The young boy wasn't able of standing the crow-eyed man's look, and
it was that very same moment when he realized what he had lost. His
honor with the lost battle. His pride with the unveiled secrets. His
life with his acceptance. Gaining
control over this late victim didn't take more than a second to the
body-sweeper, and a moment later he was Norell, the mad-lord's
steward, bastard son of that same abomination. “Monsters
with monsters.” thought Ranick
while he built the alloy of his whole collection of memories with
those small newborn thoughts. “Not small while I'm into him, I must
remember who I am now.” said
Norell to himself.
After giving a quick glimpse and
remembering where he was, the young boy approached to a six feet tall
man that stood sitting and asleep in front of him. “¿Where
should I hide myself?” asked the
man into the boy that now was not more than a sack of memories. After
searching for a while into the not-so-deep steward's mind, he
remembered of a small abandoned room nearby, and there he brought
him.
The room was small and cold, and not
even the tattered and torn old rags that Norell used to cover the
man's body seemed warm enough for the situation. Not being able to
find anything better, Ranick left himself laying there, covered into
what looked like a useless rotten blanket. “Working with
these foolish minds is no good at all.” thought
the man inside the boy.
Sometimes it grew difficult to stop
his other minds from talking. And not a thing could be done to avoid
the whispers that always surrounded him. Madness is a small
price to pay for enjoying a thousand lives. Ranick
had always seen his power as a bless from the gods, a not like the
curse his parents were always telling him. Killing the body
is not enough. Joining the mind has its consequences. Every act does.
But being into another body
always lowered other people's activity. They also have to
get used to the new brain, to a new home. Sadly,
he only remembered being what they were because they were always
telling him. He couldn't even be certain that Ranick was his true
name, but that didn't really mind. Tomorrow I might be a
goddamn maiden fearing an unexpected wedding, as far as I'm
concerned.
There was only one thing that the
thousand-man could be sure he was. Death. That's what I am.
The one with many faces, by all feared and respected. Death.
He recalled an old thought in which he saw himself as a god. I
thought I could do everything. I knew I could.
But then he had discovered others. Maybe not like him, and the ones
that shared the same blessing were not as good as him when referred
to eye-wars and mind-tricks. Poor old fellow, that
stableboy. But I ended
up even worst.
A long time ago, during those years
in which he remembered not being Ranick but being called as his
grandparents wished, he had met a young boy when working for a lesser
lady wanting to see his puppet-strings grow longer. The stableboy had
been gifted, like him. A “werecrow” he called himself.
Trying to emulate a werewolf. The
first time Ranick had heard a crow's mind, he had found both funny
and interesting, feeling like a newborn baby that doesn't even know
what may happen after opening a door. But now the sounds were not
something he could stand. Subdueing people was much easier than wild
creatures. And when those creatures were corking ravens and muttering
hungry crows, you can do nothing to shut them up.
Both he and the stableboy knew what
they were right after the meeting their eyes led. But they didn't
share a future. Or at least that was what Ranick had thought at first.
He didn't truly know the risks his power carried until he got the
stableboy's mind into him. “No one dies 'til forgotten.”
had been the last words the lad
had spit before Ranick got into him. A second later, the stableboy
was lying dead on a dry straw bed, and Ranick was at his job as if
nothing had happenned. He had been hidden. He knew how to
make me suffer.
Mallick was the stableboy's name. He couldn't forget it, and it had
been years since the last time he had tried it. The foolish asshole
hadn't been a useless sack of thoughts after all. Hidden during
decades, he had waited the most critical moment of his life to wake
every other mind in him. “No one dies 'til forgotten.” he said
before the storm began. The only thing he had done was remembering
every victim, every death Ranick carried upon his shoulders, every
burden he might have tried to leave rotting with the past. And then
he understood those words.
The torture he lived everyday was only similar, when referring to the
beastly excessive amount of pain, to the flaying the southron houses
used for uncovering the truth of those supposed to know more than
they presumed. I learnt that from a prisoner. Next time I'll seek
one that is just condemned to lose his head instead of have his
tongue loosed. But there was something that made his personal
curse something much more horrible than any flaying; it never ended.
Most nights he could scarcely sleep, if he did get a chance to rest
at all. Decades of killing, possessing, learning, capturing and
remembering had transformed him into a living book full of nearly
every word and phrase you could like to read. The people who were
once his victims and now took their revenge as torturers were counted
by thousands. He wasn't able to remember every name, but he
remembered their deeds, their words and their voices, everything they
had done after he had spoiled their existence and his own.
Even though after some years suffering such an unrespectful
treatment, he could distinguish some hierarchy. Unluckily, he had
been in charge of a great amount of soldiers, fierce warriors, holy
knghts, unexperienced stewards, but soldiers after all. After the
stableboy woke them up they suddenly realized they had found an enemy
they could fight for eternityand it only took a breath for them to
form what they called the punishment army. ¿Will I ever find a
way to die and kill them all with me?
He had thought about the possibility of committing suicide more than
once, he could not deny that. But every time he thought he had
reached his true body, he found himself reappearing into another one
after dying. The fact was that he couldn't even remember those in
which he lived, nor did the minds so comfortably playing at the siege
of his mind, so after he took the crow-eyed man some years ago he
decided to avoid more changes. I know it makes it easier for them
to linger around, but knowing the field and fortress also gives me
some advantage against them. Also, the crow-eyed man was probably
the only man he didn't think of as an enemy. Obviously, he attacked,
as everyone did. But he knew he would end up returning to his body,
thinking with it and, as Oswald thought from time to time,
controlling it. Ranick, my name is Ranick.
Nachokage
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