Grumble and Gasp: Of Rabbits and Regicide - Chapter 2, Part 1

Of Rabbits and Regicide – Chapter Two: Brothers by Blood

by Brude Bowyer

The corridor outside the ritual chamber was carefully constructed to intimidate. Cold stone walls, slick with condensation, leaned inwards overhead. Torchlight reflected off lacquered bone alcoves the color of dried blood. Each alcove contained either a grisly trophy from one of the guild’s many notable kills, or a grisly warning of what happens to assassins who fail in their contracts. Gasp was not sure which was which; the exhibits were not marked, the guild masters preferring to leave the details up to the imagination of the viewers.

Gasp perched on a narrow bench, staring at an eye suspended in a jar of liquid on the alcove across from him. The eye stared back accusingly. Gasp’s talons clicked against the polished wood as he shifted his weight for the hundredth time. Beside him, Zaghnal remained unnaturally still, his normally gleaming feathers dulled in the weak torchlight. They had been waiting for hours, watching as, one by one, their fellow apprentices were called into the chamber. None had emerged.

Gasp’s wounds from the dire-snail encounter still throbbed beneath hastily applied bandages. The acid burns had left patches of skin raw and exposed. A stolen short sword lay heavy against the wrong hip. Without flight feathers, he couldn’t grip a weapon with his right wing. He would have to pass this last test with his non-dominant wing. Another worry to add to the rest of the invading horde in his head.

Thirteen apprentices had lined the corridor that morning; now only five remained. The rest had already disappeared into the yawning jaws of the ominous oak door at the end of the hall. The iron hinges of the door groaned like a dying man each time it swallowed an apprentice whole. Sometimes they didn’t call the next applicant for an hour; sometimes they called the next one after mere minutes. The intervals made no sense to Gasp. How could it take an hour to kill one prisoner? His nerves were getting to him, so he relieved the tension the only way he knew how.

“You think they serve drinks in there?” Gasp asked in the rich falsetto of an opera singer. “Something with honey for my throat? I simply can not be expected to perform under these horrendous conditions.”

An apprentice three seats down shot him a withering glare.

“Possibly a light brunch? One must keep up one’s strength, you know,” Gasp continued, switching to the pompous voice of a young noble while turning to regard his silent twin beside him. “Some nice cucumber sandwiches, if you please, Garson. The crusts must be removed completely, you understand; one is not a savage.”

Zaghnal didn’t even blink. His eyes remained fixed on the door, as if trying to penetrate the wood with his gaze.

“One is not accustomed to being ignored by the help.” Gasp sneered.

The weasel-kin apprentice two seats down ground his teeth audibly. “Can you just be silent for one bloody minute?”

Gasp pivoted toward him, neck twisting at that unnerving angle that made mammals with proper spines uncomfortable. “One minute? I could do that. Let’s play one minute of silence.” He perfectly adopted the gruff voice of their old interrogation techniques teacher. “Though I can’t help but wonder what thoughts might fill such a void. Thoughts I am very much trying to avoid, aren’t you?”

The weasel flinched at hearing the hated voice thrown back at him.

“Or perhaps,” Gasp continued in a child’s piping tones, “we could play a different game? I spy with my little eye something that begins with ‘D’... Your double chin? A dismembered head? A room full of dullards?”

A lean fox-kin female hissed from the shadows. “If you don’t close your beak and be quiet, I’ll come over there and close it for you.”

Gasp winked at her. “Is that a promise?” he asked in her own voice, only adding a flirtatious purr to each syllable.

The door groaned open. Everyone froze. A masked journeyman emerged, beckoning to the weasel-kin whose whiskers trembled visibly. The apprentice rose, legs shaking so badly he nearly collapsed. The journeyman gripped his elbow, steering him into the chamber.

The silence that followed pressed against Gasp’s eardrums like deep water, and all of his worries threatened to flood in behind it. He lasted precisely seventeen seconds.

“Well, he looked ready!” Gasp chirped in the cheery voice of a street vendor. “Fresh meat for the grinder! Get it while it’s still bleeding!”

“I swear by the Mad Monk’s quill,” another apprentice growled, “one more word and—”

“And what?” Gasp cut them off, suddenly switching to Magnus’s brutal, commanding bark. His voice shifted so abruptly that all the remaining apprentices flinched. “You’ll kill me, worm? Try it and I’ll wear your scalp as my graduation cap.”

Gasp’s heart hammered against his throat in sudden fear-induced anger, but he choked down the offending organ with another joke.

One by one, the apprentices vanished through that intimidating door. Sometimes screams filtered back through the thick wood. The corridor emptied slowly, like water draining from a cracked waterskin.

Through it all, Zaghnal remained mute, a statue carved of midnight feathers. It was so unlike him to be shaken this way, Zaghnal the confident, Zaghnal the perfect. Always the first one with the right answer or a cutting remark.

“Zag,” Gasp whispered when only three of them remained. “Snap out of it, you’re freaking me out. Be a good wingman and help me chat up that fox in the corner.”

Zaghnal’s beak parted slightly, but whatever he wanted to say died in his throat. Gasp stared at his brother expectantly for a long moment, until the silence grew intolerable, and then he filled it with more voice work.

The fox-kin was summoned next, her earlier bravado evaporating as she walked stiff-legged into the chamber. Only the twin brothers left now.

“Well, thank you very much,” Gasp said, in the voice of a jilted lover, “you just chased off the future Misses Gasp. Do you want me to die an old maid alone in a cold, empty bed?”

Zaghnal’s head turned fractionally, just enough to meet Gasp’s gaze. Something unidentifiable and foreign swam in those obsidian eyes.

“Do you know what’s waiting for us in there?” Gasp asked, fear finally cracking through his performance. “Zag, what aren’t you telling me?”

The door opened again. The masked journeyman stood silhouetted against harsh red light that spilled into the corridor like blood.

The journeyman’s clawed finger rose slowly, pointing at Gasp, and then cocked back towards the door.

“Well, that’s me then.” Gasp rose on legs that threatened to buckle, “Thanks for the pep talk, brother. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Gasp swallowed hard, trying to tell himself that if he could face a dire-snail and mostly survive, he could face whatever waited behind that door. He took one step, then another.

Before he could reach the threshold, a wing caught his shoulder and spun him around. Zaghnal stood behind him, eyes suddenly wide and wild. Then, unexpectedly, his brother pulled him into a tight embrace. Gasp froze, unable to process this unprecedented display of affection. In all their years, Zaghnal had never, not once, hugged him.

“I’m proud of you,” his brother whispered hoarsely. “I’ve always been proud of you.”

Gasp was dumbstruck, standing rigid in his brother’s embrace, mind racing to understand this sudden sentimentality.

“What a vulgar display of affection,” Gasp quipped, using a baroness’s haughty voice to mask his confusion and embarrassment. “I think I made it pretty clear I’m in to foxes.”

Zaghnal released him and stepped back as if burned. For a heartbeat, naked pain flashed across his features before he mastered himself.

“Watch your back in there, brother,” Zaghnal said finally, his voice hollow.

The journeyman’s hand closed around Gasp’s shoulder and guided him wordlessly through the portal.

Gasp glanced once more at his brother, standing alone in the corridor, silhouetted against the guttering torchlight. Then the door swung shut behind him, and he was alone with whatever waited in the chamber beyond.

A hall stretched before Gasp like the gullet of some ancient beast, swallowing him into the stone belly of a large, round chamber. Vaulted ceilings arched over his head, disappearing into the shadows. Guttering candles in red lanterns cast writhing patterns on the walls. The stench of copper-rich blood was thick enough to choke on. Blood marred the once rich purple carpet with old brown stains and fresh crimson splotches. That couldn’t be very hygienic, Gasp thought, trying to distract himself from his fear.

Masked figures lined the circular chamber, motionless as statues carved from ebony. Each wore robes cut differently for their individual species: sleek for reptiles, loose for mammals, split-sided for avians. Representatives from all the Mad Monk’s higher races, here to witness his humiliation. Each of their faces hidden behind bone-white masks with slit eyes. Their heads tracking his progress like predators following wounded prey.

Gasp limped forward, trying to hide his acid-ravaged wing. The short sword his brother had stolen for him bounced awkwardly against his right hip, a constant reminder that he could not afford to freeze up again.

At the far end of the chamber, two figures waited on a raised platform. The hulking Master Magnus loomed over the proceedings like a mountain given flesh, and beside him, the Bone Mother herself. Madame Marrow’s skeletal frame stood impossibly tall. Her eye sockets flickered with a pale blue fire that had a way of reducing hardened killers to quivering cowards.

“Step forward, worm,” Magnus growled beneath a horrendous mask that was somehow still less intimidating than his actual face.

Gasp obeyed, moving to the center of the chamber where the carpet’s red stains converged like a grisly flower blooming beneath his feet.

“My dear children,” Madame Marrow intoned to the crowd, her matronly voice echoing unnaturally in the chamber. “A corvid-kin comes before us to complete his initiation into our sacred brotherhood. Stand witness to his trial, whether it ends in triumph or tragedy.”

Gasp swallowed, his throat suddenly as dry as old bone.

Magnus’s head tilted towards a short column pillar, where a ritual dagger rested on a velvet pillow.

“Take it, worm,” Magnus seethed. “Prove yourself worthy, if you can.”

Gasp’s wing shook as he lifted the dagger in his non - dominant wing. Its weight felt wrong, but he gripped it tighter.

“Good,” Madame Marrow purred, clapping her bony hands together once. “Now we may proceed.”

Gasp puffed out all his feathers at once, trying to make himself look bigger. This was the moment. The rumors he had heard mentioned a prisoner, some condemned soul whose life would purchase his place in the guild. Perhaps a traitor to the crown, or maybe even a fellow guild member who had failed one too many times. This last thought sent shivers down Gasp’s spine. His gaze darted between the chamber’s exits, waiting for a door to open.

But nothing happened.

The masked figures around him remained still. Magnus watched him with something like anticipation in his posture. Madame Marrow’s skull remained fixed in its eternal grin, but the flames in her eye sockets danced with amusement.

A cold feeling of dread settled in Gasp’s gut. He was missing something important, screwing up again, this time in front of the entire guild. The feathers on his neck rose in panic. His mind raced for what he was expected to do.

He heard something then, a small sound like the creak of shifting leather, subtle and alarmingly close behind him.

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 link click away.

Chapter 2 Part 2

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