“I’m Bland Snark. We’ve met multiple times.”
Ham now remembered the boy and took him into his chambers. He gave Bland a seat by the fire and brewed a pot of tea. “Bland, you seem… different.”
“That’s because I’m the Pink-Eyed Raven now,” said Bland (the Pink-Eyed Raven) (now).
“Oh… Well, I don’t know what that means. You’ve given me no context, and you’ve stated that you’re the Pink-Eyed Raven extremely confidently, as if that’s something I’m supposed to understand immediately. Are you just going around telling people you’re the Pink-Eyed Raven and expecting them to understand that?”
“It means I can see things that happened in the past,” said Bland. “And I can see things happening now, all over the world.”
Ham shot a skeptical look at Bland.
“For example,” said Bland, “before I came in here, you were trying to eat a book.”
“Shhhhh!” said Ham. “My lady friend Chilly is asleep in the other room. She can’t know about that.” Chilly had just had sex with Ham for the first time the other night, after he’d promised to stop eating books for good.
“I’ve come to tell you about a vision I’ve had,” said Bland. “It’s about Jon. No one knows but me. You see, Jon isn’t really my father’s son. He’s the son of Yomomma Snark, my aunt. I watched her give birth to him. Now I’ve just got to find out who the father is.”
“My Gods,” said Ham. “When I was at Citadel State, I very conveniently came across an old septon’s papers. There were thousands and thousands of septons’ diaries, but luckily I only ever looked at this specific one. What an incredible, plot-advancing coincidence. This septon, well, he said he annulled RayRay Grandslam’s marriage to Elitist Martell and held a secret marriage ceremony for RayRay and Yomomma Snark. If that’s true, and if they are Jon’s parents, then that means that Jon isn’t a bastard at all. Can you use your visions to see if RayRay and Yomomma ever conceived a child?”
Bland’s eyes shot backward into his head and crusted over with a pinkish-red color. He was wanking back into the history of the world. “I’ve got something,” Bland said. It was Yomomma Snark and RayRay Grandslam, in bed together, approximately nine months before Jon was born. “It’s promising, but to be honest, Ham, I’ve never had sex before, so I’m not sure if this is it.”
“Don’t worry, Bland, I know all about sex now,” said Ham with a proud grin. “Describe it to me, and I’ll tell you everything, champ.”
“Well, they’re in bed together,” said Bland.
“Naturally.”
“RayRay is lying down on his back.”
“Oh… okay,” said Ham nervously.
“And my aunt Yomomma is sitting on top of him.”
“Huh?”
“And now she’s bouncing up and down on him, facing away from him.”
Ham spit out his tea. “She what?”
“So is this sex? RayRay Grandslam… is he Jon’s father?”
“I…” Ham’s voice cracked. “No?”
“Do you not know?” asked Bland.
“We can figure this out. We’ve got this. I’ve got this,” said Ham, drying his palms on his shirt. “So where’s his, you know, where’s his penis during all of this?” asked Ham.
“Inside her privates?”
“See, that’s sex. That’s sex right there,” said Ham, feigning confidence. “And she’s?”
“She’s on top of him.”
Ham slammed his fist down on the table in frustration. “Then—then that’s just not sex!” Ham began to sweat profusely. “I’m so very confused.”
“Wait, now they’re changing positions,” said Bland.
“Okay, good,” said Ham, exhaling a sigh of relief. “I bet they’re right about to start having sex.”
“Wow!” said Bland with a grin from ear to ear.
“Is it sex?” asked Ham, smiling. “Is it, boy? It must be. I’m sure it is. If that’s not the reaction of a boy who’s just seen sex for the first time, I don’t know what is.”
“She’s on all fours,” said Bland, “and he’s behind her. Sex… sex is incredible.”
“I’ve got bad news,” interjected Ham. “That’s not sex, Bland. There is no way.”
“But his privates are in her privates—”
“It’s not sex!” shouted Ham. “It simply cannot be. I have had it, and frankly I’ve had it!”
“But Ham,” he pleaded.
“No ‘buts,’ Bland!” Hamwell was upset. He stood up and began pacing around the room, wiping sweat from his forehead with a towel. “How in the seven hells could it come close to being sex if they’re not even facing each other? Answer me this, Bland? Huh? How?”
“I… I don’t know,” admitted Bland. “I’m sorry.”
“Now is this… is this monster,” began Ham, “is he ever going to get on top?”
“Wait, he is! He’s getting on top now.”
“Thank the Gods,” said Ham, relieved. “Sex… is imminent.”
“Okay, she’s lying down,” said Bland.
“Sounds about right,” nodded Ham.
“And he’s on top.”
“Here we go.”
“And now he’s moving down her body.”
“I, I don’t see why he’d be doing that considering—”
“He’s kissing her privates,” said Bland. “His head is completely in her privates.”
“Gods dammit!” yelled Ham. “Is that even something? That’s not sex, so what in the seven hells is it? Could that even possibly feel good? What are they trying to do here! What is that supposed to even be?” Ham’s face had turned completely red. He sat down and drank a glass of water. “I feel dizzy.”
Bland began to perk up. “Wait, Ham. Something’s happening. He’s still kissing her privates, but now he’s completely rotated. He’s kissing her privates, but she’s kissing his privates at the same time!”
There was no response.
“Ham?”
Ham had fainted. Bland continued to watch his aunt and RayRay, but the two lovers soon finished up and went to sleep. How do I find out if he’s the father? thought Bland. Then an idea struck him. Bland used visions to determine if Yomomma Snark had any other intimate encounters with men around that same time period. Unless yams and cucumbers of various sizes and shapes counted, she hadn’t. RayRay Grandslam simply had to be Jon’s father. I knew it was sex, thought a satisfied Bland.
“Ham, wake up,” said Bland, lightly slapping the side of his face.
“Huh?” said Ham, regaining consciousness.
“Ham, I’ve solved it. RayRay Grandslam is Jon’s father. And I had another vision of his birth. Jon Dough is not Jon Dough. He’s Eggie Grandslam, the true heir to the Pointy Chair.”
“My Gods,” said Ham.
“Do not tell anyone,” said Bland, making his way to the door, “Oh and Ham…” Bland stopped at the doorway. “It was sex.” He exited and set out for his old bedroom.
“Chilly,” whispered Ham. “CHHHHIIIIIIIILLLLLLLLLYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!”
Dennys
Land, Your Grace! Land approaches on the horizon!” cried the deckhand boy to Dennys, who stood stoically at the helm of the ship, watching her dragon children soar through the sky playing a game of “bite-onto-each-other’s-tail-as-hard-as-possible-and-go-deadweight-plummeting-to-the-earth.”
“For the last time, Piffley, that is the floor of the boat,” Dennys sighed. “This ship has a floor made of wood. Wood looks sort of like land on the horizon, except, no Piffley. No it does not at all. You need to stop looking down at your feet when on the lookout for land on the horizon.”
A drunken Beerion stumbled up to the boy and smacked him sternly on the shin. “Come now, Piffley. We don’t want Her Grace to go mad on the journey to Drunknstoned, do we? Be a good lad and sweep the top of my head. I’m afraid I fell asleep in the dustiest corner of this ship’s brothel again last night.”
“The ship does not have a brothel, m
y lord.”
“Do not be an idiot, Piffley, of course the ship has a brothel. Down below. Immediately next to the galley.”
“My lord, that is the room where the cook stores the dead walruses that wash aboard. Mm-mm-mm. Walrus on a stick. Walrus on a plate. Those cooks sure do know what they are doing with those piles of dead walruses that they keep in that room. That room that is not a brothel. Beerion?”
“Sweep. My. Head.”
“Aye, my lord,” Piffley said, still proud that he had just found land for the tenth time on this voyage already.
“Now, Your Grace,” Beerion started cautiously, “the boy does provoke a question most intriguing.”
“Oh does he?”
“It’s just, well, we have been traveling for quite some time now. Are you sure we are approaching Drunknstoned? Our rations run scarcer each day. The Clothkhaki grow impatient on these ships without ample space for their horses to roam and play horse-and-go-seek.”
Dennys turned and looked down at Beerion. “Have you heard the story of the Dragon and the Dwarf?”
“Your Grace?”
“There was once a great queen. Let’s call her Dennyz, with a z. And she was, let’s say, a dragon. Actually three dragons.” As she spoke the sky began to darken, and the dragons stopped their game to begin circling the ship. “One day a dwarf, whose name was, hmmm, I don’t know, what is a good name for a dwarf, hmm, Beerion, questioned the three dragons’ sense of direction toward their home. A home where they rightfully belonged and had a perfect internal compass toward.”
“This can’t possibly be a story that already existed—”
“And the three dragons did not like having their sense of direction questioned! They did not like it so much that one day they killed everything in the entire world!” Draggin, Dragun, and Jragon lowered even closer to the ship.
“Your Grace,” Beerion stammered, watching the sky, fear in his eyes. “I meant no disrespect. I am sure we will arrive in Drunknstoned in no time at all!”
“I, Dennys Grandslam, Mother of Dragons, Daughter of the Land of Drunknstoned, Rightful Heir to the Pointy Chair, Breaker of Chains, and Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, can hear the call of my home. I will tell you, dwarf, when we are near! And until that day, I suggest you keep your mouth shut.”
The ship came to a screeching halt as it bottomed out on the sand. “We are here,” said Dennys.
The castle of Drunknstoned protruded magnificently over the high mountains that guarded it from the coast. Just as magnificent as I remember from years ago, Dennys thought. Yes, yes. Magnificent and beautiful. She squinted her eyes to take a closer look. The castle had completely gone to shit, she realized.
During Stankass Boaratheon’s tenure at Drunknstoned, the fortress was laid largely to waste. Whispers around the Seven Kingdoms said he had gone mad at some point after first sticking his penis inside Smellisandre and before first lighting a person on fire to allegedly gain a strategic advantage.
An obsession with burning people alive for even the smallest gain possessed Stankass. To ensure his breakfast did not contain any food-borne pathogens, a threat he did not understand at even the most basic scientific level, he would sacrifice fourteen of his most valiant men to the Fire Man. To be sure his pillow was properly fluffed before he laid his head down for rest, he would burn ten of his best pillow fluffers.
Time proved this practice to be an unsustainable way to govern a city. When he finally saw fit to move north and march his army toward Casablacka, he left behind sixty villagers to keep Drunknstoned under Boaratheon reign and then promptly shot flaming arrows into their quarters and asked the Fire Man in return to keep those men safe.
Thus, as Dennys and her cohorts made their way inside the walls of Drunknstoned, they were greeted only by the ashes and bones of sixty villagers. Sixty villagers, who will now be named: Christopher. Sixty of Stankass’s best Christophers died that day he rode for Casablacka.
“My legs could use a rest and my tummy a cold ale,” Beerion complained to Dennys. “Must you really walk through every single empty tower and stare off into the distance before saying, ‘Shall we begin?’ and then leaving? Leaving, I might add, just to do the same fucking thing in the next tower?”
Dennys pushed open a hearty oak door to reveal the room at the top of the tower they had been slowly ascending. She walked to the window and stared dramatically into the deep blue ocean. The jagged, dragon-toothed coastline cut into the waves like a stick of butter cutting through something much softer than butter. She turned around and looked to Beerion, Ms. Andei, and Dog Shit.
“Shall we begin?” she said absentmindedly and left the room to walk back down the stairs.
“Enough!” Beerion screamed. “Begin what?!”
Dog Shit tensed his sword arm, roused by the dwarf’s moment of insolence. Stress was in the air. It was moments like this when he wished he had a butthole to clench.
“Your Grace,” Beerion offered, lowering his head in apology for his outburst.
“You would be wise to trust in me at a time like this, dwarf.”
“Your Majesty! Laaaaand!” cried Piffley the deckhand.
“Piffley, it is ‘Your Grace,’ and for the love of the Gods, you are looking through binoculars at the floor of one our ships. We are on the fucking land, Piffley,” Dennys exclaimed.
Piffley looked contently to the west. A job well done, he thought. Land found again.
“—because the Bangsister army has never been defeated in an open field, while trapped by steep mountains to the west and deep, cold water to the east,” Lemme Bangsister bragged as he trotted along on his horse, Horse Slayer. Since becoming crippled, Lemme had felt quite emasculated by Horse Slayer. Every peasant in every corner of the Seven Kingdoms fancied himself a comedian when catching sight of Lemme’s prosthetic. Was it his fault that he’d had his head cut off? Was it his fault that his father gave him a new head made of gold, the most conspicuous material? Was it his fault that the blacksmith who made the head had a slip of the hand while staring at a pretty lady and made the eyes crooked? Yes to all three. And on top of that, there was that damned horse. Always prancing and dancing along with his precious, still-intact head and his correct eyes. The feeling of emasculation grew so powerful that before setting out on their journey to Drunknstoned, Lemme decided to cut off his horse’s butt and replace it with a hump of bronze. This caused Horse Slayer to trot with a very noticeable and debilitating limp. As such, the army had been considerably slowed down due to Lemme’s insistence that he ride in front.
“Aye,” LeBronn said like a fucking beast—God, I love this character. George Martin here. Sorry. “But that’s surely because no Bangsister army has been stupid enough to find themselves in such a situation. You mean to get us all killed traveling like this.”
“You and I both know the only threat to an army this size is these alleged Grandslam dragons we have heard so much about,” Lemme said while jerking off to a corn-husk doll of Cervix he had fashioned for him by the premiere corn-husk sorcerer in King’s Landing Strip.
“Come on, do you need to do that while we’re traveling?” asked LeBronn, disgusted.
“What I do in the privacy of out in the open in front of anyone is nobody’s business. Least of all you. Now, as I was saying, these dragons—if they are real—still pose no threat to our army now that we have developed… the weapon,” Lemme said smugly, tucking his corn-husk doll back into his sock.
“If that weapon works, I’ll give you my left testicle,” spat LeBronn.
“And if that testicle works, I’ll give you my kingdom.”
“What in the seven hells is that supposed to mean?”
“You have had sex with more whores than my brother. I am only saying it’s odd that no word of a ‘Bastard LeBronn’ has made it back to us from the brothels.”
“You’re saying I’ve got bad balls? I’ve got great sperm, Lemme! Swimmers down there!”
“Of course you do,” Lemme smirked
. “No need to get defensive.”
“Defensive positions!” cried the First Guard. The Bangsister army halted. “My lord,” he continued to Lemme, “there is a man up there. Two hundred paces, straight ahead.”
“Calm, calm, sir, erm, First Guard, man…”
“My name is Ser Pennybottom.”
“Of course it is.”
“We went to Kingsguard School together.”
“We surely did, Ser…”
“Pennybottom, my lord.”
“Yes, and may I help you, Ser…”
“Pennybottom.”
Lemme distractedly fumbled with his sock, trying to get ahold of the corn-husk doll with which he had some unfinished business to attend to.
“There is a man just ahead of us, my lord.”
“There is a what—oh yes! The man ahead of us. A most keen eye, Ser Unnamed Knight. A most keen eye indeed. Why, I may be speaking prematurely, but we could use an eye like that in the Kingsguard. Of course we would need to send you to the school—”
Ser Pennybottom sighed. “Yes, my lord. Now about the man, shall we send a rider toward him?”
“Why, let me handle this one. Whether this encounter requires diplomacy or force, I am surely the best man for the job.” LeBronn rolled his eyes as Lemme urged Horse Slayer forward.
“She loves me. She loves me nut. She loves me. She loves me nut,” sang Piffley as he wandered around plucking flowers in the field. He kept his eyes glued to the ground, oblivious to the massive Bangsister army that was but a hundred yards away.
“You there, boy,” said Lemme as Horse Slayer pulled up beside young Piffley. “What are you doing out here?”
“Well howdy, mister! My name’s Piffley, and I’ve been sent to pick flowers for Queen Dennys.”
Lemme froze and looked back toward his men, who had begun to unload and set up camp for the soon approaching night.
“Queen Dennys you say…” Lemme said with an ounce of worry in his voice. “She sent you to pick these flowers?”
“Well ooooowee, mister! She sure did!”
“You were with her recently?”
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