Once supper was done , Lord Father sent Lya and Ben to bed before ordering Bran and Ned to his solar . Once everyone was seated Father ordered Ned to recount his journey from start to finish .
Ned narrated his journey to the Wall, once he reached the part about the Wall itself Ned took a deep breath and began, " The Wall was beyond my wildest imaginations, to read about it is one thing but to see it with ones own eyes is another experience altogether, I saw it and thought there is no way in seven hells that the Wall is built by just men, it had to been built by giants and magic. How could it be anything else? How hasn't it melted if it's just ice in last thousand summers? How is there flowing water on either side of it but this mammoth of ice still stands before my eyes?" , after saying this Ned stood up from his seat and started pacing about the room, "So it couldn't be just ice, it had to be magic, then why did Brandon The Builder, on of the greatest man in his age constructed this monstrosity of a wall ? If it's to guard against Wildlings there is no need for the Wall to be seven hundred feet high, two hundred feet wide at the base and fifty feet wide at the top, It has no need to span from coast to coast ,three hundred miles long, how much resources does it take to construct it, I can't even imagine, how many lives were sacrificed to complete it, the number should be in thousands, the Wall can only be born out of mind of a desperate man, a man who was very very afraid, it can't just be a single man's fear either, an entire people had to be afraid to sacrifice so much for it, why else create an independent organization to exclusively man it, how could this organization survive for thousands of years, Wildlings aren't enough of threat that they require Wall to fight against them, they don't even have proper steel for Gods sake, so Wildlings aren't it. The Wall is built to keep something out, something so terrifying it required the Wall , near enough twenty castles and a minimum twenty thousand strong standing army, what is this threat then, it could only be the Others, they were real, they were mind numbingly terrifying, we didn't annihilate them last time around, we didn't win the Long Night, last eight thousand years were a ceasefire, we just forgot about it, we dismiss them as myths told to keep children in line, but did the Others forget? Even in our own stories we never say that we defeated the Others, we never say we killed the Night King, we say we drove them away and Brandon the Builder built the Wall to keep them out. But the Wall doesn't keep them out , it's a wall, yes it's a magic wall but an inanimate thing doesn't keep anything out, walls of Winterfell won't be any use to anybody if there aren't guards to stand atop it, how could the Wall be any different? So who are our valiant defenders against the Dark? Murderers and rapists, bastards and orphans, okay let's say it is what is available and any man should have the chance to serve at the Wall , are there enough of them to defend us ? No, the Ancient and Honorable Order of Nights Watch consists less than two thousand and five hundred members and only three castles are in use, if the trend continues, Nights Watch will be dead in fifty years, they aren't even able to contain pitiful half starved, untrained, wretched Wildlings , how are they supposed to stand against the Ancient Enemy if it ever returns?", with that Ned ended his ranting and flopped tiredly in to his seat and continued in a subdued voice ," I am not saying Others will return tomorrow or next year or next decade, I am not even saying that they definitely exist, I am saying there is a very small chance that they might exist still, that they might just be waiting for us to drop our guard completely, I am asking can we as Starks , as people of the North ignore the chance of an attack by an enemy so terrifying, that our ancestor built a seven hundred feet tall to keep them out? Can we take the risk Father?", Ned asked with a tiny hint of despair in his voice.
The room was silent, his Father and Bran were looking at him with wide eyes, Bran is shaking lightly and His Father gaped at him. And the silence persisted for quite some time.