Disclaimer: I'm not giving you medical advice.
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“-. 265 – 273 AC .-“
In my previous life, I studied the occult. But since ‘occult’ only means ‘hidden’, it tended to mean less True History and Mystery, and more cover-ups of human trafficking and facts suppressed by the various governments, churches, sellout scientists and corporate monopolies. There was a lot of dross. But a fair bit wasn’t. Ways to train the body. Ways to focus the mind. Ways to discern the truth. Things that actually cured you instead of treating symptoms. And, perhaps most importantly, monoamine oxidase inhibitors and psychedelic substances.
Many things were different on this world, but some most certainly were not.
All of this knowledge waged a swift and brutal war with everything else I believed and knew over my limited headspace, when all my memories suddenly snapped together upon realising I had landed in what was supposed to be a fictional world.
Even that would have been fixable if not for that accursed Three-Eyed
Crow.
I that brief, indescribable instant when my mind was shocked to the same awareness as the rest of me, it swooped and pecked out my third eye.
I’m not sure what it was after. What it thought it would achieve. What I did know was that I wasn’t some benighted and crippled little boy. What I did know was that it was a very, very big mistake for it to harass me in a dream. My dream. In dreams where I have more than one eye.
In dreams I am
mighty.
Between one instant and the next there was only ash and smoke where previously had tried to flee a lying thief.
The victory tasted like that same ash, though, because my young mind had been well and truly scrambled in the aftermath. It was all I could do in that long month of delirium to grasp and keep a hold of what knowledge could save me instead of it burning away with so much else as my brain tried to realign itself. When I came awake, I didn’t remember more than vague impressions of what happened while I was insensate. My body was weak, my will was drained and my brain was a mess of misaimed chemical bonds and misfiring synapses. At times I’m glad I don’t remember too clearly how I behaved back in those days, when every attempt to speak turned into a mess of mixed-up words from half a dozen different languages. It was ten times worse than the hodge-podge I’d inflicted on myself so long ago, when I chose Italian instead of Spanish as my college minor only to destroy my ability to communicate in both. The outright hallucinations and lapses into times long gone, though, those were the worst.
Fortunately, what I retained was just enough. Magic mushrooms to gradually reset my messed up brain chemistry and alleviate my chronic migraines. The same mushrooms or Passionflower to weaken the predictive filters that keep us blind to the higher dimensions for the sake of survival. They were the only available ways to tune my mind into the higher dimensions while still keeping it active. And intersped with both of those, a small bite from a toadstool to trade a bout of nausea for a mood lift every once in a while. My mental illness on top of my father’s abandonment had left me too depressed to even
want to do anything without it.
Support from Rodrik Cassel and my Mother counted for a lot. But the former became more a helper than protector with each passing month. I couldn’t even say how it happened. And the latter, though only ever supportive and accommodating, would be more dependent of me than I was of her for quite some time.
I managed not to resent either of them but I needed
help, not enablers.
Mother was also a bit too similar to my previous one in that she could never hold a secret from her man to save her life. That was the last nail in the coffin of my willingness to confide in her more than the bare minimum. The Maester would have insisted I be put on a regime of milk of the poppy and dreamless sleep concoctions that only made it harder to think and see what I needed. And even without that input, Father was too protective of me regardless of how far removed. He would never have allowed me to go to the Godswood, down four different psychedelic compounds and walk up to the Heart Tree for a talk.
“You’re not the crow,” I said. The Weirwood seed tasted almost as bitter as wormwood.
“A… crow?" The voice of the face on the tree was dry. Its lips barely moved, as if it had forgotten how to form words, if it had ever known how. “Once, aye. When I was yet a man. Black of garb and black of blood.” The face looked tear-stained and bloodied, the sap having worn red streaks down the bark over the many centuries of its life. Lifelight cast forth from just one eye. “I have been many things, boy. As I have been many places. I have watched you for a long time, watched you with a thousand eyes and one. I saw your birth, and that of your siblings after you. I saw your first step, heard your first word. I was watching when you arose in insight, and when you fell back into confusion and pain. And now you come before me, Brandon Stark. You, whose mind is so hard. Whose soul is so loud. Whose dreams I cannot find.”
Many things were different on this world, but some most certainly were not. And there were now things from both that made me think some of the dross in the occult might not be dross at all. Runes. Hermeticism. Alchemy. Clairvoyance. Mentalism. Magic of the Elements. The Arcane Teaching. The second Weirwood seed was as bitter as the first. “Did you see the murder?”
“I have seen many and done many,” Bloodraven said, mistaking my meaning. “If it is your kin you speak of, fret not. There was no malice aforethought in your forebears’ passing. ‘Twas but sickness only. No more, no less.”
The murder of crows stared down at us from the outer walls of Winterfell. The three-eyed liar skulked amidst its kin. It never stayed gone no matter how many times I blasted it to smoke during that month of toil and since. The tree didn’t see it. The third seed was as bitter as the rest. “You were never granted entry to Winterfell.”
“Yet here I am.” The face on the tree seemed to twist sardonically. “Will you offer me Guest Right, Brandon Stark? Or perhaps you will spurn me? Bare your sword across your knees? You seem to know who I am. Would you know more?”
“Brynden Rivers.”
“Once and not.”
“I can do neither yet, blind soothsayer. I am not the Stark in Winterfell.”
Passionflower contained some mild maoi by itself. Barely enough to let what tryptamines existed in the Weirwood seeds bypass whatever stomach enzymes stopped them from working. But sufficient to thin the veil enough for me to see what I needed. The Heart Tree glimmered to my second sight. The ever-budding seeds shone red amidst the branches. The leaves barely had any luster at all. But what they lacked, the roots cast forth in spades. They glowed like lambent moss beneath the ground, reaching and arching and twining farther than any distance I could see, shallow as fir roots and deep as the most hidden veins of ore in the world. They seemed to drink in every idle thought and hopeless wish cast by men high and low. I watched them and followed them and dreamed with them for hours and hours right up to my moment of awakening next day to tragedy.
I
still don’t rightly know what all happened to prompt Rodrik Cassel to make the choices he did. To me it seemed so out of character. Then again, the Rodrik I had read about was an old man whose hair had gone white. He’d had decades to decide his lord had a grasp of judgment, honor and justice better than his own. For a man barely into his twenties – no older than my own father – maybe it came easier to choose the parts of his knightly oaths that came
before leal service.
Do you swear before the eyes of gods and men to defend those who cannot defend themselves, to protect all women and children, to obey your captains, your liege lord, and your king, to fight bravely when needed and do such other tasks as are laid upon you, however hard or humble or dangerous they may be?
Until he outright told me, I never even considered that my father had seriously intended to put me out of my misery. But maybe Cassel had. Maybe he wouldn’t risk giving Rickard Stark a reason to revisit the option. Maybe he thought his silence would protect and serve not only me but my lord father too. Maybe it was something completely different and I just didn’t know.
The next seven years saw me in the unique position of beginning to uplift this medieval world as just a side-benefit of my
actual main goals. Of my increasingly elaborate endeavours to make my body and mind and life once more entirely my own. The one big threat to it all revealed itself within three moonturns. My very successful efforts to learn the Common Tongue saw me increasingly forgetting all the other languages I’d known beforehand. All of them together, tangled as they had become. Focusing on regaining my old life talents, in contrast, only exacerbated my moodswings and flashbacks to the point of outright delirium. Quite frankly, it scared the hells out of me. The balance, I found, was to pursue whatever interests and skills my prior life had only briefly brushed with. Or, increasingly often, those talents I’d let atrophy with time. Amidst it all, I listened to as many different stories from Old Nan as I could. And if I could spoil future events and teach some sense to certain parties while I was at it, well, that suited me perfectly.
Not everyone was as appreciative of my benevolence, but I never expected to become Lyanna Stark’s favorite person anyway.
Hope once more pushed me onward. Motherly and sibling adoration helped. The anger at what happened to Rodrik pushed me forward when they failed. And when even that exhausted itself, the distant spectre of my good and noble father pulled at me until the cycle began all over again.
I’m making abstraction of his abandonment of me and every bad feeling thereof I ever experienced. He was the Good King. Being distant and aloof was among the least of things I could forgive him. In my lonelier, grimmer moments, I doubted I’d have had the freedom or the coin and support for all my enterprises if this break in our family had never happened. And at my most frightened, I drew strength from the sight of the one-eyed raven that loomed over my father when even my dreams turned hot and cold. The crows always scattered when it was nearby.
The only skill I made a point
not pursue was horseback riding. Back on Earth, it was only during a summer vacation in my second decade that I cottoned on to maybe having some talent at it, long after my grandparents died and we stopped keeping livestock. I was taking a neighbor’s horse home after a day of making hay up in the grass lands and I indulged the whim to mount it for once. It was a workhorse through and through, but in that single minute I managed to spur it all the way to a gallop without any trouble controlling it or falling from its back, if just barely. All without prior instruction or experience. All without anything but basic reins. Or spurs. Or stirrups. Or even a saddle. I still wondered about it sometimes. But trying to ride a horse when I had my various
problems was just asking for the animal to spook and throw me off and kick me in the head.
It was just as well. I didn’t want to learn the noble disciplines from anyone besides my father anyway.
And now, it seemed, I finally would.
I woke up slowly, from dreams of the great raven standing sentry over Rickard Stark’s sleeping soul like a parent sheltering its young. It was no different from the glimpses I usually got of my father while asleep. And sometimes even awake, when my migraines flared enough that I needed twice the usual lot of mushrooms or passionflower to get through the day. The raven noticed and returned my gaze every time without fail, even half-blind. I never had any more success reading into its gaze than I did my father though. But this time there was something else. A very fleeting image that I doubt I’d have recalled if I hadn’t trained myself to immediately review my dreams on waking. It was the crow. The Three-Eyed Crow. It squirmed on the ground in front of the Heart Tree far away, impaled through the wing by a warrior’s blade. The sword was driven so low that its guard trapped the bird against the ground across the throat.
I blinked, drowsy and confused at the imagery. What had the crow been up to now? Usually it was smart enough to steer clear of my father, like all crows did no matter how large their murder when ravens came to roost. Even those that had only one eye. Even without there being an entire conspiracy of them around. Though it was certainly getting close to that point now that Maester Walys was done re-filling the ravenry.
I focused on the memory until I was sure it wouldn’t be lost like so much else. I tried not to think about what invention or idea might have disappeared to make room anyway. Then I went through my wake-up ritual. Armory, bridge, crypt, door, earth, Fire, gate, hall, Ice, jar, kennel, library, mushroom, North, Others, Prince, rookery, Sword, tower, undercroft, village, Winterfell, xanthium, yard, zest. I envisioned each object, visualising the colors and shapes and sizes until I could just about imagine the right side of my brain light up and anchor in this world rather than that of my memories. Rickard, Eddard, Benjen, Edwyle, Willam, Beron, Brandon, Cregan, Rickon, Torrhen. Ten names of men. Now for the women. Lyarra, Lyanna, Arya, Sansa, Marna, Lorra, Alys, Lynara, Branda, Gilliane. The words sent verbal signals to wake my left brain and ground me even further in the
here. From here, it all went straight into the Iceman’s Meditation and-
“Do you mumble all your mornings away, boy?” my father sleepily murmured in my hair.
I blinked drowsily as my father enveloped me in both arms like he used to when I was little. “Actually yes,” I admitted.
“Hmm.” He pulled the quilt and fur-lined blankets back up from where they’d slipped off of us. “Does it help?”
“Yes.” His arms were better than any pillow and his beard felt just as rugged as it looked. I’d held onto it all through the night, I realised. “Objects to wake my mind. Names to reel in my words. Both to center myself in the
here and
now instead of… anywhere else.” And constant thought policing throughout the day so I didn’t relapse. Particularly hard during game sessions where I set out to spoil potential futures, but such is my burden. “What I usually do next is a lot noisier though.”
“Is it anything like last night?”
“… Exactly like that.” He always was quick on the uptake. “Is that alright?”
“If it helps you, yes.” Father said soberly. “You asked me to be brave. We can start here.”
A twinge around my heart disturbed the nest of butterflies in my stomach. Had I really scared him so badly?
I breathed in deeply, imagining fresh air filling up my whole body three times ten per set. The smell of the bear furs always anchored me even further when I did this, but this time it was just seasoning over my father’s scent of leather, cloves and hemlock. It was almost a shame when the times came for me to stop breathing altogether. It took over half an hour for me to finish, especially once the time between in-breaths started getting longer and longer during the third lot. My father felt set to come apart from tension throughout it all, but he didn’t move or call for me or speak up even once. Not until I finally started breathing normally again. Well, once for every three to five of his breaths, but that was the whole point.
Father practically sagged in relief when it was over and I started breathing again. I literally felt his arm go from stone-hard to merely wooden beneath my cheek. “That was terrifying.”
“It’s really useful though,” I defended, as anxious for his approval as I always was. “It makes you better in literally every way.” That wasn’t even an exaggeration. The Iceman’s Meditation was originally a breathing technique developed by ascetic months from Tibet, to train their bodies and activate man’s natural ability to alter his mental state and expand consciousness. It was later used by a certain Dutchman to set new records in fitness, disease resistance, breath retention and swimming beneath the arctic icecap blind and naked. The old me never went nearly as far, but it only took two months coupled with cold showers to reach the point where I could regularly alkalize my body chemistry. Then I took to rolling bare-skinned through the snow in winter. If anything,
this me got it down even quicker, though that was ever only a secondary goal.
I conscientiously described to my father the many benefits. Difficult through it was once he pulled back and tipped my face up by the chin to make me look him in the eye. “I
know son. Cold strengthens the flesh. Do try to keep in mind who makes up your grandmother’s side of the family. But even the mountain clans would balk if they saw us letting you walk around in
this cold wearing what you did yesterday.” The man grunted. “I imagine it will be years before I stop hearing the many ways in which I’m a bad father. But your mother should have known better.”
“Just you wait,” I groused. “I’ll have you all doing the same by winter’s end.”
“We’ll see.” He didn’t instantly dismiss me! “Are you done?”
“Not exactly,” I hedged. “This is usually when I get up and stand in front of my open window while talking to myself about myself.”
Father blinked slowly at me. “How is that
not making worse… whatever this is?”
“It’s just awareness training,” I grumbled, tugging on his beard a tad harder than usual. He mock-glared at me. “You choose a thing, focus on it for a while and then describe it. Then do the same the next day in even further detail. Then the day after and the day after that, always adding at least one thing each time.”
“Is
this what you do with that brush of yours?” I’d never seen anyone put out quite the same combination of dawning realisation and remembered dread.
“… That’s for when I start spacing out.”
“What
has Walys been teaching you?”
“Nothing the others aren’t getting,” I said honestly. “In the interest of sincerity, I
might’ve gone snooping through books and papers he didn’t want me getting to. But none of this comes from that. I
do have my own ideas you know.” It was actually a technique from Raja Yoga, though to my shame I only knew about it because I heard someone else describe it once by chance back on the old world.
“You two really need to stop bumping heads so often,” Father said, obviously giving up on trying to make sense of me. “Go ahead then. Don’t be shy on my account.”
“You are Rickard of House Stark.” I literally felt it when his surprised gaze pinned me, quiet and intense. “Son of Edwyle. Son of Willam. Son of Beron, Brandon, Cregan, Rickon, Benjen, Cregard, Alaric, Brandon, Torrhen. You are eight and twenty name days old. Your hair is long and dark, brown near to black. You’re tall.” I did
not just imagine that glint of amusement. “You’re strong.” I poked him in the chest. It was hard as an oak tree. “You carry yourself with quiet dignity and have a long, stern face.” Yes,
exactly like that. “You wear armor of steel with golden spurs. You ride a destrier-palfrey hybrid called Nightmane. You chew on cloves to keep your teeth strong and breath fresh. Your favorite food is the same as mine, chicken roasted in sunflower oil and steamed with herbs, salt and red pepper powder.” Guilty surprise, but also delight at the revelation. “But you have the beginning of lines on your brow, which probably means you stress too much.” Father let his brow rest on mine and closed his eyes. His feelings… whatever they were, they didn’t quite fall on this side of contented. “And you don’t have even a hint of crow’s feet, which means you don’t smile enough.”
“Does it?” Father murmured.
“Your eyes crinkle when you smile,” I said, feeling immediately embarrassed. “They should’ve started to show by now.”
“That
is a problem,” Father admitted, sounding completely serious. “How would my precious son and heir go about rectifying this situation?”
I had to wait for my insides to finish doing their sudden backflip. “… How might I interest you in a toothbrush?” Don’t judge me, there are Pharos who died because of bad teeth! “Just a shaving of soap or pinch of sea salt and you’ll never have to worry about bad teeth again. They’ll be all the rage by this year’s end, mark my words.”
Tremors under my ear were the only warning before my father started laughing heartily. He hugged me to his chest and delighted in me and lay there overjoyed. It made me feel like the most accomplished son in the world.
No one interrupted or bothered us for a while even after we’d settled down again.
Eventually, though, reality reminded us that the world turns regardless of the will of men.
Martyn Cassel pounded on the door. “My lord? The Maester is here with a raven.”
“And so even the best night and day come to an end,” Father said with a sigh, before smiling at me. “Thank you for both, my son.”
I had a bunch of replies ready but I couldn’t get them out.
Father rose from the bed until he sat on the edge, bundled me in the covers when I sat up as well – I wound up looking like a chick in a raven’s nest – then he took my hand in his and called for my guard to let the Maester in.
“My Lord? Finally I’ve found you.” I didn’t have more than a half-remembered conspiracy theory to base my mistrust of Maester Walys on. But the man made it so hard to get over it whenever he bundled doublespeak in his conversations with his
Lord Paramount. “A Raven from Castle Cerwyn arrived with the dawn.”
Father accepted it, broke the seal and read it right where he was. He either didn’t see or care about the Maester’s hidden barbs. Assuming I wasn’t just imagining it.
I watched him from the mound of furs and blankets. Walys Flowers looked designed to inspire trust and confidence and the belief that the citadel assigned the Warden of the North all due importance. He was older than most new maesters, which implied experience and knowledge more in-depth that would perhaps come otherwise. Except he never said why he stayed at the Citadel so long. Nobody knew if that meant he had talents outside his links – that he hadn’t confessed to – or if he just learned slower than others. The man also spoke with all the authority of the Citadel behind him, to the point where I was starting to hear a subtle challenge to
Stark authority in every other thing he said. Maybe I was just paranoid, but the man even had a white raven. The citadel was supposedly
very possessive of them, only sending them out to signal change in season. And yet Walys kept one as a pet that almost always rode on his shoulder. It may be that he didn’t have ill designs, exactly. Unfortunately, I wasn’t sure if the confirmation for
one theory supported or discounted the likelihood of a second being true. And the opposite was true too. With him affecting a manner inauthentic enough to give credence to a certain other wild theory, was it any surprise I was
not surprised? To find that Martin knew exactly what he was doing when distinguishing
inconsistently between crows and ravens when writing about Bloodraven and Bran?
Back on Earth, there was a term for this. Shakespearean Lycanthrophy. Here, though, people were a lot more straightforward.
“Crows are all liars,” Old Nan once told me, from the chair where she sat doing her needlework.
"I know a story about a crow." I can think of quite a few people who’d say the same about grey rats.
Personally, I prefer first-hand experience when establishing a conclusion. My first-hand experience with Walys wasn’t exactly ideal though. We tended to butt heads. A lot. Not just because I worked to my own fancy, but also because I may or may not have swooped in his study at a couple of points. I also always questioned him during our standard lessons, so-called. He also compared me with my siblings every so often. Both to my face and not. Usually unfavorably.
Which was fair, but still.
“Thank you, Maester.” Father said.
Walys, to his credit, knew a dismissal when he heard one. “Of course, My Lord. By your leave.”
He left without even a second glance in my direction.
I couldn’t tell if it was supposed to convey anything or not. Walys could be so damn opaque. It was frustrating.
“It seems we will be hosting guests,” Father said, considering things for a moment before actually giving
me the letter to read over. “It seems your sky lamps have spooked Old Man Robard.”
‘Spooked’ was right. Lord Cerwyn seemed to think Winterfell or Wintertown or both had suffered some terrible fire and was riding over with all haste and every last supply he could call up on such short notice. It was at that point I recalled that Castle Cerwyn was just half a day’s ride to the south. Wouldn’t his son Medger be eight and ten name days about now? He was riding to help too.
“Wow,” I marveled. “Your vassals
really like you, dad.”
“I take no credit for the loyalty that House Stark has inspired in our followers over the centuries. Also, the man’s grandmother was your thrice-great aunt.” Father said dryly, patting me on the head before rising from the bed. “That being said, this may do well as a lesson in assuming, assigning and giving versus taking responsibility.”
I blinked, then my heart skipped a beat as I started to see the implications in what he’d just said.
“It would have taken several days to prepare for your trip even without the impending visit, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get started on everything else.” Father said, crouching to poke at the hearth. The servants had kept the fire going through the rear hatch on the other side of the wall as usual. I still thought that was overdoing it. The walls had pipes of hot springs water running through them already. “Until I know exactly where you are in everything, you can consider your prior routine suspended. Lest I say otherwise, you will wake at the same time I do, break your fast with me every day, train with me in the yard, sit in front of me when I ride, stand at my side at court, sit by me at meals and feasts, study in my solar while I do my paperwork and otherwise shadow me through the day.” The man set the poker aside and stood to behold me. “We will do this until I know what you can do, what you can’t do, what you need, what you want, and what all of that you need help with. Can you handle all of that, my son?”
Belatedly realising I’d been gaping, I shut my mouth and gave a jerky nod. “I won’t let you down, Father.”
“If you’re going to make promises, at least go for things I don’t already know.” Father sat down in my chair then and motioned with a hand for me to get at it, a firm and blatant message that he wasn’t going anywhere without me. “Go on. Get dressed. And make it proper winter wear.”
“… I’ll just lose it on the way,” I muttered, but I went to get changed with a spring in my step.
The North lacked Acacia or Ayahuasca, but Weirwood served as both. There were two totem animals waging war over my world. Bloodraven is not the Three Eyed Crow. And in my old life, I never looked at the occult as more than a way to evade mainstream censure.
But you don’t realise that a ‘mystic’ text is actually talking about the big bang and molecular physics without adding a few points of proficiency to critical thinking. And it does seem odd in hindsight that a certain fantasy setting was premised on the supernatural having faded enough that only the weakest forms of its expression lingered. The opposite made more sense, didn’t it? When the foundations of the world crumble from beneath you, it’s the
strongest parts of life that have any hope to carry on. Great cities, mass graves, megaliths. Groundwork, sewers, catacombs. Myth, tradition, widespread scripture. Ceremony, mentalism, synchronicity.
In case it wasn’t clear, magic is real.
And in case it also wasn’t clear, plot armor is also real. But seeing as I’m rather short on the latter, I have little choice besides plucking me some crow feathers to spin a nice set of my own.
