#the sole audience for pixlriffs fanfic apparently

[canarydarity]

Uh. Hi?

Obviously you have no obligation to do anything but uh-

if you did end up writing that pix one-shot

I know at least one person that would gobble it up.

(it's me, I'm that person)

Withering Away

(words: 1619) (link to previous Pix fic)

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It was part of Pix’s job to have even an elementary understanding of decomposition, though it was never a topic he’d expected to come to know intimately. Or, well, he had, just not when he was still conscious for the experience. 

This was not how it was supposed to happen. There was not meant to be an awareness of such things. A mercy, it was—it must be—to lose sentience before losing all the rest; physicality, corporeal form, tangibility. A mercy Pixlriffs was not afforded. 

And was not afforded, and was not afforded, and was not afforded.

The first time—the only real time—he’d woken up gasping on the stone floor of the catacombs. Likely no time at all had passed since his, well, passing to when he awoke, but his mind felt decades older, his head weary from the encounter with death. It didn’t matter that he’d died indoors, huddled in one of the dark corners of Katherine's house, curled into a ball on the wooden planks—his body had felt itself be reclaimed, it had touched decay. 

Time had both slowed and sped up around him; the party had moved on, his stuff pillaged or put aside for his return—when they’d at first expected that to happen—then unknowing. The crown chose another host, tea was drunk, and goodbyes were said as the partygoers left and returned to their own empires; and all the while, Pixlriffs remained on the floor, watching this happen at thrice the speed, like a film being fast-forwarded, finger holding the button to remain on the fastest possible setting. He could not speak, he could not move, he could not intervene. He could take only one, shallow, raggedy breath every few minutes, the air rattling around in his quickly emptying chest, the term death rattle never feeling quite so accurate. 

All in all, the rest of the party must have been an hour or so long—but for Pix, it was mere minutes, and time did not stop there. He lay on the floor of a forgotten hallway and watched around him as time passed on; as folks and events came and went until suddenly the empire had fallen—or he assumed as such, because the rooms remained empty and dark and the sconces empty of torches and small weeds had begun to peek up through the floorboards before seemingly gaining their confidence and overtaking all. 

And as the house sunk deeper into the ground, what must happen to all happened to Pixlriffs; the life in the dirt found him, and they reclaimed what was theirs. It seemed that the speed of time had only been saving him for this: this duty of his—of us all—to give back to the ground from whence we came. He had been outrunning it for so long that it did not waste any time when it finally caught up with him. 

Roots of the surrounding plants reached like hands for his arms his legs wherever they could catch hold, and as they curled around him they tugged and tugged until his burial began. The worms and the bugs and the scavengers picked and picked at him until the leathery fleshy parts that let him resemble something human were gone, and the rest of him was left to seep into the ground and fertilize. To give back; life gives to life gives to life—it was just that the life that begins this cycle—the giver—was not supposed to still be alive when this occurs. 

And that was only the first time. 

Pix had awoken, as he’d said, on the floor of the catacombs, emptier than he’d felt in a while. Something vital had been taken from him, something living—something human. This ghostly presence was what was left. His skin was ashen and sunken and—at the wrong angle of the sun—transparent, and his insides were hollow, and his lungs didn’t seem to fill all the way when he went through the motions of breathing, but he was still here. 

So he went back to work, because what else was he to do? He was still capable, he did not see a problem with continuing to run the museum. 

The following times had been, weirder, for lack of a better way to describe it. Since he no longer seemed to be alive to begin with, not in possession of a physical body, he didn’t know how it was that he could decay. But the earth tried and tried and tried again to show him, to prove that it could be done. 

There was nothing for them to take, he thought, there should be nothing left of him to decompose. But he did.

And he did. 

And he did. 

The ground just worked harder from each time then on. It would tug at him and pull at him and bury him but each time it found nothing to eat, to consume, but it would not be deterred. It would grope and paw and beg and it would not give up until it found a piece of him that it could claim, digging deeper and deeper with each further exploration. It latched onto whatever it had found and it ripped it from him; he feared each time that there would be nothing left to be conquered, and he did not want to know what would happen then. 

This time, this most recent occurrence, he came to on the ground in Chromia, his brain catching sight of the color around him and feeling overwhelmed for a moment by the sheer amount of sensory input. Being dead, he thought he was past inherently living experiences such as having to catch one's breath—he was constantly being proven wrong. 

The sky was blue above him, almost clear besides a handful of clouds lounging about their day. It was a nice sight until it was no longer in his view; big eyes and blond hair leaning over him, a hat somehow even more aggressive and loud than the decoration around Chromia, which was saying something. Right, he had been helping Oli with his noteblocks. 

“Oh, my liege!” the bard cried, dramatics high, ever playing up an act; like he’d heard the phrase all the worlds a stage once and decided to take it far too seriously. Even so, he was as undeniably genuine in his emotion as he always was—it was a shame there was never actually an audience to watch his evergreen performance.

Oli’s hands gripped his shirt, pulling him up with more strength than Pix expected him to have, but he forgot his shock when the position change made his head ache harder.

“Not the king anymore, Oli,” he corrected, eyes clenched tight and hand coming up to grab his head. He thought perhaps he’d just sit here with his eyes closed until it was dark and there was less to look at, yeah that sounded like a good plausible idea. 

“You okay, king?” Oli asked, having backed off a step or two, though still crouching before Pix in his show of concern. “Not king as in the king as in ‘oh fair crown of jewels that’s killed you so!’ but as in ‘yes, king, slay!’ that kind of king.” 

Pix wasn’t really sure measures of ‘okay’ applied to him anymore since his status had changed to non-living. Surely the relative measure of well-being was different for those who were dead.

“Yes, Oli,” He said, rather than explaining this. He wasn’t really feeling willing to elaborate at the moment. 

Oli laughed awkwardly. “You sure? You’re looking a little green there. And, by green, I mean completely see-through to the point where I can see the grass beneath you.” 

Pix looked down, and, sure enough, his legs were looking less than tangible. “Right,” he said in response like he had any sort of reasonable explanation to offer for this phenomenon, falling back into his role as an educator out of need for some form of consistency, but there was nothing more that he could say. Oli awkwardly laughed again when there was no follow-through, the fear behind it permeating the air. 

Pix made to stand, and Oli grabbed one of his arms to help him up, the gesture appreciated well enough. 

“So, does that happen often, or? I’m sorry, is that rude to ask? I’ve never met a dead person before.”

“Often enough,” Pix said, picking up his bag and throwing the strap over his shoulder. They were technically not done setting up the noteblocks, but he didn’t think Oli would protest his needing to leave. “And I’m unsure, I’ve never been dead before, myself.”

Oli blinked at him a few times until Pix smiled, giving him permission to smile in return. 

“Don’t worry about me, Oli. I’ll figure it out in no time and be right as rain I’m sure.” He lifted a hand to bid Oli goodbye and turned away. He needed to get back to the capital. 

The bard called behind him, “Of course, king, of course! Good as new—brand new, in fact!” and then he must have turned back around himself because the noteblocks started up again, the sound carrying softly in the breeze, still slightly off-beat from the song attempting to be replicated. 

Right, good as new, Pix thought, despite the fact that in all of the human history he had studied, there didn’t seem to be a cure for having died. But there was certainly something here, something he’d never come across before. Maybe it wasn’t curable, but it was fascinating—and he’d just become his own primary source, no better subject to analyze than himself. He was going to get to the bottom of this. 

It seemed he wasn’t quite as undead as he’d thought.

#me and you anon🤝🤝🤝🤝 #the sole audience for pixlriffs fanfic apparently #and godbless for that thank you for having my back and encouraging this #pls #message me anytime to chat about pixlriffs i am far too obsessed with him #anyway yeah as i fucking said. this man was insANE for making a comment about reenacting his death and ill never forgive him for doing that #worm writes #pixlriffs #pixlriffs fic #empires smp #empires smp fanfic #empires smp fic #empires s2 #empires season 2