Jragon instantly dove straight at the alluringly rare miniature pony corpse.
“Jragon, no!” shouted Dennys. But it was too late. A little ejection pod containing Dennys came shooting out of Jragon’s back, landing her safely on the surface of her queen ship. Dennys could only watch as Jragon was completely skewered by the massive blade. In his final movements, he squeaked slowly further down onto the sword and got his tongue just an inch away from the horse-pony-horse corpse. A lucky wind gust brought the delicious corpse to his tongue, and he died happy. The happiest he had ever been.
Yourmoms quickly had his men remove the sword and use it to cut off Jragon’s head for good measure. Then they used the giant sword to mince up the rest of his body into bite-sized pieces to be extra safe. Then they used the sword to mince up those pieces into even smaller pieces that were practically liquid just in case. Finally, they checked the liquid’s pulse.
Dennys said a bad word under her breath.
“What?” asked the soldier closest to her.
“Oh, sorry.” Dennys said the same word again, but louder so that he could hear her. The word was “bollocks.”
At the same time, a Funsullied ship was boarded by enemy sailors. They used swords to force the Funsullied into a line on the deck. “Which one of you,” cried out the enemy commander, “is Ms. Andei?”
Ms. Andei winced in fear. Who would sell her out? None of the Funsullied spoke. “I’ll say this one more time. Which one of you is the woman called Ms. Andei?” More silence. Then a sailor finally spoke. She had lived down the street from Ms. Andei her entire life. “I’m really sorry, I have no idea who that is.” Ms. Andei’s friends and compatriots nodded in agreement or offered halfhearted shrugs. “If you could describe what she looks like, I’m sure we’d all be happy to help.”
Ms. Andei glanced from the spacious escape raft that was being covertly lowered into the water to the Funsullied soldiers lined up on the middle of the deck. She decided to take the risk. She ran straight to the middle of the line of soldiers. “Are you kidding me?” she screamed at her so-called friends. “You don’t know who I am? I’m Ms. Andei. I’m popular, and cool, and relevant, and—” Before she could finish the sentence, hands grabbed her, gagged her, and handcuffed her. Ms. Andei howled in pain as she was taken away.
Content with their prisoner, Cervix’s fleet began to recede toward the Strip’s harbor. Dennys knew that they expected her to follow, but her hands were tied. She could not let Ms. Andei perish at the hands of Cervix’s men. No, no. Far too stinky of hands. Follow she did.
The silver-haired queen looked up at the golden-haired queen from the foot of the stone wall where Beerion had negotiated a momentary truce. Ms. Andei stood on a precarious platform close to the edge, staring at Dog Shit. A dozen archers watched Cervix, arrows aimed at the Dragon Queen, ready to end the negotiation before it had begun. Cervix held up her right hand, palm open. Beerion knew this could go one of two ways.
Cervix slowly closed her hand into a fist, and Beerion winced. Solemnly, she stuck out her thumb and pinky finger. She rotated her hand from side to side and said to the archers flanking her, “Hang ten, my dudes.” Somehow, her lips did not curl into even the slightest of smiles while she said it. The archers obeyed her signal and put away their weapons. Beerion sighed in relief. He approached his sister.
“The Queen in the South, Dennys Grandslam, demands that you surrender.” Cervix did not respond. Beerion’s voice softened. “Sister, your reign may be over, but think about your baby. Your child—my dear nephew—doesn’t have to die this way. There are easier ways to abort him. You could bludgeon your stomach with a veal mallet, or put leeches in your vagina, or do the worm on a bed of nails. Several of my unborn children have gone this way, and I’ve never heard a single complaint from them or their prostitute mothers. Alternatively you could surrender and give birth to this child, I suppose.”
Cervix said nothing to her brother. The distance between her advisors and the rebels below the fortress was so great that the half-foot-tall Beerion appeared as only a speck in the dirt. He was frozen with fear as he spoke to the queen, all the while watching Ms. Andei quake while being held by the executioners. After a moment, Cervix realized she was staring at an actual speck of dirt, and her brother had been pounding his belly with a mallet and making whale noises on the ground further in the distance. She had no idea what he was going on about. The golden-haired queen approached Ms. Andei. “If you have any last words, now is the time.”
Dennys caught Ms. Andei’s gaze and watched in silent horror as Ms. Andei nodded, straightened her body, and triumphantly uttered one word.
“Gasolimno!”
Dragun confusedly looked at Dennys. Was Ms. Andei trying to do the dragonfire command? Did she think it was gasolimno? Gosh, what a moron.
Dennys’s heart sank. That was a message for her. Sort of. She was definitely attempting to say gasolina. Right? There would be no peace. Ms. Andei dropped her head solemnly as she realized her queen would not save her in her hour of need. Tears fell from her face as she prepared for the Building to behead her.
Slowly, Sideburn creeped out from behind the legion of Bangsister soldiers perched atop the city wall. He whispered something in Cervix’s ear, and after a moment of skeptical contemplation, she motioned for the Building to resheathe his sword. Sideburn walked forward and stared into Ms. Andei’s eyes. He cracked all of his knuckles and limbered up before producing a small golden pocket watch.
“You are getting very sleepy, Ms. Andei,” he said, dangling the watch in front of her.
Ms. Andei tried to fight the ensuing yawns with all her might but, alas, zonked herself asleep in an instant.
“You see,” cackled Sideburn, “I’ve trained myself in the dark arts of hypnotism, and I have learned all the most sinister savoir faires. Poor Ms. Andei will do anything I tell her in the suggestible state she is now in.”
“Wake up!” cried Dennys, but it was too late. Ms. Andei was completely hypnotized.
“Now, Ms. Andei,” continued Sideburn, “I want you to dance like a chicken.”
“NOOOOOOOOOO!” cried Dennys. “YOU BASTARD!”
“Bok bok bok!” said Ms. Andei, dancing like an idiotic chicken.
“Heeheehee,” cackled Sideburn. “Now cry for your mommy!”
“I want my mommy! Mommy! I need milk!” shouted Ms. Andei, with no regard for how embarrassing this was.
“YOU HAVE DONE ENOUGH! YOU’LL ROT IN THE SEVEN HELLS FOR THIS, SIDEBURN!” Dennys wept inconsolably.
“Now kill yourself!” said Sideburn.
“Dang,” said Dennys, as Ms. Andei snapped her own neck off. “That’s too bad.” Dennys was so broken up about Ms. Andei’s death that she declared a one-and-a-half-hour lunch break instead of the normal hour-long one. There would be no peace.
The tension between the rival queens and the threat of a successful siege loomed over King’s Landing Strip more than ever before. Alone in her tent, Dennys was haunted by other thoughts. Betrayal was imminent, she knew. She would need to make difficult decisions in the days to come.
At night, Beerion visited Dennys at the opening to her tent. She had been refusing to eat or sleep since Ms. Andei’s death. She only chewed on pieces of expensive salted meats, fishes, fine game hens, oysters, caviar, beef Wellingtons, and chocolates before spitting them out. And she had developed a voracious cocaine habit in order to prevent herself from sleeping.
Beerion spoke. “There’s something you need to know.” Dennys didn’t turn to face him. She already knew what was coming.
“Panda bears eat up to sixteen hours a day.”
“That is correct.” Beerion crossed “Tell Dennys About Panda Diets” off the first line of his Best Man To-Do List, then moved to the next item. “Also, Varysectomy is plotting against you. I told him about Jon.”
“You what?!”
“That’s correct… sixteen hours a day.”
Later that night, Dennys summoned V
arysectomy to the keep where she chained her dragon. He sank to his knees before her, and she began a speech she had only used a handful of times. “I, Dennys Grandslam, first of her name, Mother of Jon Dough, Fucker of Horses, and Aunt of Dragons, I mean, Aunt of Jon, Mother of Horses, and Fucker of Dragons, hereby sentence you to a fate far worse than death. I sentence you to become a double eunuch.”
“Not my butt!” pleaded Lord Varysectomy. “Without my butt I’ll be just like one of those Funsullied. Except without the strength. Or discipline. Or fighting prowess. Or cool name.”
Dennys lowered Varysectomy’s pants. She lifted an enormous sword, carved in iron and encrusted with jewels, and dropped it on her foot because she’d stopped working out ever since she started sleeping with Jon. He did all the heavy lifting, jar opening, and friendship-bracelet braiding around the castle. So Dennys unsheathed a second, smaller sword, which she used to remove the packaging from a third, medium-sized sword. She picked it up and swung it down onto Lord Varysectomy’s backside, slicing his buttocks cleanly off. Varysectomy, howling in agony and humiliation, died.
“Damn. A fate worse than death, this was not,” sighed Dennys, glancing down at the floppy, shapeless butt rolling away on the ground.
There was little time to mourn. The next days were filled with frantic preparations for the raid on the Strip. Troops were rallied, horses and prostitutes were mounted, and black-market organ dealers prepared coolers with ice and plastered “Semiannual Sale” signs through the streets of the Strip’s neighboring cities.
The first major assault would occur on the sea, with Dennys’s ships bombarding the Ironic Fleet from the sea and Dragun raining fire down from the sky. Even with Dragun, the sheer size of the Ironic Fleet meant the battle would be uphill. Thankfully they didn’t encounter any hills in that area of the ocean. Dragun fought with the strength of one thousand men plus one slightly smaller dragon. Fire exploded from the sky, incinerating ship after ship.
Yourmoms unveiled the giant dragon-killing sword once again, this time with a mostly live human baby dangling in front of it. Dragun flew straight toward the tasty baby waiting to be devoured. Dennys would have to think fast if she wanted to get out of this situation, leaving both Dragun and the baby unharmed. But Dennys couldn’t think that fast. She quickly commanded Dragun to send the baby into flames. Dragun burnt it mostly to a crisp, yet somehow left Yourmoms, who’d been cradling the baby with his arms, completely unharmed. Totally overcooked, the baby was now worthless. This infuriated Dragun. He began demolishing ships out of disappointment.
As the Ironic Fleet began to burn and the crews’ spirits began to break, the Ironic soldiers cried out, “Oh, I just LOVE choking on smoke and breathing the smell of my brothers’ burning flesh!” “Gee, Dennys, it’d sure be swell if you could just gouge my eyes out and leave me to bleed to death or worse!” “I’m loving this total destruction of my prosperous and exciting life!” “I definitely didn’t just pee myself!”
While the last survivors’ words bubbled below the surface of the raging sea, the land charge led by the Clothkhaki and Funsullied began on the Strip. The queen’s soldiers fought fiercely until they saw the shadow of Dragun approach from the shore.
“Papa, what is that?” asked a frightened teenage boy serving in the Bangsister army. His armor barely fit him at such a young age.
“Oi, innit I tell ya that you would see a real live dragon one day, son? Innit I done do that den?” spoke his father, a senior officer in the army, proud that his promise had finally come true to his boy—his only boy.
“I love you, papa.”
“I love you too, son.”
“GASOLINA!” Dennys unleashed a blood-curdling scream, turning the father-son duo into ash.
“Pa, what is that giant pile of black dust over there?” asked a nearby teenage boy, also serving in the army.
“Roight-o, son. Innit I dun tell ye that yee’d see a two-meter-tall pile a human ash one day son?”
“I can’t believe it came true.”
“I love you, son.”
“I love you, pa. You know, if we were to die right now due to the incinerating flames of some magical beast, well, that would just be alright with me.”
Dennys flew right past this father-son duo to demolish more densely populated areas of the city. Most of the city dwellers died of fear, and some of them died of unrelated but conveniently timed natural causes right then and there in the shadow of the dragon.
From the center in the capital, the city bells began to chime to the unmistakable tune of the song “We Surrender” by Ed Sheeran and the Bangsister Boys.
Children choked on smoke, and parents dove to protect them from flames. Popsicles sold by street vendors melted at an alarming rate. Chickens laid eggs, and they immediately turned hard-boiled. Dennys brought Dragun to the ground with an earth-shattering thud. Coughing and swerving amid the chaos, Beerion ran up to Dennys on his teeny-tiny legs.
“The bells are ringing. The city surrenders. You need to stop the attack.”
Dennys made no motion to halt her forces. “I am not stopping until Cervix tells me, face-to-face, that the throne is mine. I am not stopping until all the people of this world are free and all the oppressors face their fate. I don’t know how long that will take but probably at least until dinnertime.”
Beerion shook his head. “Six o’clock?”
“Seven-thirty.”
“Thousands will die in that hour and a half, Dennys. Maybe even billions.” He reached to the Best Man of the Queen badge on his cloak. It felt like a lifetime ago that he had designed it himself, back when he’d had hope for the world’s uncertain future and this new, mysterious queen. The badge was made of forged metal, and an intricate circular carving portrayed a man in a tuxedo standing next to a woman in a wedding dress. The man wore a ball and chain around his ankle and appeared to be moping, while the woman seemed to be yelling. She had her arms crossed. Beerion didn’t know what it meant or where he remembered seeing the symbol, but he had modeled the woman on his badge after Dennys as a tribute.
Beerion ripped it off and threw it down the palace steps, where it skewered an unsuspecting wild rabbit. The rabbit began a short-lived but glorious reign as Best Rabbit of the Queen.
Dennys, accompanied by her whiskered new advisor, turned her attention to leading the army deeper into the city toward the Red Queef. Before they moved on, she laid out her strategy. Beerion had never approved of it. He had called it “completely stupid—you clearly don’t understand what a death record means,” but Dennys no longer answered to Beerion. She spoke out loud and clear.
“Funsullied, Clothkhaki, rabbit, and spies. I’ve spent the past months doing research on what the deadliest places in the city are. I have scoured death records and obituaries. I have found that, unequivocally, most people die in orphanages, hospitals, and old folks’ homes. This means that they are the most deadly and dangerous places in the city. We will strike these locations first, with no mercy. It’s the best way to protect the innocent and vulnerable. Are you with me?”
The army whooped and cheered. Clothkhaki reared up on their horses. Funsullied asked around in confusion, trying to find someone who could translate what their queen had just said. The Dragon Queen marched onward.
Cervix
Cervix Bangsister watched as her city was helplessly ravaged, horrified that she might be next but feeling pretty neutral about the crumbling buildings and dying peasants. Maybe I’ll be fine, she thought wishfully. After all, the last time someone penetrated the Red Queef’s defenses, it was hundreds of years ago when the city and the kingdom were taken over by the Grandslams with their dragon army—oh, I am absolutely done for.
Cervix could only watch Dennys fly her dragon over a consecutive row of orphanages, torching them all without hesitation. No matter how much I hate that Dragon Queen, thought Cervix, I can’t help but respect the hell out of the choices she makes.
“Come to mama,” she vengefully muttere
d, before sorrowfully remembering that all her own prepubescent children had passed well before their time. A tear slid down her face—an important sanity check that gravity was working—and a reminder that Cervix never got the chance to teach her children about the simple joys of life: spooning each other, fucking each other, and fucking each other with spoons.
Smoke trailed behind Dragun as he zipped and soared through the sky, leaving a beautiful cursive message for all of the Strip to see: “PREPARE TO BURN: IT’S BURN O’CLOCK.” All the townspeople saw the beautiful handwriting, and although they couldn’t read, they could still deduce from the massive fires and smoking buildings that it was in fact burn o’clock and that they should prepare.
Cervix observed as Dennys flew to the last standing orphanage in the Strip: Pat’s Extra-Broke Orphanage for the Saddest and Most Tragic Kids Who Also Are Bad at Athletics.
“Gasolina!” shouted Cervix from her window, trying to beat Dennys to the punch and undermine her ever so slightly. Dragun unleashed an eruption of flames onto the building in the shape of two prospective adoptive parents shaking their heads “no” and walking out of the orphanage in the hopes of finding better kids.
Luckily, when the ornately shaped flames hit, all the children were in the orphanage’s kiddie pool and thus were saved from the hellish fires. Unluckily, none of those unathletic kids knew how to swim, so they all drowned, and every single one of them got sent straight to the seven hells because of their lame deaths.
Dennys turned her attention to the Red Queef, locking eyes with Cervix at a distance. They both knew that they were staring at each other, and neither wanted to be the first to blink, but they were both so incredibly far away that it would truly be impossible to tell if either one did. This stalemate between the queens went on for two hours.
Lame of Thrones Page 17
