Marshal

Marshal was on a walk around a nearby pond where water would sparkle prior to when he got the call. The obnoxious ringing in his pocket shattered the moments of peace. He slipped his hand through his pocket and pressed the phone against his ear only to hear Liam’s cries. His heart crumbled as he listened to his panicked brother through the phone.

“Marshal?! Oh gods, Marshal…” His brother sobbed, sounding so weak, it made Marshal stop dead in his tracks. He could barely hear the rest over his racing pulse.

“Marshal? Marshal–” Marshal barely heard his brother calling his name.

“Coming!” He responded in a heartbeat. He didn’t bother to ask what was happening, as it would waste precious time. From there, Marshal ended the call, dashing as fast as his short legs could carry him.

The way back was a blur. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was deathly wrong. His brother never called him. So hearing him call now – sounding so terrified – could be anything but good. He turned the corner that led to his house, sprinting faster than he had ever sprinted in his life. He burst through the front door wide open without the slightest hesitation or sympathy for it.

“What?! What’s going on?!” He was greeted with the sight of his brother running towards him with an unmistakable look of pure terror in his hazelnut brown eyes. His blond hair was tousled, a slight tinge of blood on his ghostly face, and he looked like he could shrink at any moment in order to disappear. Marshal’s heart sank at the sight of his younger brother looking like this, goosebumps climbing up his arms like spiders in his skin.

“M-Marshal… they… they…” his brother’s voice was small and weak, collapsing in many stutters as he urged Marshal towards the way that he had come from.

“Liam, breathe. Tell me what’s going on.” Marshal ordered. His own anxiety building in anticipation as he waited for his brother to tell him what was going on.

“They’re hurting them!” Liam screamed out, just as a shrill shriek came from the other room, along with the sound of wings flapping. Marshal didn’t waste a single second before bursting into the room where he had heard the noise, stopping dead in his tracks as he saw two unfamiliar figures standing by a heap of two bodies. His blood ran cold and he became paler than snow.

No. What he saw made his vision go blurry in a flood of tears and his legs felt like jelly, wobbling unnaturally as if he could collapse at any moment now. His stomach turned, twisted, and folded in a thousand different ways. He wanted to puke from the unholy scene of his dead parents.

Marshal stared at the corpses in shock, then he remembered the murderers were in the room. Sinners who had betrayed the gods. His eyes locked on them, gripping with such hatred, he was unsure how it wasn’t currently slicing them in half with the intensity. One had wings the color of the night sky, feathers as dark as black holes with each one bigger than the next, and wings as large if not larger than a tall adult human. The other one had similar wings, but white, and a smaller, frailer body. They both stood with unwavering, blank gazes as if ignoring the sins they committed. Marshal’s blood boiled. They killed his parents. Killed them. With a sudden burst of adrenaline, Marshal let out a war cry and lunged at them.

Only then did he realize that the instrument they used to kill his parents was still in their bloodied hands, ready to strike again like a gluttonous viper. It was the perfect killing machine with a barbed tip similar to bees, meaning that yanking the blade out was all the more painful to begin with. Marshal didn’t have enough time to dodge as the blade pierced through his skin, erasing all of the adrenaline from his body as he hit the ground with a thud and a cry of utter pain. Just as Marshal was lifting himself back up, his action was completely locked still with only his head able to move even by just a little. Neurotoxins, Marshal realized as the small drip of the venom sank its liquid fangs into the floor before him in a hiss.

“Foolish teenager.” The dark feathered man spat, his voice gruffer than Marshal would have guessed. “Get the other boy.” Marshal’s eyes darted to Liam – with eyes shaking – who was frozen in place beside the doorway, as if fear turned into a cobra choking him right then and there.

“Don’t touch him!” He shouted in desperation, trying to reach his little brother. His efforts, however, were futile as he was reduced to an inanimate object that couldn’t move or do anything. The white winged guy approached Liam, grabbed him by the arm, and dragged him to the man with black wings. With one last unsympathetic look at Marshal, they flew out the window with his brother, abandoning him with what was left with his parents.

“NO!” He yelled a bloodcurdling scream. His body was freed from the venom’s influence as he lunged towards the window. He ignored the searing pain in his arm that lingered from the cut. All he wanted was his brother. The only family he had left, gone before he could even see him once more.