Empires SMP oneshots

A look in a book

           Pix wandered through Animalia, looking for the bookshop that Mayor Lizzie had told him about. "Excuse me, sir, but can you tell me where to find this certain magical bookshop?" The archaeologist asked an anthropomorphic frog. "Don't ask me; you're in the Froggy District, no bookshops here. Must be in another district, but none of us ever leaves the district we live in." The frog shrugged, and he hopped away. Pix frowned and moved on. 

           He found Lizzie in the Gotham District assisting a bat with a wing in a sling. She looked up. "Oh, hi, Pix! This is Barbara, she kind of crashed into a tree and how she's got a sprained wing, I'm helping her home." Pix helped bring her home as well, and as soon as they were done he asked, "Lizzie, remember that bookstore you told me about?" "You mean the magical one in which I wrote quite a few original books myself?" "Er, yes. I was told you had books in there on the topics of history from a thousand years ago." "That I do. Come with me. It's in the Magical District." 

           Lizzie took Pix to the magical district, and he liked it there. It was filled with light from floating lanterns and the sounds of quiet learning, and all the anthropomorphic pandas were very friendly and helpful. The bookshop that Pix was looking for was small and quaint, full of shelves and shelves of books with varied shades of yellowed pages. Pix was immediately at home in this library. He rushed to the historical section and pulled a book off the shelf. 

           "The Copper King," Pix read. He flipped it open, then frowned. "Lizzie, I can't understand your handwriting." Or pawwriting, the archaeologist thought, chuckling to himself how Lizzie still assumed she'd fooled everything into thinking she was human. Lizzie was already leaving the bookshop, but she turned around to help him out. "I hope you don't ask me to read the whole book out for you, I'm expecting Pirate Joe soon for another shipment of ink sacs." She walked over to him and glanced at the page as well, but by that time Pix had already deciphered the first sentence. "Once upon a time," They both read, and as they did so they were pulled into the pages of the book. 

           Pix opened his eyes and found himself staring at the scorching sun. He winced and got up, and noticed that he was in the desert. He looked around hurriedly and found Lizzie lying on the sand beside him, standing up as well. She was just as bewildered as he was. "What in the world?" She said. "This wasn't supposed to happen, was it?" Pix asked sardonically, knowing full well that this shouldn't have happened. "Well, this is the Magical District, or at least it was." Lizzie looked around again. "But I wrote the book myself, and this never happened when I wrote it." "Did you ever read the book after it was published?" Pix asked, thinking. "No, why?" "Well, maybe that has something to do with it."

           But there was no point in thinking about how they got to this desert if it couldn't help them get out of it. The two of them wandered around together, until they found a village atop the shifting sands. The villagers looked curiously at the newcomers. "Um, excuse me, but we've gotten lost, uh, where are we?" Pix asked. "You're in Pixandria, the empire of the Copper King." A villager answered. Pix and Lizzie looked incredulously at each other. "But Pixandria was destroyed a thousand years ago!" Lizzie whispered in amazement. "Did we travel back in time?" "The book was titled 'The Copper King'," Pix said. "More likely we were pulled into the book." 

           Then someone else walked over to them. He wore robes the color of pale sand, with shoulder pads, brooches, and buttons made of copper, and a simple ringlet of copper was his crown. He looked at the two emperors with friendly, sincere eyes. "Greetings. I am Pixlriffs, the Copper King. And you are?" "Uh, Pix the archaeologist." Pix said, surprised. He didn't expect the Copper King to have the same name as him. "Mayor Lizzie of Animalia," Lizzie answered, equally surprised. The Copper King raised his eyebrows. "What a coincidence. I have a friend named Lizzie, she's the queen of the ocean. Also, I have never heard of Animalia, is that a distant empire?" "Yeah," Lizzie said, thinking about how they were in a book. "Very distant." 

           "Sorry to bother you, Copper King, but we've gotten lost and we don't have any supplies, so could we please-" "Of course you could stay," The Copper King said warmly. "Come, I'll take you to my tavern." As they walked together, the Pixs chatted about history and culture. They were very similar to each other, both incredibly smart and skilled in redstone, and eager to help others and learn new things. They quickly became friends, although the historian Pix was hesitant to tell anyone anything about the future empires, just in case that he and Lizzie had actually time traveled and they weren't just stuck in a book. 

           Pix found Lizzie stuck on top of a floating lantern, looking extremely embarrassed. "Lizzie, how did you even get up there?" "Don't ask," She said. As he helped her down, Pix said, "Lizzie, as much as I like it here, any idea how to get back?" "You like it here? The sand is getting all over me and it's very hot in the desert when you have fur- I mean, it's hot in the desert for everybody." Lizzie stammered. Pix pretended not to notice. "But anyway, I was thinking. I read this book before about books that would trap people who read them, and the way they got out was when they'd experience everything that happened in the book all the way until the end." 

           "But this is a history book," Pix groaned. "It talks about everything that happened in Pixandria all the way to when it got destroyed, however that happened. And what if we die in here?" "I don't know, but the other way the characters got out was when someone else read the book they were stuck in and found their names randomly written in the book and they escaped." Lizzie said hopefully. "Maybe someone will come into my bookshop, find the book, read it, and we'll be home free in no time." 

           Pirate Joe walked all over Animalia with a barrelful of ink sacs, looking for Mayor Lizzie. All the animals he asked told him that she was in the Magical District bookshop, so he went there. The pirate walked into the bookstore and looked around. He saw no one. He was about to leave when he spotted a fallen book on the floor. He picked it up. "The Copper King," Pirate Joe mused. "Interesting." He opened the book and tried to read more, but he couldn't decipher Lizzie's handwriting, and pirates couldn't read anyways. Joe shrugged, put the book back on the shelf, and walked away, continuing his search for Lizzie.