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

Of Rabbits and Regicide – Chapter Two: Brothers by Blood

by Brude Bowyer

Gasp turned toward the sound behind him instinctively, the slight movement just enough that the twin blades of Zaghnal’s axe pierced Gasp’s shoulder instead of the lungs they had been aimed for. The curved beak of his brother’s favorite weapon bit deep into muscle and bone, but missed anything vital. The force of the blow drove Gasp to one knee, a strangled cry escaping his beak as the ritual dagger skittered out of reach.

Through the haze of agony, Gasp turned to look up at his brother. Zaghnal stood over him, the crow’s-bill axe raised for another strike, his face a mask of grim determination. But his eyes told a different story. Shame, regret, and resignation all swarmed in those obsidian depths.

Terrible clarity crashed into Gasp with more force than the axe blow. He wasn’t here to complete his initiation.

He was there as Zaghnal’s initiation kill.

The betrayal was more than Gasp could handle. He stared up at his twin brother, his mirror image turned executioner, and something shattered inside his head. Mad laughter bubbled up from his throat, spilling out in a voice that wasn’t his own.

“Brother against brother?” Gasp wheezed in Madame Marrow’s imperious voice. “How banal, how tragically predictable.”

The axe arced down again, aimed to split Gasp’s skull like firewood. Gasp rolled sideways, his injured wing screaming in protest as healing muscles stretched. The weapon’s blade buried itself in the purple carpet where he’d been kneeling. Gasp scrambled backward, talons slipping in pools of half-congealed blood.

“You could at least pretend it’s difficult for you,” Gasp spat, his true voice cracking through. “We shared a cloaca, you miserable backstabber!”

Zaghnal yanked his axe free, advancing with the silence of a true professional. The guild way, and perhaps Zaghnal’s way, but never Gasp’s way.

Gasp bit his tongue hard and purposefully. The abused organ, barely healed from yesterday, gushed again with blood. Zaghnal lunged, blade sweeping horizontally. Gasp spat crimson into his brother’s eyes and ducked under the blade before diving forward and tackling his brother to the ground. He fumbled for the stolen short sword at his hip, drawing it with his non-dominant wing, awkward and unpracticed.

The sword felt wrong in his grip, a stranger’s appendage. Zaghnal didn’t give him time to adjust. Despite being on his back and half blinded by blood, he choked up on the axe’s handle and swung it in a stabbing motion towards Gasp’s exposed back. Gasp was forced to roll to the side. He rose in a half-crouch, sword all but forgotten by his side.

“Pick up your weapon and fight back properly,” Zaghnal urged through clenched beak. “Don’t give them the satisfaction of seeing you cut down unarmed.”

The last twig of sanity snapped inside Gasp then, as his vision filled with red mist. He flung the sword to the side and launched himself at his brother with a shriek that belonged to no species on the Illuminated Earth.

Blind, animal rage consumed him as he leapt into the air, one wing flapping, raking his talons across Zaghnal’s shocked face. Gasp’s beak stabbed forward, seeking eyes, neck, anything soft. His wings beat against his brother’s body, one feeble from injury, both desperate.

Zaghnal staggered back, surprise flashing across his now bleeding features before the professional mask returned. He swung his axe in a controlled arc that should have gutted Gasp from hip to hip. But Gasp wasn’t fighting like an assassin anymore; he was a cornered beast. He dove below the swing, momentum carrying him forward into Zaghnal’s legs.

They crashed to the floor together, a tangle of black feathers now impossible to distinguish. The axe spun away across the blood-slicked carpet. The brothers now rolled across the chamber like the maddened lower crows they resembled, talons locked together, wings pumping, beaks snapping and cawing.

Feathers tore loose and drifted around them like black snow. Their shadows danced grotesquely across the walls, a single insane creature tearing itself apart.

Zaghnal’s beak found Gasp’s acid burn and dug in. He screamed, a harsh, rapid, mobbing caw, as Zaghnal wrenched him by the wounded shoulder and pinned Gasp beneath him.

Adrenaline flooded Gasp’s body as pure survival instinct dictated his movements.

Zaghnal reached for the ritual dagger on the floor beside Gasp’s head. Gasp twisted his neck at an angle that would be impossible for a non-avian and bit down on his brother’s wing with savage, crushing strength. His beak, designed for cracking carrion bones, closed with a snap that echoed throughout the chamber. The taste of Zaghnal’s marrow was on his tongue as his brother’s wing broke.

Zaghnal howled and tried to get away. Gasp heaved upward, rising to meet his retreating brother. His head darted forward, dagger-sharp beak driving into the soft hollow beneath Zaghnal’s jaw and finding the artery there.

Zaghnal’s body bucked once as Gasp fell on top of him, wings beating frantically against the carpet. His beak opened in a silent scream as hot blood flooded Gasp’s mouth, metallic, thick, and familiar as his own.

One moment Zaghnal was fighting, the next he was still. The transition between life and death marked only by the sudden absence of resistance beneath Gasp’s jaws.

He released his brother and pulled back, blood dripping from his beak in thick, obscene strands. Below him, Zaghnal’s eyes were wide and fixed, surprise frozen in their obsidian depths. But there was something else there too, something Gasp couldn’t identify in his frenzy.

The crow’s bill axe lay beside them in the spreading pool of blood, blade gleaming wet with both brothers’ essence. It had tasted them both now, marking them as family for the last time.

Gasp stared down at his brother’s body, and suddenly realization flooded back in all at once. The surrounding chamber faded into a fog. The masked figures, the masters, the gory purple carpet now soaking up Zaghnal’s blood, all became ethereal. All he could see, the only thing real, was Zaghnal’s unmoving body before him.

Gasp grabbed his brother’s shoulder and shook it gently, as if to wake him from sleep. He wasn’t even sure why he did it. He knew his brother was dead, so why did it feel like he was the one dying?

The slow, gentle clap of bone on bone brought the world back into focus. The sound of Madame Marrow’s skeletal hands striking together almost like wind chimes. Her skull was tilted to one side in mock adoration, the blue flames in her eye sockets dancing with vicious delight.

“Beautiful,” she purred, her voice warm and sweet. “Simply exquisite, my darling boy.”

Behind his mask, Magnus snorted. “Looks like sometimes the early worm gets the bird.” His massive arms crossed over his chest as he stared down at Gasp. “Messy, though. No finesse. Barely passable.”

The other masked guild members remained as still as carved monuments. Their silence a weight pressing down on Gasp’s shoulders as his reason returned.

Madame Marrow glided down from the dais, her ivory foot bones splashed with red as they carried her across the bloody floor. She towered over Gasp, her permanent skeletal grin somehow more terrible for its fixed nature. One bony finger reached down to tilt his beak upward, forcing him to meet the empty sockets where eyes should have been.

“My poor, sweet little mockingbird,” she cooed, stroking his cheek with a gentleness that belied the mirth in her eyes. “You looked so confused. Did you truly not understand what was happening here?”

Gasp couldn’t speak. All of the voices, his most dependable tool, had abandoned him. All he could do now was stare up at Death personified as she caressed his blood-matted feathers with motherly affection.

“Of course we knew, precious one,” the Bone Mother continued, her voice an intimate whisper. “About the Duchess. About the snail. About your... creative interpretation of events.” She chuckled, the sound rattling through her rib cage. “Such a delightfully bad liar you are, Gasp, but with so much potential.”

The words penetrated the fog of shock insulating Gasp’s mind. They knew. Of course they had known.

“You see,” the Bone Mother explained, straightening to address both Gasp and the silent observers, “your failure provided us with the perfect opportunity. The perfect test.” Her hand swept gracefully toward Zaghnal’s cooling body. “For both of you.”

Magnus stepped forward, his mask’s expressionless visage somehow radiating hatred. “Trial by combat has been the guild initiation since the beginning. Did you really think we would be satisfied watching you put down a bound prisoner like a common executioner?”

“But I confess I am quite surprised by this outcome,” Madame Marrow mused, circling the brothers like a vulture over a carcass. “The skilled one who followed orders without question brought low by the broken one who refuses to listen?” She stopped behind Gasp, placing her hands on his shoulders. “Your brother was quite a feather in my cap, you know. Every move, every strike, precise as mathematics.”

Her claw-like finger bones dug into Gasp’s flesh, gripping painfully tight. “But you, my sweet little mockingbird, you are something else entirely. Something wild. Something the Mad Monk drew with a trembling hand.”

Gasp found his voice at last, though he could find only his own hollow, raspy voice inside and no other. “Mother, you... you made him do this? You made him try to kill me?”

“Oh, don’t scowl so, dearest, it mars your lovely face,” the Bone Mother tsked. “No, of course not. I could never be so cruel to my beloved children. No, no, you see, it was you that made him do this, the moment you let the Duchess’s pet get the best of you. The moment you chose to lie to your mother about it.” She paused, allowing Gasp to marinate in the true price of his failures. She looked down at Zaghnal and sighed sadly. “He was supposed to be quick. Clean. As he ever had been.” She bent down, almost doubled over until her skull was beside Gasp’s head, her last whisper meant for him alone. “If you ask me, dear one, I think he held back. He wanted you to win.”

Gasp looked down at his brother’s face, at the expression frozen there, and finally recognized what he had seen moments before. Surprise, yes, but also relief. An aching relief had washed over Zaghnal’s face as he had drowned in his own blood. Zaghnal had known. Had planned it all, sacrificing himself for his worthless brother.

“Your brother died for your failure,” Madame Marrow announced loud enough for all to hear. She spread her arms wide, encompassing the bloody tableau. “But now you’ve proven yourself worthy. All is forgiven, my little blackbird.”

Gasp could not respond, his voice abandoning him again. As he stared into the cold, dead face of his only family, one word echoed in his skull. Forgiven. How could Gasp ever be forgiven for this?

“Welcome to the guild,” Magnus grunted, turning away. “Clean this mess up.”

One by one, the masked figures filed out of the chamber, their purpose fulfilled, the night’s entertainment concluded. Madame Marrow was the last to go. She paused at the threshold, her skull swiveling back to fix Gasp with her empty gaze. “Don’t disappoint me again, little bird. You took something very valuable from me tonight. A useful tool. I have far too much invested in you now.” Then she was gone, leaving only the echo of her bony footsteps.

Gasp remained kneeling in his brother’s blood until it went cold, until it started to gel and congeal. The chamber pressed in around him, the walls breathing like a living thing. His head was empty save for one word. Forgiven.

Time stretched and compressed around him. Minutes might have passed, or hours. Blood covered his feathers, the weapon, everything. The chamber stank of copper and salt. Zaghnal’s eyes stared up at nothing, already dull with the veil of death.

Mechanically, without conscious thought, Gasp reached for his brother’s crow’s bill axe. The weapon lay where it had fallen, its wicked curved blade, shaped so much like Zaghnal’s beak, shone red with the blood of both brothers. Gasp’s talons closed around the handle, the wood smooth from years of his brother’s grip.

The axe felt wrong in his claws, too heavy, unwieldy, foreign. This was Zaghnal’s weapon, his pride, his symbol. Not Gasp’s. Gasp had never even been allowed to touch it.

But as his talons tightened around the handle, he thought he heard something strange. A whisper, so faint he couldn’t be sure if he heard it with his ears or just his fracturing psyche.

All is forgiven.

Gasp’s head jerked up, eyes scanning the empty chamber. Nothing moved in the flickering shadows. The voice had sounded like Zaghnal’s, but wrong somehow, echoing, distant, as if called from across a great chasm.

“Zag?” Gasp croaked, his voice cracking like thin ice. But there was no answer save the quiet hiss of dying lanterns. He pulled the crow’s bill axe close and did not let it go.

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 One Available Here!

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Chapter 3 Part 1

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