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Chapter Text

Prince Mattia yelled out in surprise as his horse slipped out from under him. He fell on his back and skidded a few feet down the dusty decline that had sprang up after that sandy hill which offered such a wistful view of his kingdom. Yelling to Helena, he picked himself off the ground and slapped himself spryly about his denim riding gear to rid himself of the incessant dust. He grabbed Helena's reins and drew her near, then absentmindedly returned his gaze to that view. The spires of his castle and the faded green of their acreage called to him. The riding there had never been nearly so treacherous.

"This won't be like your riding lessons," his mother had told him on the grassy lawn of the courtyard, by the holy statue, "You won't be treated as a prince. Sir Sahjid will expect promptness and politeness at all times. Make yourself useful to him- what you do reflects back on me, and our house. And this is for your great aunt, when you see her. Don't lose it." She had handed him a sealed envelope, then, and given him a kiss on the cheek. 

Mattia mounted his horse and rubbed his cheek. His mother's kisses always smelled of fruit. He would not see her for many months, and when he did he would be changed, not a boy with a new sword riding his beloved horse but a man with a wife and children on the way. All of this inspired a vague terror in him, but the next few days' prospects sweetened the deal. The immediacy of a journey with Sir Sahjid crippled Mattia's ability to think that far into the future. He descended the hill and prompted Helena to gallop up the next one, toward the river which bisected the great landscape which rose up to greet the headstrong boy.

Some distance further along that wide and shallow river, a sign proclaimed that Mangrove was the name of the town drawing near. The roofs of the toad houses there were blue instead of the familiar red, and instead of roads the town had elevated constructions of wood leading from hut to store to cabin which likely rose above the river's seasonal tides. Mattia dismounted Helena and lead her by the reins through the narrow paths of the town. It didn't take him long to determine there was only one other horse to be found, tied to a post outside a dark wooden cabin. Surely the mare belonged to the knight he was seeking. Tying Helena to the same post as her new friend, Mattia was shocked to see two goombas smoking at a table set against the tavern, being waited upon by a blue toad. The toad turned to face him, her pigtails swaying in the brisk evening air. She smiled at him, and the peasant toad turned suddenly from merely servile to charming. Mattia lowered his face into the denim of his vest and entered the tavern.

Inside, toads warmed themselves by the fire, sitting on barrels or on the ground and nursing the type of drinks that were banned back at the castle. A guy tending bar fetched a drink for one of the two humans in the tavern, who were making use of the only proper seating in the room. The larger figure took the bottle, and Mattia saw the wrinkles on the man's face and hands. Peeking out from between pieces of the man's polished bronze armor were bunches of a white robe which identified him as a fire-worshipper from Sarasa. The sword at the man's hip identified him furthermore as Sir Sahjid, not that there were many other Sarasans with great white beards about.

The other human was a lean child with olive skin, perhaps a year or two younger than Mattia. He wore a sword too, yet the rest of his clothes were less foreign. Besides his few bits of armor he had denim pants from the Coin, very popular in the Mushroom Kingdom, as were vests like the one covering his torso. Only the ruby necklace he wore identified him as a Sarasan. The boy took a good look at him as he entered, but after appraising him returned to face the part of the bar where no drinks sat.

Sir Sahjid did not turn around, only brought the blue bottle to his lips and downed half its contents in a single go. The guy serving him prepared another bottle but the first sat untouched after the knight's first taste. The guy turned to Mattia and waved its short arms wildly as he walked towards the seat on Sir Sahjid's right. Only the boy had noticed him earlier, yet the adolescent did not turn when Mattia passed behind. He was then passing Sir Sahjid when a heavy gauntlet snapped like a turtle's maw around his wrist. Its owner slowly turned around on his stool. The shy guy cowered behind the bar as Mattia shivered in the grasp of cold bronze.

"Just what do you think you're doing?" the grizzled knight scowled, "Trying to sneak up on an old man?"

"I- Sir, I am Prince Ma-" Mattia began, but was pushed to the floor in a flurry of bronze as Sir Sahjid rose.

"I know who you are, princeling. You were trying to sit by me, which is worse than trying to pick my pockets. You haven't earned the right."

Mattia Toadstool nodded as if he understood how a Shroom prince could be unfit to sit by a knight from a backwards kingdom like Sarasa. Truly he wasn't yet Sahjid's equal on the battlefield, but until he was surely his station as prince of the realm afforded him this minor honor, in a tavern made of sticks of all places? He watched the knight finish his drink, then sit and converse with his young companion for a moment before returning to loom over the stunned and flattened boy.

"What the fuck are you still doing there?" he asked, "Get up!" Mattia scrambled to his feet frantically, mumbling out a "Yes, sir!" and following the knight outside. The sun was just kissing the horizon. Sir Sahjid stroked his beard and eyed Helena. "You brought a horse," he said eventually, "Good. Now Amir won't have to ride Hessa with me." The tall boy peeked out from behind Sahjid's armor and gave Mattia a deadly look. "Let's go," Sahjid beckoned, handing Helena's reins to Amir and leading his own horse down the wood-slatted path.

"But the sun's setting!" Mattia whispered to the boy guiding his horse after the knight.

"Don't worry princeling," said Amir, "No more riding today."

"Then why-? Don't they have any beds back in there?"

"Beds cost money," Sir Sahjid intoned loudly without stopping or turning, his back facing Mattia, "And keep you weak. We camp tonight."

Mattia tried to stomach his confusion and his disappointment and ran after the horses. Through the process of preparing and cooking a cheep cheep for dinner by the campfire he dared not ask any more questions, and only dared open his mouth again when the Sarasans' bellies were full and Sir Sahjid had tucked under his blanket and began snoring.

"Mother said I was to serve as vassal to Sir Sahjid on this trip!" he fumed softly, not even looking at the other Sarasan, "Just what do you think you're doing here, boy?"

"Ha!" Amir laughed, "You think just because he's taking you to Sarasa, he'd trust you to be his vassal? Not by Miya's eye! You can be my vassal, though!"

"You're really his vassal?" Mattia wondered out loud, "Aren't vassals normally of royal... wait. He said your name was Amir? Prince Amir?!"

"Hello cousin," Amir said. He laughed and brought his blanket up over him.

Mattia did the same. He could barely contain his shock. The rude yet unassuming boy who'd been so annoying him was none other than Prince Sandstone, the next in line for the throne of Sarasa! No wonder the great knight had shown him so much more respect. When the shock of this revelation wore off, the impending humiliation of the next few days' travel seemed to loom ever greater. Mattia shifted uncomfortably, trying to pack more of blanket under him to pad the uneven earth serving as his horrid mattress. He continued until he barely had any of the fur-lined sheet to cover himself. He shook from the cold and still his back throbbed dully from the pain the hardened dirt wreaked. 

"That's it!" he whispered to himself, "This is fucking stupid!" He wriggled out from the furs, re-donned his clothes, and strode back from the woods towards the town, carrying only his sword and his satchel containing his moneypurse, some rations, a book, and his mother's sealed envelope. When he found the tavern, the goombas outside it were gone and he noticed a sign behind their table which read, "The Bashful Blooper".

Inside, most of the patrons had gone home or to their rooms. Mattia approached the guy behind the bar and slid it a few coins. It chittered in its strange tongue, seemingly to itself. Then, the blue toad from earlier emerged from behind a set of doors and curtsied to him.

"M'lord," she said, and lead him up a set of stairs to his room. He thanked her and dropped his satchel on the ground. He sat on the modest bed and observed the toad smiling to herself and feigning incuriosity. She rose from her second curtsy and blushed, slowly walking out. She turned to close the door behind her but he yelled for her to wait, a bit louder than he had meant to.

"...I mean, would you wait a moment?" he said, regaining his composure. The toad blushed again, re-entering and closing the door behind her. "...What is your name?"

"Melanie," she squeaked, "...M'lord."

"That's enough with the m'lords for tonight, Melanie. How long have you worked here?"

"Since I turned thirteen. I refused to marry, so my father gave me to Mr. Guy instead."

"Are you... married to it?"

"Mr. Guy? No, no! I just work for him."

"But 'he'... makes you serve goombas?"

"Yeah. There's only a few in Mangrove, though. And they're not my worst customers. Mr. Toadsey is."

"I've never seen a live one before... what are they doing here? Goombas can't swim, can they?"

"No, but..." she said, "Look," and opened the blinds of a window. Mattia rose from the bed and peered through the glass, where he could see the river below, bathed in moonlight. Two small figures drifted along it, bobbing slightly. They were the goombas from earlier!"

"How?" he asked.

"They have these," she said, and grabbed a donut-shaped tube off a nail in the wall. It was striped red-and-white. She tossed it to Mattia and he caught it. It was incredibly light, which made Mattia gasp. He smiled at Melanie and threw it back. 

She smiled at him and hung the tube back up. She closed the window and came to sit on the bed. Mattia chatted with her for another hour, about matters big and small, until he found her hair brushing against his chest. She had leaned into him so that he could not see her face, but could feel her heavy breath. When she did gather the courage to look up at the prince he placed his hand against her cheek and leaned in to kiss her. She breathed into him and filled his mouth with a strange fungal sweetness.

The blue toad gradually melted into his kissing and naive fondling and he pressed into her. She melted further into his advances and he found himself atop her, his hair beading up with sweat. She looked up at him with a sweet wanting that drove him to hastily strip himself and then her, exposing her perky breasts and silky blue pubic hair. She bit her forefinger, pushing it in past her pert blue lips and white teeth and exploring her own mouth absentmindedly as she observed him. He took her hand from her and, without thinking, bit the same finger. She laughed but then yelped as he drew a bit of her blood, mostly by mistake. He licked his lips and kissed her, staining her lips slightly red.

Mattia entered the toad's wet and wanting lower lips and pumped his cock into her twice whereupon he expended his seed with significant force, moaning like a thwomp. Melanie wrapped her legs around him, kissed him, and generally addicted him all the more to her wetness. He laid with her twice more that night before falling into a deep sleep. He woke after the sun and gave Melanie his book and a final kiss before returning to the campsite reeking of sex. Sir Sahjid smacked him twice about the face with his gauntlet, leaving a bruise on each temple. Amir spat on him, too, and called him a right horny bastard.

Chapter Text

Luca Toadstool sat in the royal courtyard, at the steps of the holy Star Statue. In his hands simmered his midday meal; a hearty soldier's stew of mushrooms and barley. He fetched a blue mushroom with his wooden spoon, uttered a disgusted little giggle, and showed it to the toad leaning against a tree nearby, spear tucked under her arm.

"Look, Toadine!" he exclaimed, "Doesn't it remind you of one of your relatives? How can you eat it?"

"You and your brother are the stupidest boys I have ever known," observed Toadine. She brought her own bowl of stew to her lips and slurped without once knocking over her spear. The blue eyes which she cast disdainfully at Luca matched the blue of her cap. It was a dark but vibrant blue and she tucked her hair smartly into it, giving her the appearance of a male toad- especially when combined with her lieutenant's regalia.

A boy in his fifteenth year, Luca was quick-witted but slow to action. His hair was long, wavy and blonde, like his mother's. His eyes, too, shined a light blue. He wiggled against the stone stair, trying to find some comfort, but dimly unaware of his own spear which he had set on the perch of a higher step. When he could stomach no more of the stew he looked around for his weapon and felt the heavy strike of wood against the top of his skull. Lieutenant Toadine drew back her spear and tutted at him.

"The stew was part of your training," she intoned, "Not one of your fancy meals you get to enjoy unmolested in the dining hall. Never let your weapon out of your sight, Luca."

"Ow!" whined Luca, "Fuck, Toadine! That hurt!"

Toadine tightened her expression but there was genuine regret in her eyes. There was little hope at this point of getting Luca to internalize the lesson any further. She spent the next few minutes tending to him, even though there was barely so much as a bump and the princeling was perfectly fine. The rest of the lesson passed uneventfully, as Toadine dutifully slowed her attacks down to a whomp's pace to give the placid prince some hope of dodging them. Eventually she dismissed him, and as Luca returned his spear to her he remembered when she used to cradle him after Mattia would play with him too roughly. He smiled at her and Toadine's expression softened.

Luca's stomach growled as he ran through the halls of the castle. He entered the dining room, where he and his parents and brother used to luncheon. The table there sat in perfect readiness for a mealtime, each place set with a formal assortment of forks and knives. With just a chime of the bell by his mother's chair a small army of toad servers would flood in from the kitchen with meats, cheese, and wine. Luca ignored the bell and climbed the stairs in the next room. Up two more floors he emerged out onto the veranda. His mother was there, at a small table set for two, with a white cloth and a bottle of her favorite strawberry wine. She bid him near.

"Now that your brother's left us too," she told him, her voice muffled by her golden goblet, "I thought we might have all our meals here. The weather being so fine."

"Even suppers?" Luca asked.

"I think so," she answered, looking out at her kingdom's green hills past the red parapet, "If we take them early enough we might catch the sunset. Oh, but not tonight. Tonight you'll bring your supper with you to the tower. Your instructor's wrapped itself up in some nonsense, so you'll have a late lesson today."

"Oh...” Luca frowned, concerned about his beloved teacher. He never postponed lessons. Then, a hopeful thought arose; “Does that mean I'm free after lunch?"

"Yes but don't make any trouble. Lieutenant Toadine tells me she caught you harassing her troops with inane questions."

Luca muttered a rebuttal and stuffed his mouth with grapes, followed by a big bite of meat. The combined flavor wasn't bad, but in truth he wished for the meal to be over. His brother and father were the more rowdy half of the family, and without either around he felt a bit sad for his mother. He wished there was something he could say to her, but her manner was always a bit distant. The stiffness with which she approached royal life drove him a bit mad, and he longed for the same familiarity with her he had found with certain relatives and servants. All the same, he loved her. At the conclusion of the meal Luca's mother told him she loved him and beckoned him near for a soft if decorous kiss on the temple. With this Luca was free to explore all the castle grounds.

Outside the castle, on the eastern side of the walls, sat a cannon overlooking a sequence of targets spread out on the hills in the distance. On a small stone platform by it, a red bob-omb tittered about mechanically, barking data at a young girl who was splayed out on the grass and resting her head upon the platform. The girl was Luca's cousin, Princess Clementine. She carried a short green bow and had her dark brown hair beautifully braided and held in place with a black ribbon. She absentmindedly checked the tension of her bowstring as her instructor crowed on and on. When she noticed Luca she lit up and flashed him a smile.

"Luca!" she exclaimed.

"O-oh, Prince Luca!" dithered the old bomb, "What are you doing outside the castle, my lord? Don't you have lessons today as well?"

"Nope," Luca answered flatly, "My mom says I don't."

"Well, if Her Highness says so... you'll have to excuse me, I was just instructing the Princess here on war tactics. Women in the royal family have been known to participate- Princess Peach herself lead the Royal Army in the battle for Subconis! And your cousins in Sarasaland have been known to engage the enemy on the front lines!"

"Sounds boring."

"Yes, well, I would beg you take your leave then. I was instructing the princess in the critical art of cannon positioning."

"Oh, he can stay, Corporal!" the young princess exclaimed.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes! I've decided now! Another two notches to the right! And fire!"

The bob-omb muttered to himself and made some adjustments to the cannon. Clementine leaped up to hug Luca and when she did a small green creature fell off her head.

"Oh! I forgot Koji was sleeping on me!" she gasped, "Can you catch him?"

Luca lunged and grasped at the ground, careful not to squish the tiny amphibian. When he returned Koji to her Clementine shrieked happily, loud enough for her instructor to pause as he was loading the cannon.

"Thank you, thank you!" Clementine said, and kissed him on the cheek. Her lip then curled with mischief as she said, "Do you think if I kiss Koji too then he'll turn into a prince?"

"You've already got a prince! Me!" Luca huffed.

"Yes, but... I'm trying anyway!" she said and kissed the frog.

"That's disgusting!"

The two of them laughed and Corporal Bob-Omb shushed them. He lit the cannon's fuse and the three looked out over the hillside toward the second-furthest target. With a boom, the cannonball soared and came down about twenty feet short, forming a large fissure in the verdant earth.

"A bit off, I'm afraid," the bob-omb tutted.

"Isn't that what bombs are for?" remarked Luca.

"Well, a bomb could be used, yes. But in this instance we were exploring the utility of the more traditional-"

"Fuck that! If you'd loaded a bomb she would've hit the target! You just don't like using bombs, do you?"

"That isn't the issue, my lord, it's-"

"What if I loaded you in the cannon? That might work!"

This comment apparently rendered the bomb speechless. He fumed so much Luca genuinely thought he might ignite and explode. Suddenly, the two heard a thwacking sound and turned back toward the target. An arrow was now sticking out of the bull's-eye. Clementine lowered her bow and faced them cheerfully.

"Who needs cannons, anyway?" she remarked.

The corporal dismissed them, clearly done advocating for the utility of cannons for the day. Luca and Clementine spent an exciting afternoon undisturbed by further instruction, both chattering endlessly about their favorite topics: stories, magic, and romance. When the sun began to set Clementine invited Luca to come dine with her and her mother.

Luca followed Clementine to the castle’s second floor. Princess Strawberry Toadstool’s quarters were not so far from his own. The guards there nodded to Princess Clementine and admitted them. Within, Princess Strawberry was sitting at a pillow-laden bench with Lady Lisa Barnabud as her servants prepared the dinner table. Lady Lisa’s head was at the elder princess’s shoulder, and their hands interlocked. The two seemed as familiar as sisters, only Luca had never seen his mother give his aunt Strawberry so much as courteous kiss.

Lewis of Shroom stood, entertaining the ladies with bits of blithe ribaldry. The bastard son of Luca’s grandfather, Lewis considered himself a wit, though he himself admitted some considered him half as much. Luca merely wondered why Clementine’s mother allowed Lewis to entertain her and Lisa in her private quarters, when they had access to much more accomplished fools at the castle.

“What? Is it so, that the larder boy should tell me Sarasa’s cactus shipment falls light this shroomseason?” said Lewis, “It is just so, only I heard tell they’ve found what remains of it in Sir Sahjid’s rear!”

Princess Strawberry and her companion burst out laughing. Clementine shifted closer and took a seat a respectful distance from the would-be fool, smiling amicably. Luca lingered by the stone doorway and frowned, listening to his stomach grumble and wishing Clementine would move to the table so he could dine with her.

“Of course, the ambassador’s brother has proved a nuisance to our larderboy as well,” Lewis continued, “He says Lord Shah is likely to deplete the whole kingdom of beverages before the year is out. Soon all that will be left to us is water- luckily, Lord Shah has never heard of the stuff!”

The women laughed again as the servant toads finished setting the table. Clementine continued to smile politely, but Luca had grown impatient.

“There is no larder boy,” said the prince, “The larder master is named Toadelle, and she is a woman grown. She’s not fond of jokes either, which you would know if you’d ever been to the kitchens.”

Lewis of Shroom blushed and looked to Strawberry. The princess frowned.

“Clementine,” said Strawberry, “Tell your cousin he can go dine with his own mother. He’s clearly too young to appreciate our Lewis’s humor”

“I am not,” Luca protested, “I’m older than she is! And Lewis’s joker are dumb.”

Luca watched Lady Lisa ignore him and grasp Clementine’s arm, drawing her near. The lady whispered some words to the girl, who turned around upon her stool. Luca’s friend looked down at the floor as she addressed him:

“Sorry,” said Clementine. She watched glumly as Luca left, still hungry. Luckily, the kitchens were close by and he could smell the scents of fresh bread and roasts wafting down the hall.

In the castle’s kitchen, Luca waved a casual hello to Chef Toad and his sous-chef Serge. Serge was a koopa immigrant from a region full of exemplary cuisine and peaceful, easily-subjugated koopas. Or so Luca gathered- he didn’t really know much about what lay beyond the Six Kingdoms. Serge greeted him with a kiss on each cheek and brought him close.

“Ah, Luca! I hear you are not dining with Her Highness tonight?” he lilted conspiratorially, “Would you like something to bring up with you?”

“That would be awesome, Serge.”

“Ah, it would be my pleasure! Here, forget about this mushroom salad shit they are serving tonight- I have some lovely rabbit’s legs and potatoes for you! Just one moment!”

Serge strode over to the stoves and retrieved a skillet, which he delicately tonged the contents of into a small wooden bowl. This he wrapped in a white woven napkin, tied at the top to protect the meal and serve as a handle. Luca thanked Serge graciously and took the bundle with him back toward the south-east tower. This one was the tallest, and its stairs were sparsely lit by torch. Every now and then there would be a burnt out torch and Luca would have to make guesswork of a few steps, shivering and swearing to himself under his breath. He knew this was where his teacher conducted most of his work, but since when did a prince need to go to such lengths for a guy’s comfort? Finally he reached the upper alcove at the zenith.

The alcove was better lit than the stairs, but the height of the torches and the preponderance of books and arcana below still lent it a certain unearthliness. On a wooden table surrounded by goodly ash chairs lined with velvet, stacks of books sat among strange implements of bronze. Three vials filled with solutions of red, blue, and green sat in the arms of one wiry instrument, and a small flame burned below a series of tubes nearby. From the corners of the room hung small stars of gold. Holy symbols, yet they somehow felt sinister among the cobwebs and ancient tomes. From the open window Luca could see a small fraction of Shroomdon’s night sky and her splendor.

Among all this weirdness, Philosophic Guy huffed into his mask and hastily slid stacks of books and notes into a large iron chest. He hardly seemed to notice Luca as he snatched the multicolored solutions and began wrapping them tightly in a long strip of cloth. Luca waved to his teacher, but the philosopher was an unreadable creature. If there were indeed eyes under that mask, their subtle glint gave no hint of recognition. The body within Guy’s all-covering green tunic didn’t intend on stopping its task, and the roll of cloth, too, went inside the chest.

Luca scratched his head, slightly bemused, and cleared a small spot at the table. He sat and found the chair there hardly rigid at all, and excellent for posture. He wanted one for his room. Luca untied his bundle and began to dine on the rabbit legs, which tasted divine. He could tell Serge had marinated them in his famous lemon butter sauce, and so he all but finished them off with great enthusiasm. The last leg he left aside, and after a few bites of potatoes held out good-naturedly to Philosophic Guy.

“Would you like some?” he asked.

“Give me a moment,” the guy muttered. After stowing a final set of books from a shelf, he grabbed a stack of papers and brought them to the table. There, he took the piece of rabbit and sat, bringing it to the bottom hole of his mask as he sorted through his notes.

“Is it time for my lesson now?” questioned Luca.

“No lesson today,” Philosophic Guy mumbled, his voice soaked with butter, “Stars, but this is delicious. Alright, maybe one final lesson- don’t ever become a pawn to the politically-minded. Oh, but you may become one of them yet, I expect. Nevermind. No lesson. Just observe how a cowardly guy abandons his post.”

“You’re leaving? Why?”

“I’m vacating my position on the Council. I’ve already sent word back home. Our king is sending his bastard son soon, though I doubt he’ll have any knowledge of alchemy or philosophy. I was the first shy guy to hold such a prestigious seat. Oh, what was I thinking? I expect I’ll be the last.”

“But we’ve barely started my alchemy lessons! All I know is Pensivian socialism and pre-colonial history!”

“You better know more than that,” Philosophic scoffed, “...All the time I put into your lessons… but the Princess will find someone else to teach you. Probably not the Subconician, but someone.”

“They won’t make me think and laugh like you do!” Luca cried, tears starting to well in his eyes.

“No… I expect they won’t. Maybe that’s for the best. My interests have proved too subversive for this cramped castle. When the Council and family can’t understand something, they accuse it of heresy. ‘It’, ‘it’… ‘it’s a traitor, too!’ I can all but hear them saying. Well, they may just have willed that into being.”

“Don’t say that, teacher! I haven’t heard anything like that, so I’m sure it’s just the talk of a few gossipers! They’ll forget all about that soon!”

“Ah, Prince Luca… you’re so trusting. You’re growing into a beautiful man. I’ll tell you what, do you want a real final lesson? I can give you one now.”

Luca sniffed his nose and said yes. His teacher brought a leather-bound tome from his packed chest and laid it open. The two of them pored over diagrams of stars and flowers, much of it familiar symbology to Luca. Some of the diagrams featured extraneous detail, though, and the accompanying text was mostly too arcane to understand.

“Is… this about potion-brewing, teacher?” Luca asked.

“Certain plants and fungi can be used in potions, yes. Even starshards, when arranged properly, were once used for such… this was before the Church requisitioned them all. But there’s something more important than plants or fungi or shards… it’s the symbols, Luca. With proper knowledge of the symbols, you can do so much more. So much more than a potion would allow.”

“Are you talking about… magic?”

“Shush, now! There’s no need to throw that word around unless you’re planning to flee Shroomdon too!”

“Oh…!”

Luca thought he understood, and so sat in rapturous attention, mouth agape. He examined more diagrams with his teacher, the faintest flame of comprehension starting to burn as Philosophic explained various minutia in detail.

“...But that won’t come until you’ve studied the basics,” finished the guy. He examined Luca’s slacked jaw and wide eyes and let out a sigh. “Here- take the book. I’ve memorized everything I need.”

“Really?”

“Yes, take it. Thank you for the rabbit. Now go to bed. I have some final items to pack and a lot of stairs to push them down.”

Luca nodded, happily hugging his teacher’s soft tunic material through which he could feel no bones, only plushness. He descended the stairs and proceeded towards his room, holding his new book tight to his chest and humming to himself. His mind was alight with new possibilities. Passing through the dining hall, Luca stopped humming when he saw his mother sat in the dark room at the head of the table, her face illuminated by candlelight. Lieutenant Toadine was leaning over her shoulder, troubled expressions on both their faces.

“Luca!” Peach exclaimed, “You’re still awake!”

“Um, yes, I am… what’s going on?”

“There’s been an attack,” Toadine said gravely, “At the eastern fortress. Koopa troops- a full contingent. War is coming to Mushroomland.”

Chapter Text

Birdette sat naked and observed her face in her dresser mirror. The first beams of morning light crept through her window and revealed a pretty face, pink and not scaly like her father’s. She hadn’t slept well and there were bags under her wide enchanting eyes. Her hair was messy too, so she brushed it and tied it up in a red ribbon above her head, except for her traditional purple Subconiscian bangs which she left hanging to frame her face and offset her snout. Closing her eyes, she brushed some purple dye powder to match upon her lids and examined herself again, smiling subtly. Birdette stood and, before moving to her wardrobe, took a ring from her dresser. She placed it on her finger and observed its reflection, holding its gold magnificence against her skin.

“Lord Birdo-” there was a knock and a coughing sound at her door. She turned around to see Sir Hemik of her father’s guard, turned awkwardly by the room’s entrance to face the wall. A sweat of perspiration dripped down his scaly forehead and he actually had his hand at his scabbard to steady his nerves. He continued addressing Birdette, certain to keep his eyes on the wall or ceiling and not on her nude form. “Lord Birdo. Her Majesty Princess Wart requests your presence in her chambers immediately.” He gulped and quickly shut the door behind him.

Once dressed, Birdette found herself in her aunt’s room. Princess Aerika was a beautiful and stately lizardling of some eighty years. She wore her purple hair down in perfectly-curled tresses which fell down to her waist. Seeing Birdette, she rose from her chair and treated the younger woman to a doting smile, bringing her close for a kiss on the cheek.

“Birdette, you look beautiful,” said Aerika, and Birdette blushed. “How have you been sleeping?”

“Still poorly, aunt,” Birdette admitted.

“I’m sorry, love. But we may remedy that today! King Toadstool has sent a message- you are to report to Shroomdon immediately!”

“What? Why?”

“Mushroom is under attack, it seems. An emergency meeting of the council has been called, and the former emissary has already vacated his post.”

“Really? So I might travel today?” Birdette fought to contain her glee.

“Yes, well I know you’ve grown tired of all of us here at the castle...”

“Aunt, no! That’s not what I-”

“Hush, I know. ‘Tis not I you have quarrel with. Your father can be a… difficult man. But I still believe you may gain his favor again. Some distance may aid matters. Snout up, my dear- the king will see you one day for what you are.”

“For what I am? I was the sole bastard son of Subconis’s greatest ruler. Now what am I? Less than a bastard.”

“Don’t say such things!” admonished Aerika, and the hurt in her voice softened Birdette.

“I’m sorry. Your sons will make wonderful kings one day.”

Aerika paused to reflect on this, and did not reply. Looking at her aunt, Birdette’s eyes began to water. When she went to wipe them with her handkerchief, she felt Aerika’s soft arms embrace her.

“I will miss you so terribly!” cried Birdette.

“I know. But you must go. Just one more thing.”

“Yes?”

“You must go see your father before you depart. To leave the kingdom early without his express permission would be political suicide, whatever the circumstances.”

“...Okay.”

The women gave each other a final squeeze and released one another. Birdette returned to her room to make preparations. With the help of her servant Curious she had all her possessions packed and waiting outside by her carriage within an hour.

“Should I start loading the carriage, miss?” asked Curious.

“You can start. I’m just going back inside for a moment. I’ll be right back.”

“Oh… Oh, well good luck miss Birdette!”

Unable to procrastinate further, Birdette reentered the castle and nervously made her way to the throne room. At the door, the guard gave her a doubled looking over before swinging it open and announcing her as “Lord Birdo of Ravenshead”. The throne room was long and cavernous, an ancient seat of power, and Birdette traversed its length with trepidation. At the old stone throne, flanked by Sir Hemik and his royal advisor, sat her father.

King Wart was a corpulent green creature of eighty, more wrinkled than his twin Aerika but with none of her wisdom or grace. Though he wore a fine robe of cyan and the great Cloud Crown, they offered his unsightly appearance no splendor. His face was twisted up in a horrible sneer, his great bulbous eyes seeming to look two places at once. An ostro skeleton on a silver platter lay by his feet, and he licked some of the bird’s juices off his faded pearl claws. These he brandished lazily, gesturing for Birdette to hurry up.

Birdette knelt low before her father. She could feel his old yellow eyes on the top of her head. Sweat formed at her brow and her chest felt tight. When she found her voice again, she managed to use it:

“Your Majesty, I have been summoned to Shroomdon. If it pleases Your Majesty, I should aim to leave by carriage immediately.”

“What’s this voice you’re doing?” Wart shouted abruptly, and burped. “It sounds fucking stupid! Speak to me like a man!”

“I… Yes, father!” Birdette shouted stiffly. Her voice’s lower register sounded foreign when it echoed back to her.

“Better. What’s this about leaving, now?”

“I… I’ve been summoned! The Mushroom Kingdom is under attack and I’ve been called to an emergency meeting of the High Council!”
“I know they’re under attack, dammit! But, yes, I forgot about the emissary thing. Well, I guess I’d rather have you there than that guy. He was a fucking radical. I’ve no idea how they decided you’re suited for the role but my nephew isn’t. But fuck it- if Mushroomland wants my bastard mongrel son so badly, him they shall have!”

“Th… thank you father.”

“Yes, fine. Go. Just don’t embarrass me by looking like that at council,” said Wart, waving his hand dismissively.

“Yes, Your Majesty!” Birdette yelled and, rising, turned to leave. She fled the throne room at an improper pace and once outside began to breathe heavily and rapidly. For a moment she lost control of her breath entirely and thought she might expire, but the feeling faded eventually when she stared out the castle’s windows. She quickly descended the steps outside and found her carriage fully loaded with chests of accessories and books, waiting for her to board. Curious Guy gave her a worried look from atop the vehicle but said nothing, only reached for the ostro reins. Birdette’s maid, Chirpa, took her hands and gently helped pull her onboard.

Birdette heard Curious yell to the birds outside and felt the carriage start moving. She fixed her gaze diligently to the window and didn’t dare drift from it until they had left Cloud City. Outside its borders, she found she could finally relax, and unexpectedly began to cry. Chirpa took her by the shoulders and patted her sympathetically with a feathered hand, and soon Birdette was availing her of all her woes: her fear of her father, her jealousy of her cousins, and all the pressure these feelings placed upon her relations with her aunt. Chirpa said nothing but “Oh, dear,” and sad tweets, and that was plenty. By the time they arrived in Ravenshead, Birdette found her mind uncommonly calm, and she slept wonderfully that night.

Birdette experienced the next three days as a merry onslaught of sunlight. Each day’s travel offered a great bounty of beautiful sights as the glories of Subconis’s waterfalls and rivers gave way to the wide green plains of Mushroomland, the most flat and sprawling expanses she had ever known. Each night was rife with merriment and opportunities to be swept up in the stories of other travelers from places she had only read of. She told no one of her lineage, though she came close with one particularly debonair toad, a mustached fellow named Hung. He regaled her with stories of the war, though he seemed to lose track of which side he had fought on. Late that evening he invited her to his room but she declined politely and offered him a kiss and a gold ring. His eyes went wide at the favor and he thanked her profusely for it.

Chapter Text

Stretched out on his bedroll beneath the stars of Mushroom’s southlands, Prince Mattia awoke to find himself in the middle of the desert. The monotonous scenery which he had taken in the previous day, clinging to his cousin’s back atop a miserable Helena, had somehow been replaced. The amber wheat fields that had rushed past the limits of his vision revealed themselves that morning to be dunes of densely-packed sand, already baking with a golden warmth under the sunrise. Mattia tried willing his surroundings to be one of the vivid dreams the rich southern air stirred in him, but to no avail.

After a quiet breakfast of rabbit and the last of their turnips, Sir Sahjid gave the order to break camp. Mattia clung once more to Amir’s back as his wiry cousin drove Helena through miles upon miles of hot yellow sand. Soon the Sarasan sandhills suffered the same effect as the previous day’s scenery and stretched into a mindless blur. Mattia clasped his hands tightly around Helena’s younger rider and blinked wearily against the hot dusty air.

“Would you loosen your grip?” Prince Amir yelled without taking his eyes from the path of packed earth stretched before them, “You’re crushing my fucking ribs.”

Mattia leaned back in surprise, then wiped his hands on his pants and drew his arms back around the younger prince, this time distributing his weight to pull more evenly. For once he was grateful he was not riding with Sir Sahjid up ahead, in his bronze armor on his white steed, who surely would have smacked his thoughtless hands and sent him hurtling into one of the dunes. At times Mattia regarded the young prince as a second tormentor, even though the boy never raised a hand to him, but not now. Still, Mattia felt for the two receding bumps at his temples and winced.

The main benefit of trading the grassy fields of Mushroom for the dunes of Sarasa was that it meant the capital was not much further on. Indeed, by the time the sun was nearing its apex in the stark blue sky, Sir Sahjid and the boys spotted a valley from their path over a dune. Circling within, a stone wall ran to surround rows upon rows of square stone buildings in the distance, perfectly arranged like a tabot set. The horses skidded down the dunes into Birabuto’s valley. Sahjid’s horse Hessa did so unflinchingly, carving two thin lines in the sand with her hooves. Helena, meanwhile, kicked up enormous clouds of dust which wafted into her riders’ eyes. The boys winced and coughed.

The guard contingent at the city gate consisted of serious-faced men with short beards in bronze armor wearing fire-worshipper necklaces. The six of them immediately dropped to their knees whereupon Sir Sahjid cast his shadow over them. Upon his horse he was every bit the legend Mattia knew- a torso like a tower, elevated high into the sky by Hessa’s stocky base. The knight nodded to the guards and entered Birabuto.

Sahjid and his party were quickly surrounded by merchants and peasantry. Mattia had never seen so many humans congregating before in his life. His nostrils were filled with the scents of perfumes and spices. A gaggle of brown-skinned peasant boys ran up to wave frantically at Prince Amir from near one of the merchant stands. Amir turned and frowned at Mattia before waving stoically back. The knight and his vassals proceeded through the city until they came to the steps of a great castle, pyramid-shaped but with buttressed towers at the corners. The carvings in the brownstone were centuries old, and decorated anew with gold inlays. Most of the carvings depicted strange beasts, some of which inspired a surprising terror despite their simple designs. Still, Mattia rejoiced at the sight of his great aunt’s castle which marked an end to his largely miserable journey.

Two guards with white headscarves and bronze armor took Hessa and Helena’s reins. A third, paler and scrawnier than the others, ran up the stairs ahead of the party. There were almost a hundred steep steps to the zenith where King Sandstone and his queen held court, and Mattia felt each one in all the tendons of his legs. Yet for all his pain he willed himself to persist. Somehow Sir Sahjid, walking briskly up front in full armor, did not sweat a drop.

When he crested the top of the castle, Mattia laid eyes at last upon his great aunt Rose, her knight Sahjid kneeling before her. Her features were not so unlike his, though her face was wider and more prone to smiling. She bore light brown hair and sapphire eyes like Mattia’s, but on the desert queen they did not seem so foreign and out of place amidst this environment. A large woman, she was outfitted in a glorious golden dress with a wonderful red bodice stretched to contain her sizable bosom. Her tanned face lit up as she bade her son Amir near and embraced him, then turned to Mattia. Their heights were about evenly matched; he was tall for his age and she for her sex. He offered her the sealed envelope from his mother and his great aunt embraced him too.

“How tall and handsome you’ve become!” Queen Rose marveled, “But my dear, you were not built for the desert. Look at your poor face! Come, let’s get you inside.”

At this Sir Sahjid rose and walked dutifully past the queen. She had been standing beneath a shade-casting gazebo decorated with desert flowers, and in the sunny area beyond a pair of heavy stone doors loomed. The knight pushed past the scrawny guard from the pyramid’s base and grabbed a brass handle, pulling open the door in a tremendous display of power. Both doors were open before either the scrawny guard or the queen’s more formidable accompaniment, a burly man with exposed arms and a scar along his left cheek, could scurry to do his duty, and each looked ashamed.

Sir Sahjid, Prince Amir, Mattia, Queen Rose Sandstone and her bodyguard passed the open doors into an expanding stairwell lined with golden bricks. The cavernous well whistled from the desert wind until the doors were shut behind them and Mattia could observe it with its proper illumination. The gold gleamed from the light of candles which formed dazzling stars of evanescence, fading and being consumed by hungry darkness. The stairs continued for a short distance before turning around and dropping into the heart of the castle.

There on the ground level the well opened out to a great hall. Before the knight and his vassals, a great luncheon of flatbreads and hearty curries in golden dinnerware was set upon numerous embroidered silk cloths on a long wooden table. At the head of the table was a stone throne decorated with hieroglyphs and desert roses where Mattia’s great uncle Omar, the king of Sarasa sat. He was significantly older than his queen, and his dusty brown bore its fair share of wrinkles. Yet his face’s features were sharp rather than sagging, and set among them his dark eyes were kind and gleaming. His dark red hair remained; only his sideburns were a crypt-like grey.

At the king’s left sat two adult women in yellow dresses. The nearest to Mattia had a perfectly symmetrical face with a nymph-like little upturned nose and becoming freckled cheeks beneath wide sapphire eyes. Her dress was laced with pink silk and she wore a magenta flower pendant around her neck. The other woman was rather plain, with an orange kirtle beneath her short yellow skirt and a white-petaled flower pendant. These prince understood these women to be his princess cousins Azalea and Daisy, whom he had not seen in six years.

Queen Rose came to her husband’s side and the two shared a brief kiss which stunned Prince Mattia- he had never witnessed such intimacies at his grandfather’s court. Amir sat by his mother and Mattia by his cousin Azalea and all the assembled nobility began to indulge in the magnificent Sarasan lunch, save for Sir Sahjid who guarded his feudal lord. Mattia wrapped some curried meat in thin flatbread and bit into it. Immediately his stomach gurgled and his mouth began burning to an intolerable degree. Azalea was kind enough to pass him a tankard of ibex milk and some less spicy meat.

When the meal was concluded Mattia felt absolutely stuffed and satisfied. The Sandstone family rose from the table, save for Azalea who sat patiently while a human servant cleared her plate. Mattia stood up too, but felt the king’s hand on his shoulder.

“No child, you must rest,” said King Omar, “You are surely tired from your journey. Allow my queen and I time alone with our son. We will be back before long.”

With this the Sarasan king and queen left with their son Amir and daughter Daisy. They left Azalea behind, along with Sir Sahjid who the king brushed the cheek of with his thumb as the knight kneeled. Sir Sahjid rose to stand behind his lord’s empty throne and regard Mattia and the princess. She was staring at a reddish curry stain on her sleeve, but eventually met the prince’s gaze when he found himself at a loss for other targets of attention. Azalea covered her mouth and coughed.

“How was your journey, cousin?” she asked demurely.

“Oh… fine,” Mattia said, nervously eyeing Sahjid, “Sir Sahjid took good care of your brother and I. Um, how goes the Koopa conflict here? Luca won’t shut up about you and Daisy’s defense of Easton. You know, girls don’t lead regiments in Mushroom.”

“Oh, that’s so darling! Last time I saw Luca, he was just the cutest little thing...” Azalea began to gush, until her speech stiffened as she politely coughed again, “...but yes. The war to the east has tapped our resources. Our royal command has been overextended, which is why Daisy and I had to spend many seasons near the border. There has been little time to find worthy suitors for either of us… but yes. You are lucky your kingdom has been sheltered for these last eight years.”

“Right. But it would like a chance to prove myself in battle. To avoid becoming another weak and boring noble.”

“Oh, there’s little chance of that,” Azalea said, her eyes drifting shyly over to the young prince, “Surely there are other ways for you to prove yourself.”

At this it was Mattia’s turn to cough, and not intentionally. He reached for a cup of water and shifted his posture uncomfortably. The princess seemed to await his response eagerly, but he could not think of one. Azalea eventually turned away and the cousins contemplated the fibers of the tablecloths before them. As an hour passed Mattia longed desperately for the return of his Sarasan hosts. He could not catch Sahjid’s eye and Azalea showed no intention of moving from her spot, despite her obvious unease. Another hour or so passed. When the queen eventually did return, she was accompanied only by her son and both were in an excited state. Their servants scurried to close the hall’s great doors behind them.

“Mattia!” Queen Rose exclaimed, “By Great Miya’s Fire! We just received a message! There’s been an attack, at the Mushroom border!”

“What?” Mattia asked, shocked.

“The Koopa army came, completely unprovoked!”

“I thought they were focused on Sarasa!”

“So did we. My husband thought we had lessened their numbers here, but it seems their forces are far greater than we thought!”

“I need to go. Now.”

“Hold on, hold on- the king is still conferring, let us-”

“No, I can’t! What if they come for the capital?!”

“He’s right, mother,” Amir nodded.

“I can take the boys,” said Sir Sahjid unexpectedly from near the door.

“Sahjid, no,” said Rose, “We can send you in the morning, with a full contingent of knights.”

“Let him go,” rang King Sandstone’s deep voice. The hall’s doors had swung back open. “He can guard the boys better than anyone.”

“Amir has just come back to us!” cried the queen, “He’s only a boy!”

“No,” said the king, “He is a capable and pious young man, dear, and soon will be a knight. We must let him do this good by escorting his cousin home.”

Against the further protests of both Queen Rose and Princess Azalea, the king bade his servants to gather his son’s belongings while Sahjid fetched the horses. The king held his son close, a single tear in his eye, and quietly conferred to the boy his own red-jeweled scimitar, which the boy promised he would soon return. After the boy’s mother and sisters had hugged him as well, Queen Rose held Mattia to her breast and he caught Azalea’s gaze over her shoulder. When the queen release him Mattia saw Princess Daisy frowning.

At the bottom of the castle steps Sir Sahjid stood ready with Hessa and Helena. Amir, Mattia and Sahjid mounted their horses. The boys waved goodbye to Amir’s family, who stood assembled on the stairs. Then, the knight and his two vassals made the most of what sunlight remained and rode toward those distant dangers that lay to the north.

Chapter Text

Featherday morning, thinking of Hung, Birdette rocked wistfully in her carriage until it came to a stop. She stepped out, steadied by Chirpa, and gazed up at the sky. There rose great towers, spires which looked to graze the very clouds. She marveled at the beauty of their stonework, and especially at the vibrant red tiles of their roofs. Above a great white veranda stood a stained glass window two stories tall, decorated magnificently with House Toadstool’s shimmering seal. A veritable moat encircled the castle, and on the bridge before her which crossed it stood a small garrison of guardsmen. The entire scene was scattered with loveliest fungalage found in any kingdom.

The palace guard stood in hushed fascination at the vibrant and well-dressed lizardling, prompting her servant Curious to announce her by her new title of High Chancellor-Emissary to the small gathering. At this the assemblage promptly dispersed, with some helping unload the carriage and some retreating into the castle. As the flurry of activity began to calm, a toad with a puffy red cravat tucked into full steel armor began crossing the bridge toward her from within the keep. He bore the insignia of House Toadstool upon his chest, along with several pinned medals. Accompanying him were two guardsmen with ornamental helmets, one of blue and one of yellow, wearing iron armor with golden greaves. It all seemed a bit much.

“Thank the stars!” he said, “The emissary has arrived at last! I welcome you, good lady- you are his wife, I assume?”

“Umm… no, sorry,” Birdette stumbled, “I am Birdette of House Wart. I received your summons.”

“Oh! Sorry about that, Lady Emissary!” the red toad gulped, unsure of where his error laid, “We were misinformed that Wart’s, um, son was to take the role. But it’s no matter, I assure you! I would introduce myself as Captain Toad of the Royal Army, and if you would allow me I would escort you to your chambers. We can surely allow you a brief respite, dire as the situation may be. As the Minister of War I can tell you, we need decisive action soon- I fear the council must meet today!”

“I understand, Captain. I really feel quite well, and you may escort me to the council now if you wish.” Birdette was not at all weary from her travels. In fact, she felt invigorated.

“Really? Very well, then!” the two began to cross the bridge to the castle, flanked by Toad’s guard. “His Highness himself is taking a brief respite to collect himself at the moment, and only his royal advisor is permitted to visit with him. But the council has already been assembled for four days, awaiting your arrival.”

Being waited on made Birdette nervous, as did the grandeur of the castle entrance. Its walls loomed large overhead as she stepped through the gate. Inside was an intimidating set of stairs to the second floor, beyond which were smaller stairs and wide open archways to the courtyards, veritable gardens unto themselves with many trees and statues within. A cloister ran their length, whitestone pillars connecting to the garrison in the west, chapel in the east and the great hall beyond. She and the captain ascended the staircase and turned left, coming to a set of doors which two guards were already holding open for them. Their own guard accompaniment hung back, saluting the captain and joining their friends by the door while he entered the council chambers. Birdette followed him.

The council chambers felt significantly more cramped than anything on the castle’s main level. From the far wall hung the banners of the six kingdomsrepresented by the council: Mushroom, Sarasa, The Coinlands, Kongia, Subconis, and Dinotia. Heavy curtains covered much of the windows to the east and west. The tops of the windows, ornately carved, peeked out and shined a sparse and errant light over the great stone table which dominated the room. A huge map of Superos was carved into its center, with enough space around it to fit the chancellors’ drinks or trinkets.

A great majority of the councilroom’s empty winebottles were clustered near one dark and muscularman at its far end. He wore a yellow cape over white noble’s garb, all silk save for two steel shoulder guards strapped around his broad torso. His nose looked reddened from the surrounding drink. Closer to the doorstood a very tall man in a pretty purple coat, maintaining perfect posture with both hands on the table. He smiled at Birdette when he saw her enter, backing towards her and bringing a gloved hand to his chin. Across from both of them was a koopa who reminded Birdette of her cousins from the Koopa Kingdom whom she had met when she was young. He had bright yellow hair and spectacles, and looked to be the closest to her in terms of age, perhaps even younger.

“Gentlemen of the High Council, I present the new Chancellor-Emissary from Subconisland, Lady Birdette of Ravenshead!” announced Captain Toad. He then turned and gave Birdette a look of shame, speaking lowly, “...I know I said the council was already assembled, but it has been four days. Some of the council have been known to wander off occasionally.”

“Not I, good lady!” assured the tall standing fellow as he bowed quickly and deeply, his purple tailcoats whipping up past his arched back, “I would scarcely vacate my post and fail to greet the Subconiscian dignitary, charged as I am to represent your close allies to the north! For I am Baron Waluigi, Minister of Finance! Charmed to make your acquaintance!” He drew near and Birdette offered the baron her hand, which he made a great show of kissing before adding, “-And may I say if I had known the new emissary was to be a woman of your beauty, I would not have turned from that door!”

“You flatter me, Baron,” she said, sure that it was the right response but unsure whether she was enjoying the sudden adulation.

“Yes, how wonderful!” cried the man in shoulder guards from across the table, one hand holding his head and the other his goblet, “Let us all make a great show of introductions as we wait idly another dayon an absent king to lead this urgent war council! Meanwhile the Koopa hordes can breach our borders, raze our towns and rape our women!” This last he directed at the yellow-haired koopa, who gulped.

“Watch your words, Lord Shah!” shouted Captain Toad, suddenly red and irritated and not the cordial if blustering man of a few minutes ago, “The king did not wish to proceed with an incomplete council! To do so would be an offense to Subconisland!”

“Are we not at war?!” TariqShah shouted back.

“Um, yes captain, I personally believe King Wart would have understood if we had convened and made his child aware of the situation later,” the koopa said carefully, giving a nod to Birdette. She dared not speak nor return the gesture.”

“It is not for you to to question the king’s decisions, Lord Shelling!” the toad snapped.

“No one is doing that,” Lord Shah mumbled into his goblet, “We’re all just wondering why Chancellor Toadsworth is allowed conference with His Highness, while the rest of us are left in the damn dark!”

“Perhaps His Highness prefers you in the dark,” Baron Waluigi offered bemusedly, stretching his wiry frame forward to lean on the table, “After all, you wouldn’t be privy to any of this if your brother Sir Sahjid were not otherwise occupied, no?”

At this Lord Shah went a ghostly pale and spoke no further, sipping profusely of wine. Over the next few minutes, the blonde koopa rose from his seat and introduced himself as Lord Claude Shelling, the emissary from Dinotia and High Minister of Agriculture. Baron Waluigi then insisted on showing Birdette to her own chair, between Lords Shah and Shelling, at the far end of the table.Lord Shah had the effect of unsettling Birdette’s nerves and so she turned her chair slightlytoward Lord Shelling, not so much regarding him as finding comfort in the general shape of something close to a lizardling.Captain Toad began informing Birdette of some details of the recent attack and the kingdom’s border security, causing Lord Shah to moantiresomely in her periphery. After a few minutes of this, two short figures, both walking with canes, entered the council room. They were clearly engaged in an ongoing conversation such that they would not introduce themselves and prompted the captain to rise and, once sure of Birdette’s attention, address the congregation:

“The Council welcomes the return of Chancellor Toadsworth, Royal Advisory to the King, and that of theViscount Swanky Kong, Chancellor-Emissary of Kongialand!” the captain proclaimed. Lord Shah ignored this and angrily rose from his seat, pointing a finger at the viscount.

“Just where have you been?! What is it you two were discussing, that you need to sneak around together outside this room?”

The viscount grinned toothily at Tariq Shah. He was a short ape of the Kong family, with heavy trunk-like arms and hairless fingers that glittered with pale Kongian gold. He wore a fine blue coat and the cane he leaned on was polished black aluminium. The brown fur on his head was long and slicked back with mousse.

“I believe Toadsworth was availing the king of the new emissary’s arrival,” explained Swanky, “I chanced upon him in the hall and inquired about His Highness. I reasoned that with the capable Lords Shah and Wart now gathered we might at last convene this war council.”

Tariq blinked at this explanation, then slowly nodded to Swanky. He crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair, seeming satisfied. Toadsworth nodded to the council and extended his own cane, ambling slowly to his own chair by the king’s ornate one. The toad was as old as they came, with a wrinkled face covered in tiny wisps of grey and dominated by a long white moustache, not trimmed and oiled like the baron’s but messy and uneven, though still possessing a certain aged dignity.

“I believe it is Lady Wart, actually,” the lord Claude informed Swanky.

“It’s actually neither,” said Birdette, “My mother was an unwed commoner from Dinotia and so my father did not grace me with his name.”

“Aye,” nodded Claude, “Marriage is mostly a new and unfamiliar tradition to Dinotia.”

“So you’re a bastardess, then?” asked Tariq. The other chancellors quickly leapt to chastise him for the query, though Birdette would have answered with an unshaken yes. She would rather be her father’s bastard than his heir.

After they settled, the council’s attention mostly shifted toward Toadsworth and when he thought his lord might be ready to meet. Toadsworth said nothing and so some hours passed idly, the beams of light on the table drifting toward the edges of the room as the sun rose in the sky. Lord Shah had more wine brought in, barking at the servant girl when she reached for one of the empty bottles from the past few days. He made quick work of the new bottle and added it to his collection of depressing trophies. Next to him, Swanky of House Kong made pleasant conversation with both his neighbors, Tariq and Baron Waluigi. At one point the baron drew out some parchment and began reading his own poetry. Some of it was in Coinish, and the beauty of it made Birdette’s heart flutter. Toad and Toadsworth both drew pipes, smoking and staring at the table’s map. Nary a word passed between them, yet they seemed to pass the hours happily in that silent familiarity toads have with one another. It occurred to Birdette how rarely she had ever seen one toad hold court, let alone two.

Birdette eventually found conversation with her seatmate Claude and found him an affable sort. She questioned him about Dinotia, and though his focus seemed to be more on the kingdom’s agricultural production, he did have opinions on much of its history, and a more modern insight than she had found in her books. It turned out Claude’s predecessor had been Birdette’s cousin Wendy, the sole Koopa princess. She had held the common attitude that Dinotia’s value lay chiefly in its crops, while its inhabitants were mostly useful only as slaves or beasts of burden. This Claude bucked against somewhat, having studied the culture of the ancient creatures there. He cited the religion of yoshi tribes and the beauty of rexian pottery as holding particular interest.

Soon all hope of the king’s attendance vanished, and the council dispersed one by one or in couples. Captain Toad whispered to Toadsworth and the two of them crossed the courtyard toward the garrison. The rest of the council climbed the stairs further into the castle. Birdette called for her servants, but saw no sign of them on this floor. After some futile wandering she tried following the chancellors up and soon found herself in a hall full of closed doors. One which she came to had the seal of House Shelling painted on the wood, and the next had the crest of the Coin itself- Baron Waluigi’s room. She guessed her own room to be somewhere among these, but saw no Subconiscian symbols nor trace of her staff.

“Chirpa? Curious?” her voice rang out, echoing through the empty corridor. She heard voices ahead of her and hurried quickly along, stopping at a corner. Peeking around it she saw Swanky of Kongia and a young boy with dark brown hair.

“...well then it would be you, kid,” Swanky said grinning, hunched down over his cane level with the noble child, “Isn’t that right?”

“...I guess so,” said the boy.

“Well I suppose it won’t come to that. Lucky for you your cousin is only visiting Sarasa and will return in due time.”

“Sure- he’ll be back.”

“You’re friends with the boy, yes?”

“We’re-”

The Kong’s conversation with the child was cut short by the appearance of a woman Birdette recognized as one of the king’s daughters, an aging blonde woman with pink bows in hair. Princess Strawberry, she believed. The princess took the boy and protectively held him against her chest.

“Why are you talking to my ward, ape?”

“Ah, Princess! The prince was-”

“Never mind. Stay away from him, you freak. Let’s go, Pear.”

The princess started off in the other direction. As soon as she turned, Swanky’s ever-present smile faded and Birdette thought she heard him mutter something to himself. She turned from the corner and tried to dash off before he could come that way, but ran straight into Chirpa instead.

“Miss! We was just looking for you!”

“Chirpa! Where have you been?”

“Helping to prepare your room, miss!”

Birdette hurried Chirpa down the hall until the little avian girl showed her to where her new room was. There was no sigil on the door at all, and the present bareness of the interior made it feel vast and daunting. A toad girl with a red bonnet was hard at work organizing her dresses on a dresser, and when she saw the lizardling she balked and scurried off. Curious was sat at the new desk, folding up a piece of parchment. He turned when she entered.

“Just marking the day’s events, milady,” he said, rising from his small velvet stool, “I’ll be in the staff quarters. Ring if you should need me. Otherwise I’ll see you tomorrow.”

With her handyman gone Birdette toured her strange new quarters filled with familiar things. She toured the room idly, her fingers tracing the spines of her books like they were the arms of a friend. She came to her small iron chest and opened it to regard her pink-shelled heirloom, then closed and latched the box, satisfied. Chirpa helped her change into more formal evening wear and the two sat talking for a time, with Birdette especially eager to hear Chirpa’s amazed impressions of a place it was hard to conceal her own awe of. Soon Birdette grew hungry and sent Chirpa to fetch them something to eat. The two dined on the floor.

Birdette was about to bathe and ready for bed when the toad girl returned and informed her the War Council was finally to fully convene. On her way to the council chamber she saw Claude, and thought she might accompany him until she saw the viscount Swanky waving him near. Just then the genteel baron of the Coinlands gracefully drew beside her and offered her his arm.

“My, what a dress!” he remarked, “Already the second gorgeous article I’ve seen! You’re certain to win the hearts of Mushroom at this rate, my lady!”

Birdette blushed and hung off the baron’s arm. She asked him polite questions about him and his kingdom as they proceeded, but the frank way he veered all his responses to his own fascination with her swayed her thoughts from etiquette to more exciting fare. Before they had even entered the council room she was laughing unreservedly, enjoying Waluigi’s boldness.

“This is no laughing matter!” snipped Lord Tariq from across the chamber, “This means war!”

“Quiet, Lord Shah!” whispered Captain Toad loudly, “The king enters!”

Birdette rushed to her place at the table. The other chancellors all rose and placed their hands on their chests, bowing slightly. The High King Morris Toadstool entered with his royal advisor at his side. The king was dressed not in Mushroomish robes but in a loose white blouse stained with yellow about the sleeves and front. Only his crown conferred the man with the fearsome remoteness of a king, but Birdette trembled not for even this was beset among tousles of his dark grey mane, some slick with sweat. His countenance was grave and pale, and on his exposed neck and upper chest the blue of his veins showed clearly through his skin.

The king dismissed Toadsworth with a tired wave. The captain of his guard made to announce his entrance as he had done for Birdette earlier, but the king dismissed him in similar fashion. Instead, the king placed two veined hands heavily on the table and spoke haltingly:

“This attack was very unexpected. And also ill-timed. I care for the men lost at Fort Horn but our coffers here are lacking and our troops are spread thin. I am hesitant to act hastily and provoke further hostility.”

“If I may, your Highness,” offered Waluigi, “The Coinlands would happily contribute whatever is needed, and would suffer the crown no debt as it deal with the imminent threat.”

“I appreciate that, Baron. Still, I think I may take a diplomatic approach here. Even if war should really prove inevitable, this tactic should give us valuable time to prepare for it.”

“And what of the time it should give the Koopas, your Highness?” Lord Shah interjected, his face blotchy from the evening’s drinking, “Seven of our days have already gone to waste. That’s time they’ve had to gather their forces, while we have done next to nothing! I would beg you to take decisive action!”

“Lord Shah!” Captain Toad admonished. The king himself paid no mind and merely set his tired and unfocused gaze upon the middle distance between Birdette and the Sarasan, toward the row of banners beyond.

“If I may, Lord Shah, I would beseech you to consider the brilliance with which our king speaks,” spoke a woman seated by the king whom Birdette had not yet met. The woman wore a white dress with a subtle sheen, but no jewelry or further accouterments. She had her blonde hair in a long braid, save for two wavy tresses by either ear which hung down past the elbows of her outstretched arm. The woman commanded immediate respect through the strong timbre of her voice and the ease with which she occupied the tense room.

“A strong diplomatic approach provides myriad opportunities,” continued the woman in white, “The way Koopa responds would inform us about what we face. Even no response at all would tell us a great deal. Also, as His Highness intimates, it does not preclude us from preparing for the worst, for which the Council’s kingdoms would be of great aid. The right diplomatic envoy might even help disguise some of our other plans.”

“Thank you, Priestess,” sighed the king.

“Yes, I should say she’s provided us with an important perspective from which to consider the situation!” Swanky Kong said cheerily, “The wide perspective of the Goddess, fittingly enough for a High Priestess of hers.” There were murmurs of assent, but Birdette thought she saw the priestess frowning from one side of her mouth.

“Indeed!” said Baron Waluigi, “Where is your devotion, Lord Shah? You should remember the Goddess said ‘With presence of mind comes prescience of space”, being a follower of hers!”

With this Tariq fumed and sat down in his chair. Birdette did the same. For all the years that Sarasaland had been a close ally to Mushroom, their nobles were the most reticent of any kingdom’s to abandon the worship of their pagan god. They all swore to Rosalina and acted the part when in Mushroom, but even Birdette could see that act for what it was. For her part, Birdette had been baptized twice: once in the name of her now-dead half-uncle, said then to be Gigas incarnate in mortal flesh, and once in the name of the Goddess. Of the two, she preferred the Goddess to her uncle.

“Still,” spoke the High Priestess, “I would have war.”

At this the assembled council turned to her with shocked expressions, save for the king. The priestess coughed in her palm and leaned back. King Toadstool slowly pushed his hands forward on the stone table until his torso was perpendicular to his weary hips. He stretched his fingers out toward the eastern end of the continent carved into the center and produced a low pained growl. Its timber may have been fearsome were it not accompanied by such a pathetic display. When the growl ended, the king raised his countenance slightly and his blue eyes made contact with Birdette’s for the first time. His pupils were cloudy with age and seemed to sag heavily in the man’s irises. He looked far older than King Wart- Birdette guessed him to be at least ninety.

The high king finally slid off the table’s edge and leaned back against his tall council throne as deliberations progressed without his input. He said nary a word for the rest of the war meeting, and had Toadsworth translate his grunting into a sum of measured concerns. It was decided that until a diplomatic meeting was arranged, the only military action taken by Mushroomland would be an amassing of troops. An abashed Tariq Shah offered a handful of Sarasan knights who could pry themselves from the desert kingdom’s own military defense and avail themselves to the High King; a meaningful gesture that would nonetheless prove empty if Koopa were to mount a full incursion.

As for the other kingdoms, Lord Claude mumbled into his sleeve that Dinotia could not yet be persuaded to break its treaties, but offered himself as an envoy to Koopa should the king need one. The Baron sorrowfully declared the Coinish army spread thin but offered their reserves again. When the council turned to Birdette she balked and announced that she would write to her father at once and see what they could do. Only the viscount Swanky could make a promise of a large count of Kongia’s troops. He asked only that he be granted leave to make his case directly to his counsin, the Kongian king. Morris Toadstool grunted and waved his hand for the ape to go.

A messenger-toad was dispatched that night to the newly seized Fort Horn, suggesting a meeting there between its occupiers and the dispatch from Mushroom. The precise makeup of said dispatch would be determined the next morning, but for now the High King and his Advisor would presumably form a part, as might Lord Claude Shelling and the Baron. Birdette was eminently thankful not to be considered for the mission.

The council dispersed as Toadsworth and the Captain took the weak by either arm and lead him to his chambers, Toadsworth’s cane pounding heavily under his master’s weight. Birdette waited for Lord Shah to leave and then took the newly familiar path up the staircase towards her room. The sun had long since set and only the light of the Goddess now shined through the pristine stained glass of the castle’s foyer. It skirted between the torches to cast a pale glow on the carpet and inspire a ruminative hesitation in Birdette’s procession. She had never felt freer, far as she was from her father, yet his royal influence still informed her presence in this place.

Coming up the mouth of the stairwell and out of that thoughtful glow, Birdette observed a strange tableau. The Baron Waluigi was turned away from her and engaged in conversation with another woman. It was Strawberry, the same Toadstool princess Swanky had so offended earlier. She seemed in better spirits now, even invigorated by whatever the Baron was whispering to her. Birdette remembered his smooth lilting voice and felt an ember of envy catch in her chest. She tried to extinguish it but could not. She ducked back below the lip of the topmost stair and waited for the distant scattered plosives of the quiet conversation cease from down that hall. When she was sure the two royals had retired she finally sprinted for her room, where Chirpa was sleeping soundly in her cot. She let the tweeter sleep and disrobed alone, wrapping herself in the unfamiliar sheets of her new bed.

Birdette could not sleep. Thoughts of her new position at the seat of all power would not subside. She found herself turning continually from side to side, until at last she lit a candle and retreated back into the hallway, without waking her handmaid or ringing her servant’s bell. The lizardling scanned with her bleary eyes for a kitchen where she might procure some tea. At the north end of the castle’s third floor, while wandering through a dining area she picked up the smell of meat and grease. She followed it with her keen senses and came to an open door past which another candle’s dim light shined. Birdette quickly snuffed out her own candle and drew closer.

Beyond the doorway were the kitchens she had been seeking, though quiet and empty. Two figures stood within, one tall but hunched and one small but resolute. The tall figure was the High King, now without even his crown to offset his filthy garb. Breathing shakily, he leaned against a counter and extended a hand to the figure of his guardsman. Captain Toad stood firm, his grim countenance revealed by the candle upon the stove, and produced a transparent flask. The liquid inside was a vibrant blue. The king downed it greedily and returned the flask to Toad. He stood straight and closed his eyes for a moment, seeming to revel in some state of bliss. Then the king turned from the counter and violently vomited the contents of his stomach out upon the kitchen floors. They were largely blue, but Birdette saw rivulets of blood swirl and collect upon the tile.

King Toadstool collapsed in his mess and Birdette ran for her chambers. Her footsteps were concealed by the flare of attendant noise which rose up in the kitchen behind her. Birdette returned to her chambers. She did not hesitate to wake Chirpa and tell her everything of the captain and king and the strange vial of blue. The two talked excitedly into the morning of this disturbing intrigue.

As the new day progressed, it became clear that the king would not be leading a diplomatic mission to the kingdom’s border anytime soon. The High King remained in his quarters, where no emissary was permitted entry. A full day passed and concern amidst the castle for the health of the king and his dominion grew, as did rumors of a vial with a strange blue liquid.

Chapter Text

Princess Daisy took leave of her father’s court and ran for the stables. There, her riding gear and provisions were already assembled by Mansour. He slung the packs over Olive’s back as she strapped the leather pieces on over her traditional white battle robe and took Olive by the bridle.. As she lead her horse toward Birabuto’s main road, Daisy turned to see her sister standing by the gate and clutching her lower face. She looked like she had been crying.

“You weren’t even going to tell me?” Azalea croaked, her throat clenched tight, “Yesterday was So. Dreadful. And now you would leave me without a word?”

“I thought it would be easier,” said Daisy, beckoning Mansour to fetch his own horse out of the stable so they could depart, “It’s safer for you here.” Daisy tried not to meet her sister’s gaze.

“I don’t know when I will see Amir again! You are all I have!”

“You have mother and father.”

“Please don’t leave me here!”

“What would you have me do? I need to secure Easton!”

“Take me with you!”

Azalea lifted her hand from her face and brought it out to to touch her sister’s forearm. Daisy saw now that there were indeed tear marks along those pale and perfect cheeks, and more water welling up above them. The sight alone was enough to pierce Daisy’s fragile determination.

“Oh, Miya- Azalea!” Daisy said, stifling a sob, “I’m just worried for you, I want to protect you!”

“Then protect me!”

“I… I want to, you just seem so-”

“Let’s ride in together, like during the height of the war! The Desert Flowers, remember? Fierce champions were we!”

“I- alright,” Daisy said at last, and she released Olive so she could descend the short slope to the gate and embrace Azalea. Both women cried and held each other tight, Daisy needing to remind herself every so often not to squeeze as hard as she longed to and crush her smaller sister. When they were done they noticed Mansour had brought out Azalea’s horse and his own, both fully stocked and saddled. He patiently kept his eyes planted upon the pyramid in the distance as the princesses collected themselves and mounted up. Mansour rode behind them until they were out of Birabuto, so that the princesses could absorb the adulation of their people who so loved their champions.

Both princesses were strong riders, and their mounts Olive and Sweet Boy were the swiftest in Sarasa. They cleared a great distance before noon, when they took a short rest under a nahura tree and had their daily meal while waiting for Mansour to catch up to them on Devil.

“I apologize for this morning,” said Daisy, “It warms my heart that you would leave the castle to find me, and I am glad you did. I love you so- a trip to Easton without you would be miserable.”

“I was shocked you were leaving without me!” said Azalea, “But truly, I didn’t think I should leave my room for all of Fireseason. Yesterday was so embarrassing.”

“Well, Mattia is a boy. And a stupid one, too.”

“Why do you say that?”

“You said he didn’t respond to your flirtation! After Peach wrote mother a proposal for him to wed you!”

“Yes, it was horrible. But… do you think him a virgin?”

“So what if he is! He should be all the more eager!”

“Yes...” Azalea mumbled shyly, then smiled, “Thank you, Daisy.”

“Of course.”

Soon Mansour reached the tree’s shadow. He descended from Devil and took a long sip from his waterskin. He then urged the ladies not to wait on him anymore and so they re-saddled and rode even faster the rest of the day, until the sun was nearly setting and they slowed down. Mansour’s form expanded from the sandy horizon and he directed them toward Muda, a small town just beyond a nearby dune.

Muda had neither the walls nor gates of Birabuto, but there was a stone fortress by its edge and several small guardhouses along its streets. Once Mansour had familiarized himself with their layout he directed Daisy and Azalea to the inn he deemed most secure, which was of course the one managed by the church and watched over by its templars. It was called The Mudazel, and as they approached it Mansour unsaddled and brought their belongings inside. Of course, as a servant of the Sandstones he was not permitted to sleep under the same roof as the princesses and so once they were checked in he left with the horses to seek lodging elsewhere. Once he was gone, the girls took one look around the dull inn and retreated out under the light of the half moon, desperate for entertainment.

Azalea found herself lured in by the sitar music that spilled out from a nearby tavern with oil lanterns in the windows, and pulled her sister towards there. Inside, the pale ochre walls were painted with red light from weathered beast stomachs pulled tight over the lanterns at every table. The sitar player, a raven-haired young woman with dark makeup, recognized the two immediately and stopped playing.

“By Miya, it is the Desert Flowers come to Muda! Princesses, you honor us!” she cried.

The songstress began to play and sing “Flowers Twin of Rose”:

“Good Servants of the Lord

For seasons did endure

The gnashing of the lizard hordes

Though all were pious men

They missed their western friends

And wives they hid beneath their boards

From Birabuto rode

To serve their queenly code,

Two pretty champions aptly chose

On steeds that pierced the veil

One wispy and one hale

Those flowers twin of their dear Rose!”

As she sang the reprise, several customers of the tavern joined in. They sat up somewhat on their cushions, clapping and singing. One woman raised her hookah happily. Daisy nodded to her and pulled her sister from near the door to a deep purple couch. A barmaid promptly brought them some melon wine which they drank as the songstress continued:

“She was flanked by shields of pink

And rapt were they who saw her ride

But rare were drakes with time to think

Before her arrows found their sides

Azalea, young and of the sand

Drove the siege from sacred land

But by their fast most men were lost

Two hundred paid the desert’s cost

Yet one emerged from Easton’s gate

Seven sevens matched her gait

Forty nine with dresses fine

Daisy’s number broke their line

Yet orange dress brought forth their red

Before her women lizards bled

And when the Koopa army fell

They doffed their robes and spirits swelled

For all were men Sarasa born

The battle’s scales were tipped with scorn

And midst the devastation, those

Flowers twin of their dear Rose!”

The song concluded with another reprise. The bar’s patrons joined in, letting out a big hurrah and then seeming to slump into themselves. The atmosphere inside seemed to change as the sitarist started a bawdy instrumental and a handsome figure strode through the beaded curtain and began dancing. This elicited genuine applause from the reposed tavern guests, but they soon fell back into an inebriated half-slumber.

The young dancer had luscious brown skin, curly black hair, and a captivating assembly of abdominal muscles, partially obscured beneath the tassels of his short sleeveless shirt. He swayed provocatively to the song’s slow tempo. As the plucking began to pick up the young man spotted the princesses and started sliding toward them on his bare heels. Once before their couch, he dropped to the ground, bringing his head level to their laps and staring up at them between flutters of his thick, pretty eyelashes. As he brought himself up without touching the floor, his toned body rippling with impressive fluidity of motion, Daisy noticed her sister’s eyebrows raise. She cupped a hand to her mouth and tried to speak over the music and general din.

“Do you want me to head back to the inn?” she asked.

“What? Why?” asked Azalea.

“To give you some… time with him? It might help relieve your mind of thoughts of our cousin!”

“...No, that’s not necessary,” said Azalea. She crossed her arms and Daisy saw her posture stiffen. Whatever eroticism or adventure might have arisen that night dissipated with the mention of Mattia. The two of them continued staring at the male dancer but neither took any pleasure in it. Once they had their perfunctory second serving of wine and had generously tipped the songstress they fled into the night, where the day’s heat had evaporated from the sand and left a dark chill which shivered their cores.

“...I’m sorry I brought him up. I didn’t know yesterday affected you so,” said Daisy, wishing her sister would reach out and help brace her against the cold.

“It did not.”

“Right. Sorry.”

Back at The Mudazel, Azalea quickly made her way up the stairs, ascending before Daisy had even crossed the ground floor. As she followed her sister, Daisy heard a door on the landing slam and the lock turn. Daisy stopped on the fifth stair and let out a frustrated sigh. Just then, she saw Mansour’s solemn face peeking from the front doorway of the inn. He gave her a grave look and then his face retreated as quickly as it had appeared.

Daisy caught a second sigh in her lungs and did not release it. She wanted to curse but did not dare. Mansour was not a knight of Sarasa but rather a devoted servant of God and the royal family who took his duties more seriously than most. In Miya’s eyes, it was the duty of sanguine men such as he to temper the fiery yearnings of the women in their lives. Some amount of impropriety was to be expected from two Sandstone women, yet they would never receive any blame. Such would inevitably be assigned to the men who allowed their emotions to burn unchecked, or gave in to temptation themselves. Men such as those were not men of God. And Mansour was apparently too observant to allow himself opportunity to claim ignorance in this matter.

Daisy cursed the man’s fastidiousness as she entered her room. She found her bed lonely, even lonelier when she considered her probably similarly sleepless sister in the room just down the hall.

Chapter Text

Franco and Elio crept into the abandoned manor with nervous smiles on their faces. The ground floor was spacious and empty. The central wall of the structure had burned or rotted away- white mushrooms dotted the cracked black edge of its construction, and inky darkness lay beyond, where the windows had been boarded over. Franco took Elio’s hand and lead him to an open window on the western wall. Specks of dust floated in the light which poured from it into the manor, and in that light Franco stood and took Elio by his throat.

Franco traced the back of Elio’s neck with his fingers and tightened his grip, bringing the younger boy’s face into the light. Elio was perhaps thirteen years of age, and half a foot shorter than his gangly companion. His short and thin nose, dotted with freckles, jutted sharply out through his tangled brown bangs. His lips were full and presently quivering. Franco brought them nearer and kissed them, and the two boys stood tangled in the light and dust for a precious moment.

The kiss ended with a smack which echoed against the blackened wood, and the boys looked to each other and laughed nervously. Each began to doff their shirts, revealing their pale and freckled torsos. They whispered to one another so as not to disturb the rotting wood and the tiny maggots beneath the floorboards.

“Wow, it really does feel cursed in here,” whispered Elio.

“I know,” said Franco, “Isn’t it great?”

“I guess so. Do you think we’ll end up like those other boys?”

“You mean like Marco and them? Wouldn’t that be lovely? I didn’t think things like that happened in Bounding, but now it’s like the Devil is really here. Maybe if I offer myself to him, he’ll let you be my slave.”

“That is such crazy shit. You’re insane.”

“You’d like it though! Admit it, you’re turned on right now.”

Franco reached down and felt something small and hard in Elio’s pants. He smiled and snaked his other arm around Elio’s back, reaching down the crack of his ass and eliciting gasps and moans from the shorter boy.

“You want me to do you first?” Franco asked, and Elio nodded. Franco dropped to his knees and pulled Elio’s pants down, taking him into his mouth. After a minute of bucking his small member into his friend’s mouth, Elio’s body began to pulse frenetically. Franco stopped what he was doing and turned him around, so that Elio was pressed against the rotten wood of the wall and his ass was jutting out.

Franco inserted his tongue into Elio’s ass and starting pumping at his dick with his hand, which elicited louder and more desperate moans. Elio’s young body could not sustain himself and he soon released his white seed onto the flecked black wood, where it would serve as a meal to maggots and other vermin. Elio turned around and looked down at his friend. Franco looked up and smiled.

“Now you do me,” Franco said, and a sharp green bolt impaled the back of his head with deadly force. His eye, skewered by the tip of said bolt as it drove through both ends of his skull and the matter between, popped out of its socket. Below the ghastly sight of its protrusion, Franco’s smile remained. His mouth did open almost fully though, as his head rolled back to stare at the ceiling. From the mirthful gap between those happy lips a blackness that seemed to stretch deep into his bowels revealed itself. Luigi thought he saw the grey wisp of the boy’s soul as it ascended from that dark well.

A second green bolt nailed Elio’s thigh to the wall behind him. He screamed and immediately tried to wrench it out, but couldn’t manage it. The bolt had missed his bone entirely but his nervy meat was being letted of a small healthy trickle of blood. Elio gasped as Luigi stepped out from the darkness beyond the manor’s decayed middle wall and approached him.

“Why did you come here?” Luigi asked, and was astonished by the desperation in his voice.

“I-I don’t know, I didn’t mean to… he made me!” Elio cried, pointing at his bare-chested and mutilated friend.

“No, he didn’t. I did. A part of me wished for it, and here you are. God, you’re so beautiful.”

“What… what are you going to do to me?”

“I have to kill you.”

“Please… please don’t! F-fuck! Please!”

“I have to, or else something worse will happen.”

“What-”

Luigi interrupted the boy by stabbing him just below the chest. The blade of the knife twisted up his guts and retreated, leaving the boy a gasping wreck. Elio winced and braced himself against the wall he was pinned to, then let out a scream and began trying to pull out the bolt again with both hands. Luigi narrowed his eyes and drove his blade back eight more times into the tender meat of his victim’s thin and naked stomach. He gritted his teeth and wiped some sweat from his brow with his blade hand.

“Fuck this,” Luigi said, grinding his teeth together worriedly, and slashed at the boy’s neck just as he pulled the bloody bolt free from his thigh. The effort of it made Elio jolt his head to the side, so that the slicing knife did not hit his life vein. Still, Luigi saw that he had made a large gash from near it right through the left half of the boy’s flesh to his spine, where it glanced off the bone and out of Luigi’s hand. “Oh shit,” he said, “Wait just a-”

As his attacker reached for the fallen weapon, Elio dashed out the manor door. Luigi muttered another expletive and sprinted after him out into the afternoon sun and the expanse of gentle hills. Elio tripped on a rock at the crest of one of these and fell, rolling naked with his bloody leg making red spots in the grass. Luigi cut between two hills and lunged for the boy, tackling and overwhelming his underdeveloped frame. Luigi straddled him, his denim-covered crotch rubbing against his pale waist of his victim.

As the boy flailed his arms, Luigi caught them and looked down the length of the country road toward the town that lay in the valley below. He saw no travelers and so as the boy pleaded for his life again he brought his palms together crosswise. His hands started twisting and shaking, and then he brought them apart and quickly pressed both down on the boy’s chest. Elio bucked against the hands that touched him. The thin skin stretched over his tiny ribs twitched and then was still.

Luigi stood up, leaning over the boy and panting in the late shroomseason heat. He rubbed the back of his head and sighed, then knelt down and wrapped his arms around the boy’s inert body. He lifted it off the ground and brought it back into the manor he had always found so comforting.

Two days later, another intruder entered Luigi’s assumed domicile. This one came in the morning, and his figure cast a mightily imposing shadow on the rectangle of light which crept into the house in those early hours. As the floorboards creaked under the large man’s weight, Luigi checked the nails on the row of boards nearest him in the darkest corner. He then turned his attention to the springbows nailed into a bench against the central wall. There were five of the cunning weapons, each loaded with a green bolt and each pointed to a small, natural-seeming hole in the wall’s decayed construction. Luigi fingered the trigger on the middle one and waited.

“Luigi?” the backlit figure called, “You here?” There was a familiar gruffness to that voice which Luigi’s ears stripped off, leaving the soft voice of a child. Luigi released the springbow’s trigger. He stood, stretching out his crooked spine, and stepped out from behind the wall.

“Yea,” he said.

“I thought you’d be here. People in town say the ghosts have come back or some shit. Is that you?”

“People in town say a lot of things.”

Mario walked closer and narrowed his gaze. The features of his face were sturdy and weathered. Beneath his large pockmarked nose, a short untidy beard grew; black whiskers curled at their ends and in places on his chin clumps of grey hairs sprouted. His expression was tired, and thickets of wrinkles sprouted out from around his deep-set eyes. When he raised his head and grinned, his bright yellow teeth shining, the smile did not reach Mario’s face.

“Well, never mind that," he said, "It’s good to see you, brother.”

“I did not want to be found.”

“I know. But now that I’m here you might as well hear me out. Come on, let’s get out of this hellmouth.”

Luigi spared a glance back toward his discolored floorboards and row of springbows, then followed his brother out the door. They walked down the gently sloped road to Bounding together. Mario was silent, and Luigi waited for him to explain why he had tracked him down. Soon they were on the outskirts of town, where four or five tradesmen’s houses lay perched on small plots of hillside above the stretch of the small town square. One of the buildings a hundred or so feet from the road was a carpenter’s home, as evidenced by the sawhorse and axes along its plot and the efficiency of its construction. Mario stopped and stared at it.

“Did you visit dad while you were here?” he asked.

“No,” said Luigi.

“How long have you been here?”

“Less than a year,” Luigi lied, “Why, do you want to see him?”

“...No.”

And they continued down the road to Bounding. Mario did not speak as they passed the familiar landmarks of the brothers’ hometown, but when they left it and neared the pebbled seaside past the valley he did speak, and told Luigi of his plans for Dinotia.

Chapter Text

Three days of hard riding brought Mattia and the two Sarasans out of the desert to the more familiar wheat pastures near the Mushroom border. Mattia and Amir now rode in shifts, with Mattia skipping breakfast to start the days travel with great purpose in the morning and Amir switching in midday to guide Helena when the other prince grew tired. Sir Sahjid had kept his distance so far and not punished Mattia in his haste to return home, until the evening of that third day when Amir saw a woman surrounded by several goombas near a horsecart off the main road.

The cart had been stopped on a plateau past which a ravine flowed. The horses had been detached, and stood idly in a field further down along the ten or so foot long body of water. The woman holding on to a spoke of one of the cart’s wheels was dressed in simple but clean peasant robes. She wore a bonnet upon her head from which red locks spilled. The goombas encircling her kept a small distance, but gestured and chattered to each other in their strange tongue. Amir slowed as they approached.

“Don’t stop, she’s fine!” Mattia whispered loudly, “They don’t even have weapons!”

As Amir drove Helena on the woman let out a frightened wail. Sir Sahjid then came galloping up the road on Hessa and whistled sharply, attracting the goombas’ attention. Both these noises confused Helena, and she reared up, flailing her front legs as she turned toward the noise and sending the children upon her sideways off her back. Sir Sahjid dismounted Hessa and smacked Amir across the cheek with his gauntlet.

“What was that?!” the knight asked his vassal, “Are you so blind you did not see these beasts, or do you not care about a poor woman’s virtue? ‘Prince of the streetfolk’, pah!”

“I told him we should not worry about a commoner when my own family is in danger!” said Mattia.

Sahjid narrowed his eyes and walked past Amir. He drew his hand back but as he brought it down Mattia dropped low to the ground and lunged forward with the fullness of his sturdy young body’s weight. He caught Sahjid around the waist with his arm as he sprang forward, and sent the brass-armored knight toppling under him. Amir let out a gasp and ran over to help Sahjid up. Mattia righted himself too and the young man faced off against the old. He could feel himself verging on tears and bit his lip to urge them back.

“Fine then, fuck off,” spat Sir Sahjid, “You don’t want to help this woman? You don’t want my protection? Then go running back to your mum, princeling pup.”

Mattia bit his lip harder and did not move from where he stood with hand stretched out near his sword’s pommel. Sahjid stared a moment longer and then turned his back and marched off the road to the horsecart. Amir followed behind him.

Mattia felt himself twitch nervously, unable to adjust his stiff limbs’ position. When the Sarasans were some distance off the road and he could feel those extremities once again he relaxed them somewhat and turned to Helena. She was no longer shaken, but rather regarded him with a sincere and affecting expression in her big stupid eyes as he made to saddle her and depart. Mattia breathed a quick sigh and turned toward the ravine.

Sahjid was near the goombas now. They had all turned to look at him as he held out an armored hand to the peasant woman. Amir’s hand was at his father’s scimitar as he approached loyally with his knight. As she reached a tentative hand toward her valiant savior, a goomba lunged at the woman, baring its sharp and fearsome teeth. Amir’s blade darted out and skewered the beast through its stomach. The other goombas backed off, creating a space in their cluster by which the peasant woman ran off.

“Wait, miss!” yelled Sir Sahjid as he ran toward Hessa. Amir ran swiftly in Mattia’s direction, but the old knight’s armor slowed him down.

“Go, go!” yelled Amir as he ran. Mattia sighed and rode after the peasant upon his horse. He had almost caught up with her when she turned to run behind one of nine ramshackle buildings that formed a quiet town a sign identified as Pokey’s Rest. He thought he had lost her until he heard a creak from the largest building ring out in the desolate silence and saw a flash of movement from behind a scuffed and blackened window shutter. A star was engraved above the building’s door.

In less than a minute Amir and Sir Sahjid rode up on Hessa.

“Where is she, boy?” spat Sahjid.

“In the church!” answered Mattia.

The old knight dismounted and pushed in the building’s creaky door and the boys scurried inside. All the windows were shuttered so that scarcely any light penetrated the gloomy interior; Sahjid had to prop the door open just so they wouldn’t step on the broken glass or slip on the slimy bits of rotten food scattered on the floor. The party crept between the pews, scanning for signs of the young woman.

“Look!” Amir whispered, waving his cousin close. Someone was laying upon one of the pews, and at first Mattia thought it might be the woman they sought. But this woman had no eyes, if it was a woman at all. He found it hard to tell from the punctured and decaying state of her torso and loins. All the skin he could see was purplish and bloated, including the swollen tissue of the chest which was also so bloody as to further obscure the corpse’s sex. Mattia found it difficult to swallow the putrid air in the church as he stared at the body and the bloodstains surrounding it.

“This isn’t good,” said Sahjid, “We should find the girl quickly and leave this cursed place.”

“We should leave it now!” Mattia whispered through gritted teeth. He winced in preparation of a blow from the knight, but all he received was a look of disgust and contempt. Desecrated as it was and even devoted as it was to the worship of a goddess Sahjid did not believe in, Mattia still realized how wrong it would be for the old knight to strike him in this place.

Mattia followed his cousin and the old man up some stairs to a modest pulpit. Behind some tattered curtains was a ladder leading up to the priest’s chamber, hidden in a recess above the church. The boys waited patiently as they could for Sir Sahjid to ascend in his armor, then clambered up after him.

When they reached the landing Sir Sahjid was facing a wall. Set within it was the only un-shuttered window in the church. Only a few jagged shards of glass occupied its wooden frame. Amir and Mattia leaned in behind Sahjid to gaze outside. There, smiling with her messy red hair flowing freely, was the peasant woman. She was conversing with a fierce-looking koopa wielding an axe who towered over her. There was no fear in her. Behind them, by the sign reading Pokey’s Rest, was a whole band of Koopas in well-polished red plate cuirasses and yellow cloaks wielding spears. They had found and commandeered Hessa and Helena and now were looking impatiently about the town.

Sir Sahjid pushed the children out of sight. Away from the window, Mattia felt the lack of its breeze sharply and his breaths of the stale church’s decayed air became rough and ragged. Sahjid paid him no mind and turned to Amir, taking the boy by his shoulders.

“I’m going to climb down that ladder,” said the knight, “Wait one minute, then climb out the window. Take the princeling to Mushroom. I will find you there.” Sahjid turned toward the ladder, then hesitated. He returned and placed a heavy hand back on Amir. “Kneel,” he said, “...in case I don’t find you.”

Amir did as he was bid, and Sahjid unsheathed his sword. It tapped upon Prince Amir’s right shoulder, then came up and around in a circular arc to tap his left. As it did so, the sword almost seemed to glow. Sir Sahjid spoke some words in Old Sarasan and then Amir rose Sir Amir Sandstone.

“Sir Amir.” said Sahjid, “You will serve Sarasa well. Protect the boy.” And with that he was away.

Amir and Mattia stared at the ladder and waited. Mattia could hear his cousin counting from sixty under his breath. At thirty-eight, a din of voices rose up from the church below. A clattering of steel followed, and continued until Amir whispered “...zero.” The boys crouched through the window and crept around the roof of the church until they were near the side.

“Come,” said Amir, and dropped down off the roof, tucking his legs in under him and rolling as he hit the packed earth. Mattia lingered for just a moment longer, as he saw two figures moving beyond the edge of the roof. Sir Sahjid walked backwards, maintaining his battle stance as he faced his pursuer, a koopa soldier with its back to the church. The knight was missing a gauntlet and his cape was torn, but the koopa was in worse condition: the monster’s arm was a sliced and bleeding mess in two pieces, hanging limply like fleshy flails.

Sahjid sought the higher vantage: here was the porch of a storehouse. He held his sword steady, prepared for the monster’s onslaught, but the koopa did not charge. Mattia gasped and covered his mouth as he saw a glint of steel from the dark storehouse entrance. Bloody metal extruded itself from Sir Sahjid’s eye, and the knight coughed up blood. Behind him stood the red-haired woman, smiling her unpleasant smile.

Mattia made a noise like a tweeter and saw the koopa spin around toward the church to see. He panicked and fell off the roof. As he tumbled he saw the back and restless legs of Amir, already some distance away. Mattia brought himself to his feet and ran north in his cousin’s general direction, away from the cursed and ravaged town of Pokey’s Rest.

The sun had set and left him awash in a vital darkness when Mattia found himself at the banks of a familiar river. He had parted with it reluctantly on the second day of his bitter and beguiling journey. Then, there had been the novelty and euphoria of his first seed sewn, and his bruises were but painful mementos. He realized Mangrove could not be far, and thought of Melanie.

Mattia cupped his hands, crouching by the river, and took a few sips. He looked around for any sign of his cousin, but the dappled reflections of moonlight illuminated the streaming water and nothing more. He followed the river for some time until he came to Mangrove.

The town was eerily silent. The rushing water and occasional splashing cheep cheep were the loudest discernible commotion. He entered the Bashful Blooper and saw neither Melanie nor any other toad. He approached the guy tavernkeep and asked where she was.

“Melanie?” asked Mr. Guy, “She’s left us, lad. Will you still be wanting a room?”

Mattia nodded wearily and took a key. This time he was left to see himself to his quarters, and though they were the same quarters he had taken Melanie in they brought him no joy. The sheets smelled not of her, and there was no one swimming outside the window. He undressed and slept fretfully in the tavern.

In the morning his eyes fluttered wide open. He still felt weary and unhappy, but a fierce energy had gripped him. Outside his window, the prince saw there were now a few goombas clustered at the docks, assembling their primitive fishing spears and nets for the day’s trawling. He dressed and hurried downstairs.

Outside the tavern, there were more goombas. Six or seven, he counted, not including those on boats. Three more inside, smoking and playing cards. He rushed in and grabbed one, cupping the small and ugly thing’s jaw and lifting it off the ground. Cards went flying to the floor: clouds, flowers, and stars. The other two stood from their table and regarded him dumbly.

“You little beasts!” he seethed, “I saw what happened at Pokey’s Rest! I see this now too! The toads are gone! You’ve killed all of them, you monsters! You, you’re all Koopa traitors, you-”

“Whoa, whoa,” the tavernkeeper said, brandishing a club, “What’s going on here?”

“You!” said Mattia, “You were supposed to protect her! How could you let them murder her?”

“Hey, now! The serving girl isn’t dead!”

“How can you be sure? What about all the others?”

“Lad… the other toads were rounded up, or fled...”

“Rounded up?”

“Yes. It was your men that did it… prince.”

Mattia balked. He had missed something crucial. He released the goomba and fled the tavern, following the road out past the town in the direction he knew Mushroom lay. There by the sign bearing the name Mangrove was a mossy boulder, which he sat on in contemplation. It seemed there had been more developments since the message had come to Sarasaland. Did his family know yet of the Koopa contingents within their very borders? He was unsure.

Pondering this, Mattia looked out upon the range of hills which climbed to the capital. Above one hill there he spied a smattering of grey. There rose a thin spire of smoke which stretched into the clouds. Steedless, he took the road a ways into the hills before plotting out a path along them to a small stony bluff overlooking the riverbanks, forest, and marshland of Mushroom’s south.

The bluff was set against a steep cliff marked by two eyelike holes spewing smoke. They gave Mattia the impression of a bob-omb lit from within, crying out in agony. Below them he found a wider, less fumy mouth, which he ducked under the lip of.

Within the cave Mattia found Melanie and Amir crouched side by side, their faces illuminated by a crackling fire. The skin of a skewered cheep cheep blackened scrumptiously above the flame. Melanie’s hot face blushed redder and she stuttered, trying to form a sentence.

“I was about to go look for you,” Amir said, interrupting the toad, “I had a feeling you’d be spending the night in one of your precious feather beds again.”

Mattia circled the fire, his fists clenched. He stood before his cousin and for a moment the Sarasan seemed prepared for an angry blow. But Mattia knelt down instead and took Amir in a fierce hug. The boys clung together tightly for a moment, making only muffled grunts, before either would let go. Mattia looked askance from his cousin then, and reached his hand out tremblingly toward Melanie as though she were a phantom. The girl took his hand and rubbed it against her cheek, a tear in her eye.

“I thought they got you,” said the shroomish prince.

“The red toads?” asked Melanie, “They almost did.”

“No… not them, the-” Mattia began, then shook his head, “Never mind. I don’t understand, why would my grandfather send his guard after toads?”

“His Grace… was poisoned, I’m sad to say,” said Melanie.

“What?”

“Yes, we heard of it only a day before the inquisitors came knocking. They claimed it was a blue toad that did it.”

“A blue toad?” Mattia asked as his mind turned to Lt. Toadine.

“Yes, prince. My mother used to say that when toads around here need someone to blame, they look at us. My grandfather was there when they erected Mangrove’s first toad house. Blue towns like ours were supposed to keep us safe, but the royal guard have swept them all. I don’t know what to do.”

“We- we’ll figure out something,” said Mattia, “Come with me to Mushroom.”

“Prince, I can’t! Are you listening to me at all?”

“I’ll keep you safe. I won’t let them hurt you.”

“Would that you could, my prince.”

“You head along, cousin,” spoke Amir, “I’ll keep her safe.”

“Oh, you’ll keep her safe, will you?” asked Mattia.

“Yes.”

“Amir, would you join me outside for a moment?”

The two princes ducked under the cave lip. Outside, the sun had fully risen and was beating down harshly upon the countryside. The hilltops where they stood received special buffeting for daring to reach so greedily skyward. It was the last day of Shroomseason and Mattia sweltered under his thick denim.

“Can I leave you alone with Melanie?” Mattia asked his cousin.

“What do you mean by that?”

“What did you two do last night?”

“Are you serious, cousin?” Amir put a hand to Mattia’s chest, “Of all the girls I could have, why would I give my sazranhood to the first one you bedded? Besides, do you think I was in any fit state…? Look! Look at my hand.”

Mattia looked to Amir’s hand; it was shaking.

“Fair point, cousin,” said Mattia, “I place my trust in you.”

“Good. Go home now, and tell them what happened yesterday. I will wait here for Sir Sahjid.”

“Amir… Sahjid is dead.”

“That’s not true. Don’t say it!”

“It is. I watched a koopa run him through-”

“Ha! Sir Sahjid has survived worse!”

“...the sword went through his face, Amir.”

For a moment Amir did not speak. Then, he turned back toward the mouth of the cave.

“Just go,” he said.

And Mattia started his climb over the craggy hill beyond which lay the serene vistas and waterfalls of his youth.

Chapter Text

The season of fire had begun, and the city of Easton was overfull with journeying knights and merchants looking to make their fortunes in the season’s great tourney. Tents and booths were set against Esmos mountain to the north and south, as far as the eye could see. The princesses Daisy and Azalea cleared this span, where peddlers hawked flamelings in glass jars to travellers, or “enchanted” armor to hopeful knights, and came to the city proper where the crowds clustered so tight they had to dismount their horses and lead Olive and Sweet Boy by the reins.

The princesses and their servant approached the gates of Easton’s fortress, where a small contingent of guards came to greet them. Daisy had mentioned neither Mansour nor her sister in her letter, and so the girls were greeted with much bowing and reverent whispers of “Twin Flowers Rose...” The whispers and bowing prevailed along the short ride to Easton’s keep. There, at the top stair of the keep’s caracole, Daisy’s dear friend Yara Gancha cried out:

“My heart! My love!”

And embraced Daisy warmly. The countess Yara was a great connoisseur of fashions from across Superos, and so her presentation and décor reflected an eccentric medley of styles from all six Lands. Her hair was dyed the lavender of a Subconiscian noble, which contrasted beautifully with her dark brown skin. She wore a dark blue Sarasan dress embroidered with a Dinotian pattern, and her pants were Shroomish. Yara also bore the cap of a Coinish sailor.

The countess greeted the princesses and introduced them to some of her court; her man-at-arms Salem, her niece Liana, and her handmaiden and songstress Esmerelda. She then dismissed her niece and handmaiden to an adjoining room where they could entertain Azalea. Yara Gancha brought Daisy out onto the balcony. From there they needed only crane their necks a tittle to enjoy the view of Esmos’ peak. Below it on either side tall Ganchian walls skirted the breads and peaks of the lesser mountains. These stretched out far into both horizons.

“I know your fear, my dear,” said Yara, “The koopas capture of Fort Horn. Yet we have fought their like many centuries before the Shroomish, and things will not go so easily for Bowser’s armies here.”

“I… wish I shared your confidence, Yara,” said Daisy, “But the mountain border has been breached before. If Koopa was brazen enough to invade Mushroom, then...”

“Let me see if I can assuage your fears,” said the countess before whispering in the ear of her stout man-at-arms, “Watch this.”

Sir Salem drew his sword and waved it at some guards up on the parapets, then pointed it at the mountain. A great horn sounded as a guard waved a huge green flag over the tower. After a moment, a perfectly aligned volley of arrows shot out from the wall, black dashes like dogged and deadly birds in the sky. They soared high then sunk behind the mountain’s edge and disappeared. Daisy exhaled in amazement.

“There, dear,” said Yara, “Does that put your mind at ease?”

“It helps, I won’t lie,” Daisy said, and smiled.

“Good! Now let’s go enjoy the festivities!”

The young royals walked hand in hand back to the entertaining room where they rejoined Azalea, Liana, and Esmerelda. This retinue boarded a carriage outside which took them to the tourney grounds. Young Liana marveled at the colorful banners and the trellises of desert roses and creeping vines which decorated the royal booth overlooking the grandstands. Even Azalea had to smile as the women climbed the wooden steps and were greeted with cheers from the crowds below and both sides of the assembled knights comprising the melee’s small armies. Sir Salem instructed his second-in-command Obaid to guardhis countess and the princesses and descended the booth to don his armor for the melee.

“Mansour, will you fight as well?” asked Azalea.

“My only role is to guard you, princess,” said Mansour, “Besides, I am not a knight.”

“Come, Mansour,” said Daisy, “If that’s really what’s holding you back, I’ll have my father knight you as soon as we’re back in Birabuto.”

“Obaid will keep us safe,” Yara assured him, “Go find Salem, he’ll lend you a set of armor.”

“Very well,” said Mansour, barely restraining his obvious joy.

More nobles soon joined the royal retinue in their booth. There was Yara’s sister Hana, the countess of Chaiton, and her husband Prince Rockwell; an older cousin to Daisy who she called Rocky. There too was Rocky’s sister Lily and her husband Count Crackle Fry from Subconis. The Count of Easton, Yara’s father Taron, was chiltstricken and thus could not attend the tourney. When the horns sounded and the masses in the grandstands roared, Countess Yara stood and made some commencing remarks in his stead:

“Good people of Sarasa and lands beyond, it is my pleasure to welcome you to our beautiful city for Eastern Sarasa’s Fireseason tournament! We begin today with our main event: the melee! As you can see, we have afield some of the bravest knights in all Superos, separated into small armies of white and red. Some of you may have noticed a pattern with these armies...” the grandstands let out a murmur of confusion before the countess continued, “That’s right, for the very first time we have enough foreign champions to challenge our homeland heroes, head to head! Good folk of Sarasa, may I present to you… from Mushroomland, Subconis, and the Coinlands… the Red Firehawks!”

The grandstands erupted in boos and cheers. The red army, some three dozen souls strong, rode on their horses and ostros from past the stands to the field proper. There they formed a line and lapped the perimiter, near the crowds and the royal booth. Daisy and Azalea’s uncle, Sir Dandy Blossom of Tallmount, formed the head of the procession. He waved cheerily to his nieces, twirling his long moustache and dabbing his cheeks with an embroidered handkerchief. Behind him was Sir Griston the Gallant, with his winged helm and morningstar. Most of Mushroomland’s champions were relations of some sort to the princesses’ mother, Queen Rose, and so they earned polite nods from the girls.

Next were the knights of Subconis on their ostros, chief among them Sir Verdance Wart. He was a tall lizardling with a long tail and a malevolent sneer. He rode high upon his bird, using his tail for balance as he raised his spear and taunted the crowd. Behind him, the other lizardlings from Subconis were more courteous, and a Shy Guy astride a pink ostro did not escape Daisy’s notice.

Super knights from the Coinlands formed the Firehawks’ rear. The young Super Marco Verducci, scarcely twenty years old, smiled winsomely, earning the loud appreciation of many of the younger girls in attendance. His older cousins Fabio and Enrico Medici were not without their fans either, but Azalea’s eyes were only for Marco, and she flushed when she caught his gaze.

The Coinish were clad in their typically splendid armor, much of it gleaming green with their emeralds from their land’s many mines. In contrast with this opulence, the knight bringing up the procession’s very tail wore simple iron armor of a dull black. His helm was cunningly crafted in the shape of a snarling dragon, and his frame was large and imposing.

“Knightsbane, they call him,” Daisy’s cousin Rocky whispered to her, “Bane of the brave.”

The fearsome Knightsbane rode up to the royal booth and stopped. His helmet’s long toothy snout turned to face the royal court, and Rocky pressed himself timidly against his wife’s chest.

“Good Princess Daisy, your highness,” said the knight tinnily, “I know I come to battle your countrymen. Still, I would have your favor, if it pleases you.”

Daisy looked around the booth- she had no favor to give. Standing, she reached down the side of the box and picked a desert rose from the trellis. She then leaned over the front to hand the rose to the black knight.

“My favor,” said Daisy, “Let it serve you well, dear knight.”

“It shan’t be wasted,” rang the voice from the dragon’s iron jaws, “A favor from a Pale Flower herself is no trivial thing.” The mysterious knight rode to join the rest of his army. Yara Gancha offered Daisy a curious look and then continued her pronouncement:

“And now, my good folk... from our beautiful and sacred land of Sarasa: the White Foxes!”

The Sarasan knights rode by on their kungas and daries. Hana and Rocky cheered for their vassal Sir Ari of Chaiton, and for Rocky’s brother Sir Clastain, who was so sturdy of build they called him The Boulder. The princesses cheered for Mansour, calling out “Sir Mansour” to their manservant to make him beam. With the white army assembled, the melee could begin at last.

“And now,” cried Yara, “To pronounce the melee’s start, I present to you: beloved to all, and none more so than I, Their Highnesses, the Twin Flowers of Sarasa… Princess Daisy and Princess Azalea!” The crowd erupted once more in cheering as the princesses stood.

“…May the tournament begin!” cried Daisy.

“...Good luck to you all!” cried Azalea.

The horns sounded, and the red and white armies launched themselves from either side of the tourney grounds at a breakneck pace. Sir Griston the Gallant rode ahead of the allied Firehawks and drove a wedge through the Sarasans with his morningstar. Even with the spikes blunted, the mace-like arm still easily dented armor and crumpled shields. He had unhorsed two riders with great swings of the weapon when Sir Ari charged into the fray with zealous ferocity. Sir Griston’s steed reared up in fear, throwing him from the saddle. Sir Ari deftly wove to let the chestnut mare run off, abandoning her rider. Sir Griston blocked some jabs from other riders with his shield, but when Sir Ari returned he seemed to despair. It was only then that Sir Dandy Blossom came to his aid on his white stallion, driving back the Sarasans.

As the gallant Sir Griston fled shamefully in search of his mare, Sir Dandy smashed Ari’s thigh with his blunted longsword. Daisy heard Rocky Sandstone cry out, sputtering his fear that his vassal would be unable to continue. The lowborn son of a butcher persevered, however, rallying tenaciously with a stunning spear strike about Sir Dandy’s head which toppled him to the ground. Rocky and Hana cheered, while Daisy winced with concern for her uncle.

The highborn brother of both Mushroom and Sarasa’s queens rose and stood his ground as Sir Ari charged him. This time, Sir Dandy caught Ari’s spear with his shield, snapping the shaft like a twig. Sir Dandy was bellowing haughtily when Ari, his leg armor a crumpled mess, circled behind him. The peasant’s boy produced a small mace and, leaning almost horizontally on his kunga, bashed Sir Dandy’s shield arm across the joint. Dandy Blossom dropped his shield shortly, and Sir Ari came charging again.

As Ari’s hearty kunga bolted across the grounds, a tall figure leaped in its way. It was Sir Verdance, who dealt a dreadful blow with his greataxe, snapping the beast’s legs backwards. Sir Ari somersaulted through the sand and laid defeated. Rocky screamed as Hana tried to settle him.

“My thanks,” were the words Daisy saw her Shroomish uncle’s mouth form, “You fight like your uncle.”

“No time for war stories, old man,” the lizardling snarled, pointing, “The Boulder approaches.”

Sir Clastain was steedless too, but no less effective for it. On his way towards Dandy and Verdance he sent both Medici brothers sprawling with a single swing of his war hammer. Young Super Marco barely dodged a second fearsome swing, after which there were no knights between Sirs Clastain and Dandy. Sir Dandy riposted bravely as the Boulder thundered towards him, but his sword was sent sailing through the air. Sir Verdance stepped between the two men, catching Sir Clastain’s hammer with his axe. As the sturdy Sarasan pressed down with his full might, all seven feet of his foe rumpled beneath the weight, until the lizardling was squatted down on the ground. Sir Verdance rolled away at the last to catch his breath and live another day with bones intact.

There was nothing Sir Dandy could do to avoid the hammer’s swing, and it flung him to the sand. There were only a few Red Firehawks left, and with Super Marco dueling Sir Salem across the field, no other combatant dared close distance with the Boulder. The Shy Knight on the pink ostro ventured nearest, but a warning hammer swing sent him running. Prince Rocky cheered exuberantly and dared any knight to challenge his brother.

At last one Firehawk dared to close the gap: it was Knightsbane himself. Horseless, his armor scuffed, the black knight charged Sir Clastain. He seemed to rethink the maneuver in short order, though, drawing back just in time to avoid the Boulder’s first swing. When the second swing came, Sir Knightsbane took the opportunity to sidestep it and close the distance. The Boulder took a blunted sword whack to the head and smiled like it was nothing, taking another swing. This time Knightsbane whirled past the hammer, maneuvering behind and dealing the Boulder another smack to the head.

Sir Clastain was no longer smiling. The Sarasan knight, brought off balance, quickly resolved to bring his hammer shakily over his head and bring it down, squashing his sprightly foe like a pokeyshell. He could scarcely do that, however, when the Knightsbane struck his leg, twisting one limb unnaturally behind the other. The great Boulder fell, his war hammer nearly shattering him beneath it.

Across the field, Sir Salem had bested Super Marco, much to Azalea’s dismay; the handsome boy looked pitiful with his shield shattered and cape ripped to ribbons. Sir Verdance and the Shy Knight had menaced Mansour, who now clung near to Easton’s man-at-arms. Knightsbane approached these last two enemies and, almost inevitably, Sir Salem fell before him. Sir Knightsbane turned to face Mansour.

“Please, sir!” Mansour cried, and dropped his blade, “I am no knight.”

Sir Knightsbane nodded and the grandstands booed and roared in tandem as Mansour scurried away. Sirs Knightsbane, Verdance, and the Shy Knight were the tourney’s victors, and so the Sarasan nobles in attendance grumbled and began to retrieve the Firehawks’ due spoils from their coinpurses.

While his Subconiscian allies were being paid, Sir Knightsbane marched slowly to the royal booth. He dug beneath his chestplate to retrieve Daisy’s favor, barely any worse for wear. He held the flower aloft and entreated her:

“Princess Daisy,” his voice rang, “I thank you for this rose, which gave me the strength to reign victorious here today!” The sympathetic factions of the audience cheered, and the knight continued, “If it pleases you, I would ask you for one favor more!” and gestured for Daisy to come closer.

Once Daisy had leaned out over the front of the booth, Sir Knightsbane removed his helm. Beneath the snarling iron visage was a surprisingly similar face. Instead of a nose he had small slitted nostrils set upon his scaled yellow countenance. His jaw and snout were even more pointed and fearsome than those of Sir Verdance, and his eyes glowed red instead of the lizardling’s lime. Those eyes and his long flame-like mane identified the knight unmistakably as a koopa, and a noble-blooded one at that.

The crowds fell silent, the tense hush making it easy for Daisy to discern the half-whispered words the koopa spoke to her:

“Return here tonight, so that I may thank you properly.”

Daisy neither nodded nor answered aloud, and so the koopa walked off to join with his fellow koopas. The booth’s other occupants save for Azalea and Esmerelda swarmed Daisy, buzzing with

questions:

“I can’t believe he was a koopa all along!” Hana remarked, “Didn’t he look like a royal?”

“Did he tell you his name?” asked Rocky.

“Why’d you give the monster a flower?” asked Liara innocently.

“What a spectacle!” Yara said, and asked, “Do you think that’s enough excitement for the day?”

Daisy answered this last question in the positive, and after a few more pronouncements from the countess she accompanied her friend back to the castle. Sir Salem, his body bruised, lead them there, while Mansour, bruised of ego, stood by Azalea who remained with the others for the joust. In the castle, Yara and Daisy sipped tea and nibbled at small delights.

“I’m sorry about your wounds, Salem, but it serves you right for making that beautiful Coinish boy look the fool!” Countess Yara chided her vassal, “You should apologize to dear Princess Azalea later.”

“Yes, my lady,” said Sir Salem.

"Azalea will be alright,” said Daisy, “Mother just put her in an odd position with our cousin. The boy clearly isn’t ready for marriage.”

“Yes, well, all the same,” said Yara, “The bigger tragedy was seeing Sir Salem and my other knights knocked down by that monstrous koopa. It made Sir Salem look beautiful as the Coinlander by comparison.”

“I didn’t think him so bad looking,” said Daisy, “He had pretty eyes, at least.”

After sunset that night, Daisy dismissed the handmaid Yara had lent her and sneaked out of one of Fort Easton’s many guest rooms. She took special care not to disturb Azalea in the room next to hers, and donned a hooded cloak from the stables. Astride Olive, she hurried quietly to the tourney grounds, where many of the tents and booths were already disassembled. A dark but familiar figure stood in the trampled sand between the empty grandstands.

Staring at the royal booth as though lost in thought stood Sir Knightsbane. Without his armor of black iron, the koopa’s build was even more impressive. Exposed by a leather vest, his arms were thick sinewy columns ending in ivory claws. The vest’s front lacing revealed tufts of dark red chesthair, matching that gorgeous mane which, untethered, descended nearly to his waist.

Daisy noticed him notice her as she dismounted and walked along the sand. Nearing him now, she noticed him to be rather short for a koopa. He was shorter than she was, though she was nearly six feet. She pondered this and addressed the knight:

“Sir Knightsbane… I’m glad to find you.”

“I’m where I said I would be,” said the knight, “It was no trick, Princess.”

“Yes, I see that now,” said she, “Might I know the true name of my champion?”

“Yes, I believe you deserve that much,” said he, then, “I trust I have your secrecy?”

“Of course.”

“Very well,” the koopa sighed, and said, “I am Prince Bowser Koopa II, son of His Holiness King Bowser Koopa II, The High Lord of Flame and Sixth Incarnation of Gigas, heir to the Koopa throne.”

Daisy was appalled. She had suspected the knight to be of noble blood, as it was rare to see red hair on a koopa. But she would never have suspected this. Before her stood the spawn of the great adversary who had wrought so much horror and bloodshed upon her people. She could strike him down now, and deal that adversary a deserved blow, but she could not bring herself to.

“Wait…” she said, “You say you are King Koopa’s son?”

“Yes.”

“Just how old are you? I was told the Koopa queen died some twenty-five years hence.”

“I’m sixteen,” said the young Bowser without shame, “My mother could not adopt the title of queen, but my father did marry her under Gigan law.”

“Great Miya...” said Daisy. She couldn’t believe the boy was only sixteen. He was such a developed fighter, and a great beauty besides. For a koopa, she meant. And koopas did mature differently than humans, she supposed. Possibly his age meant very little.

“Yes, I’m aware of my birth’s problematic qualities,” said Prince Bowser, “But there is no solution to them. I must forge my path elsewhere. Here, today, for example.”

“You were brilliant,” said Daisy, “An exemplary fighter.”

“You honor me, Princess.”

“You mentioned wishing to thank me properly at the tourney,” she said, stifling her nerves, “Was that all you had in mind?”

“No,” said the prince, and drew close, kissing her lightly upon the lips. Daisy breathed a sigh of surprise into his mouth, and saw the tough skin of his cheek redden. When the prince relented shyly and drew away, she gripped a scaly forearm and brought him back.

They stood for some time in the dark cool desert air, kissing and breathing in each other’s scents. Then Bowser II suggested he walk the princess as far back to the castle as was wise. But on the way Daisy turned the topic to sleeping quarters and pointed out some of the tents still standing, inquiring if one was the prince’s. The boy agreed to show her his modest tent and she promptly fell inside it and pulled him in after her.

The princess pulled her dress over her head, letting the knight marvel at her nakedness. She inhaled sharply when the koopa’s claws wrapped around her breasts and she prepared for pain, but Bowser was tender, kneading softly against her nipples with scaled palms warm and fine. She rubbed herself against his knee and kissed him again as he mounted her and wriggled free of his breeches. What she spied below them was not so horrible a thing as in the nightmare poetry about koopas. In fact she found it no more horrible than any man’s, only with a different texture and shape to the tip. And it was his, which she appreciated. She moaned agreeably as the appendage worried its way into her, and soon found the movement of its soft, warm tip capable of eliciting wave after wave of pleasure from deep within her belly.

An hour later, Daisy squatted just outside the tent to relieve herself. She ducked back inside to find the prince spread out among his furs, his beautiful red hair coiling and climbing up a corner of the tent. His slight though muscled form looked almost delicate by the dim flickering lantern light. Bowser’s eyes were closed, but she could not tell if he was sleeping. Daisy doffed her dress again and joined him.

The prince rolled over when she placed an arm to his chest. He coiled himself further in furs and pressed his back against her body. Daisy thought she saw a smile on his peaceful resting face, but there was still a question bothering her.

“Bowser...” she said.

“Mm,” he mumbled sleepily, “Don’t call me Bowser… you can call me Bane.”

“Bane...” she said, “Who is your mother? Why could she not be a queen?”

“Ah, it would disrupt the realm...”

“Really? Why?”

“Because,” the prince mumbled, “My mother is your aunt, Princess Peach Toadstool.”

Chapter Text

“The earliest known Superosi glyphs date from the 14^th century of pre-modernity, in Dinotia. These were found in caves where a Dinotian subspecies of koopa dwelt. The “magikoopa” population has since dwindled massively in population due to koopa pogroms in the -8^th, -2^nd, and modern centuries. But in the -1400s, they had already developed the three basic transfigurative glyphs, shown below:

These symbols each accomplish an elemental “turning”, shifting an object’s base composition to one of the three elements: plant, flame, or celestial. The magikoopas saw themselves as creatures of flame, and already in their proto-Gigan belief system any attempt to change that would have been considered sacrilege.

When Coinish explorers “discovered” Dinotia in the early -9^th century, they too learned of transfiguration magics. Coinish alchemists of the time believed that the human form contained a mix of all three elements. Thus, through transfiguration they could adjust the balance of their humours and grant themselves resistance to physical, moral, or spiritual maladies. Several Coinish monarchs of the -9^th century, such as King Primo VI, King Enrico II, and Queen Pauline III were known for their weekly realignments and affinity for potions.

Guyish magic developed independently in the -11^th century, in present day Cloud City. There, the first conjuration glyphs were transcribed...”

Luca’s mind started to buzz indignantly, so he shut the grimoire. Without his teacher Philosphic, studying the dense tome was like climbing up a hill that grew steeper and steeper until he couldn’t help but tumble down it. He missed having someone to converse with who could comprehend and help him refine his burgeoning ideas about the world. Without Philosophic, his mind seemingly grew weak.

By some similar measure, the prince’s body had grown noticeably weaker without Lieutenant Toadine’s lessons. With both his teachers gone and his mother preoccupied by his grandfather’s illness, Luca gorged himself at all hours of the day, and the countless tarts and cakes had begun to outpace even his youthful humours. Only now, examining the pudginess of his stomach in the early afternoon light, did he truly appreciate the value of Toadine’s drills. He had even begun to look back on her stern manner fondly- at least someone had cared enough about him to be exacting.

The castle grounds were mind-numbingly quiet today- of its royal court, only the lizardling ambassador basked within it. Five pairs of toad guards were patrolling the area from the star statue to the front gate, which Luca stared at longingly from his chamber’s window. There was a verdant brelbous tree whose branches hung over the stone arch, and its amber trunk called out to him.

The princescaled his window and knelt upon the sill, grasping it with both his white and delicate hands. Hanging from the ledge, he dropped the trivial distance to the grass below. Reading by the star statue, the lizardling gasped at the boy’s fall and dropped her book into its fountain with a splash. Luca braced for her reprisal, but instead the strange pink-scaled woman merely moaned and tried desperately to shake loose the water which had soaked every page. Luca had heard tell that she was not a true noble, but the lizard king’s bastardess, and so he supposed it made sense that her reaction was not that of a noble- she was more similar in affect to the castle staff he so often preferred.

“Sorry...” said Luca.

“It’s okay,” said the ambassador, leafing through her book’s pages and observing the ruin miserably.

“What was your book about?”

“Um… nothing that would interest you, your highness.”

“You believe you know what interests me and what does not?”

“No, just, ah…” the lizardling choked out, flustered, “It’s a book for ladies… it concerns courtly romance and such.”

“Oh,” at this, Luca blushed too, “Well, you don’t need to tell me about it then.”

“Thank you, your highness.”

“Unless you wanted to. Then you could tell me sometime, I guess.”

“Thank you-”

“You can stop calling me your highness, now. My name is Luca.”

“I-I know, your- Luca.”

“I was reading too. It’s a book my old teacher left me. I’m not really supposed to talk about it, but it’s probably fine since you’re from Subconisland.”

“Uh, perhaps? What is the book about?”

“Alchemy. Do you know of it, ambassador?

“No. No, don’t start with ‘ambassador’. It’s Birdette, please.”

“Okay, Birdette. You see how those toads are turned towards the gate?”

“Yeah..?”

“Watch this.”

With this, the prince dashed with a youthful fervor in that direction. Birdette watched him stone faced, blinking bemusedly. The boy climbed a vine up the arch and shimmied out of her view. Below, the toad guards chatted obliviously.

Luca dropped to the city side of the gate. The guards spotted him instantly and gave a shout, so he rushed downhill into Shroomdon. There were toads everywhere, all shorter than Luca, though his mother told him he still “had not sprouted”. Guards were still numerous in the municipal district at the base of the hill, and so he hurried to the flat valley of Hare Square. There, a troupe of mummer toads entertained the peasantry with Satirick Guy’s newest farce, “The Garlic King of Golde”. Philosophic was a considerable appreciator of Satirick’s works, and had assigned their reading to Luca on several occasions. But the boy had never had the privilege to see one in person, and so lingered in the square.

On the humble stage, two toads played the parts of Coinishmen. The yellow toad playing the slain Coinish King’s nephew, Lord Roberto, bore a pale mask with a forlorn face, meek and balding, while the red toad playing the commonborn overthrower King Wario wore a devilish purple mask with horns and a jagged moustache. The persona of Lord Roberto spoke first:

“Brave Mario has been bested,

Crown of Coinish king now wrested,

Sir, your mettle’s now been tested-

Which rare metals are requested?”

And the response of the foul Garlic King came:

“All, old fool, I’ll mine the valleys!

Mine the forts, the inns, and alleys,

Though I want for more- a galley,

And a girl with which to dally!”

During the recitation of which, a young male toad in a red dress playing Queen Ashley climbed the stage. His mask was winsomely painted, though the eyes were sunken and lacked pupils. With his last line, the king’s persona grabbed her by the waist and fondled her lustily, sparking equal measures of laughter and consternation from the audience. Roberto’s portrayermimed shock:

“Lord, that’s but a child you’re wanting,

Furthermore, she suffers haunting

Cursed since birth, her story’s daunting,

Think back to the gold you’re flaunting!”

At this there was an unearthly moaning as the rest of the company took the stage in white sheets and began howling like the dead. Luca leaned over the toad before him to look closer and she turned around to gape at him.

“Your Grace!” the peasant toad exclaimed, and many more toads turned away from the stage. Some kneeled,but most just stared with mouths wide.

Luca lifted his tunic up over his lower face and ran down an alley. There he lingered for some time before returning to the square. By then the farce was over and the crowds had dispersed, though many toads still scurried about their busy work or hawked their goods from their storefronts. There were still a few mummers by the stage, and Luca saw three cross the square and enter a building. He followed them inside without a second thought, squeezing by the door as it swung.

Within, Luca found a tavern, brimming with unfamiliar scents and music that wafted upon the air.The veteran portrayers of King Wario and Lord Roberto sat with the young man who had been Queen Ashley. The red toad Wario pinched the arse of a passing wench, while the yellow toad Roberto rested his head upon his hands.

“You don’t need to pinch her, you fool,” said the yellow one, “We’ve no more performances today. And she’s hardly your type.”

“Every girl is the Garlic King’s type,” responded the elder of the red.

“Stop,” said the yellow, “I can’t take this anymore. Least of all when Frice has fled town and left us with this,” He gestured toward the young toad boy at their table.

“Hey!” the toad boy objected.

“Sorry, son, I’m sure you have many talents. But acting isn’t one of them.”

It was then that the mummers took notice of Luca, who had been slowly drawing near.

“Whoa, what’s a human boy doing here?” asked the young toad.

“Har! Drinking and whoring, I expect!” exclaimed the toad Wario, “What else?”

“Quiet, fool!” the toad Roberto spoke in a sharp whisper, “That’s the prince!” At this, a hush fell over half the tavern, and even the toad Wario fell silent. Queen Ashley’s young portrayer, however, didn’t seem to know when to hold his tongue.

“The prince?” he asked, “What’s a prince doing here?”

The question hung in the air for a moment, before the tavernkeep himself spoke up, bowing his head lightly to avoid Luca’s gaze.

“He’s here to see his brother, I expect,” said the tavernkeep, “Come, lad. I’ll bring you to him.”

The tavern keeper toad brought the prince up a flight of stairs and, loosing a key from his belt, unlocked a door. The old toad gestured toward it and left, so Luca slowly pushed open the door.

A sword was at his throat, a hand grasped his wrist. Peering down at him wild-eyed was Luca’s brother, who he hadn’t seen in weeks. Mattia’s clothes were dirty, his long blond hair frazzled and uncombed. But his uncharacteristically harsh face quickly softened with recognition, and the sword was lowered.

“Luca!” Mattia exclaimed, “I’m sorry- you’re so little, I thought you were one of them!”

“What are you doing here?” Luca asked, “I thought you were in Sarasaland still!”

“I came back when I heard of Bowser’s attack. Is mother safe?”

“Mother is fine. But Mattia, the king is… I’m afraid he’s deathly ill. They say he was poisoned with some magic by a blue toad sorcerer.”

“...Did you say a blue toad?”

“Yes. But did you hear me?” asked Luca, “Our grandfather is dying.”

“This is wrong! They’re hunting the blue toads down like dogs, all because of grandfather...”

“What? Since when do you care about toads?” It seemed an innocent enough question, but Mattia stared at him angrily and Luca felt ashamed. He paused before asking a different question of his brother: “But why are you sleeping at a tavern? You could have come to the castle straight away.”

“I was following some soldiers who spoke of imprisoning toads from Mangrove. I thought this was all a toad thing...”

“Well, you should come home now. Mother and grandfather should like to see you.”

“I’m not sure I want to see the king,” remarked Mattia bluntly. Luca was aghast, but with some argument he convinced his brother to accompany back to the castle grounds, this time by a more conventional route. The guards at the gate were shocked to see the older prince so disheveled, and wearing a look of such disdain that could only be directed at them. But with an apologetic look from Luca, they stood back silently and let the princes pass.

Back in the courtyard, Birdette was joined now by the Baron Waluigi. The older statesman draped in purple wrapped his arm about her shoulders, leaning over her beaming face as she sat by the fountain, her waterlogged romance book long since forgotten. As he saw the boys approach in the slowly dying evening light, the baron took notice of Mattia and a look of simple shock briefly passed his cheery countenance. It faded when he returned to look at the ambassador though, and she took notice of the brothers for not one instant.

On the castle’s second level, they found their mother’s bedchambers empty, save for her pet rabbit Mips and a single handmaid left tending to the golden-furred creature. When the boys came bursting in they so startled Mips that he leaped from the handmaid’s hands and ran about the room. It was only after the princes helped her corner and recapture Mips that the handmaiden would tell them their mother had gone to visit with her father at his chamber.

King Morris Toadstool’s chamber was ominously crowded. As they approached its open doors Luca already felt the unease of a looming horribleness bubble up inside him. The king was scrawny and jaundiced. The sallow flesh of his face seemed to drip from his sharp bones. His wife the queen held this wrinkled dome in her hands.

The king whispered something to Aunt Strawberry, who was nearest to his bed. The boys’ mother Peach leaned in beside her sister to hear. Between the two of them stood Prince Pear, Strawberry’s ward. Behind them was the bastard Lewis of Shroom, who the king loved as much as a trueborn son. With him was Strawberry’s husband, Count Gerald of Whompton. Clementine stood by her father with tears in her eyes which she tried admirably to hide.

On the other side of the bed, the king’s sister Citrina held the hand of Toadsworth. She had arrived that morning from Moomeadow, without her husband Lord Wheaton. In an old chair sat Great Grandma Catherine, a shriveled woman of four and eighty years, watching her son die. At the front of the room, High Priestess Luna read a few rites from the Book of Stars. Luca and his brother entered behind her unnoticed while the priestess, towering over everyone else at an ungainly height, commanded their attentions.

“Father, Peach’s sons aren’t here,” Aunt Strawberry spoke over the priestess, “And practically lowborn besides. Look upon Pear. He should be king, by all rights.”

“M-Mattia…” the king moaned, and spat up blood, “Bring me the boy...”

“Pear is here, father,” said Strawberry.

“Mattia has gone to Sarasaland,” said Peach, “But should set himself homeward soon-”

“It matters not,” interrupted Strawberry, “Pear’s claim is greater. Peach’s boy is missing, and where is the boy’s father?”

“Prince Mattia is his firstborn’s firstborn,” said Toadsworth, “Historically, the-”

“Quiet, Toad!” Strawberry hissed.

“Stop, stop!” whined the king, shifting uncomfortably, “No more...”

A moment later Luna finished her rites and stepped back, revealing both of Princess Peach’s sons behind her. The room fell silent.

“Who is it?” asked the king. “Tell me…” Peach embraced Mattia and brought him to the king’s side. Prince Pear had to shuffle awkwardly to make way. The king grasped his grandson’s wrist with a cold papery hand. “Ah, Mattia...” he said, “Would you sit the throne, boy?”

“I would rather seek a knighthood, and defend it,” Mattia answered bluntly.

“Ha!” coughed the king, “So like your father. He saved the realm from ruin many a time. But in times of peace… he’s gone far from the castle as he can, hasn’t he? Ha ha. I’m afraid we’ll have need of his like in the years to come. Not cravens like me, who crumple beneath the crown’s weight. And since he’ll never sit the crown, I suppose you’re our best chance, boy.”

“Father, how-” Aunt Strawberry began, but the king coughed up blood. Peach unlatched the king’s hand from her son’s wrist and held it tight, while Mattia stepped back in line with Luca. Half of Mushroom’s court watched as King Morris drew his last ragged breaths. His last breath caught in his throat and rattled as his eyes looked up to space and finally glazed over.

Count Gerald observed only the scantest of silent respects before inquiring to the high priestess about the funeral. Even now, none of the court would chance leaving an alchemist alone with the body, so all the work of preparing it would be done by the Luna’s star sisters. As they poured in the king’s chamber became overfull, and filled with muffled sobs and the sounds of twining linen as the sisters diligently prepared the king’s stretcher. Neither Luca not Mattia could bear it anymore, and so vacated the chamber until their mother followed behind her father on his stretcher and finally released his hand. She took the boys to a quiet dinner in her chambers before dismissing Luca so she could begin instructing Mattia in some of his royal duties.

Luca snuggled comfortably into his bed, happy he had found someone who would give him the time of day. They were still brothers after all, even if Mattia was now the king. Perhaps he shall have need of all my wisdoms, thought Luca, and remembered his grimoire. He set it down open on his blanketed lap and now all the book’s knowledge seemed to find its rightful place in his mind. When he could absorb no more of it he closed the book and fell quickly to sleep.

He awoke in the early morning with the feeling that something was wrong. He went immediately to his brother’s chambers and found no sign of him nor any servants. When he told his mother this she began to wake the castle. It seemed the boy king had never gone to his rooms that night. A full search of the castle and its grounds was carried out to no avail. King Mattia of Mushroom had disappeared like a ghost.

Chapter Text

The baron felt her move an inch away and would not have it. In his sleep he pulled her hips back in close and squeezed her breast tightly. She had never felt so adored. She would take no other lover but this one, this perfect one. She nestled her short tail back against the baron and fell back asleep.

In the morning, she was alone in the bed. She rolled over and saw Baron Waluigi at his desk, where he spent the bulk of each morning composing poetry. The baron had ordered the castle’s carpenters to make a perfect approximation of the desk in his own room, which he said would do until one could be brought in from the Coinlands. She saw there was already an empty bowl at the desk, and another full of oats for her at the table. His servants had left after setting it, but Chirpa stood by the door, ruffling her feathers and tweeting quietly as she saw her mistress rise. But Birdette had grown accustomed to dressing herself since adolescence, and so dismissed the maidservant.

She donned a purple dress that matched her hair and the baron’s jerkin, and a black headband for her head. It was Moon’s day, so she slid a silver ring upon her finger, with a quartz moon inlaid upon it. She slid her sharp delicate hands around the sides of his chair to pet lightly at his chest but he shirked her off. The baron hated for anyone to see his poems mid-composition; even his finished works were commonly discarded before she could read them. So she brought one of her romances to the table and while she read ate she her oats, following them with a juicy Kongian peach.

With her lover still occupied Birdette decided to wander the castle’s courtyard, as she did every day. The royals cast a mourning gloom over the castle’s halls, yet outside it was easily forgotten in the Fireseason light. She loosened a button at her breast and strolled past the fountain to an arbory with candystick flowers and tulips upon the trellis. Lord Claude Shelling was sat within it. Birdette flushed; there was an uncomfortable intimacy to running into the only other reptilian of noble lineage in this strange land, especially now that she was engaged with the Coinish baron.

“Lady Birdette,” the koopa observed.

“Lord Shelling,” Birdette responded, “As I’ve told you before, I am no lady.”

“Oh,” said he, “Yes, sorry. Still...”

“Still what?”

“Your father was never married, was he?”

“Not under the light of the Stars, no,” Birdette replied. She adopted a modest mask of star worship, even with a koopa like Claude who was almost certainly a fire worshipper.

“Why did he not marry your mother, I wonder? Even if she was commonborn. Did you know her at all?”

“No,” said Birdette, and walked past the lord.

“Wait, Birdette, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-” Claude Shelling called out after her. She kept walking to the far corner of the courtyard where the chapel stood. By one of the open doors, Viscount Swanky leaned upon the chapel wall. His long toes, normally curled, pressed flat against the old and dusty wood. He smiled at Birdette as she walked in, but said no word to her. She was thankful; it was too early for this many exchanges with other councilmembers. She was already dreading the council meeting tomorrow, when they would have to confer with the new regent, Queen Peach, about whether Waluigi and the others would still form a diplomatic envoy to Fort Horn as planned. She hoped not; she would miss her lover terribly if the plan proceeded.

Within the chapel, only every third pew sat any congregants, and of those there were only servants. The king’s funeral had been yesterday, and so the nobility were full up on the chapel and had brought their grief home instead. The king’s body had already been moved to the crypt, and in the city they now mourned a newly sculpted statue and an empty coffin, so the servants here were mostly the infirm who would not leave the grounds or shared some special connection with the late King Morris II.

High Priestess Luna walked to the pulpit. The pulpit was ornate and grandiose, impressively wrought with moons and stars, yet the priestess towered so far above it looked a mere toy. Her white dress flowed and sparkled magnificently in the light that poured through the windows. She caught Birdette’s gaze briefly as the lizardling ducked into the nearest pew, hoping to escape attention. The priestess brought her fist up to lips, coughed, and began:

“Children born of starstuff, rise. Blessed day to you all. Her pull has returned you, Her light shines within you. She walked amongst us in days and lands of yore as the Prophetess Mercutia and now She guides us still in some hidden form. Goddess, together we say your name in the hopes that you will bless us all: Rosalina, Our Lady of Stars. Bless us with your wisdom, for without you we are babes in the dark. All turn aloft and pray,” and the priestess held her head aloft and silently prayed with them. When she lowered her head she was smiling; “You may seat yourselves. It lightens me to see you all this Moon’s day, so full with love for our dear king. I too miss him terribly, and pray the Goddess keep him well.”

Birdette sat through the remaining service, and came to find it passed surprisingly quick. Priestess Luna’s voice was soft and lilting, and lulled her into a state where her thoughts crossed her mind as easily and prettily as shooting stars. When it was time to leave she shuffled mindlessly to the chapel doors, where Luna pressed blessed each congregant and bid them goodbye. Birdette stepped forward and the priestess took her hand, drawing her near. The priestess pressed her thumb lightly to Birdette’s forehead, and the lizardling felt starstuff, cold and fine, scatter off her scaled skin.

“Goddess’ blessings, my child,” said the priestess, and smiled. Birdette could only nod and shuffle along to make way for the next congregant. She stumbled into the courtyard in a blissful trance. Smiling to herself, she wandered past the empty arbory back to the castle’s inner doors.

Birdette snapped out of her memory when she spied from below the stairs Baron Waluigi and the princess Strawberry. Her mind went immediately to the envy she had felt on the first night of her and the baron’s meeting, when she had happened upon the princess in such good spirits whilst talking to him. She did not seem in good spirits now, but rather whispered tersely in a tone Birdette could not hear. All she could make out was some mention of a “horn”, and she dared not linger for fear of being discovered.

Birdette sneaked back to her chambers, but the experience of catching her lover in deep conversation with the same woman twice put her entirely off her luncheon. Chirpa cocked her head and asked if something was amiss. Birdette tried to hold back and act the refined lady but she could not help but divulge this latest sight to her maidservant.

“Horn?” asked Chirpa, and tweeted thoughtfully to herself.

“Yes,” said Birdette, “I wonder… could it mean Fort Horn? Would he really discuss his intentions to join the envoy with her, when he won’t hear a word about it from me? Do you think she means to join him?”

“I’m not sure, dear.”

“Oh, what was I thinking? He could never love a lizard girl, much less me. Of course he would prefer Princess Strawberry, she’s beautiful…”

“Isn’t she married, dear?” asked Chirpa.

“Is she? No, no, that can’t be right… I could believe he’d seek the affections of another, but true infidelity… no, not my baron. Perhaps I was wrong.”

Just then Baron Waluigi returned to Birdette’s chambers, where he now spent the majority of his days and nights. He did not knock, and so gave the excitable Chirpa a fright. The tweeter scurried off to fetch the baron his wine.

“Where were you, my love?” asked Birdette.

“Sending a new poem to my cousin’s abbey, dear,” he replied. Waluigi’s cousin was a monk who made copies of his poetry to disseminate among the bards and scholars of the land.

“Was that all?” asked Birdette.

“Hm, I came across the princess on my way there.”

“Princess Strawberry?”

“Nay, Peach. I gave her my condolences, of course.”

“Ah,” said Birdette, “Good… you know, I was reminded of something curious recently.”

“And what would that be, love?” asked the baron.

“The day I arrived in Shroomdon, I saw Princess Strawberry speaking with Lord Swanky. They were arguing about her ward the prince… remember how she said Pear should have been made king?”

“Yes.”

“Later, that evening, I saw you speaking with her as well, and… I just… I’m very curious what the two of you discussed. I’m sorry dear, for being so nosy.”

“I forgive you.”

“Thank you… so what was it? Whatever it was, I won’t judge you. If you had relations before...”

The baron laughed. “No, not that,” he said.

“Then what?”

“It was something so trivial, I can scarcely recollect. Now have some wine with me, my dear.”

“Could you try to remember? Please?”

“Very well. Hmmm… cheese, I expect. Or maybe wine. Though perhaps I only say so because this is such a very fine port! Mm, yes. I do so love wine.”

“There was nothing flirtatious?”

“No, dear, aside from the inherent eroticism of any discussion amongst the qualified gentry concerning fine wines. But fret not, that erotic sentiment was not aimed at the, ha, the Toadstool woman. Rather, it is a rind of salacious energy which permeates my innards and lends its aroma to my gratifying allure. It’s the same allure by which I first wooed you, need I remind...”

As the baron continued edifying, Birdette clasped her hands together and felt something wrong. The ring on her right hand was missing! She stood quickly from the table and excused herself, causing Chirpa to jump up yet again.

“Sorry Chirpa!” Birdette yelled to her maid as she scurried down the hall.

She ran out to the courtyard and first checked the arbory, but the seat beneath was still bare of her ring and of Lord Shelling, If he had found the pretty piece of silver, and planned to return it, after that last interaction they’d had… oh, the embarrassment. Yet if he planned to keep it for himself, that was far worse. The ring was a present from Birdette’s aunt Aerika, and she did not expect to receive another like it.

She searched the chapel next, where she had spent most of the morning. It was empty now save for a few sisters of the Star cleaning the floors. She hoped they had not seen to her pew yet. Inching in, she lowered herself to her hands and knees and crawled between the benches, looking for a glimmer of silver. Then- there! She saw one. She could not believe her luck and nearly shouted with glee in the holy place. Holding a hand to her mouth, she sat down and returned the ring to her finger.

Examining the ring for signs of damage, she noticed something strange. Around the moon inset was a queer band of yellow. At first Birdette thought it might be rust, or some gross fungus, but with her finger she felt it to be parchment. She sat upon the pew and, huddled in towards herself so that no sisters might see, pulled the parchment off the ring and unfolded it.

“Birdette of Ravenshead,” it read in tiny script,

“There is something which I must tell you.

If you would hear it, come to my solar past nightfall.

Please see that you destroy this note.

-Viscount Swanky Kong”

Birdette gulped and wondered what this might be about. Surely it involved the council meeting, with tomorrow looming so close. It was not as if she and the viscount had conversed outside of said meetings, not really. Could it be that he would enlist her help in swaying the new queen regent towards some plan of action? Perhaps to rethink the envoy, or to pursue it? Could it be that Viscount Swanky wanted Birdette to join them at Fort Horn? Better her than Princess Strawberry, she supposed.

These questions plagued her until some hours after the sun had set. She refused the baron’s romantic advances that night, which she was not wont to do, and waited until he had returned to his own chambers in a huff before creeping to the tower occupied by Viscount Kong.

It was the shortest and the stoutest of the castle’s four towers, much like the viscount himself. Upon ascending its stairs she found herself in a spacious solar, decorated with objects which filled her with peculiar awe. Kongia was closer to the Cloud City than Mushroomland was, and so the sight of the ape kingdom’s handaxes, crude maps, and carved masksmounted upon Swanky’s walls filled her with raw emotion and seemed almost to re-balance her cultural humours.

One piece did unsettle her, though- a kremling pelt, stretched and hung above several masks. The kremlings were practically lizardlings by a different name, and Birdette had more kremling cousins than she could count on both hands. Some said Kongians were savages, and this display of brutality did little to dissuade her of that notion. Yet the viscount had never given that impression in his personal affect- was he trying to frighten her?

Viscount Swanky sat in an upholstered chaise by the window, smoking a pipe and reaching out to stroke his pet parrot. It was a beautiful bird, green with red and yellow plumage about its flame-like wings. It turned its head almost backwards towards Birdette as she took a few steps past the solar entrance.

“Bird!” squawked the parrot, “Big bird! Swaaanky!”

“You came,” said Swanky, and lifted his bird by the talons. Locking it in its cage, he rose from his chaise. The kong fetched a pouch from his breast pocket and loosened some fresh konka leaf into his pipe. Exhaling a puff of smoke, he crossed to one of three plush ottomans in the center of the room and bid her to sit. “Please,” he said, “You’re a brave girl.”

“No,” she said, her eyes darting to the kremling skin as she sat, “I’m not.”

“Perhaps just an inquisitive one, then,” said the kong, “I’ve a great deal of information to share. Some of it you may have already suspected. Regardless, I would have you swear to secrecy.”

“I swear not to tell,” said Birdette, though she had no idea what these secrets could be.

“Very well,” said Swanky, “Baron Waluigi and I have been rivals in the court for some five years. He, of course, was made Minister of Coin, when I so hoped I might secure that position for my people. Besides which, he’s always had greater success forging friends and allies, to my chagrin. Especially concerning womenfolk.” Birdette flushed at this- was the viscount hoping to win her affections from the baron? She had to stifle a laugh at the notion; Viscount Swanky was short, stumpy, walked with a cane and had a peculiar face. But he continued, “And especially concerning Princess Strawberry. I never suspected that her ambition might rival his. Until you, my dear, caught Captain Toad in his efforts to poison the king. Successful efforts, I might add. Only the captain never does anything alone. Not his nature, nor any toad’s nature it would seem. And this theory, that he’s in league with blue toad radicals seeking to topple the kingdom? I dismissed that notion straight away, the captain had no love for his fellow toad. Or has. The captain rots still in the dungeon, I even went to check. I asked the guards there what visitors he might have received, and after a hefty bribe they told me. Besides me, only one: Strawberry.”

“Not the baron, though?” asked Birdette hopefully.

“Nay,” said Swanky, “He would not be so careless. But their alliance is well documented. One of my spies was lucky enough to overhear the princess telling her lady love Lisa that Prince Pear would now surely wear the crown. Which might have been true, had Prince Mattia not returned from Sarasaland. A shame for the princess and her ward. Though I hear tell that the prince was waylaid near the border. Don’t you find that curious?”

“Maybe Strawberry did have something to do with all this,” said Birdette, “But if you’re saying the baron did too, I don’t believe you. He couldn’t have.”

“Hm, yes. And yet Prince Mattia has disappeared so suddenly. My spider- my spy says the baron spoke with the boy, late that night. I find that odd.”

“No.”

“Fine. Perhaps the baron’s hands are entirely clean. But I’ll tell you whose aren’t: Shroomdon’s new Captain of the Guard, Toad of the Western Brigade. He’s just proved himself in a bloody struggle against a band of blue toads rebelling against the insurrection. He rides here tomorrow. They say he left in his wake stacks of corpses taller than trees. And toads are not very tall,” the kong grinned and gestured towards his own height, “Blue toads, very well that they should die. But who is to say who the next insurrection will target? Koopas? Kongs? Lizardlings?”

“And what do you suppose to do?” asked Birdette.

“I propose the two of us ride at dawn. I’ve already made my arrangements. You’ll need to wake your servants, I suppose. I aim to beseech my father the count, as well as my cousin King Donkey. I seek to return with an army of kongs for the war effort. We’ll search the realm, and hopefully find King Mattia. If the boy king has met some unfortunate end, we will support Prince Luca’s right to ascension instead.”

“Why go yourself? Why not send a message?”

“I find I’m more convincing in person,” said Swanky, and smiled again, “At least I hope so. And I will not send Squawks alone, not with the baron’s ravens scouring the skies.”

“Why are you telling me all this?”

“Subconis is along the way, is it not? I hoped that you might beseech your own father for aid. A combined army of two kingdoms are nothing the court could sneer at, not with wartime imminent.”

“I’ll not return to Subconis.”

“I would reconsider, my dear. I would not stay here with the baron… I fear to say that beneath his finery he is a man of monstrous temperament. The evil he has perpetrated on the realm-”

“I’ll not hear this!” Birdette yelled, and ran to the door. Viscount Swanky cried out after her, but he was just another council member spilling his poison in her ear. She descended from the solar and ran back to her chambers by the castle’s torchlight. There she summoned Chirpa and sobbed while holding the tweeter and telling her of the viscount’s vile lies.

She and Chirpa awoke just after dawn and quietly breakfasted together. Birdette was reticent to even leave her chambers, but that would not do. She needed to attend the council meeting soon, and there either face the viscount or account for his absence. So she dressed in modest green tunic and white skirt and walked arm in arm with her maid down the second floor’s eastern hall. Chirpa quietly tweeted a tune to the Subconiscian emissary which soothed her fraught nerves. At the hall’s end they saw Lord Shelling stumble down the stairs to Swanky’s solar. He tripped on the last step, skidding hard on a carpet and hitting his head against the wall.

“Guards! Guards!” yelled the koopa.

“Lord Shelling, what is the matter?” Birdette asked incredulously.

“It’s- the- he said I should meet him… in the solar...” Claude Shelling kicked his feet, frantically trying to smooth out the carpet, as a rivulet of blood trickled down his head.

“Chirpa, stay with him. Try to find help,” Birdette said, and ascended the tower.

Swanky Kong lied dead, splayed out upon an ottoman stained with blood. The flesh beneath his auburn fur had faded almost to grey, and Birdette thought there must be little blood left in him. She saw the two dark wounds at his throat and looked down at her own claws.

The viscount’s solar was in ruins. All the masks and weapons had been wrested from the walls and splintered to pieces all across the floor. The pottery too, had been smashed to shards. The only artifact not destroyed was the kremling skin, wrested down from the wall and laid out like some great beast in its own corner away from the wreckage. A black and orange spider crawled out from one of the scaled hide’s empty eye sockets and skittered across the floor. The parrot Squawks puffed his chest at it and flew a quick turn about the room. Both his cage and the window were open.

Someone is trying to frame me, thought Birdette, looking at the lizard hide, I should deface that, or they’ll all think it was me! Yet she couldn’t bring herself to do it; the open window did little to drain the faint stench of death that permeated the solar, and it was all too terrible. I shouldn’t have come here, she thought. On the verge of tears again, Birdette held out her hand and tried to entreat the parrot. He peered suspiciously at first, but Squawks quickly took to the lizard girl, lighting on her hand and then her shoulder. She ran quickly down the tower.

There was already a contingent of guards surrounding Chirpa and Lord Shelling. Leading them was a fierce looking toad with a thick beard Birdette had not seen before. He noticed her coming down the stairs.

“You! Lizardling!” the toad shouted, “What were you doing up there?”

“That’s Emissary Birdette, Captain,” said Claude, “I just-”

“Quiet, koopa!” barked the toad, “Men, up the stairs! We’ll see the truth of this soon enough. Except you, Corporal. You hold the lizardling until they return.”

A toad in armour swiped for Birdette’s arm, and she recoiled away from his grasp. The toad’s expression turned mean as he backed her against a wall.

“No! Chirpa, help!” cried Birdette. As the tweeter lifted her skirts to run to her mistress’s side, Squawks took off from Birdette’s shoulder and swooped down to claw at the corporal’s eyes.

“Agh!” cried the corporal.

“Fucking fool! Get her!” cried the captain.

But they were off, both lifting their skirts and running as fast as their legs would take them. Birdette made at first for the stairs to the servant’s quarters, but then remembered something. She lead Chirpa to her own quarters and started hurling away piles of clothing.

“Miss, I think they’re coming!” chirped the maid anxiously.

“Hold on a moment-” said Birdette, “-where is it?!” She could not find her iron chest anywhere. That was where she kept that single most precious belonging of hers, the egg. It was the closest thing to a sister she had, though lifeless and cold. And it was nowhere to be found. How can this be? she thought, I didn’t even tell the baron about it!

It was no use- she could hear distant footsteps in the hallway growing closer. Birdette snatched up her jewelry box and grabbed for Chirpa’s hand. Hand in hand, they turned down the hall. As they set off, Squawks came flying out of the dark and perched skillfully on Birdette’s shoulder as she hurried. They ran downstairs to the servant’s quarters, where Birdette started shouting for Curious.

“What is it?” Curious asked, poking his head out from a doorway.

“Ready the ostros!” Birdette cried, “Now!”

The ostros were quickly tethered to the carriage. Curious climbed up to its roost. Chirpa and Birdette scrambled inside and Curious made the ostros break immediately into a gallop. The two women inside would not let go of each other’s hands. I can’t believe I lost the egg, thought Birdette.

They were almost to the gate at the end of the grounds when the carriage came to a sudden halt. Birdette screamed and squeezed so hard she nearly broke Chirpa’s wing. The lizard girl knew they had been caught by the new captain, and would soon suffer his cruelty.

There was a knock on the carriage door. Chirpa and Birdette sat frightsome still on their carriage bench. Neither made a sound.

“Who’s there?” squawked Squawks.

The door wrenched open from the outside. There, standing tall in the Shroomish morning sun, was High Priestess Luna, magnificent in her natural poise and her plain white robe.

The priestess climbed into the carriage.

Chapter Text

The sea spray misted Luigi’s eyes and made him cry as he bit into his bread. Above him, the topmen hung from rigging, the sun blazing large behind them. They were as motley a bunch as on any ship, he supposed. Furred and scaled and feathered were they. He supposed it came naturally to the reptilians, but he wondered how Ook could bear that thick Fireseason humidity of the Dinotian sea, thick as his fur was.

Luigi forced himself to take his lunches outside, and to weather the brine and beating sunfor as long as he could. It was crowded below decks something dreadful, and none of the koopa seamen who slept there were overglad for his company, nor his brother’s. Still, the dark calm comforted him, and the rocking and gurglings of the seamother’s belly helped him forget his woes. So too did his moon brew, which he could take as he pleased away from the main deck’s eyes,ever watching.

Luigi remembered when he and Mario had met the captain at a tavern in Perona. Captain Emiro was an old friend of Mario’s from their youth in Bounding. Emiro was the son of Bounding’s vassal Lord Bellicci, and had often commanded the younger Mario to perform for his amusement. The carpenter’s boy had found precious little patience for this. Yet, when young Mario had broken the noble boy’s nose, Emiro had laughed and shaken his hand amiably. They were friends thereafter, though their paths took them in very different directions.

Now he had come with Luigi to The Slippery Eel to pay Emiro for passage to Dinotia. The captain’s ship was a mercantile vessel called the Nunzo Plain. She was small, the fastest merchant ship in the Coinlands, and used to carrying precious cargo. Emiro had asked a steep price, and even then the small ship’s guest cabin was already occupied by the first mate’s sister and her child. There was nowhere to quarter the brothers other than the crowded orlop deck, but it was imperative they set for Dinotia quickly and, the ship was leaving that day. Mario paid the captain eighteen gold pieces, the last of the funds his father-in-law had bestowed upon him for his journey to find Luigi.

The first day aboard the Nunzo Plain had passed quickly enough, with the koopa boatswain Alan Brightfang barking at his nephews not to drop or jostle the last of the fine Coinish porcelain as they loaded the ship. Still, Brian let go suddenly of the rope as they were hoisting one box aboard, and broke what Alan estimated to be two hundred gold pieces worth of beautifully painted plates. For this error Brian had been denied food for the first three days, and would likely work off the debt for the rest of his life. His brothers Carl and Dennis handled the rest of the cargo and the crew hoisted the flag. They set out on the deep blue Dinotian sea.

The captain had seen fit to feast them at his table that evening, for spirits were high then and so were rations. It gave Luigi the chance to get a sense of the Plain’s officers. The first mate Carmello dined next to his sister Daniella. He seemed kind of nature and quick with a joke, until anyone made the mistake of mentioning the infant at his sister's teat. Then he would roll up his sleeves and ball his red little fists and shout, and only the second mate Michael Hornsby could calm him down. Michael was an old koopa sailor, with weather-worn face and scars about his chest and arms, and the seamen, most of them koopas, often showed more respect to him than the captain.

The captain’s steward was a kremling woman named Teraka, a former pirate who regaled the other officers with stories of her adventures some fifteen years hence. The first mate’s steward, a shy guy who always had his maps with him, sat to his master’s left, scarcely talking. The second mate’s steward was not permitted at the captain’s table, for she was a Kongian ape of a lesser house, born with base intelligence. She was Ook’s older sister Brook, and looked like her brother, only bigger and hairier. She was well-loved by all the crew for her sweet disposition and aptitude at sea, and Michael loved her most of all- between courses he went to the deck and gave her some rare meat and fruit for dinner and patted her head before returning to the table.

Last of the officers feasting that night was the captain’s son Antonio, a boy of eighteen who served as the Plain’s purser. The boy had thick brown hair, piercing blue eyes, and an ever-vacant expression. The Plain’s boatswain preferred to dine with the crew, so the helmsman took his place. The helmsman was a bob-omb, and had no name but Bomb. Despite his common name, he claimed to be a son of Dinotian nobility, and had the manners of a lord. Luigi had no reason to doubt this, though he found that all bob-ombs had a lord’s pride.

“The young sailor and the gunner,” said Bomb, referring to his bob-omb crewmates, “Were well bred enough, I suppose. But one sees why they would leave Dinotia to sail the seas. There is hardly a chance for a bomb to distinguish himself there anymore, and I fear they shall while away the years as no one in particular. I, on the other hand, will receive a hero’s welcome upon my return, and marry quickly to secure my place in the realm.” At this the human officers other than Antonio had rolled their eyes.

Now on their fifth day at sea, Luigi felt himself beset by a darkness. It followed it out from below decks, and twisted his mind up so that he could not concentrate. He found himself looking constantly back toward the stairs that led back down into the ship. It was more than just the dark of the Plain’s innards which pulled Luigi in. He was cursed, and the only true means of relief laid on the orlop deck.

Mario sat on a barrel, a small band of seamen about him quizzing and prodding him for stories. He was tolerating it remarkably well- usually the hero of the Coinlands needed far more ale to tell his tales to the commonfolk. The rest of the seamen, koopas all, went about their business. The boatswain’s nephews would not even look at the warrior; it was said across the realm that Mario of Bounding had once presented the Princess Toadstool with an entire wheelhouse filled up with koopa skulls. Luigi knew this wasn’t true, but it was close enough so that when one of the kremling seamen, a man named Kyodor, asked about it Mario denied nothing.

“I told you!” Kyodor’s younger sister Karrina whispered.

“Sir Mario,” Sailor Bomb began, “When you nearly freed Dinotia-”

“I’m not a sir, bomb,” growled Mario.

“Don’t you fucking bombs know anything?” asked the toad seaman Li, “They call them ‘Supers’ in the Coinlands.”

“Quiet, toad,” said the bob-omb, “I was granting him the more formal style of-”

“What he means to say,” interrupted the rex boy, Darmonius, a squat reptilian of blue, “Is that he wishes you had liberated Dinotia like you did with the Coinlands, that we could return home… that wretched Koopa King killed my parents and countrymen, and there aren’t many of us left.”

“That’s your countrymen’s own fault,” Li retorted, “For siding with Bowser in the first place.”

“You know nothing of Dinotia!” Bomb blurted, “Commoner!”

“I know that had the bloody bombs and the ‘peace-loving’ rexes not joined up with Bowser’s army, he would not have stood a chance,” said Li, “Mario commanded the greatest army in Superos to victory just two years before, in the Battle of the Three Kingdoms. Shroomish, they were,” the little toad seemed to swell with pride. There was a pause as the seamen all looked to Mario.

“What my brother is too gracious to say,” said Luigi, “Is that he did not lead the greatest force in Superos to Dinotia. The king would not give him the men. So you can thank King Morris for the state of your miserable kingdom.”

Luigi left the sailors huddled around his brother and walked downstairs to the gunner deck, where the third bob-omb Gunnie was instructing three midshipmen in how to load a cannon. The war veteran koopas Blondie and Richard took to it immediately, but the Sarasan commoner Emil was struggling. Luigi paid them no mind as he descended another staircase to the orlop deck and located the purser’s office.

Inside, young Antonio Bellicci was counting coins and writing in his ledger. The boy had some gift with numbers, to be sure, even at his young age. Yet with conversation, he did not seem so skilled.

“Antonio,” said Luigi, “I’ve been meaning to stop by. I have questions for you, kid. First of all, when is your father going to dine us at his table again?”

“Uh, he might… that is, he…” said Antonio. The boy seemed to give up on the thought. “Hello, Luigi,” he ventured.

“Right,” said Luigi, “Hello. Your father is aware my brother is married to a Princess of Mushroom, no?”

“Wait, a princess? I… I didn’t know that.”

“Okay, next question,” said Luigi, “How well do you know Dinotia?”

“Uh, not that well, really. Why?”

“I heard there might be someone there who can help me.”

“Help you..?”

“Help me with…” Luigi began, then thought for a moment, “Hm, have you heard of Gaddenhal?” The boy shook his head, “Nevermind then, it’s a dreary subject. Alright, last question: do you have keys for the personals chests in the cargo hold?”

“I do,” said Antonio.

“Oh, good! Will you bring it down with you? I’d like to retrieve something.”

The boy nodded hesitantly and retrieve a set of keys from under his desk. He fetched a candle and lifted a hatch. Antonio descended the stairs below, plunging into the dark of the cargo hold with Luigi close behind. They passed between stacks of fastened crates, the low churning of the waves lending the vermin-infested hold an air of otherworldliness. At the far end of the ship’s belly was a small space between a wall of crates and the Plain’s back end. Antonio crouched to unlock one of six iron chests laid out in two rows on the floor. With it popped open, the boy waddled back a few steps but stayed low and close to the chest. Too close. Luigi stayed standing.

“Gaddenhal,” he said.

“Gaddenhal?” asked the boy.

“Yes. I’ll tell you the story now,” said Luigi, “Some ten years ago, I deserted my brother on the eve of the hardest battle he ever fought. He lost, and even though I wouldn’t have made a difference, I thought he’d resent me forever. I was afraid, so I fled… I eventually made it to Gaddenhal. It was a small vassalage- a quiet hamlet, an old cavernous keep. One of the lords there, Erasthmus, had no children. I was almost thirty by then, but he took me in as one of his own. I stayed there many years, some of the best years of my life,” Luigi knelt down to the chest. Moving his brother’s hammer to the side, he spied his own springbow. With the boy just behind him, he pretended to search through a pouch of his trinkets.

“But I-”, he continued, “I have an illness, and in Gaddenhal it festered. Every day the pressure built, like a river’s torrent on a wooden dyke.” Carefully, he felt for a bolt while continuing to talk, “It’s no ordinary illness. It needs to feed, and grows like a mold. It makes me feed it, Antonio. You understand?” Finding a bolt, he loaded it into his springbow, “When it feeds enough, it pops like a boil. And I’m not the only one who suffers. This world ruptures. Something peeks through from the beyond. Demons, spirits, whatever. They tore through House Gadd. Erasthmus’s father, his brother, his sister, so many of his nephews and nieces… they were thrown against the walls of the statues, time and time again.”

“S-s-stop!” cried Antonio, “I, I’m not sure I want to hear-” the boy had crept further now, huddled under a crate. His back was turned to Luigi. Luigi aimed.

“...Their eyes turned to fountains of blood, their bones pierced their skin. Count Darrien, Griston the Graceful… and the little lords too. Edgar and Errol, Matthew and Morris…” he fingered the trigger.

“No!” cried Antonio, still crumpled into himself. The frightened boy flailed and dropped the candle he was holding. Suddenly the hold was black as pitch. Luigi could not see Antonio, nor any of the crates, nor even the springbow inches from his face. Cursing and setting it quickly down, he lunged out in the boy’s direction. But his hand raked naught but air, and he heard the boy’s shoes scampering against the wood. Sure enough, the boy knew the hold’s layout well and was soon out of it.

Luigi cursed again- there was nothing to do but return his bow to the chest and close it. He hoped the purser would lock it again before any of his or his brother’s effects were stolen.

Then came the long slow process of flailing in the dark, slamming each of his limbs time and time again against the hard crates, which were strewn quite carelessly, it seemed to Luigi. His fumbling fingers finally lit upon the hatch, and he pushed up and out onto the orlop deck. As he crossed to his hammock he coughed loudly into his sleeve, doing his best impression of his grandfather’s racking wheezes from towards the end. As he climbed into his hammock he peeked around the corner towards the purser’s office. The door was open and no one was inside. Luigi wrapped himself tightly and pretended to sleep, every so often letting out another exaggerated cough.

The Nunzo Plain swayed. Around him, Luigi heard the crew go about the day’s tasks. He did not hear Antonio’s voice, nor the captain’s.

“Enough with the bleeding coughing!” came Kyodor Kritter’s rough voice from the rabble.

“It might be sweatfever” that sounded like Darmonius.

“It better not be! I’m sleeping next to the bastard,” said one of the koopas.

“I’ll find the doctor” said Darmonius.

Soon Luigi felt cold metal against his head. It was a strange device, gold and conical, and through his eyelashes he saw a small figure in purple robes holding it to him. The figure appeared koopan, with yellow skin and white hair. It tutted to itself and shook its head and just like that it was gone. Darmonius and the other crew murmured to each other.

Luigi could tell that it wasn’t night yet, but he really was desperate for sleep. It had come to him only fitfully since leaving Bounding; the cackling in his head and the distortions kept him up. He rested for perhaps an hour, but then his brother was at his bed and Luigi had to reassure him: yes, he was fine. No, he didn’t have sweatfever. His thoughts reeled, the spirits cackled. An interminably lost feeling shook and disoriented him. When it had finally released him Luigi sensed that it was night, and he crept from his hammock to find Darmonius sleeping on the floor beneath Karrina Kritter. He nudged the rex awake.

“Wh-huh? What’s going on?” asked Darmonius.

“Come with me,” bade Luigi.

They trudged to the gunnery, then further to the main deck. It was deserted, the mate’s and captain’s cabins dark, but the full moon lit up the deck and sea quite well. There was someone else under the open air; a small figure pressed itself against the Nunzo Plain’s railing, a stream of piss sailing out into the sea. The figure turned and Luigi saw that it was Li of Littleshroom.

“You lot come up for a piss too?” asked the toad.

“That’s right,” said Luigi.

“You know,” said Li, “Your brother’s alright. Woulda’ made a fine king too, says I. King’s got no trueborn sons anymore, isn’t that so?”

“My brother’s not really the type for courts or thrones.”

“Fair enough. Still, fuck King Morris. The craven goes and gets himself sick, and now the whole realm’s got to pay.”

“Mind what you say about the High King!” Darmonius whispered loudly.

“Morris is sick?” asked Luigi.

“Aye, and I hope he dies,” Li replied, “He’s the whole reason I’m in this mess. You know he had both me brothers locked up? And my poor sweet mum besides.”

“...craven… hope he dies...” said Luigi. Darmonius shook his head and looked out to sea.

“...Well, I’ll leave you to it. I think I’ll sleep nicely now, the salty air’s done me a good turn,” Li said, and he went back below decks. Luigi waited a moment, then turned his gaze to the squat rex who looked up at him keenly.

“I didn’t come up for a piss,” said Luigi, “Nor a shag,” he lowered his brow at the reptile.

“I… I wasn’t thinking that,” said Darmonius.

“Maybe another time though. Look, I’m not sick. I’m fine. I just need to know how much you know about Dinotia.”

“I- not too much. I haven’t traveled past the port, not since I was freshly hatched. I know what stories my mother told me, though.”

Luigi sighed. “Is there anyone on this ship who might know anything about it?” he asked, “Anyone besides those stupid fucking bob-ombs?”

“Oh, well Kammy knows lots about Dinotia!” Darmonius exclaimed, “She lived there almost all her life, and my lady is over a hundred years old! Oops! Don’t tell her I said that. Or that I called her my lady-”

“Kammy? Who is that?”

“The doctor. I thought I saw her check on you today- are you sure you’re not sick?”

“I’m fucking fine. A hundred-year-old doctor from Dinotia, eh? What’s her story?”

“Well, she wouldn’t want me telling… but she’s actually part of the Koopa royal family. Some great aunt of Bowser himself, I hear! ‘Course, she’s estranged from them now. Locks herself in her cabin most days, with her potions and such.”

“Is she…” Luigi gestured vaguely, “...you know?”

“A magikoopa? Well, she wouldn’t-”

“She wouldn’t like you saying, yes, fine, now spit it out. Yes or no?”

The rex nodded his head. Luigi looked out to sea. To have searched so long, and now to have the person he might need so close at hand…

Just then the reptile and the Coinlander heard the tear of fabric and looked up to see a ragged flap hanging from the sail. Another bolt flew from past the ship’s prow and just missed the mast. Squinting in that direction, they could make out the dark shape of a ship just outside of the moon’s pallid glow. Luigi looked at Darmonius wild-eyed.

“Go down and wake the crew, now!” he told the rex, “I’ll get the captain!”

Darmonius nodded and ran below decks. From beneath the wood he stood on, Luigi could hear him screaming:

“Wake up! We’re under attack!”

Chapter Text

Sarasa’s oldest princess sat between her sister and Bane on a long cold bench of stone. Before them in the center of the very wide, high-ceilinged foyer stood a pair of red iron doors that none of them had the slightest hope of opening.The atmosphere in the great black chamber was disquieting, and not just because her sister and her lover didn’t get along. Daisy thought she could hear the low, distant knelling of great bells from somewhere in King Bowser’s keep. They seemed to sound the end of the world, for outside the window she glimpsed something apocalyptic. Fires burned throughout the city, sending into the sky thick plumes of black smoke that blocked out any but the faintest glimmer of light or sky. Koopas were the original fire worshippers, before the first King Morton had established himself as godhead, and now when their holy king was in their most sacred of cities they all lit fires every day.

Darkenvale was in West Koopa, but well north of Sarasa. Still, the princesses and prince were all excellent riders, and the journey had passed in under a moonsturn. They brought Mansour with them, and the young Koopa prince’s squire, a Coinish lad named Marco, carried the sigil of the Koopa king so that neither bandits nor soldiers dared bother them. Still, Azalea would not speak a word to the prince, and Mansour was no great conversationalist. Daisy found herself tilting between Azalea and the prince like a child’s plankin an effortto curb their dark moods. She was grateful that Countess Yara had insisted she bring the songstress Esmerelda along. Her sweet songs helped the evenings pass much more peaceably when they camped, and along the road Azalea had grown rather fond of the bard.

What landscape they passed by upon the greenroad was harsh; there was precious little grass in Koopa, and mountains rose up everywhere so that Daisy always felt as though she were in the maw of some gargantuan beast. Even in fireseason there were patches of unmelted snow by all the lakes and streams and between the hills. What villages they passed didn’t even bother to shovel it between starseasons, they wore trails between their homes and inns and wells with their well-padded feet. In the great stone city Darkenvale, though, they kept the snow at bay all year round. They burned their hay, they burned their clothes, they even burned their food in tribute to their great Koopa King.

Daisy struggled to turn her gaze from the city’s glow. It lit a maddening fascination in her, she could not deny it. She looked to her other fascination. Bane returned her gaze sweetly. The best part of the journey had been the hour or so of robust pressing and fondling after sunset each night before they passed out from exhaustion.

The red iron doors lurched open, propelled by some hidden mechanism, and revealed a Koopan noblewoman behind them. She was taller than Daisy or Bane, of a height with Mansour, and wore a stunning long rose-coloured dress. She wore bracelets of ornate gold and a necklace with rubies bright as flames. A red velvet headpiece rested on her large skull; her hair’s pink tresses wreathed out from under and behind it. Her rose lips curled in delight as she took notice of Bane.

“Brother, you really have returned!” said the Koopa princess, taking hold of Bane’s arms and kissing his cheeks, “I’m sorry father’s kept you waiting, I told him I must see you at once! And you’ve brought guests- please, introduce them!”

“Very well,” said Bane, “This is Princess Daisy of Sarasa, Rose of the Desert, and her sister Princess Azalea,” Azalea stared at the two koopas grimly, “Their manservant Mansour, and Esmerelda of Easton, a woman of songs. And this is my squire, Marco.”

“I am Princess Wendy O. Koopa. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

Princess Wendy offered her hand and Daisy took it. Only then did she notice the painted claws, twice as long as Bane’s and filed to points, which wrapped delicately around her palm, inches from piercing her skin. Wendy brought the hand to her lips and kissed it, leaving a bright butterfly-shaped smudge behind.

“Your servants may wait here,” said Princess Wendy.

Young Azalea looked to Mansour fearfully, but Daisy gave a nod. The squire and manservant dutifully turned their back on the iron doors, and Esmerelda gave a smart curtsy.

The four royals stepped into the great hall of Bowser’s castle. It dwarfed the waiting chamber, for here the ceiling loomed so distant and darkly it evoked the night sky, and the chandeliers hung far overhead were as celestial bodies. Braziers brimming with red-hot coals encircled the hall and bestowed an ominous glow from without. Though the hall was well-appointed with stools and tables of carved stone, the barren surfaces of each did nothing to offset its intimidating grandeur. Over it all stood a dais with an enormous throne. Could he really be as large as the stories say? thought Daisy of the Koopa King.

“I shall fetch His Greatness,” Wendy announced. She climbed the steps to the dais and then slipped through a door centered behind the throne. Bane and the Sarasans were left to themselves.

“Does she know who your mother is?” asked Daisy when they were alone.

“No,” Sir Bane shook his head, “And neither do any of my brothers. The truth of my birth could rend Koopa asunder, and so my father chose to burden only me with that knowledge...” the knight sighed, “...It’s difficult being back here.”

“And you’re certain they were wed under law of the Gigan church?”

“I told you I swear it.”

“Alright,” said Daisy, “We don’t need to involve the rest of your family, then. We’ll simply remind the king that you are heir to both the Koopa and Mushroom thrones, and that whenwe are wed Sarasa will join that union as well, and there will be no one left to fight. We’ll also let him know that Azalea is still engaged to Peach’s eldest-”

“I shall not wed my cousin,” spoke Azalea gravely.

“That remains to be seen,” Daisy replied, “But the Koopa King doesn’t need to know the details of your romantic tribulations, dear sister,” she turned back to Bane, “Is all well? Will your lord father see our reason?”

Bane nodded. There was a blast of fanfare so loud that Azalea grabbed her sister’s hand in fear. A band of koopan musicians had assembled on the dais. They played wooden instruments, stringed and reeded, and one had a harpsichord; a glorious little device which produced the dulcet tones of a harp struck with silver.

Between the band strolled a koopa who outshined Wendy in splendor. Illustriously dressed in white cravat and silken pants, he stepped down the stairs of the dais. His hair was blue and well coiffed into two tidy points, his fangs well tended to and claws manicured. The harpsichord-player stopped the band briefly to rise on his stool and announce that the man before them was Prince Ludwig Von Koopa, Baron of Greenport and the Highlands. Bane made introductions for the princesses.

“A rose in bloom, and so far from her desert,” Baron Ludwig opined, “And now you are the human who so captured our young Bowser’s heart. Why, when I heard the news I had to take my airship to come see for myself. It is an honor to set eyes upon both pale flowers in person.I remember your victory over our brother Sir Morton fondly. If only for the measure of the godking’s esteem by which he fell that day.”

“Is Sir Morton here?” Princess Azalea asked nervously.

“Oh, no. My unfortunate-looking brother is occupied at Fort Horn presently, gathering his forces. But don’t tell your uncle that!” Ludwig said, smiling mischievously.

“We came to speak with father, not Sir Morton,” said Bane, “Where is the king?”

“His Holy Greatness was in the middle of some business when you arrived. He will receive you when He is good and ready. Though I may check upon him, if you wish.”

“Please do.”

The band reprised Ludwig’s overture as the koopa baron left the hall at a leisurely pace. Daisy suppressed a yawn and turned to Bane when they were alone once more.

“How many more of your siblings must we meet before the king receives us?” she asked, “I would prefer it at least if they came out all at once, rather than greeting us one by one.”

As if the walls themselves had heard them, a section of stone at the great hall’s eastern end withdrew to admit two figures. One was the tallest koopa Daisy had seen yet, and almost skeletal he was so thin, while the other was of a height with Bane.

“Your Highnesses,” spoke the tall one, “Welcome. I am Prince Iggy, and this is my brother Lemmy, His Holy Greatness’ youngest save for our brother Sir Knightsbane here. The three of us have taken strange paths indeed to distinguish ourselves as His progeny, haven’t we brother?”

“I’ve done what I could in my short time,” said Bane, “Not so much as you, Iggy.”

“You flatter me. I fought battles enough in my day, though never so fierce nor bravely as Sir Morton or Roy the king. Hm, you’ve never been to war, have you brother? I suppose that’s one difference between us.”

“By the time I came of age Larry was already dead, and the rest of you were well honed. There were no wars left to fight.”

“Ah, yes- you’re young. So young. Speaking of war heroes- I can scarcely believe my eyes! For two leaders so skilled in battle to be so fine of features! Princess Daisy, I hear you’ve slayed more of my countrymen than any but the ruffian Mario. But perhaps they were lucky their last sight was one so fair, no?”

“I’m afraid I look less lovely in my armour, Your Highness,” said Daisy.

“Oh, I rather doubt that,” said Iggy, running a hand through his long green hair, “I’m told you only wear a half helm, to inspire the Sarasan troops. A formidable combatant, with eyes beautiful enough to make your foes weep- no wonder there are so many songs about you.”

“I weep for the fucking fallen,” said Lemmy unexpectedly. His face was raspy and off-putting. “And all the souls you’ve loosed with that wicked curved sword you wield. Now you stand in the hall that my people’s ancestors built before your mother’s kin ever saw sight of this continent… ha, you’re so human, aren’t you? Ha, ha-ha...” There was a dead silence as Prince Lemmy’s mirthless guffaws echoed off the black stone. Prince Iggy stepped before his brother.

“I’m sorry for that, Your Highness,” he said, “I told Lemmy to compose himself before we entered. He probably doesn’t mean it, we don’t know what to do with him anymore.”

“We all like killing...” said Lemmy, “And mating. Except for me, I find both disgusting. You can cake yourself in horse dung and call yourself the king of shit, if you like, but in the end you’re just an idiot covered in feces.”

“Lemmy!” shouted Sir Bane, “Enough!”

“Now that really is disgusting, Lemmy,” said Iggy, “Perhaps it’s better if you take your nap now.”

“Oh, finally. Sweet mind egress...” said Lemmy. The young koopa stumbled as he departed the hall.

“Is Wendy returning soon with father?” asked Sir Bane, “Or is Ludwig?”

“Ludwig?” asked Iggy, “Oh, he just left, with His Holy Greatness.”

“What?”

“Oh, hold on, you came to see Him, didn’t you? Ah, I see… I fear our sister might have played a cruel trick on you.”

“Wendy?” Bane said, “Bring her here, now!”

“No, wait,” said Daisy, “He said they only just left. We should re-saddle the horses, and follow them immediately.”

“Fine, my love, I shall confront my sister another day. Come, let’s go to the servants.”

The red doors swung open, as if they themselves had heard the knight. As Bane and Azalea hurried from the hall, Prince Iggy held back a few paces and coughed. Daisy turned to look behind her.

“Princess, a word?” he asked quietly. Daisy nodded, slowing her pace. “I’m afraid as I was trying to prepare Prince Lemmy to meet you, I couldn’t help but overhear something from the hall. Something about young Sir Knightsbane’s mother, hm?”

Her words caught in Princess Daisy’s throat. “I…” she started to say.

“There’s no need to deny it,” said Iggy, “I can see the truth of things plainly enough. Don’t worry, Your Highness, I shall keep your secret safe. Now, let’s after my lord father, shall we?”

Daisy nodded.

Chapter Text

Mattia left his stolen horse in the stables of the Bashful Blooper. He walked back up to the steep section of the yellowroad towards where he could cross to the cave. The prince had with him some of Baron Waluigi’s gold, and he thought to buy Melanie and his cousin a warm meal in Mangrove before they decided where to go next. The road was not safe for a girl so delicate, he knew, but he did not think the village was safe either.

Towards the hill’s crest a strange scene came into view. Six short men in cloaks were gathered just off the road. Mattia only realized they were toads when he caught sight of one’s smooth face. Two more had already navigated to the cliff, and were facing the mouth of the cave where Melanie and Prince Amir had been.

Prince Mattia quickly ducked behind a tree and drew his sword. He hesitated, looking to the six toads by the road, and then the two approaching the cave. But there was only one by the cave’s mouth now. He waited a moment, his sword hand shivering slightly. The second figure returned from the cave, wrapped around the form of someone even smaller than the toads in cloaks. Mattia could see the blue of her hair from here, and his mind filled in the form of her beautiful face with its innocent eyes.

“Melanie!” the prince cried out. He saw her head turn in his direction, but he was still partially obscured by the tree. He took a step away from the road and toward the cliff.

They were all around him then. Some held spears while others had only drawn daggers. These were his father’s men, he surely realized. Though not a unit he was familiar with. Rough, hard-born toads, with dour or sneering mouths beneath dark pupil-less eyes which disappeared under the darkness cast by the cloaks, save to glint back some perversion of the sun’s light. They were not like the toads from the prince’s keep, these. These were not those toads, cheery and compliant, who would run hand and foot to fetch the prince some juice or tea at even the latest of hours. No, these were toads of another sort.

“Well, aren’t you a pretty one?” said one toad, bulkier of build than the others, “Hair the colour of corn and that. Why don’t you just drop that sword there, lady? We wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself with it.”

“Shut up!” cried Mattia.

“That’s not a lady, Bo,” said another toad, “He’s just a lad, that’s why he’s got no chin hair.”

“Hold on, brothers,” said a toad with a long scar across his cheek, “That’s the prince of Mushroomland!”

“It can’t be!”

“You’re certain?”

“Kill him, brothers! Run him through!”

“No, no,” said the toad with the scar, “We can’t kill him, much as we might like to. The king’s own son? That’s quite a boon for the resistance, if taken alive. We must hold on to the boy. His father would pay us the son’s weight in gold.”

“You’re traitors,” said Mattia, “And fools besides. My father is dead.”

This sent the toads into an uproar.

“The craven king is gone!” cried one happily, “Miya’s fire take him!”

“The insurrection…is it over?” said the other, “Who rules now?”

“It’s him now,” the scarred one growled, “The boy is king. Take him!”

Two toads approached Mattia with their spears drawn. He slashed out with his sword, sending their spearheads to the ground. He tried to rush between then, but the toads brought their spears back up and crossed them to block his path. This time they caught his sword, and pressed it down against him. The prince had not the strength to conquer the combined might of two stout toads, and was nearly overwhelmed when he weaved at the last moment and kicked the leftmost toad squarely in the chest.

The speartoad fell to the ground, grunting. His brethren closed in on the prince, cinching their formation in a tight noose around him. The four of them brandished their daggers, save the one called Bo who only had a wooden club. Bo was large for a toad, almost of a height with Mattia. He lurched forward recklessly, and Mattia caught the club with his sword, embedding the blade in its wood. Bo tried to wrest it free, but the prince took his sword with both hands and pushed, flinging the club away from the fight. Mattia had hardly finished tracking its movement when a thick, meaty hand wrapped itself tightly around his throat.

Bo managed with the brutish strength in his one arm to lift Mattia some inches off the ground. The toad brought his hand that wasn’t clasped around the boy’s neck in to try to grab Mattia’s sword arm by the wrist. With a desperate slash, Mattia filleted half of the toad brute’s hand flesh off the bones. Bo dropped the prince and could only look with shock at his red palm, leaking blood. From the ground, Mattia had to parry several dagger strikes before he could get his legs back under him. From a crouch, he jabbed a toad in the armpit and his sword came back soaked with blood. But as that toad stumbled back, the one with the scar struck the hilt of Mattia’s sword and struck it from his hand.

There were three daggers pointed at the boy now, as well as three angry sets of eyes. The second speartoad busied himself with tending to the wounded, while the scarred toad sheathed his dagger and pulled the boy’s wrists behind his back. The other two cussed, and one of them spit on him, a green gob that covered his eye in mucus and caught itself upon his cheek. Then the other punched him hard in the gut, and Mattia nearly toppled over.

“Quit it, Render!” the scarred toad reprimanded, propping the prince up to his feet.

“He’s no king,” said the toad who had spat.

“If I’m not the king, then let me go!” Mattia said, “I command you!”

“Oh, he’s the king alright,” said the scarred toad.

“We’ve had quite enough of kings...” mused Render, his dagger grazing the denim of Mattia’s tunic.

“Enough! She’s coming back.”

From the side of the cliff, a cloaked figure approached, its hand around Melanie’s. Behind them, another walked beside Sarasa’s prince, who was casually minding his steps. When Amir saw Mattia his face lit up.

“Cousin!” Amir cried. Next to Melanie, the nearest cloaked figure removed her hood. She revealed herself to be an older blue toad, still wearing the same helmet as in the royal castle.

“Prince Mattia?” asked Lieutenant Toadine. Mattia tried to step forward, but his captor held him back. “Release him,” said Toadine.

“We can’t,” said the scarred toad, “As you said, he’s prince of the kingdom. Or king now, most like. We can’t just let him go-”

“I swore an oath to protect this boy,” Toadine said, “And I won’t break it just because his father has forsaken me.”

“He’s a noble. We fight nobles. Look- look how the whelp nearly took Bo’s hand, and gave Khan a nasty cut besides! We should ransom the boy back to his mother, at the very least. There’s not a human force in Superos that would squander this opportunity!”

“The boy might be a whelp, Rotleg, but he is my charge. We should aim to be better than our pursuers in this.”

Mattia felt his captor’s grip loosen at this, and Rotleg pushed him dejectedly away, releasing the prince. Mattia wiped the spit from his face as the rest of the toads eyed him strangely. Some of their cloaks had been knocked askew, and now he could see they were blue toads all. Mattia stumbled forward a bit and wheeled around, looking for his sword. But as he reached for it, Toadine lifted and tied the steel to her belt.

“Perhaps I had better hold on to this a minute,” she said.

Mattia nodded solemnly, then rushed over to Melanie and embraced her. She let out a happy cry and gave him a kiss, and then he embraced his cousin Amir too, who shoved him away with a grin.

“What’s this about a king, then?” asked Amir.

“Nothing,” said Mattia, “Stupid gossip.” Prince Amir narrowed his eyes and nodded.

“Mattia, what are you doing here?” Toadine asked.

Mattia explained some of his trials since leaving for Sarasaland. He related the sad story of Sir Sahjid’s demise, and the state in which he had returned to find Mangrove. He told Toadine how his late father’s minister Waluigi had made it clear that the royal court had no great love for him, nor was it safe for him in Shroomdon. Mattia had already decided he would soon become a knight, he said, and never be made to wear the crown. Then he asked Toadine what business she had in Mangrove.

“These men and I have been checking every town for stragglers like your lady love, prince,” said Peach’s former guardswoman, “It’s not safe for a blue toad girl here anymore. Not even in a cave with your resourceful cousin, I’m afraid.” She winked at Amir, who flushed lightly, “We have made camp in a forest not far from here, where we can hide from guards. Young Melanie would be safer there.”

“What say you, Melanie?” Mattia asked.

“Can I not stay with you, my- my prince?” asked the toad girl.

“I would gladly keep you, but- I’m not sure...”

“These roads are not safe for you, my dear,” said Toadine, “The princes have some business to attend. A host of knights gathers in Bladeton, a few days east of here. Your prince must earn himself a knighthood, and so protect your honor. Harsh times ahead for our kind, I’m afraid.”

Melanie nodded with tears in her eyes. Mattia took both her hands in his and kissed her about the cheeks, which quieted her some. Then Toadine took her hand again. The blue toads all fixed their hoods and began to shuffle up the hill, casting baneful glances at the prince as they passed. Melanie walked a few paces with them, then turned back to the prince.

“I… I’m with child, I think,” she said, almost a whisper.

“What?” asked Mattia, though he had heard her properly.

“Find me soon, my love!” Melanie chirped, and allowed herself to be lead away by the small band of toad rebels.

Amir and Mattia exchanged glances, then started down the hill to Mangrove. At the Blooper, they ate a meal of baked cheep and grains in relative silence. Then they mounted their new steeds and rode east to Bladeton.

Chapter Text

Curious drove the ostros down a small dirt road off of the redroad. It was bumpy, and as Chirpa jostled against Birdette on their cramped side of the carriage she began to weep. The high priestess looked at them with bemusement.

“The king’s men will be after us,” Chirpa moaned miserably, “I’ll bet they’re coming down the redroad by now. They’re going to find us!”

“They’re going to find us! Find us! Find us!” the late Viscount Swanky’s parrot Squawks repeated.

“No they’re not,” Birdette said consolingly, then leaned out the window to shout to Curious, “Ride us behind this farmhouse here! We need to figure out where we’re going!”

Curious obliged and the carriage came to a stop in a small clearing between the farmhouse and some trees. It was quiet, for now. On the other side of the farmhouse was a cottage with a garden, but no farmers about, which was odd. Then Birdette saw that the roof of the cottage was blue, and it made sense. The toads who worked this land had been brought in by dead King Toadstool’s men, and were likely rotting in a dungeon or dead.

Birdette noticed she had dug deep grooves in the interior of the carriage door with her claws, though she did not recall doing so. Her hand shook as she brought it to her face, and she noticed at once the enormity of her fear. She wanted to sob as her handmaiden was doing, but would not. For the fear that so gripped her now was not the hopeless fear she experienced in Subconis every day; the fear of her father. No, there was a buoyant energy to this fear.

Birdette calmed herself by listening to a birdsong from the forest that wafted into the carriage. She looked to High Priestess Luna, who sat on the opposite bench with her hands on her lap and smiling serenely. Chirpa’s moans subsided as she crumpled into herself, clutching at Birdette’s skirts.

“You don’t seem concerned, Priestess” noted Birdette.

“It’s in the hands of the Goddess now,” Luna replied, “But I have faith we will reach Kongia unharmed.”

“Kongia?” Birdette asked, “Who said that’s where we’re going? And why would you want to travel there?”

“For the same reason as you. The viscount believed they would be useful allies in the war. And we might be able to clear up some questions I had about this,” The priestess held up a porous and glittering rock on a chain, eye-catching for all of its ugliness.

“What is it?”

“The viscount said his father mined it from a great rock that struck the earth on the night of his birth.”

“Were...” Birdette began, narrowing her eyes, “...were you and Swanky close? Forgive me, priestess, but I don’t remember the two of you getting along.”

“You are correct, we were not friends. Of my fellow council members, I thought him the most unctuous and repellent man I had ever known, ‘til the very end,” said Luna, “Then he died. Two nights before his death, something made him entrust me with a great many stories. Or I thought they were merely stories. Now I am not so sure.”

“I’m not sure either...” said Birdette, remembering the viscount’s harsh words about her lover Baron Waluigi. If they were true, could the baron be somehow implicated in the baron’s death? No, it couldn’t be, surely not her baron. “...Perhaps we can find out what kind of man he truly was when we reach the Gloomgulch.”

Curious returned from within the stables and announced he had found several horses there. He recommended to Birdette and the priestess that they abandon the carriage, and ride out on horseback after nightfall, when there would be less of the late king’s men about.

“Couldn’t we take the ostros instead?” asked Birdette, “I’ve never ridden a horse before.”

“Me neither,” moaned Chirpa.

“I’m sorry ladies,” said Curious, “Ostros were not bred for such terrain as this. Though they may outrun a horse by day, at night it will be very difficult to keep them to the roads.”

“Oh, we’re doomed!” Chirpa cried.

“Go rest inside, Chirpa,” bade Birdette. Once her handmaid was gone she turned back to Curious. “I will think upon this. You’ll have my decision before nightfall.”

“Very well,” said Curious.

In the farmhouse, Birdette tenderly fed the ostros their seed, tossing a handful to the floor so that Squawks would leave the ostros’ meal alone. The six birds of burden who had so faithfully bore her in exodus from her homeland had no idea that their time had come. Birdette watched as Curious brought some Subconiscian quaff to Chripa, who was shaking with anxiety. It calmed her down enough that the tweeter was soon asleep. Curious busied himself about feeding and saddling the horses, who seemed scrawny and miserable things, having gone untended to for nearly a week.

With Squawks returned to her shoulder, Birdette went and settled herself beside Luna on a bench beneath some scythes and trowels which hung upon the wall. Her stature was so enormous that the head of the priestess reached dangerously close to one scythe’s curved tip. Yet Luna didn’t seem to mind. Birdette leaned her spine against a stretch of wall nearby. The wood had started to rot, which gave the wall a slight comforting give. The fury of the moment had worn out, and the lizardling felt suddenly tired as death. Giving a final glance to the ostros, she shut her eyes for a few peaceful moments.

A fierce light shined clear through her eyelids, and Birdette awoke. It was dark outside, as it should have inside, but for the stone hanging around Luna’s neck. The priestess held her amulet daintily aloft as it illuminated her smile. Curious and Chirpa were staring at the scene in rapt amazement. Birdette had to shield her face not to be blinded.

“How did you get it to do that?” asked Curious.

“I breathed my faith into it,” said Luna of Littleshroom, “And my faith was rewarded.”

“What is it?” asked Chirpa.

“I’ll tell you what it is,” said Birdette, “It’s how we get my carriage out of Mushroom.”

“Mushroom!” squawked Squawks, “Mushroom!”

That night a shimmering carriage led by great birds came down the redroad. There were no other travelers on that dark and moonless night, for the knights and guards had bedded down and the common toads were subject to a curfew. But if they had seen they would have marveled at the carriage. It looked to be lit from within by some holy magic, for the light seemed to know how far to spread along the rust-coloured stone to guide the ostros’ footsteps, and no further. At the center of the light was the High Priestess Luna of Littleshroom, wearing a grateful little smile.

Chapter Text

Luigi found the captain asleep, with his nephew Antonio curled up at the foot of his bed like a dog. In stirred Captain Emiro awake, he woke the nephew, who caught one glimpse of Luigi’s face and bolted out the door in pale terror, wearing naught but his underbreeches. They soon heard screaming from the deck. The captain swore and followed Luigi out into the night.

Outside, a flurry of bolts was tattering the Plain’s sails to shreds, as Alan Brightfang and Second Mate Hornsby tried to lower them while ducking below the approaching ship’s fire. Antonio Bellici writhed on the floor, squeezing at a bolt protruding from his thigh and dripping thick red blood on the ship’s filthy planks.

The captain rushed to his nephew's side while Brightfang narrowly ducked beneath a bolt which thudded into the mast. More of the crew were streaming out from below decks, but Luigi stopped them at the top of the stairs before they wandered out into open air thick with crossbow fire.

"Who here has a bow or crossbow?" Luigi asked the crew, who strained to hear his low voice above the chaos outside. Tweedle, Gagak Paluk, Richard Manwar, and Li stepped forward. "Good. Get out there and shoot them. The rest of you stay covered. Gunnie has the canon, I should hope. Blondie and Emil, you should get to him. Where is my brother?"

"No one's... seen Mario," huffed Darmonius, who was out of breath after shouting to stir the crew of the Nunzo Plain.

"I'll find him," said Luigi, and the crew made way for him to pass. He found no trace of his brother on the gun deck nor the orlop deck, where Carmello of Perona was trying to quiet his sister and her crying babe as he brought them to safety. The young woman seemed especially unwell, and as Luigi passed them he saw blotches of purple upon her skin. The first mate gave him a terse look, so Luigi found a lantern in a nearby cabin and made for the cargo hold. The lantern's flame was weak, and Luigi thought he heard something in the dark beyond its glow, but there was no time to investigate. He retrieved his springbow and returned to the main deck.

The approaching ship had turned away from the Plain some ways back, and was no longer firing upon the merchant vessel. Still, it was close enough for Luigi to make out some of its features, even in the dark. The ship in the distance was a good-sized galleon, and size enough for a good two hundred crew at the least, compared to the Plain's fifty and five. Yet it had been built some decades before the War of the Three Kingdoms, for Luigi saw no gunports and presumed there only to be arrowslits. He saw too that the ship's mast flew a malformed skull with bone white tentacles, the banner of Captain Syrup, the terror of the Coinish Cape. Yet for all its size it lacked the distinctive black skeleton carved upon the prow of Syrup's principal vessel, the Black Kettle. It had to be the Kettle's sister, the Purple Fury. Luigi had no idea what it was doing here in the Dinotian sea.

The Purple Fury had ceased firing upon the Nunzo Plain. Kammy was ripping the breeches off Antonio, who was still bleeding and writhing. Captain Emiro had backed off the boy to peer uneasily at the Fury. There was a much smaller vessel near it now, heading towards them; a rowboat, with an oarsman and a smaller passenger illuinated by another beari/ng a lantern.

"Get my nephew below deck," Emiro commanded without shifting his gaze. Darmonius and Bruce the cook came and carried the boy below decks for Kammy. First Mate Carmello walked up to the captain, standing at attention.

"Gunnie says they're in range, captain," he said, "Though the winds could be better. Do we fire?"

"No," said the captain, and called up to Tweedle in the ship's rigging, "Can you see who's on that rowboat?"

"It's-" Tweedle called down, "It's old man Skull!"

Luigi remembered the stories of Dread Captain Skull from his youth in the Coin. Before Syrup, he had menaced the Cape with immunity, setting so much of the navy ablaze that old King Rodolfo the Fool had shored all his ships and ordered the merchants to steer clear of Skull or else pay his tolls. Skull ruled the Cape as his sovereign sea until Captain Syrup came of age and started tearing her way through his fleet. All thought it to be over for the old man, but some ten years ago Syrup actually made peace with him, and they came to rule the Cape as partners. Eventually she had taken his ship, the Black Kettle, and given it to another pirate, though Skull had remained her trusted confidante. It seemed this was still the case.

When the rowboat approached the Plain's starboard side David Clawmark let down a rope ladder. The man bearing the lantern set the handle between his teeth and climbed up to the deck. Then the burly young oarsman lifted up old man Skull as though he weighed nothing and passed him to the lantern-bearer, who set him down but stayed close by as the former captain waddled about the deck, leering at the Plain's crew as he took inventory of them.

Luigi had never fought nor even met the old pirate in person, but still could tell he was no longer the fearsome figure from the stories. The pirate bore at least five and seventy years, and had either shrunk or had always been a small man in truth. The skin of his cheeks drooped over his wispy white beard while his round little belly drooped over his gold-plated belt. His right arm had been cut down to the elbow, and there a black iron hook had been bolted, while his left arm was withered and rotting, with signs of an old crabscale infection.

"Are ye the captain, lad?" the old man asked Luigi. He was a revolting little creature up close, and his breath stank of rotting crab. Luigi stared back disdainfully but said nothing.

"It's my ship," said Captain Emiro.

"Yer the captain? I took ye for a steward! Why, you look younger than this lad here..." Skull stroked his beard, doddering about on his stubby little legs, "Aye, that ye do. And is that what passes for a moustache these days?"

"Enough personal remarks," said Emiro, "State your business on my ship, brigand."

"Brigand? You best not be talking to me like that, lad, I've warts on me back older'n you. And I'm not here to seize yer pathetic ship or rob ye blind. I'm here as an envoy."

"What's this? Old Deadclaw of the Gold Sea has come seeking peace?" asked First Mate Carmello.

"Seems Captain Syrup has fashioned the Claw into her pampered hand," jeered Teraka Paluk, the captain's steward.

Old Skull only smiled. What teeth of his that weren't gold were rotted nervy things, like the barnacles and seaweed on a ship's keel. The smile faded suddenly when he spat upon the deck and narrowed his eyes at Teraka. "Look! Look, with yer slitted eyes, lizard wench," he said, "I know they can see by dark. Is that the Black Kettle ye see there, below the moon? No! I come on behalf of Captain Boots, Savior of the Sequin Isles and Terror of the Koopa Coast," At this, Alan Brightfang and his kinsmen gasped audibly. Emiro reacted not at all. "I come here as a favour to her," Skull continued, "Ye have something of hers, Captain."

"I'm certain I don't," said Emiro, "For I've never heard of this woman captain, much less come under possession of her valuables."

"No? But I'm quite sure ye have a belonging of hers right here on yer paltry little ship, captain. The girl be a short young thing, with black hair and an innocent face. She might be nursing another belonging of Captain Boots as well, one that's seen a single starseason at the most. Might be she calls herself Sweet Anne, or Daniella of Perona, and she might even appear Superosi- ah, but the girl is a Sequiner through and through."

Captain Emiro shot a glance to his first mate, who had gone pale in the face. "I know of no one by that name," he said to Old Skull, "The only women aboard are the lizardlings you see before you."

"That's a lie, and a bold one too. Aye, yer bolder'n I thought! Take another look at the Black Fury there, captain! Three times the size of yer little boat it is, aye, and ten times the crew! If I give the sign, they'll be upon ye before ye can say pip, and her crew will have the truth about the girl out fast enough!" Old Skull grinned a sour and empty grin and stepped forward from the two men he had brought aboard, entreating the crew of the Plain. "I'll give ye and yer crew the same chance- if anyone steps forward and can show me to the girl, that man'll have paid for all yer lives. Tubs, pinch yer nose and hold yer breath."

The pirate with the lantern behind Skull set it down and pinched his nose, inhaled sharply, and ballooned out his cheeks. "We call him Tubs because the lad nearly drowned once, in a half-full wooden tub. He can't hold his breath worth a damn. If Tubs runs out of air before one of you land lilies steps forward, we'll slaughter the lot of ye."

The crew of the Nunzo Plain looked at each other uncertainly, but none were craven enough to volunteer straight away. Tubs' cheeks were already red, and beginning to turn purple. Luigi saw Li of Mushroom clench his fists and sway forward a bit, and wondered whether he should stop him. Instead, a different figure strode through the crowd, the seamen clearing a path to let him pass.

"Ah, here's one among ye with half a brain!" the old pirate jeered, "Wait- ye look familiar! Why, this is quite the surprise! Brave Super Mario of Bounding, in the flesh! And here of all places! Why, we might just have to-"

The front half of Old Skull's face exploded as Mario brought his warhammer up in a terrific arc. Bits of the old pirate's namesake pelted Luigi's veteran brother, as well as the captain and his steward. Skull's small body sunk to its knees and fell to the deck with a loud squish. The oarsman behind him yelled and drew his sword, which Mario's hammer sent flying into the ocean. But the sturdy pirate was bold, and tackled Mario to the floor.

While Teraka and her brother Gagak struggled to pull the raging man aloft, Tubs seized up his lantern. Aiming it at the Fury, he slammed it upon the head. A shutter closed down over the flame and then lifted. Tubs had done this twice before Second Mate Hornsby set his ape steward upon him. The pirate screamed as Brook clawed out his eyes, flailing uselessly against the Kongian beast. Brook merely pinned his shoulders to the deck with her feet and pulled his arms up until they popped from their sockets and fell limply to the floor. Then she worked her fingers into Tubs' mouth and pulled off his jaw, and he stopped screaming.

"Captain!" said Teraka, "What do we do with this other one?" She and her brother had the oarsman restrained by both arms. Mario had already risen and broken the man's nose in return for knocking him down.

The captain walked up to the remaining pirate and screamed in his face. "Call it off!" he shouted, "Call off the signal!"

The oarsman smiled. "I can't, you stupid son of a bitch," he said.

The captain frowned and looked to his childhood friend. Mario took up his hammer once more and brought it down, crumpling in the pirate's chest like piecrust. Once he was on the floor, some of the more vicious koopas began stomping the body into gore.

"Tweedle!" the captain called up.

"She's turning, cap!" shouted the tweeter.

The moon was behind the Purple Fury's sail now, so everything was darker, but even Luigi could see now that the inky blot in the distance was growing thinner, its hull pointing directly at the Nunzo Plain. She would be upon them in minutes.

"Get those bloody sails up!" Captain Emiro shouted furiously.

"You heard him, lads!" called his second mate.

"Tell Gunnie to open fire!"

"Aye, sir!"

The first cannonball disappeared into the darkness, and none were sure if it had breached the Fury's reachwood hull. By the time the cannon was ready again the Plain's tattered sail was up and the Fury was upon her. Luigi could see its crew, a great unsavory mass of tattooed bodies that crowded the deck of even that massive vessel. He aimed his springbow and fired a bolt into the crowd, and one head among hundreds dropped from sight. The Fury's sail was askant of the wind now, and her deck tilted up and towards the Plain, its occupants rising like a wall of demons from one of Luigi's horrific visions.

Gagak, Li, and some others joined Luigi in firing bolts into their mass, but they met a hail of bolts in return and had to seek cover. The Plain's cannon fired into the Fury's hull, and there was much screaming from behind its arrowslits. Tweedle fell face-first from the rigging above onto the deck, a bolt in his feathered chest.

"You bloody bastards!" cried Gagak, "He was a tweeter! There are less than a hundred of his kind left to this world!"

The wall of wailing fiends paid the admonition no mind. The Fury's hull was scraping against the Plain's deck now, peeling up strips of wood as the two ships sailed as one for a brief moment. The pirates didn't bother with ropehooks and took the opportunity to start jumping, and soon the sky was raining loathsome men with their cutlasses clenched in their teeth. They all had rough landings, but at least half of the first couple dozen men were on their feet before any further harm could befall them, and more kept falling. Before the deck erupted into chaos, Luigi spied a purple-skinned woman upon the deck of the Fury, wearing a trihorned hat and sneering at the sordid scene, smugly crossing arms across her near-bare torso.

Then Gunnie fired his cannon into the Fury's hull and the larger ship was launched back behind the waves. It was mayhem across the deck. Luigi watched in dull disbelief as a pirate with a jagged octopus tattoo rose, snatched his cutlass from his mouth, and slashed the chest of Kyodor Kritter, who crumpled and dropped his axe but stayed standing. The pirate cackled madly and grabbed the kremling by the back of the neck. He thrust his cutlass over and over into the gut of the Plain's smallest lizard seaman, forcing him to stumble backwards as blood gurgled from his lips to meet the mess of red below his neck. Luigi heard Kyodor's sister Karrina cry out in anguish as the pirate's cutlass slid from her brother's chest one last time. There was no will left in him, and the motion sent him toppling off the ship's edge into the waters below.

The pirate paid no mind to Karrina's cries as they grew sharper, and turned to leer at Luigi. The Coinish rogue took several steps back as he coiled his springbow, steadying it with both hands. Hisbolt struck true, and brought several fragments of the pirate's teeth through the back of the pirate's throat with it. The pirate fell backwards and there was Karrina, her green face slick with tears. She looked to the pirate's welling mouth, then frowned at Luigi as if she would have chosen a slower death. Then she took her brother's axe and hacked at the pirate, screaming as drops of sweat flew from her skin.

A jumble of six pirates near the prow had managed to disentangle themselves from some kin of theirs that had died beneath their weight. Three of them were upon Luigi before he had the chance to reload his springbow. The one in the middle was without a shirt and had lost his cutlass, but wore a hook on his crippled right hand which he swung at the Coinishman's brains. Luigi was focused on loading his next bolt and had time to jolt back but an inch before the rusted iron appendage was scraping against his face. Rather than his skull, the hook punctured a hole in his cheek and twisted horribly between his molars. Luigi grasped his bolt in pain and drove it into the shirtless pirate's heart.

With the dying pirate slumped against his shoulder, Luigi turned to see what had become of the other two. His brother stood in a pool of the first's blood, a miserable bald fellow with a caved in head, and kicked at the second. This last of the trio wielded a halberd which he poked at Mario cravenly with. Super Mario's kick threw him off balance and he slipped in the blood. But even in his fall he managed to snap off the head of the halberd with his greathammer. The pirate tried to close in and attack with his broken stick as Luigi's brother struggled to stand.

Luigi seized the dying pirate's arm desperately and removed the hook from his face, sparing what he could of his mutilated cheek. He grabbed the other's broken halberd and pushed him to the ground, but could not pry the weapon from him. After some wrestling Mario came and splattered the spearman's face across the deck with his hammer. When Luigi rose he saw Karrina with a koopa pirate dead at her feet. Two more had hacked her arms to ribbons, and laughed as they plunged their cutlasses into her gut. Mario gave Luigi a nod and went to kill them.

Luigi ran to the ship's stern, where the captain and his first mate were fighting off a swarm of fierce types, koopa and goomba and human. Captain Emiro had placed himself perfectly upon the balcony over his cabin, at the head of the stairs where he might duel with the onslaught one by one. Carmello of Perona stood a few feet back. His sword was out, but his attentions were upon his steward, Charter Guy, who lay in a pool of blood with a bolt in his stomach.

"He's- he's dead, Captain!" cried the first mate.

"Well? Step up, you curs! Which one of you is man enough to fight me? I'll kill every last one of you myself if I must!" boasted the captain, ignoring the situation behind him.

The captain feinted confidently at the crowd, which was when the smaller of the two goombas ducked and ran beneath the captain's slash. Emiro stumbled to one knee as the goomba slashed at his leg with a dagger and dashed towards the first mate. Seeing this, Carmello's eyes grew wide and he stepped forward and jumped from the balcony, abandoning the captain.

There was no time to save the captain as the rest of the pirates swarmed him. Luigi ran to Carmello and helped him to his feet. Their backs were to the cabins now, and they could see that half the Plain's crew were dying or injured. Darmonius ran up to them, a bolt protruding from just below his shoulder.

"Captain's dead?" Darmonius shouted.

"Captain''s dead," Luigi confirmed.

"What do we do?" asked the rex, "The Black Fury ship is burning, but she's not sunk! She'll be upon us again soon!"

"Where's Hornsby?" asked Carmello.

"Dead!" cried Darmonius.

"Carmello, get Daniella and get her in a rowboat," Luigi demanded.

"What? But Emiro's dead. I'm the captain now, I'm supposed to-"

"Go to her! She's-" Luigi began to insist, but the first mate had already ran below deck. "-forget it. Darmonius, you're with-"

Darmonius stepped forward and another bolt pierced his back. The young rex fell to the floor and twisted on his side, and Luigi could see now how much blood he had already lost from his previous wound. The boy was not long for this world.

"Take me... too..." Darmonius groaned as Luigi loaded his springbow.

"No. Forget it," said Luigi, and loosened a bolt between the boy's eyes.

The Black Fury was close now. Great flames swelled up from its hull, but from the screaming it sounded like much of the crew were still alive. It would be less than a minute before another batch of them swarmed aboard the Nunzo Plain, but Luigi chanced to peek downstairs at the gunner deck. Kammy the magikoopa had finished dressing Antonio's wounds and was standing by the late captain's nephew, who had passed unconscious.

"Help me carry him," said Luigi.

They brought him to the Nunzo Plain's sole rowboat, which was dangling over the ocean by some rigging. The late captain's steward Teraka Paluk was passing Daniella of Perona's baby to her upon the boat, while Li of Mushroom helped Carmello in after his sister. They cuddled up close to one another, poised delicately and swinging over the roaring waves.

"Teraka!" cried Teraka's brother Gagak. He had run up to the little group covered in blood.

"Gagak!" cried Teraka. She was holding back tears.

"Get on," said Luigi.

"Wh-"

"They're coming, go." He pushed Teraka into the rowboat and Gagak jumped in after her.

"You fucking bastard!" yelled Gagak.

"Hold this," said Luigi, and handed Antonio Bellici to him. "Bye," he said to the unconscious boy, and he and Li cut the ropes.

The rowboat with its six passengers splashed into the sea and was soon swept behind the Nunzo Plain. He sighed as the fiery flagship of hell loomed over him, its flames casting a vicious wind which swept his hair back from his scalp. The first of the Fury's second swarm were already leaping from its deck, mostly towards their deaths. Luigi turned to see his brother, covered in more blood than Gagak Paluk.

"Skull's boat is still tied to the ladder," said Mario. He turned and ran, sure that Luigi would follow.

"Wait!" said Luigi, and wrenched at the magikoopa's hand. If they were to live, it was important that she do the same.

Li followed them to the ladder and hurried down it once Mario was aboard Skull's boat. Luigi lifted Kammy from her feet; the old crone weighed almost nothing. He tossed her to his brother and then leapt after her, just in time to see a half-mad weaponless goomba bite the air where he had been. Li cut the ladder and the four of them were swept off by a wave. The Nunzo Plain had grown louder again, but the noise soon quieted as the ship shrank into the distance, along with the burning Fury. In the opposite direction, Luigi saw a dot he thought might be the rowboat with Carmello, Antonio, Teraka, Gagak, Daniella and the babe aboard.

"Frozen hell," said Li, "What a fuckin' mess that was."

Kammy moaned. Mario said nothing. Luigi nodded, and looked up to see the sun rising at last. Above it, dark clouds stormed menacingly. A crackle of thunder made him flinch.

"...a fuckin' mess," Li repeated.