Daruvian’s kiss hit Joe like one of those kinky, pink leather whips—the ones that Ball Squires were be-knighted with. “I shall find my Champion Courser,” Joe found himself saying. “Not even Gay Satan could stand in my way now.”
And then he was running away from Daruvian. He had no idea where he was going.
He fell down a really twisty stairwell.
He ran until he was outside, in middle of the Gay Training Grounds.
Which was empty, save for the occasional falling snow-flake. It was cold up here, in the Mountain Fortress of Gayitude.
Joe paused, breathless, unsure of where to go and confused as to why the courtyard was empty. Usually Dreadnok (the recruits called him "the dread cock" was training squires now. Eventually he spotted Dreadnok, who was leaning against a stone wall with an arm draped across his face, shouting numbers very loudly. Joe ran to him, curious.
“NINETY NINE!” Dreadnok cried. “ONE-FUCKING-HUNDRED!” He suddenly twisted around. He saw Joe and frowned. He said, “I didn’t know you were training with us today.”
“Training?” Joe stared around the empty courtyard.
“Training,” Dreadnok said, his face deadly serious. “We’re playing ‘Uncle Touchems’.”
Joe stared.
“It’s the best training tool I’ve ever seen. Really gets the boys good and gay. All the agility-build squires remove their clothing and go hide, and then I try to find them and poke them in the asshole with this—” he scooped up a pike from the ground and waved it in Joe’s face. “See? They’re allowed to run—I always catch ‘em, though. It’s like a sexy cocktail—” and at this Dreadnok paused meaningfully for a very long time.
Joe waited, and was about to leave when Dreadnok continued, “—a sexy COCKtail of hide-and-seek, tag, the Battle Server, and weekends at my Uncle’s house.”
Dreadnok’s eyes suddenly stared over Joe’s shoulder, and his face became quite stern. Joe turned to see what was up. There was Cikel, standing completely naked in the middle of the courtyard. He was waving.
“SQUIRE CIKEL!” Dreadnok cried, “WHAT IN THE NAME OF chadz DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?!”
Cikel just smiled and waved.
“Excuse me, Joe,” Dreadnok grunted. “I have to go discipline Cikel. We’ve gone through this training exercise a hundred times, and a hundred times has the point gone right over his head.” Dreadnok jogged towards Cikel, pike in hand.
Joe frowned. The point, he suspected, usually went somewhere else.
Joe resumed running dramatically towards his destiny.
And where was that, exactly?
Joe wasn’t sure. Usually he’d ask Kesh, but Kesh had locked himself in his room as of late and refused to talk to anyone, only occasionally slipping notes under the door.
WITCHCRAFT might know where he could find Courser. After VC Day and FCC’s defeat, he/she/it/whatever had settled into a little cottage in a terrifying, haunted swamp forest thing in the north. Kind of like Yoda, but gender confused. Word had it that she was giving out free oracle-advice stuff, like a fortune teller or something.
That’d probably be helpful.
He ran to the stables, just outside the castle walls, where he began searching for the least shitty horse. He walked up and down the stalls, interrogating individual animals. They all turned out to be in terrible shape, except the donkeys. They, at least, were not limping.
He grabbed the reigns of three donkeys and led them outside. They’d have to do.
The closest to him cleared its throat. “Sire,” it said, “I’m sure I speaketh on all our behalves when I declare that we are honored to serve so renowned a horseman as yourself.”
Joe stopped the little train of horses and stared at the talking one. This was surprising.
“Truly,” it continued, utterly chivalrous, “shall we enjoy the skillful, gentle spurring of thine eighth-level-riding feet!”
Joe frowned. Donkeys usually didn’t talk.
Unless they were loomed. Horses got smarter as they got loomed, and apparently donkeys did the same…
“Verily will we serve you, and tryeth to equal thine chivalry and skill. Our breeding is such that we might stand-to the task!”
Joe looked around. “Y’all are fully-loomed, you’re telling me?”
“Yes my liege! Bred and born for battle!”
Joe put up a hand. “Please, please stop. What about you two?”
“Chea,” the other said, its voice deep, chocolaty, and ghetto as fuck. “When I get galloping I ain’t fuckin’ ‘round nigga.”
Joe looked to the last horse, noticing just now that it had glasses on. It stuttered for a bit, and finally said, “Y-yes.”
Joe slowly raised his right hand, which hovered in the air as if expecting a high-five. He then very deliberately slapped the glasses off the donkey’s face. “You’re fully-loomed, you don’t need those.”
The donkey blinked.
So, Joe would be riding three unfortunately sentient donkeys. A brave, knightly donkey; a gangster mother fucker; and a nerd.
He was tempted to go get a swaybacked rouncey or something to replace the donkeys, but he knew these would be faster, and time was important to him.
He lined the three donkeys up along the dirt road outside, stringing the lot of them together.
It was time to establish some ground-rules, what with time being of the essence.
He hopped onto the back of the first donkey, then turned around to address the rest of them. “Alright boys! Since there are no good horses here and I’m in a hurry, I’m going to have to try something different. I’m going to have to ride you to death, individually, starting with the foremost animal and working my fat, heavily armored ass down the line as those underneath me collapse from exhaustion.”
“I’m gonna rotate donkeys every few hours. If you move slowly, I’ll just sit on you longer.”
He put dug his heels into the side of the donkey underneath him. “Hiyaa! Let’s go, Shakespeare!”
“Yes my liege-lord!”
Joe kind of like this one. The others quietly trotted along behind them for a bit, and the only sound was of wind howling through cold, mountain crags. Finally, the nerdy one said, “S-sir, where are we going?”
Somewhere out there, his sexy, luscious Courser was waiting for him. “We’re bringing sexy back,” Joe said. “We’re bringing back my sexy.”
In the back, the ghetto horse mumbled something about crackers. Joe had indeed packed some, but he wasn’t going to share any.
Poll