The Night Bran (GoT, Peggy Sue, Crack)

[BreezyWheeze]

Chapter 1: Well This isn't Right
=====​

'Well, this isn't right,' was the first thing I thought.

The second was, 'it's much too hot in here' followed closely by 'who's that old red-headed lady sitting in the corner of the room?' and wrapping up with 'oh dear sweet jumping juniper berries why is there a dire wolf lying across my lap?!'

Wait, I mean, 'a living dire wolf?!'

I'd just been minding my own business, turning dragons into undead wisps, slaying the living, and fulfilling my glorious purpose in Planetos's cycle of death and rebirth, when I got stabbed in the back by one of those really ouchy daggers.

I was pretty sure I was supposed to die. Well, not die. But, you know, be destroyed. Cease to be. Instead I found myself waking up lying in a scorchingly hot bed, surrounded by the stone walls that made up those castles that mortal men were so obsessed with, practically suffocated under a living dire wolf, and watched over by an old red-headed hag who didn't even have the decency to awake and immediately serve the whims of the NIGHT KING!

-
​

I might've shouted that last bit out loud, because the hag and the overgrown dog jerked awake.

The beast started snarling at me and the hag started screeching some pointless nonsense about "my dear sweet son" and "thank the Seven" and whatnot.

Being the genius of an eldritch abomination that I am, I immediately carried out a high-level threat assessment and determined that the screeching hag was a more immediate threat than the dire wolf. After all, the barest flex of my power would render the dire wolf into a mindless wight, an extension of my indomitable will, but the hag seemed to possess some sort of sonic attack that spoke to fell magics that were incompatible with my own.

I sought to do battle with the wailing harpy, pushing forth my will.

Nothing much seemed to happen. I pushed harder and my limbs started rattling about. Well, my arms anyway. My legs remained motionless lumps. It seemed there was something amiss with my current form. The extension of my unholy will caused a choking, coughing noise that only seemed to enflame the hag. She threw herself upon me, engulfing my body with her arms, no doubt in a suicide move to temporarily immobilize me while others from her nest appeared to finish the job.

An interesting side effect of my efforts – and note here I only say "interesting" in the sense of "temporarily captured my interest" not anything like "unexpected" or "novel" because, after all, in the boundless depths of my undead wisdom, nothing could be considered unexpected – was that my mind temporarily fractured, sending large chunks of itself forward into the direwolf.

My vision split into two, one half taking in little more than the suffocating darkness of being trapped under the harpy's many layers of cloth vestments, and the other a weirdly sharp colorless view of the room from behind the harpy. That second train of input was linked to an assault of smell.

That was ultimately my undoing.

Temporarily, that is.

Yes.

Yes, let's blame it on the stink of the thing.

For nearly four hundred thousand years I'd been participating in the cyclic death-and-rebirth of Planetos. The mythology surrounding myself and my legions had shifted over time. We were understood as everything from "punishment from the savior" to "the divine salvation consuming us to bring us to heaven" to "the entropic destruction of the interdimensional consumption of theta energy that powered the wasteful excess of post-Ninite society" – and mind you this was by far my favorite – "a tool of the Fairies of the Forest to fight back against humans."

Even thinking that lunacy caused a small gasp of laughter to emerge from my throat. Imagine! Our icy, undead majesty understood as a creation of the little fairy-mortals. HAH!

Something about the laugh sound I created seemed to counter the harpy's sonic attack magic. She leaned back, allowing my small, broken self to breathe more easily. Of course! My brilliance shined through, as it always did. To counter the harpy's sonic attack, I need only respond with a sound-based attack of my own – to wit, laughter.

Nonetheless, my thoughts were still an incomprehensible whirl. Hundreds of millenia and never once in that time had I ever had a sense of smell. And now the portion of my mind implanted in the wolf was awash in a sea of olfactory input. A tide of smell washed over me. An avalanche of stink. A juggernaut of odor. A… well, you get the idea.

I knew what smell was, in an abstract sense. But to directly sense it with my own mind was so overwhelmingly present that I blacked out for just a bit.

Not the entirety of myself, of course. Just the broken-little-boy portion of my mind. The wolfy part of my mind had gotten so infected by the wolfiness of the wolf that I not only understood all these smells, I reveled in them. I could smell the hag, I could smell the coarse soap she used to wash last week, I could smell what she'd last eaten (a thin oat porridge), I could smell her fierce love for the broken-little-boy version of me and I could smell…

Wait. What?

Love?

Well, I had little understanding of how sonic-attack-magic hags expressed love for their offspring. My overly-keen nose revealed that the body containing a full half of my mind was, in fact, of the same bloodline as the hag. Perhaps screeching and attempted suffocation was a standard display of parental affection. This was, of course, excellent news, because it spoke to a future in which the broken-boy body would, itself, have access to sonic-attack hag magic.

She began leaking a salty fluid from her eye sockets while murmuring and rubbing the boy's hands. Was the fluid perhaps a form of caustic attack?

…no.

No that was stupid.

I had already established that she smelled strongly of love and that my new body was her offspring. I needed to surrender the base assumption that the hag was attacking me and understand the situation from a larger framework.

Such understanding would, it seemed, need to wait, as a moment later the door to the chamber burst open, revealing another pointless mortal.

The hag gasped and smelled of shock and confusion. Ah, she did not recognize the interloper. It smelled of male power, anger, and determination. It reached to its side and pulled forth a dagger.

THAT DAGGER! GRR!!

It was not the exact same ouchy-glass that felled me in my earlier incarnation, but it contained the same base spark of dragon-fire-magic that could cause impossible levels of damage. It smelled of cold iron and metalworking and lost genius, but most importantly, it smelled of the same base spark of fire magic that had earlier proved my undoing.

My wolfy lips peeled back from my wolfy snout. With a mighty push of my undead will, I awoke my broken-boy half. I meant to pronounce the man's death as punishment for entering my presence with such a dagger, but my throat seemed to weak and filled with some sort of goopy obstruction. My attempt to speak turned into a hacking throat-clearing.

Very well. I would have to let my wolf-half speak for me. I howled with icy fury. The man's smell shifted to sudden confusion and fear. The fear was like a sweet ambrosia, emboldening me and weakening him. I pounced and in a flash, I sunk my powerful fangs into his wrist, wrenching the dagger from his grasp and sending hot splashes of blood across my muzzle.

The smell of blood, the warmth of blood, the coppery smell of blood, the wet, salty slickness of blood, the smell of blood was a joy beyond any I could possibly imagine. Nearly half a million years upon this planet, and never once had I experienced the pure pleasure of a wolf-mind soaking in the vicious transcendental ecstasy of the smell of blood.

I rammed into the man, knocking his screaming form to the ground. I clamped onto his intact wrist and again bit down and shook my head back and forth. His wrist all but disintegrated in my mighty mouth-grip. With a fast joyous crunch crunch I ate his hand and, for the first time in my infinite life, paired smell with the overwhelming sensation of TASTE.

My god.

Had I known that such rapture as the combination of smell and taste could exist, I would've gladly surrendered the icy eternity of my undead form so, so, so long ago.

The man's screaming grew ever more shrill. But now I was much too savvy to be confused by this sort of sonic attack. I had already seen the screaming that mortals carried out, and my hag-mother had thoughtfully given me the lesson that screaming was no threat at all, and was possibly even an indication of love. To be on the safe side, I countered the man's screaming with my own potent laughing, the boy-peals-of-laughter signaling a glorious high note of victory over the lower-pitch man-screams.

Yet such sonic attack had, previously, been a signal of love from hag-mother. Huh… there was a thought. Perhaps the man sought to avoid his imminent death by convincing me that he loved me. Well, I wasn't hatched from the eldritch oblivions yesterday! I would hardly fall for such an obvious ruse. Instead, I gleefully shouted with my boy-body, "GET HIM SUMMER! GET HIM!!" and with my wolf-body I pounced forward, all vicious instinct and wild glee.

My wolf-body seemed to know exactly what it wanted to do, clamping onto the man's neck and with a final, mighty wrench, ripping the head clear of the body.

And oh what sweet reward! The head was like one of the eggs laid by the black-and-white swim-birds that occupied my icy northern realms. Pengeen? Pigwin? Over the eons, the mortals had surprisingly consistent names for them. Well, no matter. Point being, crunching down on the man's head revealed a bloody, chunky mess of flesh that was so very sweet.

I feasted.

Behind me, I smelled the contents of the hag's stomach as she voided both stomach and bladder upon the chamber's floor.
No doubt she was offering me even more food as a reward for my glorious performance.

===
​

The next few days were strange ones. My chamber was cleaned, although wolf-me left precious little to clean besides teeth, bones, clothing, and that damnable dagger. I was, as yet, unsure of how far I could spread myself, so I made a point to keep wolf-me and boy-me as close together as possible. After a single incident requiring that I bite a man, they made no further efforts to separate myselves.

Many people came to speak to me and ask questions and make statements and they smelled of many mixed emotions, the predominate one of which was fear. Fear was followed distantly by anger, which was followed closely by confusion. It was comforting, really. I was very well acquainted with fear and anger and confusion, but never before had I had such direct access to perceiving the emotions.
Such gifts would make my work in this cycle all the easier.

The noises that men made from their throats were typically opaque to me, as I was used to relying on my ice magic to pierce directly into men's souls to understand their intentions and ideas. Here, I was operating at a far remove. I understood what they were saying in a wooly, abstract sense.

It would seem that the mind of the boy-body I inhabited had left behind echoes. Some basic knowledge – language, some names, basic cultural facts – was there, but difficult to make sense of. The world of the living had always been deeply alien to me and my kind and now I was thrown to the wolves, both literally and metaphorically.

As a living boy and a living wolf, I was awash in two related but distinct worlds. The relations were easy enough to understand. Fear and love. Eating, shitting, rutting. Fear. Attacking and defending. Fear. Sleep and alertness. Love. High-interest, novel stimuli and low-interest boring stimuli. Fear.

It would seem that living animals shared a context, a level of common framework that was previously unknown to me. The places where wolf and boy differed (language vs. smell, repressing instinct vs. expressing instinct, symbolic thinking vs. concrete thinking) were matters of degree rather than type. The overlap was so much more important than the difference.

I idly mused that perhaps this was why my kind was always fated to lose in each cycle. Again and again, we spewed forth and sought to extinguish all life on Planetos. Again and again, we killed billions. Again and again, we were beaten back, defeated by an unruly mob of the living. In some cycles we barely managed to wound of 1% of life on the planet. In our most successful attempts, we wiped out over 90% of sapient life.

But always, we failed. Always.

Perhaps my current predicament was the Great Cold One finally showing us how to succeed for all time? I was cursed to live among the hot ones so that I could take this knowledge into the next cycle.

The dead were, of course, infinitely obedient, but they lacked the commonality of experience that I saw between wolf and boy. The only thing holding together the Walkers, the Wights, and the Wisps was my own indomitable Will. If I faltered, even for a moment, the Walkers would fracture into factions that had no common ground, the Wights would crumble into the non-existence they craved, and the Wisps would each bend into patterns of behavior that mocked their living nature. Wisp dragons would tunnel under the ground to mock flight, Wisps of pack animals would fragment into solitary hunters that mocked the pack, and so on.

I resolved to live life as thoroughly as I could – to embrace wolf and boy and the world of living as fully as was possible. I would learn everything that could be learned in my current forms and when I was returned to my superior station I would finally capture the complete success that had so long eluded me and mine.

===
​

The strange power of the living (or perhaps only a power of my living boy-body?) seemed to be a sort of sharing of bodies, instead of the one-way dominance that my Night King self had had over the other undead. This sharing was not limited to my wolf, as I learned the day they brought me the fool giant.

Not a literal giant, of course. Merely a very tall, very broad man. But as soon as they directed him to pick my body up and bring it to a different part of the castle, I extended a tendril of my power towards him. In a flash, I jumped into his body, fracturing my mind yet again.
A mere mortal would have been confused, or strained by the multiple fracturings.

But of course I was no mere mortal. I was the Night King, commander of untold millions of the dead. Extending my will across three minds and three bodies was child's play. Again, literally and figuratively, in this case. I blinked open my man-eyes and looked down at my boy-body.

Splitting my mind into thirds was notably easier than the original split into halves. Perhaps it was because the fool's senses were fundamentally the same as the boy's. Perhaps it was because the fool's base mind was actually quite a bit simpler than the wolf's.

In any event, on my fourth day among the enemy, I expanded my empire to three bodies. The fool's mind knew its name – Hodor – but had precious little additional knowledge to add to the boy's. Fortunately, the addition of the fool to my burgeoning empire provided a key tool – the combination of legs and opposable thumbs. The wolf added legs, of course, and the boy already had opposable thumbs, but having both in a single body was immensely useful.

I spent much of the next day roaming around the castle and grounds, learning the geography of the coming apocalyptic battle. With boy-body carried in fool-arms and wolf-self padding along behind, I traveled hither and yon.

It would seem that boy-body occupied a position of some respect among these mortals. That or the castle staff held a solid sense of self-preservation and had the good sense to defer to the raw physical might of the wolf and fool.

Things weren't perfect, of course. My attempts to fracture my mind into fourths and seize control of another member of the castle staff were met with abject failure. It would seem that unimpaired humans had a strength of soul that I was still too weak to overcome.

I considered simply punching them in the head with the fool's mighty fists in order to damage them enough that I could seize control. However, I privately admitted to myself that I didn't yet know enough about human anatomy to know how to damage their delicious skull-egg-yolks enough to keep them alive while shaking loose that damnable soul.

My concerns were somewhat alleviated on my fifth day among the enemy. I walked my army out to the "Godswood," a place in the castle that seemed to hold special significance to the mortals. I gazed upon the face carved into the weirwood tree. I recognized it as a locus of power for the forest fairies and a symbol of connection between the disparate mortal races.

But such recognition was purely abstract. As a practical matter, I felt a deep sense of… nothing. For all that I now inhabited three living bodies, I felt no connection whatsoever to this place of power. The "old gods" were long since destroyed and gone and the thin strands of worship offered were barely enough to sustain a god, much less bring multiple gods back from oblivion.

Nonetheless, my trip to the Godswood was not wholly pointless. While the fool sat in front of the weirwood tree, my wolf eyes caught the sudden movement of a raven.

Given the success I'd had taking over the wolf, I did not hesitate to whip out with my perfect will, extending a lash of my power towards the bird. A moment later, the raven gave out a strangled squawk and fell from its perch.

In a flash, my wolf body shot forward, its thick fur and muscled body breaking the fall of raven-self.

Taking in the senses and mind of the wolf was momentarily disorienting. Taking in the senses and mind of the raven was so, so much worse. For some time, I stopped understanding who I was. What I was.

It wasn't smell. It wasn't sight.

It wasn't proprioception (and what a deliciously strange thing that was, to have the body talk to itself about where it was).

It wasn't mind. It wasn't drive and it wasn't appetite and it wasn't soul.

No.

No, it was the fucking magnetic field of Planetos itself.

Apparently, the raven had some overall geographic mapping sense of the entire planet based on magnetic field. After seizing the raven's body, I shared this sense. I could hearfeelsmell the overarching pulse, the planet-wide pulse of ALL OF FUCKING CREATION slowly, inexorably moving from north-to-south.

The fool-body stumbled. It dropped boy-body. I fell.

Wolf-body spun and spun and spun in circles until nausea was so overpowering that wolf-body vomited forth half-digested wolf food.

It was so profoundly unpleasant – not painful, just deeply uncomfortable – that I would've gladly surrendered myself to the Great Cold One in that very moment. I would've written off this entire cycle, allowing the hot living ones to triumph for another ten thousand years, if I could be freed from the impossible reality of Planetos itself breathing so fucking loudly in my face.

=
​

And once again, I was freed from my pain and locked into my torment by that hated shrieking harpy.

With a swirl of silk and wave of wool and a flutter of fabric, the boy-body's mother came forth, screaming her love-magic and drawing nearly the entirety of my attention to the broken boy-body.

She hugged and grasped and suffocated. With the pulsing awareness of Planetos's living magnetic field fading to the background, I was finally able to re-assert some mastery over myself.

"Mother! Mother, I'm fine!" I gasped out in my piping boy-voice. The beast clutched even tighter. I deployed my counter-attack: laughter. I laughed long and deep and full.

At long last, the shrieking harpy relented, loosening her grip and pulling back, looking at my face with her own flat, meaningless eyes.
"Oh Bran, I knew I should not have let you out into the yard so early. Maester Luwin be damned and his suggestion for fresh air! You should be abed!"

And, in short order, I was.

==
​

Having stretched my wings, both literally and metaphorically, I found myself more comfortable in my feverishly-hot skin. A boy and a man and a wolf and a bird.

I still felt uneasy, a little too much Night King smushed into too few bodies, but with a bit of practice I was able to temper my awareness of the crow's senses.

Eventually, I turned my attention to the others that occupied this castle. Mother had finally relieved me of her suffocating presence, off to pray or some such nonsense, and a young serving-girl brought me a small tray covered in dead animal flesh and harvested plant matter.
Despite earlier failures, I once again reached forth with my fell will, brushing across her feeble mind.

She stuttered and stumbled, and soon I was covered in hot soup and spilled water and breadcrumbs of various sorts.

Her blazing-hot soul repulsed my efforts, leaving me disoriented and confused.

The confusion of the two humans present only served as an opportunity to the much more sensible ones in the room – moments after the serving girl stumbled, wolf-self and raven-self fell upon my bed and numb legs and began scarfing down stew and bread and water and watered-wine. Had fool-self been present, rather than sleeping in his chambers, no doubt he would've snatched at the chunks of meat.

(And, so long as we're being honest here, I will confess this – having my august self present in a brain that was dreaming while simultaneously present in a brain that was awake was deeply strange. Fool-self had simple dreams that merely recreated a mélange of base instincts [service to Bran, fear, hunger, service to Bran, aggression, service to Bran, thirst, fatigue, confusion, service to Bran].

Wolf-self and raven-self had dreams that were easily disregarded as they were nothing more than kaleidoscopic rearranging images of sensations and animal impulses that – despite their surreality – were easily ignored.

It was when boy-self slept and other-selves were awake that the true strangeness emerged. Boy-self was sapient enough that his dreams were able to re-create scenes that closely mimicked reality, despite the pathetic limitations of a single organic body.

Boy-self was deeply worried that the screeching Mother harpy would stop loving him, given how often his dreams involved the harpy repudiating him. Boy-self was also very much concerned with an incident during which 'Father' killed another of the hot, living ones.

Personally, I reveled in such scenes – the death of all living things was, after all, my goal, and to see the living slaying each other was a balm to my weary heart. Yet such scenes created a physical distress response that I was unable to overcome.

Point being – dreaming was weird. Especially so when the boy dreamed while the rest of me was awake.)

===
​

More days passed as I slowly came to accept my circumstances. I was unable to seize control of living humans, no matter how young or old or feeble (the fool excepted). This was upsetting to me, as in the past my vanguard always consisted of masses of the planet's dominant life-forms.

One day another strange being visited the castle. He was the size of, perhaps, a boy, but treated as a man. He was as stunted as fool-self was enlarged.

I was traveling through the castle's main courtyard in my usual fashion – boy-self strapped to fool-self's back, wolf padding alongside and raven ranging across the skies, keeping me informed – when the small man's horse came cantering up, trailed by a handful of men in red cloaks.

One of the castle's head servants approached, helping tend to the men and their beasts. Curious, I extended the tiniest tendril of my power towards him. I was rebuffed with a fierce, blazing energy I'd not yet encountered. His soul was enormous! And powerful indeed!
"Come, my lord Lannister, we will provide food and refreshment immediately," the servant offered.

I walked over and asked the obvious question, "Why are you so short when your soul is so large?"

The servant's face turned a bright red and there was odd shuffling on the part of others around me.

The servant interjected, "please excuse him, my lord, ever since little Lord Bran awoke from his fall, he's been a bit… touched in the head."

The little man smelled of amusement rather than offense, so I wasn't sure what the problem was.

"The gods made me short because to give a full-grown man my brains and cock would've been unfair to the point of unseemly," he replied with a crooked smile.

My eyes widened. "Indeed! Would the Great Cold One gift me with greater powers were I to cut off my cock?"

The servant was rendered speechless but my question drove the men in red cloaks into fits of suppressed laughter. I nodded sagely, understanding their pre-emptive efforts to ward off any attacks from sonic harpies that might be about. Powerful magic, laughter.

"No, my boy, I don't think that would quite work. Although…" here the short man's face took on a thoughtful cast, "…the way you're riding that giant around suggests that with a bit of work, you'd do well on a horse. Your saddle would merely need…" and he seemed to lose himself in thought. He shouted demands to see his men and horses fed and watered and insisted that he be escorted to the Maester's tower immediately.

A few short hours later, he joined mother and I at dinner, presenting us with a series of drawings for modifications on a normal horse saddle. He described a method by which my little broken boy-body could be permitted to ride a horse while securely attached and directing the horse using nothing but spoken commands and reins.

Mother seemed unsure, and smelled powerfully of confusion, anger, and simmering hatred towards the small man.

I swallowed a mouthful of potatoes and decided to revisit the vital issue from earlier that day. "Short man! You shall accompany us into the Godswood. We will speak more of the powers allocated on the basis of shortness and male genitals. I have a number of promising ideas and such ideas should be discussed before the weirwood."

This was balderdash, of course. The Great Cold One was near-omnipresent and near-omnipotent. He lived in all the dark, frigid recesses of the world. Anywhere light and warmth fled, anywhere virtue crumbled and cold calculation took its place, the Great Cold One was present. As his foremost servant, I had no need to travel to a tree to commune with the gods and the one true God.

But I saw how the feverish humans behaved and heard how they spoke of the wood and tree. By suggesting we needed to speak in front of the weirwood, I was emphasizing the importance of my words.

My pronouncement had the desired effect. Other pointless conversation was muted for much of the rest of the meal, and the short man said something about "If the Lady is willing" or some such. I was sure he was making an ineffectual reference to one of the "seven gods" and that he and I would speak more later.

==
​

"Bran, why do you wish to speak with Lord Tyrion?" mother asked me that night, tucking me into bed.

I gazed at her with loving eyes and did not reply verbally. Any time I spoke with her there seemed to be a chance that I would spur her into another suffocating embrace or sonic attack, and I just didn't feel like I could muster up the necessary laughter to counter-attack.

She shivered.

I pushed wolf-self up against her side and licked her hand. Of all my selves, wolf was the warmest. The shivers of hated humans would usually be a balm for my weary… well, not soul, but weary something. But I found myself with an incomprehensible impulse towards comforting this woman, and stopping her shivering. Coldness was best solved with cuddling wolf.

She desisted in her questions, made to tuck my covers in even tighter, and left the room.

I immediately brought fool-self in from the adjoining small chamber and opened a window, permitting fluttering bird-self back inside. Fool untucked the damnable covers and crawled into bed, providing soft warm comfort. Wolf settled by the fireplace, raven-self tucked in under its head.

As one, we slept.

===
​

The short man had originally planned to leave the next morning, but he apparently decided to stay and help with the modification of a saddle to meet my "special needs". He recognized some element of my genius and thought to stay for a few days before continuing his journey south.

A few mornings later, a servant informed me that Lord Tyrion requested my presence out in the main yard. I flew forward and observed little out of the ordinary. Tyrion was trailed, as ever, by the four men in red cloaks, and the yard bustled with activity, although notably less than what would've been expected before Father left with the girls and a full quarter of the house retinue.

I carried myself forth, allowing wolf-self to slip out a small side door and go hunting before my two human selves made their way to Tyrion's side.

He looked immensely pleased with himself. Before him stood a horse bearing a saddle that looked largely the same as all other saddles to me. No doubt those extra straps and higher… bits… had some meaning, but it eluded the memories of the boy's mind.

"Lord Bran, I present to you your saddle!" Tyrion gave a bow that I was sure was mocking. Or perhaps I had just come to see everything he did as mocking.

"Very well, let us try it!" "Hodor!" we replied.

I lifted myself off of my back and into the saddle. Winterfell's Horsemaster began giving me a long-winded set of instructions while strapping the boy-body into this leather contraption.

The horse was restless under me. Something about how the saddle sat on its back or the way the straps pulled on its body seemed to make it uneasy.

Eventually, the Horsemaster told me I was fully strapped in.

Off to my left, a door suddenly banged open just as Tyrion began speaking: "now, Lord Bran, you may wish to take things easy at first…"

Mother shrieked from across the yard, "BRANDON EDRIC STARK WHAT DO YOU THINK…"

The Horsemaster had also started to speak, "she's an easy old girl, won't be winning any races but she won't…"

I ignored them all and extended my will into the beast of burden beneath me. Fracturing my mind came ever-easier, now. Extending from four to five actually felt more comfortable, less taxing. And this horse had no senses that were new to me. A sense of smell worse than a wolf's, a strength roughly equal to the fool's, and a deep-seated need for herd that was similar enough to the wolf's need for pack that I could simply subsume that need into the extended collection of self.

I sent the beast dancing forward, carrying me across the open, mushy ground of the yard. It was exhilarating, to carry two bodies with such crisp speed. It lacked the high-flying freedom of raven-self, but the thundering clop of hooves and the wind brushing past four eyes, six limbs, two faces, all created a heady exhilaration that was not be denied.

Eager to extend this magic, I danced the horse in a gentle diagonal patter. The animal's instincts seemed to find such movement unpleasant, but I blithely ignored such base concerns. In but a moment, I was circling the paddock, doing spins and twirls with the horse's body, rearing on hind legs and triumphantly kicking forth with forelegs, rearing on forelegs and lashing out with mighty strikes to the air with hind legs, heading into sudden loping lunges across the space, pulling into flat-hoofed skidding stops and whirling about, all while my boy-mouth laughed in manic glee.

Such excitement! Such wondrous tingling… happiness!

"…or you could take to the saddle like you were born into it and ride better than a Dothraki horse lord…" continued Tyrion.

"You! Little man with the big soul! By what fell magic did you devise this… device?" I thundered, ignoring the Horsemaster's sputters and mother's imprecations. "By what ancient knowledge did you come to know how to unlock the power of horse for my frail boy-form?"
"Uhh… Simple intelligence, Lord Stark."

"Yes, yes, wonderful!" I crowed. "And whence derives and implements this simple intelligence? Another gift of your short stature and enormous manhood?"

He had a strange cast to his features. The men around Tyrion once again began laughing, not having my built-up immunity to mother's screeching attacks.

He thought for several moments before responding. An appropriate display of prudence when answering questions posed by my great mind. "I would say it was little more than common sense and then basic principles applied to novel situations, young master."
Ah-hah! He acknowledged that I was his master! Truly his big soul was wasted in such a small body.

"Excellent!" I boomed. Or, well, as close to booming as I could get with my small boy's voice. "This 'common sense' is truly a remarkable talent. You will accompany us forthwith and employ the dread power of 'common sense' against all of our foes, that we may vanquish any who oppose us!"

A small cough of laughter sounded beside me. I turned, seeing the salty one, the kraken-breast, had a smile pulling across his face. His cough of laughter was contagious, soon spreading to full and open laughter among the men present. I joined the mirthful outpouring. I raised my mighty fist and cried to the heavens, "TO COMMON SENSE!"

My wolf-self howled in the distance. My crow-self cawed a mighty caw. The little-man-big-soul joined in tears of laughter and soon raised both arms aloft, hands balled into tiny fists, calling out "COMMON SENSE!"

 

[dermenscha]

Oh my sides. This is beautiful.

 

[yinko]

I don't know, it seems as though COMMON SENSE! would most likely sweep the floor with a lot of the factions in the Great Game. Especially if you understand the theme to which they dance.

 

[RichardWhereat]

This is glorious.

 

[marsolino]

I laughed out loud at some parts, good work.

 

[BreezyWheeze]

"Well that's ridiculous," I pronounced. "I can smell a lie… I mean Summer can smell a lie a mile away. More, if the winds are favorable. We shall simply ask him."

"Bran, dear, I know Summer is your leal protector but the notion that he can smell a lie, well it's just…" mother tried to rebut my obvious truth.

"You need not persist in your doubts, no matter how prudent they may be," I responded. "Simply summon two guards. Order one of them to speak truths and another to speak lies. Summer shall sniff out the difference and thereby prove to you that I can… we can… he can tell the difference!"

My boy-body reclined on a small cot in a small tent, pitched aside the King's Road. We were surrounded by a retinue that had divested Winterfell of another quarter of its living host. Rickon and Shaggydog accompanied us, as did many men-at-arms, servants, and the moderately helpful Horsemaster.

Of the Starks, only Robb and Theon remained at Winterfell, mother insisting that Robb was Lord and must remain to watch over his birthright. This development was immensely pleasing to me, as any efforts that could weaken "The North" would well serve my eventual takeover of the world.

All of this was a consequence of my unwillingness to leave behind my most important servant. Lord Tyrion stated his intention to travel south, returning to King's Landing. I commanded him to stay, but many hated humans (mother, Robb, and Tyrion included) told me I had no such authority over the short man.

​

This was ludicrous. I was the Night King. I had authority over all of Planetos and the uncountable legions of the dead. It would, seem, however, that my authority over the living was still a work in progress. When I'd casually suggested that the fool could kill the little man, thereby making him a suitable vessel for my infinite will, Tyrion had replied that death would seriously impair his power of COMMON SENSE and thus make him quite a bit less useful as anything other than raven food.

In response, I pushed much of mind into raven-self and contemplated hunger for a while. But it seemed that raven-self had eaten a hearty meal not minutes earlier, thus speaking to the uselessness of turning my common-sense-wielding follower into raven food.

In any event, Lord Tyrion insisted on leaving Winterfell. Mother smelled glad to see him on his way, but I refused to be parted from him. This led to an altercation that saw fool-self taking a few scrapes, wolf-self getting several good bites in on Winterfell's men-at-arms, and raven-self indulging in much raven-laughter.

(As a side note, we feel compelled to point out that raven-laughter is only marginally effective as a counter attack when mother begins her harpy-magic-sonic-attacks. It is, at best, a tiny distraction and ultimately a waste of raven-self's utility in battle. Far better to peck at eyes, assuming human eyes contain the same delicious sweet-jelly as those of the various animals upon which raven-self has feasted.)

Returning to the present moment, my hazy memories finally revealed the key word to employ: "mother, I shall prove to you that Summer can sniff out lies and if you don't let me show you, I fear that I will end up having another tantrum."

On that last word, I slightly inclined my head, hooded my eyes, and pushed the full gravitas of my Night King self into the word. Of course I succeeded – mother offered a tiny cough of laughter in response.

This was clearly the next step in the evolution of our relationship. First, sonic-harpy-mother attacked me with wailing noises and caustic salty eye-fluid. Second, I was made to learn to repel such attacks through the overwhelming might of laughter. And now, I infected her with the power of my laughter.

This was a poor reflection of infecting the dead with my implacable will as The Night King, but everything about the living seemed so much slower, stranger, more disorganized, and damnably hotter.

=
​

I had learned a key lesson during the days upon the road. Laughter could be employed as a subtle offensive maneuver just as much as a defensive one. As ever, I learned this through being subject to attacks. Other, lesser minds may have felt anger or been wounded at being made into a victim, but I was made of sterner stuff. My stalwart common-sense-wielding servant shot small barbs and japes at me and my various selves. Men laughed, most loudly the red-cloaked ones.

My boy-body flushed with unusual sensations – a sort of inward-curling unease all mixed up with anger and confusion and a little amusement and a desperate desire to turn the sharp verbal pronouncements back on the attacker. Late into the night, I meditated on these barbs and handily constructed potent retorts that would allow me to reclaim the mighty power of laughter.

I sought to employ these retorts at later times, but was confounded by their failure. The lesson was clear: laughter was a weapon and to utilize it effectively, one must memorize a huge store of retorts and employ the correct one in an instant, and – above all else – one must have a speed of mind that permits one manipulate human-talking-sounds in a way to turn the laughter back upon the attacker in that very moment.

To that end, I'd spent the past two days meditating on the nature of the living. They were multifarious in a way that was staggering, even to my majestic mind.

The Dead were One and in that unity possessed only three natures. Walkers had the minds of men (or really, the minds of whatever the dominant life-form was at the start of each cycle). Wights had no minds and were merely appendages. Wisps had no minds, but had instincts that sought to mock and destroy the nature of whatever animal gave rise to them.
It was simple, elegant, and effective.

But I'd been hounded by a thought. A thought that wouldn't let me sleep. Even more than my desperate need to construct retorts to use against Tyrion, my mind was singularly focused on one irrefutable fact: the dead were superior, yet the dead lost.

Time and again. In all ways, upon all axes of analysis, the armies of the dead were better. Better. Yet in half-a-million years, never once had the dead actually succeeded in wiping out all life on Planetos.

No.

No, I would not retreat behind euphemisms like "the dead." The truth was thus: the failure was mine. I was a failure. I had had hundreds of attempts at wiping out life and never once had I succeeded.

And so, in my failure, I was humbled by the perfect will of The Great Cold One. He cursed me with the wretched, itching hotness of a life. I had to push beyond my boundaries. I had to tear down misconceptions and find the root of my failure such that I could finally, finally, at long last succeed.

It was life's vast, messy variety that offered my first clue. I could dominate the dead with thoughtless ease. Yet the ability of boy-body to push into the living and dominate them was constrained, difficult, and so very slow.

I thought long and hard about how to regain the fell quickness of the dead. I must take the powers of the living, learn from their variety, and re-create the best of the dead while adding the magic on the living. I must. I must.

I'd sought the great wisdom of Common Sense.

We rode our mounts through the gentle sunlight that broke through the overhanging branches. The breeze was rare, but welcome. Altogether, a fine day for riding.

"Tyrion, the minds of the living are disagreeable things. Always fighting," I began my supplication.

He smiled, "indeed. And I suspect, young master, a question lurking behind those two statements."

"How is it that the living accomplish anything? Are there any living creatures that actually know the meaning of cooperation? Of obedience?"

He paused to give my questions thought. He looked down at horse-self pacing along merrily and had a far-away look on his eyes.
Eventually he spoke, "well, I myself wonder about that first question. As to cooperation, I would think you would know as much or more than any of us, given the way your herd," here he nodded at horse-self, "and your pack," a nod to wolf-self down at my side, "stick to your side with an uncanny focus. But for the last? Obedience? The living obey only their natures, Lord Bran. The tree grows towards sunlight. The bee seeks the flower," here he was struck by another thought, falling silent for several long moments.

I desperately wanted the answer, but I was slowly learning the meaning of patience. Common Sense was not a god that could be rushed. She revealed her secrets to her short-statured acolyte only in the fullness of time.

"Bees, I suppose. Or insects, generally. My father has a number of bee keepers that manage hives to aid in the growth of the Westerlands' harvests. And they assure me that each hive has but a single queen bee. I suppose if you were looking for a model of 'obedience' you would find it among our buggy friends," he offered a wan smile.

Of course! I had been so enamored of the power of humans and the animals that served them, I was ignoring entire classes of living being. Surely my next great lesson would come from extending myself into those classes that humans saw as mere pests – rats, insects and so on.

=
​

This, then, was the backdrop against which mother's protestations emerged. She yammered on about the evil dagger wielded by the man that Summer had eaten. It was, apparently, some sort of special dagger owned by the Lannisters. I could've told her it was special. Special because it was awful. Special because its hated demonic fire-magic was just awful, awful, awful.

She asserted that Tyrion was not to be trusted, that no Lannisters were to be trusted. She seemed to think Tyrion might have been responsible for the attempt on our life. And so I pronounced this ridiculous and told her to simply summon Tyrion. I would ask the high priest of common sense, and he would speak. Summer would smell the truth or falsehood of his words and I would either eat him or not.

She doubted my ability to sense truth. I suggested a simple test. She demurred. I threatened a tantrum. She laughed at me. Yet she complied, as surely she must.

Two guards entered the royal tent. Mother strode forward and murmured in each of their ears. Summer's ears pricked forward, but I could not hear what she said. Moments later, she returned to her chair.

She waved a hand and spoke, "Okay, Bran, if Summer can sniff out a lie, tell me which of these two guardsmen are lying. Each will say three things."

They both looked confused and smelled nervous. Summer padded towards them, standing a yard away between them, nose upwards pulling hard on the scents in the tent.

The one of the left coughed lightly into a fist and then offered, "well, uhh… I mean… Stephan there," here he jerked his helmeted head towards the other guard, "he's always goin' on an' on, telling tall tales and shirkin' his watch and lyin' left and right."

The other guard jerked to full attention and barked out, "no I ain't not even! I's as 'onest as they come! You want a truth, well then 'ow 'bout this! Efric 'ere 'e's the one at gon' an' snuck inta tha Maester's stores o' summerwine an gon' an nicked a 'ole crate of 'em an' gon' lost 'em bettin' at tricks playin' wif tha 'oundmaster and 'is boys nah a moon past!"

"Liar!" shouted the leftmost guard.

The shouts drew the attention of the noble guard standing out front of the tent. Three men barreled in, swords drawn. "Here now, what's all this!" shouted the shortest of the three. "You lot, both disturbing the Lady! I'll have you mucking out waste for a month!"

I smiled.

"Summer can smell everything, mother," my high voice cut through the tumult.

"Stephan is a liar," I pronounced. "When Efric pronounced him a liar, he was telling the truth. When Stephan objected, he was lying. Efric is a thief and a gambler. When Stephan cast his accusations, he was telling the truth. This man," I nodded towards the leader of the house guard, "is angry and honest and he hates Stephan and Efric for being faithless liars and cheats."

Silence greeted the obvious truth of my pronouncement.

"Also, that one," here I pointed to the leftmost of the house guard that had just burst into the tent, "has recently lain with a female that has some sort of foul-smelling illness of the genitals."

"Gods dammit all to the seven hells she said she was clean!" was the angry response. The house guard leader cuffed the back of his head in reaction to the foul language.

Mother was too confused by the impossible majesty of my powers to respond properly to the truths I'd just presented. Her posture was stiff, her face locked in stone.

"Captain Mattison, escort your men out of my tent immediately," she said in a tone of command I envied.

"Deal with them as appropriate for Men of the North," even my unpracticed ears could hear the emphasis on those words.

Much shuffling of feet and murmured assurance followed. Soon the tent was empty, save for mother, me, fool-self, and wolf-self. Raven continued her careful patrols of the sky, revealing nothing of note. Horse was enjoying a meal, surrounded by others who were safe although not herd.

"Bran, dear, how did you know?"

"I told you, mother, I can… Summer can smell the truth of things. Men have a stink to them when they seek to deceive with facts or falsehoods. His nose sees through the shallow, choppy waters of words and gets directly to the underlying heart of the matter. Men who have true intent smell of assurance and the bedrock of reality on their side. Men who seek to deceive have a spiky, shifting scent that reveals their hearts, whether their words are actually facts or no."

I reclined slowly on the pillows gathered at the head of my cot. It had been a trying day, and my mind was distracted by the dreams of the sleeping fool.

"Bran," her voice was gentle… no, not gentle, it was careful. "Bran, love, how do you know what Summer smells?"

Her body reflected a posture at ease and her tone reflected a voice in casual contemplation. But I saw them both for lies. Every fiber of her being screamed confusion and stark, breathless fear.

"I am Summer."

My eyes had slowly closed, the lids feeling the gentle press of sandy sleep. My statement was simple truth, and I did not attempt to misdirect. After all, mother and I had progressed several levels in our relationship, and I could only assume that the fourth level of the relationship between sonic-attack-harpy and offspring involved a sharing of truth.

I heard a strangled coughing noise as the reply came, "what?"

What?

Surely she was confused.

I remedied that confusion directly: "this is the magic of men. Surely, as a sound-magic-harpy you are well acquainted with the magic of the first men, yes? To fracture the mind, to subsume the beast, to share in their senses and knowledge and nature, this is the great power of the first men. The sharing of natures rather than the pure dominance of the dead, this is what it means to be among living men, yes? Rickon and Shaggydog share this same bond, and I can only imagine that Robb and the girls do as well."

The tent was warm, the silence heavy. The bare remnants of the evening's fire crackled lower and lower until falling into silence. Outside the tent, the pressing chirps of the evening's crickets faded. Inside the tent, the silence stretched for long enough that Summer fell asleep and boy-self nearly did.

"Bran, was it the fall that created this delusion?"

I coughed out an exhausted laugh. I raised my voice to be heard beyond tent-flaps, "guard!"

A guard entered immediately.

"Bring us Lord Tyrion immediately. It is a matter of the utmost urgency," I commanded in a drowsy tone.

The guard shot his eyes over to mother, but her face was a locked chest, features rigid, wide eyes unmoving.

Long moments passed and I barely managed to win my battle against the siren song of sleep.

Waddling legs bustled into the tent.

I closed my eyes fully. In a near-whisper, I murmured, "My acolyte of common sense, did you attempt to have me killed? Is the dagger there upon the table yours?"

He smelled of confusion and the fear typical of those in Summer's presence. He smelled of a powerful will tightly leashing a maelstrom of thought and emotion.

"My Lord Stark… Bran… I recognize the dagger, but I swear to you on the honor of House Lannister…" here he paused for a moment before continuing, "I swear upon all common sense, I did no such thing and have no knowledge of the plot to kill you nor how a Lannister heirloom of Valyrian steel came to be here."

I gently released my hold on boy-body's consciousness as I whispered to mother, "truth."

===
​

My dreams were strange, even by the standards of my fractured multi-minded dreaming.

I had taken Tyrion's suggestion very seriously. Insects and other lower life-forms knew the meaning of obedience and if I was to fully unlock the power of the living, I would need to find a way to marry their strengths to the perfect, immediate obedience of the dead.

Initial forays were failures. It was nothing to send forth a lick of power into the body of an ant, but invariably such action immediately killed the ant. It would seem such a small body was too frail to handle even the tiniest whisper of my greatness.

Tyrion had spoken of bees and their ability to obey a single queen. Thus it was when I finally saw a small yellow-and-black bit of darting movement, I'd grown excited.

Alas, I killed the bee as well.

But somewhere in my dreaming, it seemed that my mind knew my mind better than I did.

Or… something.

For in the middle of a dream about lessons with Maester Luwin, my mind found itself suddenly fractured many dozens upon hundreds of times. It was even more disorienting than my first forays into raven-self with its perception of the living planet's magnetic field.

Images came to me in the hundreds, all slightly off-set from one another. I could see the green-grey of leaves and brown-green-grey-black of tree bark tessellated upon my mind in hexagons of slightly-offset visual input.

For the barest second, my mind reacted with knowledge from a past cycle. "Space-filling curve" and "topology" and other terms flitted across my awareness. There had been many cycles in which the dominant life-forms possessed knowledge and technology well beyond the current cycle. But never before had even the tiniest scrap of my own memory carried over like that.

Strange.

The memory was gone in an instant, but it was enough to shake me out of my current confusion. It was not my mind that was fractured in the hundreds, merely a small slice of my visual input. Boy dreams and wolf dreams and horse dreams and fool dreams and raven dreams all danced before me. Added to the mix, however, was the strange vision and smell-taste and wind-feel of a new, tiny mind.
The oddity was enough to awaken raven-self. Tiny-self and raven-self darted towards each other in the air.

Raven-self nearly ate tiny-self midair, just on sheer instinct. A deep, uneasy clang of a jolt shot through all bodies as I had to powerfully wrench raven away from following its impulses. Instead, I awoke and padded out of the tent, once again relying on my wolf nose to make sense of the situation.

Raven and tiny approached, and I learned that tiny was a large dragonfly. The space of its little mind was terribly constraining and I suspected that if I pushed too hard, I would kill it as I had ants and bees. Yet so long as I maintained the very lightest of feather-touches, I could direct its flight, see through its multifaceted eyes, and taste-smell through its feet.

And so five became six.

Or, well, you know, five and a half. Five a tenth, at least, surely.

=
​

The next morning, mother awoke well before I did. Dragonfly-self didn't seem to need much sleep, so I was able to keep an eye on things from above. There was much bustling about. I couldn't hear, as the world was entirely silent to dragonfly-self, but I could see much gesticulating of limbs and moving about and angry postures between those in red cloaks and those in grey. Eventually Tyrion appeared and calmed the others and nodded at the Captain of the house guard.

I awoke boy and fool and broke their fast first. I went off to hunt the woods as Summer, raven darting ahead to find prey and feast on remnants. I always made a specific point of saving the eyeballs for raven-self. Dragonfly-self darted about, feasting on the flies and mosquitoes drawn to horse-self's exhalations and bowel movements.

Eventually, one of the guards entered my tent and informed me that we would be taking a detour. Instead of heading straight to King's Landing, we would make for the Eyrie to see Lady Lysa and cousin Robin Arryn. Anticipating my question, he then immediately followed up by telling me that "the blasted Imp is coming along too, whether he likes it or not."

I suspect that the man suddenly realized he shouldn't've said that, given the apparently close relationship I had with Tyrion, as he ducked his head and exited the tent a moment later.

Things moved slowly, as things always do among the living.

Long after the sun had risen, I was strapped firmly upon horse, wolf and fool at my sides, raven and dragonfly resting on my shoulders, six full bellies and calm minds. I stomped my four feet in eagerness to be off as the camp finally finished packing up around me.
I made my way to the van, determined to stay ahead of events.

There I found Tyrion, surrounded by his four red-cloaks, surrounded by an even larger contingent of Winterfell men.
"Ah, young master, so nice of you to join us!" Tyrion boomed.

I cantered up to him and inclined my head in acknowledgement.

"I am told we make our way to the Vale to see my aunt and cousin, and that you will be accompanying us," I said.

"Well, it wasn't exactly my preference," he answered, glancing down at the empty scabbard at his side.

"Mother is taking you hostage and bringing you with us?"

Tyrion responded at the same time as one of my men-at-arms, "It would seem so," "He's not a hostage my Lord, but the Lady left instructions…"

I angled my rear slightly towards the man-at-arms and pushed a copious helping of horse dung from horse-self's backside.

This was another lesson I'd taken, although from the other men rather than from Tyrion. Sometimes one could do an end-run around the entire enterprise of verbal sparring and laughter-dueling through the use of immediate and forceful crudity.

It had the desired effect on the men.

Tyrion continued, "events are, apparently, conspiring to ensure that I stay with you, Lord Bran, and those events seem to point inexorably towards the Vale."

I nodded, a flash of knowledge from a previous cycle coming to mind, "you're being railroaded."

"I don't know what a rail is, but yes, I am stuck on a road whose forks offer no alternative."

===
​

The following days were pleasant enough. I had sharp words with mother when she attempted to keep me apart from my advisor. The guards seemed more than happy to "forget" that I was there so long as Summer growled at them and stayed by my side. I learned to leave a hearty coating of blood and tiny bits of deer flesh on Summer's muzzle. Not only did it attract insects that dragonfly-self could eat, it had a lovely intimidation effect.

I learned another valuable lesson as we entered the Vale and made our way up to the Eyrie: there seemed to be nearly no limit on how far apart I could spread myselves. We were made to ascend into a ludicrously tall castle while leaving horse-self and Summer behind. I had raven range far and wide, and despite the large distances separating us, I felt no discomfort.

The hot, quick ones engaged in their endless parade of frustrating and pointless behaviors. The high priest of common sense and his men were escorted to a private chamber to wash and eat. Mother and Aunt Lysa exchanged brittle words and brittle bread and salt.

Aunt Lysa said something or other that compared boy-self unfavorably to cousin Robin. Boy-self's body flushed with sensations I readily identified as offense and subsequent anger. I squashed such nonsense easily, pushing those feelings of anger into raven-self. Raven did a mid-air dive at a small brown bird with an orange chest and pecked out both its eyes. The victim cheeped in confused anguish while raven-self cawed vicious cawing laughs.

Boy-self merely offered a tight smile and nod of the head. Aunt Lysa escorted us into the main audience chamber.

"Sister, I apologize for the rushed greeting, but we were in the middle of dealing with two horrid criminals just as you arrived. If you will give us a moment to enact the Vale's justice, we can proceed to a welcoming feast, and then to a discussion of... other matters."

"Certainly sister," mother answered.

Guards exited the round chamber and returned in short order, man-handling two filthy men. One loudly declared his innocence while the other raved nonsense and spat and bit at his captor.

Meaningless words filled the air. Had Summer been with me, I could've smelt the truth of the matter in a moment. But alas, fool's nose was as blunt as my own, and dragonfly-self (nestled tightly against my chest, desperate for warmth against the cold, wailing breezes of this high castle) had no sense of smell beyond what it could tastesmell with its feet.

Aunt Lysa declared that they were clearly guilty. She gave cousin Robin, who sat upon her lap, a tight hug and kissed his head. She murmured into his hair, "and what shall be the sentence, Sweetrobin? What does the Warden of the East declare?"

"Make them fly, mummy! I want to see them fly!" a savage gleam filled his tiny eyes.

Lysa looked up from her son and fixed a fierce glare on the guards. She shrieked out a harsh command, "well! You heard your Lord! Open the moon door!"

The guards worked a large, chain-covered wheel. With a squeal of metal and a rumble of stone, the large circular depression in the middle of the room slowly opened, revealing nothing but blue sky for miles.

Cousin Robin leapt out of his mother's lap and scampered forward several steps.

"Careful, love! You can watch, but stay two steps back!"

The pale form of the Lord of the Vale gave a nod, his body shaking with some palsy that could not be fully explained by the anticipation of violence.

The first criminal, the gibbering madman, was dragged forward. The guards flung him down the two steps leading to the moon door. He howled in something like glee, his howl dropping in pitch as his body tumbled away.

Robin clapped and hopped up and down. "Fly, fly, fly bad man, fly!" he chirped.

There was something profoundly wrong with him, I realized. My sense of humans was still poor, I could admit, but I could still tell that his body, his words, his mind all seemed off. Weak.

Weak.

My eyes widened. He was weak.

Perhaps…

…yes! Yes! This is why mother brought us here. Perhaps she meant for me to seize control of cousin Robin. She knew of his infirmity and knew of my damnable inability to overtake humans with an intact soul. And so she brought me a challenge that would demand that I push my limits while still being at the edge of what was achievable.

I felt a swell of some warm, glowing emotion for mother-harpy. Was this love? Was this respect? That she would offer her own nephew to be subsumed? That she would concoct this elaborate ruse about taking Tyrion hostage? Truly, I had so much to learn from the living, mother and her ruthless brilliance most of all.

While I'd been lost in my thoughts, the other man had been brought forward. I caught the edge of his screams as he was cast down. Robin continued his nonsensical chanting and had begun to drool slightly.

Well, I could not possibly reject the gift that mother offered.

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and gathered my strength. I pulled my power back from horse and dragonfly and fool and Summer as much as I dared and with a mighty HEAVE I threw the entirety of my power at Robin.

My bright, clear will slammed into his mind and soul. In the quickest flash of an eye, his soul's fire repulsed my power. His body went stock-still for just a moment, his muscles seizing as his soul rejected my will.

But in that moment, he had been clapping and japing, leaning slightly towards the moon door. When his muscles locked, his body was over-balanced, and in an eternal second, he tipped forward, losing his balance. He barely managed a choked gasp as he suddenly fell through.

In the beat of silence that followed, I could feel the world shifting on its axis. Tyrion and I had spoken earlier about being railroaded into a certain destiny and in the eternal silent second that followed Robin's death, I could feel, down to the very bones of all six of my bodies… down to the very bones of five bodies and chitin of one body… that I had just broken the chains of predetermined destiny.

My failure was complete.

Mother-harpy had used her cunning and logic and magic to conspire to bring my majesty to this moment, to finally learn to subsume humans into my will, and I had botched it. Completely.

Time started again with screaming and wailing and shouts of confusion and anger.

Tears flowed down my face.

I tiled my head up and saw Aunt Lysa, madness having overtaken her completely. She barreled forward, seemingly intent on following Robin out the moon door.

Almost as an afterthought to my failure, I lashed out with my will.

I found a mind shattered and only the wreckage of a soul. The flotsam of a person on a sea of incomprehensible anguish.

Lysa's anguish over the loss of her son mixed with my anguish at my failure to subsume her son. Our minds became one, the spiky remnants of her soul burned away in our shared loss. The brittle shards of her mind were ground down further, broken into tiny pieces, those pieces scoured by sand, by a million tiny grains of a life lived in bitterness.

My infinite mind, almost without my own input, began consuming those few pieces that were left of Lysa Tully Arryn. Images of Cat. Images of Petyr. Images of Jon. Dropping small drops of poison into Jon's wine.

Lysa's body raged and wept still. Lysa-self clung to fool-self and boy-self and we three wept and wailed. Tears and spit and snot and sweat and hot, itchy hot bodies all desperately lonely and desperate to join to become part of the greater, to surrender pain and impossible pain and to surrender… everything…

=​

We lost ourselves for a while.

When boy-self and fool-self and woman-self awoke, horse and Summer informed us that it had been a full evening and night and morning. Near on 18 hours we had slept, lost in nightmares of Robin's plunge through the moon door, and Father scolding us after killing the Night's Watch deserter, and sister-self screaming as her wolf was killed, and stolen glances at Petyr coveting that bitch Cat instead of us, and Robin, dear beloved, dear Sweetrobin falling through the moon door.

Six eyes opened. Lysa and I were cuddled together in an enormous soft bed. Fool was squished into an overstuffed chair. We quickly glanced around, taking in the room.

Mother reclined in a chair, dozing. The room was illuminated by a low fire, windows shuttered against the chill breeze.

We spoke to wake her up: "mother!" "Cat!" "Hodor!"

Mother jerked awake. She darted forward, scooping me into her arms. She murmured and whispered and kissed my head as Lysa-self had done to Robin.

She fell back into her chair.

"Bran, my love! What happened?!" she exclaimed and asked.

"I'm fine, mother," I tried to reassure her.

She ignored me, continuing to stroke my hair and rub my back and rock back and forth.

"The Maester said it was a fit of shared madness from grief," she said.

We once again sought to break through, "mother!" "Cat!" Hodor!"

Mother finally ceased her mindless rocking. Her shining tear-soaked eyes darted up to Lysa-self and fool. "What…?" she began.
Fool stood up and came approached mother, holding hands open. She mindlessly surrendered my boy-body to the fool's trusted hands.

Lysa-self arose from the bed, her wrinkled shift billowing around her bony frame.

We spoke in turn, to more clearly reach mother.

My piping boy-voice led the way, "we accept and acknowledge our failure to take cousin Robin, mother."

Husky, grief-wracked woman-voice continued, "but we have nonetheless made a key stride forward by taking over Aunt Lysa."

Impossibly deep, rumbling man-voice punctuated our pronouncement, "Hodor, hodor hodor hodor."

Mother's head darted from one of my faces to the next, her tears dried. Her face went slack in incomprehension. We changed from speaking in turn to speaking unison to ensure our point was made.

"We are Lysa and Bran and Hodor and Summer and Horse and Raven and Dragonfly."
"We are Lysa and Bran and Hodor and Summer and Horse and Raven and Dragonfly."
"Hodor and Hodor and hodor."

Mother's hands shook. A look of horror came across her face.

I felt a crushing pain in my chest. I had failed. I had taken Lysa when mother had clearly intended me to take Robin. And now cousin Robin was dead instead of part of us, and Lysa's soul and mind had been shattered and I hadn't learned how to take over a weak human soul, only how to crush the remnants of a shattered soul.

I was a failure.

"Bran!" choked out mother. "Release Lysa at once!"

She rose from her chair, her horror warring with her determination.

Again, child and woman and man spoke in unison:

"There is no more Lysa, mother. When cousin Robin died her mind and soul shattered. If we withdrew from her body, she would collapse and die."
"There is no more Lysa, mother. When cousin Robin died her mind and soul shattered. If we withdrew from her body, she would collapse and die."
"Hodor hodor. Hodor hodor and hodor hodor. Hodor, hodor die."

Mother was struck speechless. She fell backwards into the chair. She gazed straight through me, unseeing in her incomprehension.

Clearly my failure reached depths even I had not considered. I resolved that I would explain everything to her; I would hold nothing back; I would do whatever was necessary to fix this.

I would fix this.

I would.

 

[marsolino]

Night Bran's misunderstandings get funnier the further in we get, thanks for the chapter!

 

[Glyn]

Well
Now mother knows