Double Picture -- Brothers

"Cyclops Tyrant" image by Zack Stella

© Wizards of the Coast 2013
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"Cobblebrute" image by Eytan Zana, who is here with us on Blogspot!

© Wizards of the Coast 2012

They were brothers, in their way. They treated each other as such. Both singular monstrosities, made by the same person, who tried to keep control of them but did not always succeed. They had things in common, but not everything. Brothers have disagreements, and these did, but now they were involved in a mutually beneficial venture, though neither of them could have used those words to describe it. 

Two stupid brutes, that's what father had said. Stupid brutes who couldn't do anything right if they tried. Father always wanted to wrest control of some group of humans, from the other humans or from the gods or from their currency or ideals, whatever was controlling them, father wanted to take its place, and he made his sons do things sometime time to push his power. Sometimes they destroyed villages, or demanded tribute, or killed miners, or once they had killed a governor of a small, nearby city state as he traveled in his carriage. 

Oglant was the taller and stronger of the two, but Grothinepp weighed more, and was smarter, and sturdier. Oglant was a fleshy and enormous cyclops, easily thirty feet tall, and stupendously strong. He was a bit crazier, less predictable, and it had been his idea. Grothinepp was a golem, and though he was just under twenty feet tall, he was extremely heavy, and had momentum going for him. Despite his weight, the golem had speed, and if accounting for the actual weight of their respective bodies, Grothinepp was probably stronger, simply being forced to move more of his own weight. 

After quite some time following father's commands (mostly) faithfully, the orders stopped coming. No commands came for months. At first the brothers simply caused terror, killed villagers, forced sacrifices, collected pretty things, but then they got bored, and were silent one week, wreaking havoc for the next. It was no way to live. That's when Oglant had the idea: attack the cities father wanted to control. Conquer them for father. Regain his love and attention. Grothinepp saw no problem with the idea, being the smarter of two simpletons, and wanting their father's approval.

They each took one of father's favorite cities, making sure that the two cities depended on the same army, which was the best idea either of them had ever had. They decided on a time of attack, (8am, in time for breakfast) and, when the time came, destructive chaos ensued. They killed people as they went, picking them up and eating them, or throwing them against walls. They swept champions, strong boys and patriarchs aside. Oglant ripped the tops off of rich houses, killed the inhabitants, and set them aflame, then moved a few blocks down the road, stepping on people and houses, kicking and punching and swinging something he had picked up at anything that ran and anything that didn't as he moved. Once he walked a few blocks in this manner, he ripped the top off another house, lit it aflame and repeated the process. 

Grothinepp, for his part, moved straight through walls and houses for the legislation building, then the courthouse, then the guard room. It took him all of seven minutes to run from the outer gates to the legislator building, toppling buildings, eating people and swatting challengers aside as he ran. When he arrived, he simply toppled the building, destroying the main supports and letting it fall, then making sure that it fully collapsed by walking around on the roof making his loud and terrible sounds. When he had finished the legislator's building, he moved onto the courts, and then the guard house and the prisons, destroying all in his path. Father is going to be so proud of us.

Oglant had found a bit of a problem. One human kept coming back, fighting even after Oglant had thrown him across the square. Oglant tried to eat him but the human cut his teeth with a sword, and the metal that Oglant's teeth and jaw usually crushed so easily felt like a rock would in your own mouth. He spat the human out and screamed with rage, but he still had the man in his hand. The man, unphased, was doing something strange with his own hands. 

Grothinepp never encountered any such problem, and, after he had destroyed the main parts of the town, he started his own fires and killed whoever got in his way (really anyone in his path at all.) The more people you killed, the more respect you got, and respect was important, because it made father happy and proud. He continued on.

Oglant's trouble-making man was boring him now, and not causing him much trouble at all anymore. After fiddling with him and his armor and sword a bit, Oglant decided they were magic, and crushed the man's head between thumb and forefinger. He then continued burning the city. 

Father's armies arrived in both cities simultaneously around 1pm, just in time for siesta in this part of the world. Father was physically present at Oglant's city, and present by projection at Grothinepp's. When he crested the hills at eleven o'clock and twelve respectively, and saw the cities for the first time that day, he was furious, and doubled the march. His army closed half the distance at that speed. He slowed them back down, looked, and thought: Someone's back-stabbed me. Someone's decided that if I can't have it no one can, or the missing army was enough to incite barbarian attack. Damn. I knew I should have just fought the army. Would have cost more troops, but this is the risk I took. His army continued approaching the city. They saw no armies, no barbarians, and the monsters were hidden by the taller buildings. But the buzz of an approaching army was not hidden from the monsters' ears and the brothers came running to the front of their cities. They saw Father leading the armies and each greeted him in their own way, "Father!" Oglant was less than original, though with "Hello father! What do you think?", Grothinepp was hardly better. 

Father put two fingers and a thumb to his temples. They had been among his favorite creations. They had ruined his plan though, and he saw only one way to fix it. "Kill them" the real father and the projection said to his second-in-commands. The second-in-commands gave the orders to the men, and the men swarmed the monsters like ants, and father had saved both cities from monsters. And he won, but he lost his sons.

"Brothers" Flash Fiction © Ben Clardy V

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.