that followed wasn’t quite awkward—but it teetered close. A few glances were exchanged, some thoughtful, some wary. No one wanted to be seen hesitating, but the eastern wall was exposed terrain. No natural choke points. Hard to defend. Easy to flank.

Then—

“I’ll take it,” came Vivienne’s voice. Smooth. Unhurried. Clear as chimes over still water.

Every eye turned.

She stood slowly, placing a hand on the edge of the table as she rose. The crystal-sharp claws that tipped her fingers gleamed faintly in the light of the lanterns above. Her other hand rested gently on the subtle swell of her belly—not protectively, not nervously, just there, like it belonged.

“My songbeasts can hold the eastern wall,” she continued. “They don’t tire. They don’t bleed. And I won’t need to be on the front line to command them.”

A long silence.

Someone near the back murmured something too quiet to catch. Another elbowed them.

Korven raised a brow at her, his expression shifting slightly. There was no mockery in it—just plain, puzzled curiosity.

“You sure?” he asked, tilting his head. “You are… well…”

“Pregnant,” Vivienne supplied easily.

The word dropped like a stone in still water.

More than a few eyes turned toward her again, though none quite so obviously as Korven, who blinked once and tilted his head further, ears twitching slightly in disbelief. “How? When I heard you had returned, you were… not.”

Vivienne smiled.

Not a polite smile. Not a courtly one. A wide one—sharp and black-lipped, her mouth parting just enough to show the needled gleam of her inner teeth. It was the kind of smile that didn’t invite conversation so much as end it.

“I believe we are in a war meeting, yes?” she said lightly. “Is my rapid gestation the important thing here?”

Korven coughed into one hand, straightened, and nodded with a grunt. “No. No, it is not.”

“Good,” she said sweetly.

He cleared his throat again and pressed on, trying not to look as thrown as he clearly was. “So, you can take the eastern wall?”

Vivienne leaned forward slightly, resting both hands on the table, long claws clicking once against the polished wood. Her tone remained pleasant.

“So long as I don’t place myself directly against the bulk of their force, yes. I should be fine. My songbeasts don’t tire, and I can sustain myself through extended conflict.”

“How?” someone muttered.

“I can supplement my aether,” she continued, ignoring the whisper, “by feeding on the corpses of the fallen as I fight. As long as there are bodies, I can maintain the summoning. In effect, I can continue without rest.”

That… earned her stares.

Long, hard ones. Some curious. Some disturbed.

It was the older woman from before—Skol Fenrik—who finally broke the silence, brow furrowed, her scarred face tight with something between confusion and caution. “What do you mean by ‘eating the corpses of the fallen?’”

Vivienne looked at her as if she’d asked whether snow was cold.

“Just that,” she said. “I’m not about to leave perfectly good meals rotting in the sun. Wasteful.”

She shrugged, casual, unconcerned, her tail curling and uncurling behind her like a lazy predator.

Someone near the edge of the chamber made a noise halfway between a cough and a laugh. Another muttered something under their breath. One of the younger warriors looked distinctly queasy.

Korven raised both brows now, then shook his head with a bemused chuckle. “Well. Long as your creatures don’t eat our dead, I’ve got no problem with it.”

“They won’t,” Vivienne said. “Unless they’re delicious.”

She didn’t smile this time, but her fifth eye blinked slowly, just once, high on her brow, and several people looked away.

The rest of the meeting blurred for Vivienne.

It wasn’t that she didn’t understand what was being said she simply didn’t care. There were talks of unit distributions, supply routes, fallback positions, signal protocols, and terrain advantages, all delivered with the grim seriousness of people who had survived too many battles and didn’t expect this one to be any different. To Vivienne, it was all clunky noise. Numbers and names, formations and flanking maneuvers.

She’d never been military-minded. Not before, not now. Tactics had their place, surely, and she wasn’t so arrogant as to dismiss their value outright… but they felt clumsy. Slow. Predictive. And her instincts were sharper than any war table. When the moment came, she trusted her claws, her song, her beasts, and her hunger.

Still, she stayed quiet, letting the discussion flow around her like a river she had no intention of stepping into. She let her eyes wander instead, over faces, over body language, over a few of the softer weak spots in the stone ceiling above, should something ever need to fall.

Beside her, Rava sat stone-still, one arm draped loosely across the table, her fingers tapping every now and then—slow, rhythmic, thoughtful. She didn’t speak much, not unless addressed directly, but Vivienne could see her listening. Closely. Her ears flicked now and then when certain names came up. Her brows furrowed slightly when someone suggested thinning the perimeter guards for supply convoys. She was present, in a way Vivienne hadn’t seen in a long while.

It made her smile.

She didn’t do it often, not the soft kind of smile, not the one that meant something, but it happened now, small and private. Rava still wasn’t quite who she’d been, not fully. She was moodier. Less patient with strangers. A little sharper, a little colder, especially with those she didn’t know or didn’t like. Vivienne had seen the sneer she gave the Skol who spoke too long, the twitch of her lip when one of the junior officers fumbled his words.

But that was fine.

She didn’t need Rava to be soft with everyone.

She was still kind to her.

And that was enough.

Vivienne shifted in her seat, letting her tail curl around the legs of the chair, eyes half-lidded as the voices around her debated the merits of tunnel escape routes and how many warbeasts could fit on the upper tier walls. It was dull—but the battle would not be. And when it came, she’d be ready.

The meeting did eventually end, though it dragged like a wounded animal for a time. The Skols and their chosen kin filtered out in groups—some with quick efficiency, others lingering to murmur among themselves. Warbands would need to be assembled. Messages sent. Armor prepared. There was much to do, and little time to do it.

When the last of them had gone, the hall finally quieted. Only Korriva, Korven, Vivienne, and Rava remained. The thick doors closed behind the final Skol with a heavy thunk that seemed to drain the tension from the air just slightly.

Korriva leaned forward at last, resting her forearms on the war table. Her golden eyes didn’t blink, didn’t flinch. They locked on Vivienne with pointed precision.

“So,” she said. “Who is the father?”

Vivienne’s lips curved into a slow, wicked grin, all fangs and mischief. “Guess.”

Korriva’s eyes narrowed.

Then she turned to her daughter.

Rava didn’t say anything. She just nodded once.

The High Fang sighed—a low, long exhale, as though she were bracing herself for a headache that hadn’t even begun.

“I don’t know how you made that work,” she muttered, half to herself. “I have so many questions.”

“Ask away, mother-in-law,” Vivienne said brightly, voice dripping with playful mockery.

“Do not call me that,” Korriva replied flatly—but there was no real bite in it. Just exasperation.

From beside her, Korven let out a low whistle and crossed his arms. “Wait, wait—how is that even possible? I thought you were—” he gestured vaguely at Vivienne’s entire being “—you know, an aetherbeast?”

Vivienne’s many eyes blinked lazily. “I am.”

Korven blinked. “So how—”

“I’m not a Lekine anymore,” Rava cut in, speaking for the first time since the others had left.

The room stilled.

“What?” Korriva turned toward her daughter, brow creasing sharply. “What do you mean ‘not Lekine’?”

Rava’s voice remained even, but low. Matter-of-fact. “Came back different. In more ways than one. Tarric ran the tests. Says I’m not Lekine anymore. I’m… like her now.”

Vivienne rested a hand on Rava’s shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. She was warm. Solid. Alive.

Korriva sat back in her chair, visibly trying to make sense of what she’d just heard. Her expression, usually a mask of authority, cracked for the briefest of moments into something more maternal. Something uncertain.

“I… I don’t understand,” she said, and for a heartbeat, the iron in her tone faltered.

“Neither did I,” said Rava quietly. “But it doesn’t change anything.”

Korven looked between them, jaw slightly slack. “So wait. You’re both aetherbeasts?”

Vivienne’s grin widened. “Darling, we’re family now.”

Korriva buried her face in one hand.

“I’m taking her as my bondmate,” Rava said, tone steady but leaving no room for doubt. “I plan to do the ritual sometime after the battle.”

That made Korriva’s head lift sharply. Her eyes widened, not in disapproval, but in something closer to disbelief. “Really?” she asked, leaning back slightly. “I didn’t know you had any interest in taking a partner for longer than a night.”

Rava didn’t flinch. “Because you don’t know your children as well as you like to think.”

The words weren’t cruel. Just honest. But they landed with the quiet finality of a blade slipping past armor.

Korriva opened her mouth, then closed it again. She looked at Rava for a long moment, her expression flickering through guilt and something older, duller, worn down by years of distance.

“I… no,” she admitted at last. “You’re right. It wasn’t my priority.”

A silence settled between them. Not hostile, not warm either. Just honest, the kind that lingered between people who had stopped expecting closeness long ago.

She turned her attention back to Vivienne, then glanced down, almost reluctantly, at the subtle swell beneath her robes. “How long until the child is born?”

“Five days,” Rava answered for her. “Maybe six.”

Korriva’s brows drew together, and her shoulders stiffened. She straightened in her chair, gathering up the strength of her title, though something softer pressed behind it.

“I pray nothing happens during the battle,” she said quietly. “I will not have my first grandchild die before they get a chance at life.”

Vivienne’s smile softened. Not the sharp one she gave strangers, but the small one that only Rava ever earned. “They won’t,” she said, voice low. “I won’t let them.”

Rava’s hand brushed against hers beneath the table, their claws tangling together. Korriva didn’t speak again right away, and when she finally did, her voice had changed.

“Then may every god who still listens be watching you.”