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“Hey, Ocean Queen!”
A mer swam towards the rocky shore, blue and gold tail flashing in the sunlight. Lizzie brightened, placing down one last block before jumping down into the water next to him.
“Hello there, Reef!” she splashed him as he pulled himself up to sit on the rocks next to her chests of supplies. “What brings you here?”
“The dark prismarine you asked for, fresh from the monument.” he said, starting to fill up the chest with the blocks. “It’s only a dozen stacks, we’ve run out of dye again.”
“Ah, that’s alright, the palace needs more plain prismarine than dark, I can work with that for a while.”
He nodded, looking up at the unfinished tower. “It looks amazing so far, I’m impressed you’ve managed to get so much done so fast- wait,” he glanced at her, “you’ve been at this all day, did you even stop for lunch?”
Lizzie’s stomach rumbled at the thought of food, and she winced when Reef gave her a look.
“You haven’t been taking breaks, have you?”
“Not exactly.” Lizzie pulled up her sleeve, glancing through the grid inked onto the inside of her arm. Tools, building materials, random bits and bobs- but not so much as a scrap of seaweed.
"I'm out of food," she sighed, "you wouldn't happen to have enough to share, would you?"
Reef scanned his own inventory, frowning. "Nothing made up, but I have the stuff for it," he said, pulling out a crafting table. "Give me a moment."
She blinked, watching as he laid out bowls and fish and pickles with practiced ease. Any other of her subjects would have just given her the ingredients, expecting her to craft the food herself. She was an emperor, after all; she had the most strength, the most experience with crafting magic. But no, Reef summoned his own magic, the ingredients floating just above the table and shredding themself into pieces.
He was surprisingly good at it, fish and pickles and water swirling in even motions, both mixing and heating at once. Most people had enough magic to spark a crafting table into working, could slap together tools or force wheat into becoming bread easily enough, but it was shoddy. The motions would be clunky and slow, one after another. It took experience, training, to be able to make your magic dance like that, smooth and multitasking and exact. Training she didn't know Reef had.
There was a lot she didn’t know about Reef.
The mer had floundered into her territory one day, awkward and uncoordinated as a guppy. He hadn't known where he was, hadn't known what had happened to him; all he'd known was that something was wrong.
It was a familiar sentiment; Lizzie herself had wandered, lost and amnesiac and with an itching under her skin that wouldn't stop until she found her way to the ocean. But she'd at least remembered her name. He'd gone through quite a few options before settling on Reef- almost familiar, he'd said, not quite right, but close enough that he wanted to use it.
Sometimes she wondered if they shared a curse, that the same thing had left them confused and adrift. They had so much in common, after all. And this was one more thing, she thought as thick, steaming fish stew poured itself into the bowls, the magic fading to a stop.
“Eat up,” he said, handing her a bowl with a smile. “You can’t be a good leader if you don’t take care of yourself first.”
It wasn't as good as hand-cooking, no crafted food was, but it was still the best she'd ever tasted.
.
Lizzie flipped through the book, a collection of ancient maps and sea charts, and dropped it in the ‘definitely take’ pile with the others. The shipwreck she and Reef had come across was chock full of books, the captain’s quarters practically a library all on its own, and surprisingly protected from the elements. There were too many books to take back in one trip, but it was a long way from the palace so they’d decided to sort through them first.
“Oh, this one’s right up your alley, why is it over here?”
Lizzie blinked at the book he held up, a leather tome with a spiralling design on the cover and thin geometric markings on the spine. She had thought it didn’t have a title at first, but the pages were filled with the same markings, obviously a language she didn’t know, which is why she had left it in the ‘come back for it later, maybe’ pile.
"You can read that?"
“You can’t?” he asked, incredulous.
She shook her head. “I don’t even recognize the script.”
"Tenehir hem-hina nihur hua, imho yuhuti hele-hm," he read, the foreign words rolling smooth and sibilant off his tongue. It was vaguely familiar, the language breathy and almost like humming, and- oh!
“Pixish!” Lizzie said, snapping her fingers. “I’ve heard it spoken before, by the wandering traders, but I’ve never seen it written.”
But Reef evidently had, she thought, watching his eyes scan through pages without faltering. He knew it well enough to be fluent, well enough that he hadn’t even considered not knowing it. She wondered if he was once close with the traders; although, they never stayed in one place for long outside their desert, and a mer certainly couldn’t live there…
“It’s a book of gods and spirits, their legends,” Reef said, interrupting her thoughts. “Look at this, it speaks of an ancient ocean spirit called the Kraken.”
The illustration was dark, more of a vague suggestion of giant waves and flailing tentacles, and it hurt her heart to look at it. “There’s no Kraken in the ocean,” she said, oddly sure. “The ocean is my empire, I would have met it by now.”
“Maybe the legend is wrong then,” he said, shrugging as he handed the book back.
She put it in the ‘definitely take’ pile anyway.
.
"LIZZIE, LOOK OUT!"
Lizzie yelped as she was suddenly pushed, and heard the unmistakable thunk of a trident striking true. She whipped around, shield at the ready, but it was too late- Reef was gasping, blood clouding the water as he struggled like a fish on a hook, utterly impaled.
She screamed, high pitched and loud enough to echo for miles, powerful enough to create a small shockwave and push the drowned away from him. It snarled, rotten eyes practically glowing with undead rage, but she had the rage of all the oceans roiling in her chest. In what felt like seconds she was tearing it apart, slicing and stabbing and ripping into the whole swarm of undead until they were so much chum clouding the water.
"Reef!" Lizzie cried, diving for him, "Reef, just hold on!"
He lay limp in her arms, skin clammy and cold, and his eyes fluttered shut.
"Reef!" she sobbed, holding him tight. She couldn't lose him, not her best friend, her curse buddy.
His body vanished like she'd held too tight and crushed it, disintegrating into a cloud of bubbles and magic and abandoned belongings.
Lizzie stopped breathing, unable to look away from the pile of Reef's things.
She knew those bubbles.
Bubbles that would be mist outside of the water, magic that drew one back from death and returned them to safety.
A Life-Tether.
But that just didn't make any sense. It took a living empire to form a Life-Tether, the magic of hundreds of people living and working and believing together. It took history and traditions and culture, focused into a shared identity for years until it was strong enough to begin to truly live, to have a soul of its own.
To be able to bind together that soul with the soul of a worthy ruler, so that not even death could break an empire.
Lizzie grabbed Reef's things and bolted, swimming for the palace as fast as she could. It didn't matter how he had a Life-Tether, all that mattered was that she knew where he slept.
She ran to his room, slamming the door open so hard she wouldn't be surprised if it broke.
“Reef!”
He was sitting on his bed, a cushioned indent in the rim of the pool that took up most of the room, hands pressed against his chest, against the spots where the trident tines had poked through. He looked dazed, confused- but most importantly, alive.
She darted to his side, relieved, and he jolted when she touched him.
“You’re okay,” she said gently, knowing how disorienting coming back to life could be, “you’re alive, you’re safe, just breathe.”
“I- I respawned?” he asked, eyes wide. “I don’t- how?”
“We can figure out why later,” she said, reaching over to grab his hand, feel the heartbeat under his skin. "Right now I'm just glad you're alright, Reef."
"Riffs," he whispered.
"What?"
He blinked, seemingly surprised himself. "My name isn't Reef, it's Riffs," he said slowly, eyes unfocused. "Pixlriffs."
And suddenly everything fell into place.
"The Heir of Pixandria," she murmured.
Lizzie had heard about Pixandria, the far off desert kingdom that was home to the Great Vigil. More recently she'd heard of its succession crisis, of King Pixmrov being assassinated and his heir gone missing. It was currently under the rule of the former royal advisor, an odious person Lizzie had luckily only had the displeasure of meeting once so far. She didn’t trust them one bit, and it looked like her instincts were correct.
“The Heir of Pixandria,” he repeated, and then began to glow. Golden light suffused him, a solid flare of magic running deep within him, and then began to melt. The magic dripped off of him like water, leaving scaleless skin in its wake ; human ears instead of fins, nails and fingers instead of webbed claws, and finally, finally, human legs instead of a tail. A golden chain hung around his waist, so tight it dug into the skin, and in seconds it corroded and cracked apart, the last of its magic spent.
The last of its curse broken.
“Oh,” Reef- no, Pixlriffs breathed, and then smiled. “I remember now.”
.
Lizzie faceplanted onto Pix’s bed with a groan, burying her face in the blankets.
“Well hello to you too, Ocean Queen,” Pix said dryly, “so nice of you to barge into my room completely unannounced.”
She rolled over to give him a look and winced as her elytra dug into her back. “What, I can’t visit one of my closest allies without a formal notice?” She sat up and undid the harness, shoving the gossamer wings in her inventory. “Should I have sent a royal messenger a week ago to announce my imminent arrival?”
“I was thinking more a comm message saying you were coming over, but sure.” He dropped the papers he was reading on his desk and turned his chair to face her. “What’s up?”
Reminded of why she’d come, Lizzie flopped back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. “Joel is being confusing,” she whined, “he keeps adding things to our trades, much more than we agreed on- like today! He sent extra terracotta! And moss and flowering azalea bushes- I didn’t even ask for those!”
“Alliance gifts aren’t that out of the ordinary,” he pointed out, raising an eyebrow, “You yourself sent me that extra fish the last time I asked got prismarine, and I didn’t freak out over it.”
“But I think it means he wants to court me!” she burst out, covering her face with her hands. She didn’t know what to do with that; friendship, she understood. Allies, enemies, even that strange quasi-possessive you-are-so-important-to-me-but-I-don’t-know-why feeling that drew her to the Codfather; all of that, she understood on some level. But courting love, romance…
“Hey,” he poked at her shoulder until she sat up, sitting down beside her. "Do you want him to court you?"
And that was the question, wasn’t it.
"I mean, I don't know," Lizzie huffed. "It's good to have allies, but that's allies, not partners, and Mezalea is so dry, it always dries me out when I visit, and it's so different to the Ocean Empire, not to mention the fact that it’s allied with the Grimlands and that could cause problems, and-"
"And this isn't about your empires," he interrupted, looking her in the eyes. "Do you like him? Not, do you think he'd be a good ally, or would it be good for your empires- do you like Joel?"
She hesitated, thinking about sparring trident against saber, long tours where they explored every nook and cranny together, late nights talking and laughing and then he'd give her that grin and suddenly her stomach was all full of jellyfish…
"Yeah," she murmured, cheeks heating up, "I like him."
"Then court him. You already do everything for your empire; love should be something you do for you.”
Lizzie leaned against him with a sigh. “You always know what to say,” she muttered, “thanks.”
“I mean,” he laughed, "you don’t have to always come to me for advice."
"No, but I will, Reef," she grinned, "you always have been my wisest friend."