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.
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