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evilwriter-originals · 4 days ago

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Zine of GID 2024 Edition

Brothers in Blood

Written for the 2024 Edition of @zineofgid! It was a wonderful opportunity! Thank you!

Beta Read by @turianjournalist

Rated: explicit

Warnings: Non-con body modifications, forced amputation, alcoholism, wing whump, blood

Word Count: 2,744

Summary: Sol's palace is under the grip of his cruel brother Hakur. Hakur sees it fit to pay the old king a visit.

It hurt to move. The pain was mostly in his upper back and shoulders, but there was pain in his lower back as well. He could barely get comfortable in bed, never mind get out of bed.

Sol wasn’t at all surprised by this. The initial injury, an arrow to the back between the base of his wings, had been dealt with. All he had there was a scar.

But the arrow had hit a nerve in his spinal cord, a very, very important nerve.

It allowed him to move and feel his large golden wings.

Well, it had allowed it. Now that it was damaged in a way magic couldn’t fix, his wings were nothing but giant weights dragging down his body.

He lay in bed on his stomach, wings carefully arranged to either side of him by reluctant servants. It must have been hard for them to see their king like this… Well… Their deposed king.

Sol was a prisoner in his own palace. The battle in which he’d taken the arrow had not gone well, and now, Hakur, his brother, was ruling in his place.

To be frankly honest, Sol didn’t know why Hakur was keeping him alive. This war between them had been going on for a while. Sol wasn’t willing to kill his older brother, but he’d thought Hakur himself would have no qualms about killing him.

Apparently he was wrong.

The door to his bedchamber burst open, and Sol craned his head to see who it was who had entered. A deep frown creased his features.

“What do you want this time?” he asked, words laced with venom.

Hakur came in and closed the door with his foot. He was carrying a covered tray that smelled of breakfast. Odd. Usually one of the servants would be bringing that for Sol.

Hakur himself had no wings despite being related to Sol. He’d had them cut off against his will around four decades ago. Still, he bore himself with confidence. He was taller than Sol, with reddish-chestnut hair that fell to his shoulders in subtle curls. They shared the same hazel eyes and long straight nose. It was clear they were related, wings or no. Hakur’s had been the same shade of gold as Sol’s.

“It’s a special occasion,” Hakur answered in that raspy voice of his, a voice that was completely unrecognizable to Sol. It wasn’t the voice Hakur had had before his kidnapping and ultimate disappearance.

“Special occasion?” Sol got himself up onto his elbows, groaning unintentionally at the way it sent pain flaring through his shoulders and back. He’d been completely disabled by this injury, and it was not something he was used to. “Since when do you bring me food?” He narrowed his eyes. “Unless of course you poisoned it.”

Hakur laughed lightly, coming over with the tray. He set it down on the bed beside Sol within his reach.

“I assure you there is no poison.” He took the cover off the tray, revealing some of Sol’s favorite foods. Sol quirked his eyebrows. Distrust simmered in his chest, a bit of dread and anxiety in his stomach. “Why would I kill you when having you alive is so much more entertaining?”

Sol frowned, reaching for some grapes. His arms were beginning to hurt from his wings being dead weight, and he wasn’t able to use any of his magic to help himself, not with the heavy dampening collar around his neck.

He knew what that meant for him, knew that he’d need his wings amputated. There was no fixing the nerve. The healers had tried, had exhausted their resources for who they saw as the rightful king, but to no avail.

But Sol didn’t want to have his wings amputated, despite the hopelessness of the situation. He knew there was no way to fix this, and that he’d just damage himself and waste away in keeping his wings. They could do no good for him anymore. Why keep them?

“The occasion?” Sol asked, wanting to get an answer out of his brother.

“Well, I don’t want to spoil the surprise.” Hakur sat down on the bed beside Sol, right on top of his right wing. Sol didn’t make a sound, just shot him a glare. He couldn’t feel his weight there, but the insult of him doing so…

“Get off.” Sol’s words were an order. He wasn’t going to be cowed by this new king.

“Actually, I find this spot rather comfortable, thank you.” Hakur smiled as if he was teasing him in a normal, brotherly fashion, instead of tormenting him psychologically. He reached for some of Sol’s grapes, and Sol couldn’t stop him from taking them. “Now eat. You’ll need your strength.”

Sol wanted to inquire as to what he’d need his strength for, but knew Hakur would continue being tight-lipped. So, instead he ate, not looking at Hakur. Eye contact with him was much too uncomfortable. Looking at him and realizing what had been done to him during his disappearance was also too uncomfortable. And then knowing he’d taken defeat at his hand and was nothing more than some sort of toy to him…

Hakur took the tray away just as there was a knock at the door. Hakur rose to open it, and Sol looked at where he’d been sitting. His feathers were crushed and in disarray. He tried reaching with his arm to fix them, but pain lanced itself through his shoulder, and he put his arm back down, gritting his teeth over a cry that would certainly have been undignified.

“I have the… tools you requested, Your Majesty.” The voice was that of a male servant, timid and scared. Sol strained his neck to look towards the door, saw Hakur being handed a big black case, the servant taking the tray.

Tools? The man didn’t seem comfortable saying the word. What was in that case?

The servant’s eyes darted over to Sol, and Sol quickly turned his head away. He hated being seen by anybody like this.

“Do not linger,” Hakur snarled. “Get out.”

“Y-yes, Your Majesty.”

Then the servant was leaving and the door was closing. Sol wished he could track Hakur’s movements with his vision, but all he got were his footsteps. It sounded like he set the leather case down on something, and then he was moving a table into view beside the bed, the case on top.

Sol let an angry growl work its way up his throat.

“If you plan on torturing me, I—”

“This won’t be torture,” Hakur said. He reached for the clasp on the case. “Not the physical kind, anyway.”

Sol furrowed his brow. “What game are you playing?”

“Believe it or not, but I’m helping you,” Hakur responded. He opened the case, and Sol gaped a little at what he saw inside:

A series of sharp knives varying in length and curvature and…

A bone saw.

Hakur’s eyes glittered when he looked at it, the smile that crossed his features looking completely devoid of sanity.

Sol felt like he was going to vomit up what he’d just eaten.

“Here?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Now?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Hakur rolled his eyes dramatically at all the questions. “Well, you haven’t been ordering anyone to do it yourself,” he replied. “So, I figured I’d step in.”

Sol narrowed his eyes, then looked at the knives and the bone saw. “You just want to see me hurt, don’t you? In any way possible.”

Because, despite not being able to feel his wings, this would hurt. It would hurt his mind, his heart. He was going to permanently lose a part of himself, something near and dear to him, as wings were with his people.

I already lost them, Sol tried telling himself.

And yet, he still tried to move them, get them out of Hakur’s reach.

They remained sitting heavy on his bed, pulling at all the muscles in his shoulders and back. Hakur was right that he was helping him, in a way. In Sol’s mind, that just made this worse.

“I do, actually, yes,” Hakur answered with that unhinged smile of his. Sometimes Sol wondered if he was still sane, wondered what it was that had made him like this.

Hakur picked up one of the knives, clearly starting with those. He reached a hand down to stroke at Sol’s feathers.

“These are getting oily anyway.”

“Get your hands off me.” There was no quaver in Sol’s voice, no sign of fear, but inside, his veins had turned to ice.

Hakur acted as if he hadn’t heard him, continuing to rub his hand over his feathers. “It’s a shame you won’t be able to feel this. Though, not feeling it will bring its own horror, won’t it?”

Hakur began pressing around near the base of his right wing. He brushed the fingers of his left hand over his back, the knife held in his right.

He pushed Sol down flat onto the bed, making him grunt.

Despite the way he strained his neck trying to look over his shoulder, Sol couldn’t see Hakur’s hands and what they were doing, and that frightened him even more.

He knew when he began cutting though, heard the sound of the knife slicing through feathers, then flesh. He realized there would be blood all over him after this, blood on his bed, on Hakur’s hands… Not that there wasn’t already blood on Hakur’s hands, speaking metaphorically. The atrocious things his own brother had done…

And here he was continuing it.

Sol found himself pressing his forehead against his pillows, trembling hands on either side of his head, trying to brace himself, trying to breathe.

His wings. He was losing his wings.

A sob left his lips without his permission. Hakur laughed at it. He clearly got some sort of sadistic pleasure out of hurting people—he was making that abundantly clear.

“You know,” Hakur began speaking over the sound of the cutting, “I can’t decide what I want to do with these after. Do I burn them? Or do I hang them on the wall as some sort of trophy?”

Sol’s stomach twisted painfully. “Wh-whatever it is, keep them out of my sight.”

“Oh, I don’t think so.” There was a clatter as Hakur put the knife down. He was done with that part. Sol saw him lifting the bone saw out of the corner of his eyes. His heart pounded, breaths quickening. He squeezed his eyes shut. “I want you to see your own defeat.”

“As if I… I haven’t seen enough of it already,” Sol somehow got out without losing his breakfast. His breaths were mere puffs. Blood was running hot from the wound, getting all over his back, his sides. Would he ever be able to sleep in this same bed again? Surely this would stain…

“Mm, imagine what your daughter will think,” Hakur said. “Will she think lesser of you for this?”

“She…” Sol didn’t know what to say. The only consolation he had in this situation was that his daughter, Anaria, was safe, that she hadn’t been captured like him.

He closed his eyes, letting tears fall free. All he could think of was his portrait with her. They’d both had their wings, their sanity, their dignity…

And Hakur had stripped almost all of that away.

Sol gasped at the sound of the bone saw: first the sound of flesh being split, and then a sickening grating noise. That was coming from him. That was his wing.

Oh, gods help me.

At the moment, Sol didn’t care about how undignified it was—he just wanted to keep some shred of sanity (and his breakfast)—he covered his ears with both hands.

He felt the reverberations of the bone saw through his body, through the parts of him that still could feel. Horror like nothing he’d ever felt before gnawed on his senses, making it so that this was the only thing there was, the only thing that mattered.

Sol was a gasping, sobbing mess when he lost the weight of his right wing. It had been completely severed from his body. That he could feel. The loss of the weight was a physical relief, his screaming and aching muscles now cheering.

Fingers pried at his wrists, violently pulling his hands from his ears.

“No, no! Let go!” Sol tried to twist his body now that he didn’t have that weight. He was able to a little bit, and all he could see was red. It was absolutely everywhere. And then his wing…

Sol quickly turned and buried his face in the pillows. Even without feeling the pain of losing his wing, would he go into shock? Would he die of blood loss?

No, probably not. Hakur wouldn’t let that happen. Hakur had his magic to heal him.

“Oh, look at that,” Hakur breathed. He pulled on one edge of the severed wing, then let it flop back down, laughing. Then, he patted Sol on the back, smearing blood on him, making him flinch. “We’re halfway done.”

Sol wanted to beg and cry for him to stop, but what was the point now when the process had already been started? What was the gods-damned point?

Hakur walked around to the other side of the bed with the knife and bone saw. He leaned the bone saw against the bed, taking the knife up once again.

Sol groaned in despair as he began cutting into his left wing. He was trying desperately to breathe, just breathe—and maybe he would get through this.

Hakur didn’t check to see if the sound was a genuine one of pain, if he’d cut too close to nerves that could still feel. He hadn’t, but even if he had, he wouldn’t care. He’d probably relish in it.

Sol found himself oddly quiet as his left wing was removed from him. Maybe it was the way he was starting to feel cold, his breaths shallow, his vision blurred. Was he going into shock?

He became unaware of everything around him save for the grating noise of the saw on bone, and somehow, it almost comforted him in a way. Just that sound, forever and ever.

He let himself slip away, not even realizing he was doing it.

---

“Brother.”

That was the word that woke him. Sol expected to be assaulted by the pain of his muscles trying desperately to hold onto his wings when he woke, but there was just soreness, not the agony that had been slowly driving him mad.

“Hm?”

He’d had an odd dream, a dream of him and Hakur playing together as children.

Except neither of them had had wings. Neither of them could fly, even with the help of magic. They’d both grown frustrated with it, but Hakur had eventually laughed it off and wanted to continue their game.

Sol hadn’t. Sol wanted to fly.

“So, you’re back with us in the waking world?” Hakur’s voice sounded close.

Sol blinked open his eyes, memory crashing down on him like a rain of piercing arrows. He expected to be covered in blood, surrounded by it, his severed wings to either side of him…

But instead he was in a room completely different from his own, the lights dim, the bed comfortable and free of any blood.

“I… suppose,” Sol said carefully. He’d woken on his stomach, but rolled onto his side to view Hakur. His muscles struggled and shook with it, as it was a motion he hadn’t done in a long time. But without the weight of useless wings, he was able to accomplish it. “Where am I?”

“Still your palace,” Hakur said. He leaned back in his chair, picked up a goblet of wine from the nightstand. Sol could smell the alcohol from here, and he hungered for it. “My rooms, however. I thought it best if you recover here.”

Sol barked out a laugh. “Don’t pretend to care about me.”

Hakur took a sip of wine. “All right then. I won’t.” He put the goblet down and shoved it towards Sol. “Take a drink.”

“I… can’t.”

Hakur smirked at him. “Oh, I’m well aware of your… habit? Shall we say? Do it. Take. A. Drink.”

Sol looked between Hakur and the goblet of wine. His senses screamed for something to dull all this turmoil.

He reached for the goblet, and Hakur smiled.

#self reblog

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evilwriter-originals · 5 days ago