Mother of Midnight

Chapter 257 – Disquiet

Tarric paced the parapet with tight, deliberate strides, his boots scuffing against the worn stone. The wind tugged at his robes, cold and dry, but he barely noticed. His eyes were locked on the horizon, on the distant shimmer of tents, siege engines, and the vast, crawling shape of the Aegis army as it encircled Serkoth like a noose.

He had known this day would come.

Three years ago, during a seer’s trance that nearly broke his mind, he saw the shadow of this very moment: the smell of smoke, the banners of gold and white, the rising scream of something too old to name. He had seen the walls shake, the city burn, mother weeping, though in that vision, she’d had no eyes to cry with.

It had haunted him ever since.

And yet… it hadn’t made him anxious enough.

He glanced eastward—toward her. Even now, he could feel the blockage. The wall in his sight. Vivienne. For seven months now, almost none of his scrying had worked if it involved her. No matter how subtle the magic, no matter how distant the question, if she was even adjacent to the answer, it withered into static.

She was like an anti-scrying ward made flesh.

A blind spot carved into the weave of fate.

And why?

He didn’t know. That was the worst part.

Tarric’s brow furrowed as he folded his arms, watching the glint of sunlight off enemy armor. His thoughts drifted, unbidden, to the strange woman who now lived under their roof, slept beside his sister, carried a child in her belly, and made meals of the dead without shame.

He had… complicated feelings about her.

He didn’t trust her, not truly. She unsettled him, and her casual cruelty toward outsiders set his teeth on edge. Her habits disgusted him. Gnawing flesh like it was bread, smiling as she did it, but he also understood. A piece of Serkoth pragmatism buried deep in her marrow. A lesson learned not from a book but from surviving where others died.

He could respect that.

And more than that—he owed her.

Vivienne had saved him. Had saved Rara. Not for glory. Not for thanks. But because, at the time, it had served her interests. Still, a debt was a debt, and he would not forget it.

She didn’t murder without reason. He doubted it was from any innate morality, more likely, she simply wanted to stay on good terms with the family. Keep her place secure. Protect her child.

She was a monster.

But… so was he.

A different kind. Quieter. Quivering under the skin, beneath the layers of reason and refinement. He had channeled magic that killed thousands before. Had written spells that could crack the earth. He knew what it meant to wield ruin, and more than that, he knew what it meant to choose not to.

For now.

His hand clenched at his side.

He had the Cataclysm spell still. One final casting. One perfect, world-sundering invocation that would drain him to his bones, but end the siege before it could begin.

He didn’t want to use it.

But he would.

Because if Mother had to join the fight… if she had to step onto the battlefield—

Then something had gone very, very wrong.

And Tarric Serkoth would rather burn the sky than let it reach that point.

He knew what his mother was capable of.

Not through bedtime stories or whispered tales traded between skittish cousins. No—he had seen it. A glimpse torn from the past, caught in the trembling web of a scrying spell gone too deep, too far. He’d only been twenty-five at the time—young enough to believe curiosity was harmless, powerful enough to get himself into trouble, and not nearly wise enough to know what to do with the answers he found.

He hadn’t been trying to unearth anything dangerous. Not really.

He had just wanted to know her. The way a son yearns to understand the stranger he calls “Mother.” To peel back the veil and catch a glimpse of who she was before the silences, before the weariness, before she wore her smiles like masks and her sorrow like armor.

What he found instead… chilled him to the core.

There didn’t used to be a pass through the Greyreach.

That alone should have been enough to stop him. Every map older than three centuries marked the Greyreach Mountains as impassable. Sheer cliffs. Jagged peaks. Not even wind dared howl between them.

But there was a pass now. A long, winding path through scorched rock and shattered stone, a place where the land itself seemed reluctant to remember what had once stood.

He thought how strange. A sudden shift in the earth? An earthquake, maybe? A disaster? He dug deeper.

And then he learned the truth.

The Greyreach was not a mountain range.

It had never been a mountain range.

It had been a god.

A being vast beyond understanding. That was what the Greyreach had once been. Not a mountain range, but something ancient—older than nations, older than memory itself. A god in form, if not in worship. It had curled through the land for centuries, unmoving, slumbering. Its body stretched across leagues, its bones mistaken for peaks, its breath so slow that no one living could feel it.

The world had grown around it, built over it, and then forgotten it. The villages on its slopes had no idea they lived atop ribs. The rivers carved through its hide, thinking they cut only stone. It had dreamed in silence, too massive to notice anything, too indifferent to care.

Until his mother tore a piece of it away.

Not to kill it, no. That had not been her purpose. It had simply stood in her path. There had been a battle, one that had left the world shaken and the air itself uncertain. A clash between his mother and the narrative titan—a being of purpose, of order, of destiny given voice. Neither had won. Both had stepped back before the fight could truly reach its conclusion.

But not before she left her mark. She severed a part of the god that called itself Greyreach.

It did not scream. It did not bleed. It merely twitched once in its endless sleep, unaware or uncaring of what it had lost.

And where once there had been an impassable wall of stone, now there was a mountain pass.

He had seen it in a vision once. Not from stories. His mother never spoke of it. None of them did.

But he knew.

He had cast a spell in his youth, trying to learn more about her. Wanting to know what had shaped her into the being who spoke so rarely and watched so quietly. And the spell had answered with a single memory. A battle that reshaped geography. A god that never even noticed it had been wounded.

Korriva was powerful. Near godlike, as many whispered behind closed doors. The High Fang was not just respected—she was feared. The Sovereignty had not dared challenge Serkoth directly during her entire lifetime, excluding the recent attack, if it could be called that.

But if his mother claimed she could strike down Serranos, her own patron god, Tarric would not question it.

He would believe her.

And that was why he prayed she would not need to act.

Because when you wield power that even gods regard with caution, every movement echoes across the world. Every action risks starting a storm that will not stop.

Tarric exhaled sharply and leaned on the parapet, letting the wind cool his thoughts.

"Brother! So this is where you’ve been hiding!" came a voice from behind him, loud enough to startle birds from the ramparts.

He turned, smiling despite himself.

"Hello, Kav. Just needed some time to think," he said, moving in to wrap his much-larger brother in a hug.

Kavren returned it without hesitation, squeezing tight enough that Tarric felt his bones protest.

"Thinking too much again, huh? You always do that before battles. It’s your curse."

Tarric chuckled, pulling back. "Some of us don’t have the luxury of smashing our problems with a hammer."

"Then maybe you should get a better hammer," Kavren grinned.

“Some of us don’t have the strength a giant would be envious of, my dearest brother,” said Tarric with a crooked smirk. But it didn’t last. The expression faltered, faded, and what remained beneath it was far more raw.

“We need to win, Kav.”

Kavren scoffed, as if brushing dust off his shoulder. “Of course we’ll win. We’re outnumbered seven to one. I call that an even fight.”

“Kavren.” Tarric said his name flatly, cutting the bravado with nothing more than tone.

The larger man’s shoulders squared at once. His back straightened. “Yeah. I get it. This isn’t the kind of fight we can just punch our way through. But we’ve got an inkling of their plans. That’s more than most armies ever get. We won’t let them win.”

“We can’t let Mother get involved.”

“I know.” Kavren's voice lowered. Something old and heavy passed through it. “Tarric, I know.”

He let out a breath, one that felt like it had been building for years, and sat on the edge of the parapet with a creak of old stone.

“She was harder on me than the rest of you, you know?” he said, eyes scanning the horizon. “I saw things she learned to hide after raising me. Things she got better at keeping quiet about by the time you were born. We don’t talk about them. Never have.”

“Mhm,” Tarric murmured. “And I’ve seen things she’s told none of us. Visions, fragments, echoes she didn’t mean to leave behind.”

Kavren nodded slowly, watching the twilight bleed along the curve of the sky. “She’s from another world.”

“Yeah. She is.”

“Doesn’t she trust us?”

“I think she does.” Tarric leaned on the stone, arms folded in front of him. “Between you and Narek, you’re already running the city. Mother has barely needed to intervene in years.”

“Still feels like there’s a distance,” Kavren muttered.

“Yeah,” said Tarric quietly. “Still.”

A long silence followed, filled with the sound of distant hammering and the cries of birds returning to their roosts.

“When do you think they’ll move?” Kavren asked.

“Tomorrow,” said Tarric. “Crack of dawn. Their High Priest either doesn’t know I’ve seen it, or he’s pretending not to. He’s subtle, I’ll give him that.”

“You weren’t going to tell us that?”

“Of course I was,” Tarric snapped, eyes flashing. “I only completed the scrying a quarter bell ago. I was just about to go and report.”

Kavren held up both paws, the pads facing out. “Alright, alright. My bad. No need to scorch me with your death glare.”

Tarric closed his eyes and breathed in deep. “No. I’m sorry. I’ve been… on edge. Everything’s been so tangled lately. So much depends on so little.”

“I know.” Kavren stood up and patted his brother’s shoulder. “We’ll hold the walls, little brother. We’ve done more with less.”

Tarric nodded. “Let’s hope the enemy doesn’t realize just how desperate we really are.”

“We can’t underestimate them either,” Tarric said, voice low. “Drakthar wasn’t weak. Not by a long shot. Sure, they didn’t have anyone that could stand toe to toe with Mother or even you, but their soldiers were seasoned. Their heavy infantry outclassed ours in discipline and cohesion. That cost them dearly, but not for lack of strength.”

Kavren crossed his arms, fur rustling with the motion. “And Aegis isn’t lacking, either. Numbers, tactics, resources. They’ve had time to plan. And worse—some among them can match us, or come damn close.”

“Aye,” he added, tone firm. “First mistake in war is underestimating your opponent. Followed very closely by overestimating them.”

Tarric gave a short, hollow laugh. “Yeah. I’ve made both mistakes before. I’d rather not add a third.”

He shifted his weight and rubbed at his temples, as if trying to press the pressure out through his skin. “I’m going to report what I’ve seen. I recommend we position some of our faster units in the streets near the eastern wall. Hidden if possible. I don’t know why, but I saw flashes… movement. They plan to strike there. Maybe not first, but during the confusion.”

Kavren grunted. “They think we’ll be too focused on the north.”

“And they’re right,” Tarric said. “Most of our numbers are there. But if they punch through on the east while we’re distracted... that could split our lines. Box us in.”

“You think they’ll use that as their pivot point?” Kavren asked, brow furrowing.

“I think they’ll try. Maybe just a feint. Maybe something more. But if they hit hard and fast enough while our attention is northward, it could be more than a diversion.”

“I’ll make sure there’s a squad on standby,” Kavren replied, already turning the thought over in his head. “Fast. Mobile. Experienced.”

“And someone who can reinforce quickly if it turns out to be more than a probe.”

Kavren nodded. “I’ll pick them myself.”

Tarric offered a brief smile, the weight of the future still heavy behind his eyes. “Thank you.”

“You sure you’re alright?”

“No,” Tarric admitted. “But I will be. Once this is over.”

Kavren clasped his shoulder once, firmly, before stepping back. “Then let’s make sure we get to that part.”

Tarric gave one final look over the city before turning on his heel, cloak trailing behind him as he made his way down from the parapet toward the war council chambers.