The End of the Beginning
Lizzie was panicking, just a little bit.
This was entirely understandable! Her brother had almost died. All the other Empires were in ruins. She had just kissed someone who wasn’t her husband.
That last one probably didn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things, but it was certainly playing a part in the panic!
The Golden Age shall rise again. That was the first sign. Lizzie wasn’t sure if that prophecy would ever be fulfilled, but the others certainly would.
The Empires were in ruins.
People were dying.
Shrub had probably run away again.
Everything was awful!
Lizzie tried to reassure herself as she kept rowing towards the Ocean Empire. She wasn’t quite sure why she wasn’t flying. Maybe she just didn’t want to see all the damage at once.
She was just starting to think that maybe her Empire would be okay when her boat lurched forward and plunged downwards. It hit the water again with a THWUMP and threw her overboard. Something slipped from her finger as she righted herself, but she didn’t have time to check.
That’s not right, Lizzie realized. We don’t have waterfalls. She swam to the surface and gasped when she saw the towering wall of water.
That’s not right at all.
The current tugged her toward her kingdom, and she followed it, leaving her boat behind. There were several more waterfalls along the way - Lizzie noted the lowering water level anxiously - but they were much easier to fair once she could just swim over them.
And then she hit the muddy ocean floor.
Or what used to be an ocean’s floor. Her entire kingdom was… “Dry.”
Lizzie sprang to her feet, pulling out a rocket to get an aerial view.
The shipwreck was dried out.
All the boats had sunk.
Her lilypads had cracked once they hit the ground, and her people were nowhere to be seen.
The only thing that remained intact was the Prisma Palace, and she landed at the top of the steps.
“My Ocean… is gone,” she whispered.
A splitting pain struck her head. Bewildered, she raised a hand to cradle it - and stared in shock at the human appendage. The webbing between her fingers had disappeared, her claws had shrunk back into fingernails, and the blue scales that had coated her skin were rapidly receding. If they ever were to leave the water…
“No, no, no!” She cried. “I didn’t leave the water, I didn’t! It left me! It’s not my fault!” But the universe ignored her pleas, and in a moment, the transformation had been undone.
At the top of the steps of a tower, a pink-haired human stood in armor much too large for her, a crown slipping down her face, with no memories except her name and a pair of amber eyes.