The Quest So Stupid It Broke the Royal Seal

I awoke to the sound of trumpets, marching boots, and Mister Fog arguing with a peacock.

"I have diplomatic immunity, you flamboyant feathered rat!" he shouted from the window.

Lilith rolled out of her bed and unsheathed a dagger before realizing she wasn't under attack. "If that bird honks at me one more time, I'm turning it into a belt."

Meanwhile, I was still in bed, pretending to be asleep, mouth half-open, body limp like a dead raccoon at a noble's funeral. "Maybe if I don't move," I whispered, "they'll forget I exist again."

That's when the scroll exploded.

No knock. No warning. Just a BANG, a flurry of glitter, and a poorly animated parchment slamming into my face like it had beef with me specifically.

Lilith caught it mid-fall.

"'By royal decree,'" she read, "blah blah, Cecil, Royal Emissary to Things Too Stupid For Us™, is hereby summoned to undertake a special mission—"

"NO," I said immediately.

She kept reading. "—to the village of Plompshire, where a mysterious magical anomaly is causing livestock to speak fluent Elvish and declare war on their owners."

I blinked.

Galrik burst into the room, mouth full of toast. "Did someone say cow uprising?"

Lilith tossed the scroll onto my lap like a cursed receipt. "You've got five minutes to get dressed. We're riding out with a squad of idiot knights."

Cut to: Me, clinging to a horse like a sack of stolen laundry, galloping through royal farmland while Galrik yelled things like "FOR THE GLORY OF PEACEFUL CATTLE RELATIONS!" and Mister Fog recited war poetry to a confused squirrel.

Lilith, as usual, rode at the front like a blood-slick valkyrie of doom.

And me?

I was stuck in a freshly pressed emissary robe, holding a bell the size of my ego, wondering how I became the kingdom's official ambassador to magical farm disasters.

When we arrived at Plompshire, it was already chaos.

A sheep stood on a crate, delivering a rousing speech to a crowd of chickens and geese.

"—AND THAT'S WHY WE SEIZE THE GRAIN MILLS!"

A terrified farmer clutched his pitchfork. "They've unionized!"

Another villager wailed, "My cow just quoted Nietzsche and told me to get a job!"

Lilith unsheathed her sword.

"No," I said, grabbing her arm. "They sent me for diplomacy."

"You're going to negotiate with a goat that thinks it's Chairman Mao?"

"I mean, I have the bell," I said, shaking it weakly.

The sheep turned, narrowed its eyes, and bleated with menace.

I took a deep breath.

"Take me to your leader," I said, already regretting everything about my life.

The barn they led us to had been converted into what I could only describe as a Communist utopia—if the builders had hooves, no thumbs, and a deep love of hay bales stacked in the shape of a podium.

At the top stood the Supreme Chancellor of the Uprising, a black-and-white cow with a monocle and a red silk scarf. She stared down at me with all the contempt of a tenured professor forced to explain basic algebra to a spoon.

"I am Comrade Bovina," she mooed. "Speaker for the oppressed. Advocate of the muzzled. Friend to the trampled."

"You're a cow," I said, diplomatically.

She blinked. "You're a bipedal meat stick. Let's not cast the first hoof."

Mister Fog leaned in. "She's got you there."

Behind me, Galrik had formed a protective wall with his arms and was whispering "I will not eat the revolutionaries" like a mantra. Lilith stood motionless, visibly restraining every urge to start the world's most politically incorrect barbeque.

I cleared my throat and bowed. "Your Excellency, I am Cecil, Royal Emissary of—"

"We know who you are," she interrupted. "We intercepted your scroll. Also, the crow told us."

I looked up.

A crow wearing a tiny crown gave me the finger.

Bovina continued. "You've come to crush our movement. To put our minds back in shackles. To turn our pastures into prisons."

"Actually," I said, "I came because my government sent me and I have zero personal ambition or opinions whatsoever. I'm just here to figure out why the hell you can talk."

The animals muttered amongst themselves. A pig in tiny glasses passed a note to the cow. She read it, then gave me a wary glance.

"There was… a noise. A burst of light in the old wizard's hut two nights ago. Since then, we've become… aware."

I nodded. "Ah. Accidental magical sentience."

"Yes. And now we want voting rights, land ownership, and the right to throw our owners into the mud pits if they ever make another 'moo moo goes the cow' joke."

I turned to my party. "Thoughts?"

Mister Fog: "I support their demands. I always suspected livestock were oppressed philosophers."

Lilith: "Burn it all."

Galrik: "I think the pig winked at me. I'm scared."

I sighed.

This was politics now. This was my life.

I turned back to Comrade Bovina. "Would you be open to a treaty? Something that grants you basic rights but doesn't involve publicly humiliating the nobility?"

She squinted. "Will we get hats?"

"…Yes."

"Big ones?"

"Enormous."

She extended her hoof. "Then we have a deal."

By the end of the day, I'd negotiated the First Accord of Plompshire, which granted sentient livestock one pasture of autonomous self-governance, biannual hat deliveries, and a statue of Bovina made entirely out of cheese.

Back at the capital, the Queen stared at the treaty in silence for a full minute before saying, "This is… somehow both treason and genius."

"I try to hit the middle ground," I said.

She sighed. "Fine. You've earned a break."

"Oh thank gods—"

"Your next assignment is a haunted opera house run by sentient wigs."

"…I'm going to need a bigger bell."

TO BE CONTINUED.