The Kingkillers

[Thaumantica]

There was an explosion at the center followed by several louder bursts and screams from men and women close to the action! "No one puts the electric kettle on high, pitch it down won't you?!" a shrill Nievish woman demanded before Engwahl crows asked for the same. The Cantignian cook removed his pan at the center of their communal yurt with much chagrin, shouting back at how he could leave a permanent scar on them while they listed the ways they might kill him.

"Do any of you know why we're here?" the Nievishwoman inquired, "suffering a Cannie's oil burns on the New Year? Is this hell, or has Engwahl won once and for all?"

"If we'd won my sock would be in your mouth, love, and my . . " the Engwahlian began before the Cantignian slapped a sorry series of spitting sausages of on both of their plates. "We're here to kill a king, only our Lady Pherson has not determined with God which one yet." The Cannie said.

The Nievishwoman sighed and facepalmed, "save me, a Pherson is behind this?" and she was hysterical now, at least for theatrical effect pushing the plate away, "I'd not eat from a Pherson plate. I side with MacBain, don't I, and advise ye do the same!"

Still this woman, this spy known as Rosygyn Wilmette ate eventually after the other two ignored her outburst. "And so, you know, it has to do with her treatment of the Florists Union two revivals ago, okay?" she asked before ranting on for a time about angry dealings between Caitekurke Communalists.

"Sooo'rrre," the Cantignian who would be know thus as Blue said, "my name's Blue, and I'd like you to shut the fuck up and listen Rosygn. You won't know my name down-Cannie or above, and I fetch this Engwahlian won't treat you his.

"I will call him sorry-Engwahlian-fuck because . . " Rosygn began before the Engwahlian shouted back "ELI, OKAY? WHAT IS WITH YOU NIEVES?"

"For 693 years you held us as prisoner," Wilmette replied, "now you want to put the crown back on? Fuck you, fuck Yeovil and fuck this delusional whore Pherson down-Cannie."

Blue, the Cantignian, slapped a trio of manila folders on the orange dusty ground. "Pick one up, of course we will trade before our night is through, the Premier has put guards outside this yurt to ensure we stay in here until we each pick a mission we can carry out."

 

[Thaumantica]

FOLDER 1: Operation Butterus

A Thaumantican Communal Revolutionary with military contacts enters Jydsken with a certain plan to assassinate the monarchs of the Two Kingdoms or Northlaw Communes. A Nieve might serve this mission, but an Engwhalian would suffice. You will embed with the East Jydsk and bring them to the event horizon for us to decide the fate of the north.

FOLDER 2: Operation Butterboy

Turning Prince Haglia remains a core and primary mission of the Order. You cannot do this yourself, agent, and will instead venture into the Meridian to inspire invitations for his lust and money. Somewhere along this you will kill or ransom him.

FOLDER 3: Operation Buttergirl

You should kill the Csengian Jezebel but you can't, you should return to Csengia but you will not. You will place a Tarusan bomb in Uicheon.

 

[Thaumantica]

Within the communal yurt the Engwahlian, Ian, had been forced into selecting Operation Buttergirl: an incursion into Tianlong, the most dangerous and harrowing possible mission. Sourcing Tarusan material would be the easiest part, all reckoned, but he immediately denied getting captured explosives from Gutarike to Tianlong’s celestial capital would be even remotely possibly.

“I’m not a bloody terrorist, and Rosygyn you’ll find buttering that boy is not well within your material possession!” Ian bemoaned as the Nievishwoman pushed up her tits.

“Why the hell not, I’m as fetching as any lass in the . .” She declared before Blue, the Cantignian, slapped Ian’s ass.

“Haglia’s after boy’s bums, he’s smitten for pricks, dandy for wee willies . .” Blue said while Rosygn fell in love then with the Jydsk mission. “Fine then, kill a Queen and become one - that’s how that works I’m certain. It’s settled then, I bid you as the Austwegians say: Off Wienersayin’!”

“Rosygn, hold a moment dearie, look at this.” Ian demanded as he found a message attached to the cork he had just pulled from a wine bottle.

“It reads this: ‘Ian, if you’ve let them bully you into Uicheon you’ve failed - of course you cannot slip on a balaclava and bomb the bloody Tianese! Charles is the Cantignian, say hello to Charles Dugwhen, he has failed by not trusting you and selecting the bullocks mission of partying in the Meridian. And Rosygnyn, my fellow Nieve, you will achieve nothing in the north because you still think you are someone special …”

A few moments later Aelis Pherson entered the yurt with a pensive look, but by the scent of her they soon knew she must be incredibly high. “Children of the Order you have failed my test, and now I must teach you to work together. Make friends now, make family, and know soon all of us will be lovers before leaving this communal yurt.”

“You’ve lost it mum,” Rosygyn, “I’m so very sorry God dinna let you die, but you’re delusional and you do your namesake justice with this dead liver tripe!”

“My ego died as yours will too Rosygyn, I merely want to share this gift without strangling life out of you as happened to me. If you wish to be an individual, a selfish one, go on then and leave this yurt. Walk to the coast and swim home, or perhaps sell your body to the truckers and seamen betwixt?”

And so it was on the unaffiliated Commune of Rememory Valley held dear a couple of Thaumanticans for several days of the new year, agreeing one and all not to emerge to kill a King until they had killed one another and emerged as one.

 

[Thaumantica]

On the second day arguments continued as surely as the smoke, marijuana swirling and escaping above while their food ran out. Aelis Pherson herself did not guard the escape but rifleman did, clicking to unsafe and reminding Rosygyn she was an "absconding slut from the north-end" of Caitekurke when she attempted a witching hour escape. Folding in they became less communicative on the third day, imbibing only water and the pipe hand carved by the indigenous of this colonized land.

Blue, who was known as Charles, was the first to hallucinate and describe a vision from beyond. "I was there again, sure as awake with you here, but it wasn't them it was a wolf. Instead of the Mazzanine Commune driving in and shooting down my, my everyone, my first parents and communal parents, it was wolves jumping and tearing at their necks . . . We do not have wolves in Cantignia, a dingo can steal your chicks sure, but I saw them . . the Mazza as wolves!"

Next came Rosygn, crying throughout the entire third day, claiming she had seen Jesus on the fourth day and that he had told her to sully home with prayers. None believed her until upon the next witching hour when she writhed and screamed without tears. "THIS IS HELL!" Rosygyn squealed before muttering under her breath prayers and communal poems taught to her before she was yet an individual or a woman. Ian spoke of sparrows carrying messages between the communes and was quite certain a sparrow was with them in the room until he went silent too on the fifth day.

With them passed and in their own deprived dreams Aelis, the spiritual advisor of the Cantignian Communal Covenant, left them to wake in their own time together or alone. Rosygyn later dragged the two men together, resting them with hands folded as if they were going to the grave, and called upon Christ to listen before breaking down and confessing that she never believed.

Busting out of the tent no riflemen greeted her, only the Cantignian desert in dark. She wasn't out there escape now, rather, to bring them something to die with. There she saw an apparition as well, perhaps, a pack of dingoes were eating what the Thaumantic Troopers had left behind. Licking wrappers and snarling after barbecued bones while Rosygny sought after a desert flower that did not exist.

True to her Nievish self Rosygn had been hoarding a morsel this entire time, denying herself and her rivals that, but now as she watched the country canines licking after each others lips and finding minor feud in sharing or fighting over scraps with their tight ribs she was ashamed of herself.

The protein bar, made in Nieveland of fish and oats, she took in to her mouth and chewed into a slurry before returning to the communal yurt and pressing her mouth against Ian the Engwahlian and pushing the contents into his mouth and then transferring over to Blue Charlie. Both returned coughing and spitting her slurry out before collecting it again confused and thankful.

"I am no one," Rosygyn confided, "and we mustn't let any one before us."