Grumble and Gasp: Of Rabbits and Regicide - Chapter 1, Part 1

Rabbits and Regicide Chapter 1: The Duchess and the Dire Snail

By Brude Bowyer

They say history was penned by a mad monk who cared little for facts, and that we are nothing more than the idle sketches he scrawled in the margins.

Usually Gasp delighted in the Mad Monk’s chaotic creativity, but not this night.

The outer wall of Duchess Margery's estate was slick with evening dew, cold stone biting into Gasp's talons as he perched, his silhouette stark and out of place against the night sky. His heart hammered with such ferocity he worried the guard below might hear it, thump-thump-thump, a woodpecker with anxiety drilling through his chest. First solo kill. First real test. Beneath his wings, a pouch of specially prepared knives rattled with his trembling, tiny tinkling warning bells to his fear.

The night was crisp, autumn-cool with a slice of moon hanging like a mocking smile in the darkness. It cast just enough light to illuminate the terracotta tiles of the duchess's private wing, the balcony doors left carelessly ajar. An invitation? A test? A trap? No, just noble arrogance. They never expected death to come from above, to wear feathers and a sharpened beak.

"Whatever you are drawing right now, stop it," Gasp prayed to the Mad Monk, but not in his own voice. Why use your own voice when there are so many other delightful voices out there to steal? In his prayers, he always perfectly imitated the voice of his brother. The Mad Monk always seemed to listen to his brother’s prayers.

“I mean it. Put the quill down. Just this once, just for tonight, please be boring.”

Gasp unfurled his wings, stretching them to their full, modest span. The wind tested their strength with gentle probing fingers as he launched himself in a silent glide. He landed on the balcony rail like a lightning bolt, precise, practiced, but with far too much noise. His talons curled around ornate ironwork, squeezing until his knuckles ached beneath ebony feathers as he listened. No one within the manor stirred.

Through gauzy curtains, he saw her, the Duchess of Thorndale, the woman whose signature had condemned twelve villagers to death for failing to pay impossible taxes. She slept alone tonight. Good. He had been told that the Duke was away hunting with the royal party. The guild's intelligence was solid, at least.

Gasp slipped between the curtains as silents as fog through the trees. The room smelled of lavender and wealth. Perfumes that cost more than his life, silks that would feed a family for a year. The carpet beneath his feet swallowed his footsteps, conspirator to his crime. Across the vast expanse of the room, her canopied bed stood like an island in a dark sea.

He moved with the same instinctual grace that had earned him a place in the guild despite his shortcomings. Where others clomped and shuffled, Gasp floated, light-boned and careful. Each step measured. Each breath controlled. His feathers, normally ruffled and wild, now lay flat against his body, sleeked back by nervous sweat and meticulous preparation.

Step. Pause. Listen. Step.

The duchess's breath came in gentle waves, the tide of sleep pulling her deeper into dreams she should never wake from. A polished bronze looking-glass hung above her vanity. Gasp glimpsed himself as he passed, an emaciated corvid-kin, small, dark, wrong. Like the Mad Monk had crossed a nervous crow with a starving boy.

At the bedside now, short sword unsheathed and trembling in his grip. The blade winked at him in the moonlight. The duchess's face was lined despite expensive creams; her hair spread across the pillow in silver rivers. She looked... ordinary. Like a man-kin’s grandmother. Not like a monster who would starve children for their parent’s debts.

"Do it," a voice yelled in his mind, the harsh, commanding tones of Magnus, a guild master and his chief tormentor. "One quick slice, you worm. Like practicing on the pigs."

His wing extended, blade poised at the soft hollow of her throat where her pulse fluttered, visible beneath paper-thin skin. One movement. One moment of courage.

But his wing wouldn't move. Seconds stretched, each frozen moment compounding the chance he would be caught.

Madame Marrow, the grand master's voice curled through his mind: "Hesitation is the difference between the living and the dead, my little bird. And I don't mean for the target."

Something cool and wet draped over Gasp's shoulder.

At first, he thought it was a misplaced curtain, a draft from the balcony. Then it tightened. Gripped. Pulled painfully.

The sensation was otherworldly, slick and muscular and covered in... teeth? Little hooks that caught his tunic as well as the skin and feathers underneath. Before he could react, before he could even draw breath to scream, he was yanked backward with terrible strength, his talons leaving furrows in the expensive carpet.

Pain exploded across his shoulder and back as the thing, the nightmare ribbon, dragged him across the floor. His tunic ripped like paper, and patches of feathers ripped free with it, exposing shredded skin to cool air and agony. Somehow he held onto his sword. At least one of Magnus’s severe lessons had stuck with him.

The tongue, for that's what it was he realized with horror, retracted with a wet, sucking sound. It withdrew like a whip being coiled, leaving behind a trail of viscous slime and black feathers. In its wake, Gasp's shoulder burned as if touched by hot iron, acid eating into exposed flesh where his plumage had been stripped away.

Gasp gasped, loud and exaggerated, clutching at the wound. His flight feathers came away sticky with blood and something else, something that hissed faintly against his feathers. Acid. Digestive fluid.

The duchess stirred, sheets rustling like disturbed autumn leaves. His first solo contract failing before his eyes.

The tongue retracted back to its source in the darkness. The shadows in the corner rippled like a curtain, and something massive shifted in the gloom. Gasp’s eyes adjusted just enough to see the curved dome of a shell, ridged with calcified plates that gleamed dully in the moonlight. The thing glided into the light silently, a silver trail glistening wetly behind it.

A dire-snail. A monstrous gastropod the size of a pony, its shell spiraling higher than Gasp's head. Of all the creatures the Mad Monk had drawn, he seemed to love snails the most. The variations of the creatures on the Illuminated Earth were multitude. Each one different, deadly, and disgusting in their own unique way. But of all the snails, the dire-snail was the worst. The creatures had almost consumed the whole kingdom a few years before Gasp had hatched.

The snail’s gelatinous body oozed forward, incessant as the grave. Four antennae extended from its head, thick as a man's wrists and tipped with bulbous eyes that swiveled independently, fixing Gasp with an alien, hungry stare.

"Nope," Gasp whispered, this time in his own voice, thin and reedy with fear. "Nope, nope, nope."

The creature's muscular foot rippled, propelling it forward with deceptive speed, antennae splayed like a boxer's stance. Its mouth pulsed, a circular hole ringed with teeth, gibbering wetly. Digestive fluid dripped from the opening onto the lush carpet, which, clearly custom-made for this purpose, did not sizzle.

Gasp's wing fumbled with his short sword. He'd practiced this. He'd trained for this. Back at the guild, he'd faced blades and poisons and the brutal tutelage of the masters.

But his body betrayed him. His wings locked in place, the sword point dipping toward the floor as pure, animal terror flooded his system. All the drills, all the beatings, all the lessons melted away like spring snow. His mind emptied of everything but the primal scream for flight.

Behind him, silk sheets rustled. A sharp intake of breath.

"What—" the duchess began, voice thick with sleep. Then her eyes found Gasp’s black figure in the dark, and she screamed, a piercing, aristocratic shriek.

The sound shattered the trance that held Gasp. The snail's antennae jerked toward the new noise, and its body rippled like a slapped jelly. The circular maw opened wider, revealing rows of backward-facing teeth arranged in concentric circles, glistening with caustic saliva.

"Run!" Gasp screamed, perfectly matching the tones of the duchess’s own voice, but the warning wasn't for the lady. It was for himself, a command his paralyzed limbs refused to obey.

The snail’s radula shot out again, a serrated tongue like living sandpaper that sliced through the air with a wet, whipping sound. Gasp tried to dodge, too slow, too late. The muscular appendage wrapped around his sword arm, barbed hooks latching into his flesh and feathers.

Pain exploded across his limb, white-hot and overwhelming. The radula rasped against him, a thousand tiny teeth shredding feather, skin, and muscle in a single pull. It was like being scraped with broken glass, each hook tearing loose a piece of him. His flight feathers came away in clumps, ripped from their follicles with wet, popping sounds that echoed in his skull.

The sword clattered from his nerveless grip as the radula retracted, taking with it long strips of Gasp's flesh, leaving raw, weeping wounds in ribbons down his exposed wing. He screamed then, not in the mocking voices he so often borrowed, but in his true voice, high, reedy, and terrified.

Terror finally broke his paralysis. Gasp sprang backward, wings flapping uselessly, stumbling over his own feet. His back hit the duchess's wardrobe with enough force to rattle the ornate doors.

The duchess was fully awake now, her screams shifting from surprise to indignation as she took in the scene: an intruder in her bedroom, and worse, blood spattering her expensive imported linens! She scrambled from the bed, clutching silk sheets to her chest, backing toward a bellpull that would summon guards.

Gasp lunged for his fallen sword. His talons closed around the hilt, but something was wrong. The metal sizzled against his touch, hot and pitted. Acid from the snail's tongue had already begun its work, eating into the blade with hungry efficiency. The steel bubbled and smoked, corroding before his eyes.

He remembered the tales. Every fledgling in Prydein knew the horror stories of the Great Dire-Snail Invasion. How they'd come from the southern marshes in vast, slimy hordes. How their acid dissolved armor and weapons alike, rendering the kingdom's proudest knights into nothing but unarmed bone and sinew. Soldiers would strike at their shells only to find their swords pitted and useless moments later. Arrows bounced off their rubbery hides. They were unstoppable, inexorable, until a Swedish fishmonger discovered their one weakness by accident, desperately slapping one with a salt-encrusted cod in a last act of defiance before what he'd assumed would be certain death.

Gasp mentally swore that if he lived, he would never again travel without a pocket full of salt. The snail's body convulsed, mouth yawning wide for another attack. Its maw worked hungrily, acid pooling beneath it in a fetid puddle.

"Guards!" the duchess screamed, her voice pitched high enough to crack crystal. "Guards! Murder! Monster!"

Gasp dropped his ruined sword. It hit the floor with a dull thunk, blade already eaten through in places, more decorative cheese grater than weapon now. His gaze darted from the advancing snail to the balcony doors. Three quick steps. That's all he needed.

"You loony nobles keep these things as pets now?" he hissed in disbelief, backing away from the advancing gastropod. "As pets?"

The snail's antennae quivered, sensing his movement. Its mouth hole pulsated obscenely, hungry for more corvid flesh.

Gasp didn't wait for its next attack. His training had failed him enough tonight; he wouldn't give it another chance to disappoint.

He lunged for the balcony in a hurricane of panic, feathers sloughing off his acid-burned wing in black confetti. Behind him, the duchess's screams sharpened to crystal-shattering pitch while booted footsteps thundered down distant corridors. The snail's antennae quivered with predatory anticipation, sensing his retreat.

"Coward!" he snarled at himself in Magnus's rage-filled voice as he vaulted over the rail. The night air embraced him for one sweet moment of weightlessness. Freedom beckoned below, over the garden wall, then safety beyond.

Gasp spread his wings and pain exploded across his right side. Where the snail's tongue had raked him raw, night air rushed against exposed nerve endings. Worse, as he tried to catch the wind, his now almost featherless right wing met no resistance. He plummeted uncontrollably, the ground rushing up to meet him with hard finality.

The acid had eaten through his strongest pinions, leaving him all the flying ability of a plucked goose. His one advantage, the thing that made him valuable to the guild, gone.

A tree came at him faster than thought. Branches reached up like desperate hands, each one willing to break his fall and his hollow bones. A thick bough caught him across the chest, driving precious air from his lungs in an undignified squawk. He tumbled, wing-over-talon, through a gauntlet of smaller branches that snapped and cracked against his body. Each impact was a new note in a symphony of pain, percussion against bruised flesh and broken pride.

Something, elbow, shoulder, he couldn't tell anymore, bounced off the wood with a muted crack that reverberated through his slight frame, sending him careening into open air. The world spun, leaves and stars blurring together in a dizzying waltz. Gasp tried to catch himself, talons raking uselessly at nothing.

The rose bushes bloomed with thorns beneath the duchess's balcony. A defensive measure against exactly this kind of intrusion. They welcomed him with thousands of tiny daggers that pierced his already shredded skin. He landed spread-eagled in their cruel embrace, each thorn finding what little uninjured flesh remained.

Gasp bit back a scream. The acid still sizzled in the remains of his feathers, a chemical fire that refused to die. Every movement drove thorns deeper, but staying still meant capture, or worse, becoming the main course in a dire-snail's midnight feast. He could see the relentless creature above him now, slowly gliding down the manor’s outer wall.

The duchess's voice carried through the night, shrill with rage: "Find it, Miss Snotski! That filthy crow tried to murder me in my sleep!"

With a wrenching effort that sent fresh blood trickling through his remaining feathers, Gasp tore himself free of the rosebushes. The last shreds of his tunic remained behind. His legs wobbled beneath him, threatening to fold. One bald wing hung uselessly at his side. He fled with all the dignity his injuries and sudden nudity would allow.

He staggered forward, each step a negotiation with pain. The garden path swam before his eyes, moonlight turning the white gravel ghostly. Behind him, the mansion erupted with activity. Lanterns flickering to life in windows, doors slamming, voices calling. The hunt was on.

"Worthless Worm," he muttered in Magnus's graveled baritone as he limped between ornamental hedges. "Pathetic excuse for an assassin. Can't even kill an old woman in her sleep."

Guards shouted behind him, their voices carried on the night breeze. Dogs barked; the duchess kept hounds too? Of course she did. Gasp pushed himself faster, ignoring the screaming protest of his injuries. He veered off the path, ducking beneath the low branches of an ornamental plum tree. The soft earth swallowed his footprints, a small mercy from the Mad Monk.

He reached the tree, chest heaving with exertion and suppressed whimpers. The trunk loomed impossibly tall before him, its upper branches a dizzying height above. On a normal night, he would simply hop and flutter up in stages. Now, he'd have to climb like a common squirrel.

Lantern light swept closer. No time for doubt.

Gasp dug his talons into the bark and hauled himself upward, using his good wing for balance and his beak to grasp higher holds. Each pull sent fresh agony through his shredded muscles. Blood and acid slicked his grip, making the ascent a nightmare of near-slips and stifled cries.

Behind him, a hound bayed, catching his scent. Gasp climbed faster, desperation lending him strength his body no longer possessed. He reached the branch that stretched toward the wall just as torchlight illuminated the base of the tree.

"Up there!" a guard shouted. "I see it!"

Gasp hopped along the branch precariously, balance gone the same way as his feathers. The wall was so close, freedom just beyond. An arrow whistled past his head, embedding itself in the wood beside his ear hole with a meaty thunk. He didn't look back. Couldn't afford to.

With the last reserves of his strength, Gasp launched himself from the branch. For one terrifying moment, he was airborne again, falling. Then his chest slammed against the top of the wall, knocking what little breath he had left from his lungs. His talons scrabbled desperately for purchase on the smooth stone. One leg slipped, then the other; his weight dragging him back toward his pursuers.

At the last possible instant, his right talon caught in a crevice. With a hoarse cry, equal parts triumph and agony, Gasp pulled himself onto the wall's narrow top and rolled over the far side. He fell gracelessly into the street beyond, landing in an undignified heap of blood, bruises, and humiliation.

He lay there for three precious heartbeats, letting the cold cobblestones soothe his burning skin. Then, driven by the sounds of pursuit still echoing from within the estate, he staggered to his feet and melted into the familiar shadows of the city.

Home waited, with all its judgment. And Zaghnal.

Thanks for reading. The story is a work in progress, and I welcome all comments and constructive criticism. This is book 0 in the Grumble and Gasp quadology. If you find yourself liking the story and wanting more, the full first novel is available on Kindle and Amazon.

Book 1 Available Here!

Want to know if I killed off your favorite character? I probably didn’t, but how can you be sure? The rest of this chapter is just a button push away.

Chapter 1 Part 2 Continues Here!

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