Chapter 4: A Journey of Two Princesses
The small group of four raced across the grasses of Giant Land, heading straight for Sky Land, where they hoped Mario would be. Lemmy fell to the ground when something knocked his ball from under him. He looked around to find a familiar shape lying near his foot. The small Koopa picked the piece of stone up as everyone else made their way back to see if he needed help.
The stone was in the shape of a hat, a capital M carved into the front. Fearing the worst, Lemmy examined the grass around him. He quickly found himself surrounded by fragments of stone. “It can’t be… can it…?”
“Lemmy, are you all right?” Peach asked, kneeling down to get closer to eye level with the sitting Koopa. “You took a bad fall.”
“I’m fine, but look what I found…” Lemmy said, holding up the stone hat to the others.
“It’s just a stone cap, why make such a big deal over it?” Luigi said, taking the hat from Lemmy.
“That is because it’s not a stone cap, Luigi…” someone said, stepping out from behind a few large rocks.
“Wendy!” Lemmy exclaimed, jumping to his feet. “What are you doing here? I thought we got separated during that sandstorm in Desert Land.”
“I’ll explain that later, but I have something more important to say first…” the Koopa princess said as she approached the group.
“What is that?” Toad asked. “Does it have anything to do with Dimentio?”
“Well, yes and no,” Wendy replied, sounding serious for the first time in her life. “That hat that Luigi is holding isn’t an item… It’s Mario’s true hat.”
Luigi looked down at the piece of rock he was holding in disbelief. “How can we know if you’re telling the truth?”
“I’ve been here for a while, trying to find the others,” Wendy said. “I was on my way to Sky Land when I saw Mario arguing with Dimentio, and hid behind those boulders in case something happened…”
“If they were only arguing, what makes you say that Mario lost his hat?” Peach questioned, slowly getting confused from the story.
“They began to fight soon after I saw them,” Wendy explained. “I was going to help Mario, but then Dimentio revealed some weird red jewel that shot some kind of magic from it… I was frozen stiff out of fear…”
“So this hat really is…” Luigi said, not wanting to finish his question.
“Yes… And all the pieces around us…” Wendy answered grimly. “I watched Dimentio transform him into a statue myself with the same jewel as before…”
All remained silent as everyone’s eyes slowly began to well over with tears, small drops falling to the grass below. Toad was the first to break the silence to ask a question. “Did you see what the jewel Dimentio had looked like?” he asked.
Wendy was a bit confused by the question, but nodded. “It was bright red and glowed like fire. Why do you ask?”
“Maybe Merlon knows something about it,” the Mushroomer suggested. “He knows about almost every magical item in the world.”
Luigi looked up at them, wiping tears from his face. “If he does know anything about it, he might also know how to stop its power.”
“Then it’s settled,” Peach said as she
stood up from the grass, dusting off her dress. “We can mourn after Dimentio
is defeated.”
Dimentio laughed loudly as he stood in the middle of a cemetery, his red gem glowing as it rested on the grass between two graves. Two hands slowly pushed their way out of the dirt, followed by the rest of their bodies.
“This little treasure has more power than I thought…” he chuckled. “Come on, my pets, we’re going on a little trip…”
The two revived bodies nodded silently,
following Dimentio out of the graveyard.
Merlon had his eyes closed and was lost in his thoughts. “I have heard of something that seems like it would match what Wendy saw…” he said as he continued to think. “I don’t know anything about it, but I know someone who might.”
“Who would that be?” Lemmy asked, knowing they were desperate for any information.
Merlon reopened his eyes, scanning across the group. “Professor Frankly of Rogueport should know all that you need about this item.”
“Thank you so much, Merlon,” Luigi said politely before leading everyone out of the small house.
“I guess we all need to pack our bags, then,” Toad said, not too excited about the idea of sea travel.
“No, only Wendy and I are going,” Peach said, to everyone’s surprise. Wendy nodded in agreement.
“Why would you want to go by yourselves?” Luigi asked them, looking very concerned. “You know it’s dangerous in Rogueport.”
“Yes, but you need to stay here in case the kingdom gets attacked.” Wendy replied. “Who knows what could happen if we leave it unguarded?”
“Good point,” Lemmy agreed, nodding
his head. “I just hope you two are careful.”
Later that evening everyone had gathered at the Mushroom Kingdom’s port. Lemmy, Luigi, and Toad waved at the Mushroom and Koopa princesses as their ship pulled away from land.
“In just a few days, we will find out how to stop Dimentio and his gem,” Luigi said as they started for the castle. “I only wish I could have gone with them, in case…”
Lemmy quietly laughed to himself. “You need to relax, everything will be fine.”
“Maybe a good night’s sleep will help
us all,” Toad suggested with a yawn, the others agreeing.
Peach smiled as she took a deep breath of the crisp, morning sea air. “Today will be a good say, I can just feel it.”
“It would have been nice if you would have at least let me sleep in,” Wendy complained as she appeared from below deck. “We aren’t even going to get there until tomorrow.”
“We are adventurers now, and that means no sleeping in,” Peach teased. “I’ve never personally met the professor, but from what Mario told me, he is very smart.”
“Yippee…” Wendy said sarcastically, rolling her eyes. “I lived with two nerds, it’s not that special.”
Their conversation was broken when they heard one of the Koopa crewmen calling for help. He was pulling on a fishing pole that was pulling back just as hard.
“If we can pull this guy in, we’ll be able to eat for the rest of the trip!” the Koopa said as they ran to him. The two princesses took hold of the pole, all three pulling with all their might.
A figure was flung onto the deck of the ship. As they approached it, the realized it wasn’t a fish, but a Koopa. The new Koopa slowly stood up from the wood floor, remaining silent as he turned to face them.
“Iggy?!” Wendy exclaimed, backing away from her brother. “I thought you were dead!”
It was indeed Iggy, but something was different about him. His glasses were broken, one of the frames completely missing its glass, the blue of his eyes now a pale gray. His skin was very pale and his shell was cracked, one of its spikes broken off. He was breathing heavily as he glared at the two girls standing in front of him.
“Something isn’t right…” Peach said, backing away from the Koopaling as well.
Iggy only let a low growl escape his lips as he produced a sword from his cracked shell. He charged at Peach, swinging the blade at the princess. She managed to dodge, if just barely.
Wendy produced her magic wand from her pink shell, holding it toward her brother. A small, white beam shot from the purple dome on top of the wand, striking Iggy, who just shook off the attack. Wendy cursed under her breath as Iggy’s attention was drawn to her.
“Don’t go easy on him, Wendy, that’s not your brother anymore!” Peach said, trying to find anything she could use to defend herself.
Wendy nodded, returning the glare of the now monstrous Iggy. The purple dome on her magic wand began to glow with a faint light that slowly grew brighter. Iggy charged her, thrusting his sword forward at her. Wendy dodged the attack, countering with a much stronger blast from her wand. The attack hit squarely against the side of Iggy’s head, the Koopa seeming unfazed by the attack yet again.
Peach secretly retreated below deck as the two Koopas fought, in search of anything that could possibly help them in any way. A small smile appeared on her face when she found her old, trusty weapon from adventures past…
Wendy jumped back, barely avoiding getting
cut in half by Iggy’s blade, the sword sticking into the wood of the ship’s
deck. She took her chance, hitting Iggy’s hand with her wand, which forced
the Koopa to lose his grip on his weapon, leaving it in its place.
“Out of all the relics in this world, that gem is the one thing that this castle doesn’t have a book on!” Toad growled in frustration, leaving the castle’s library.
As he paced through the halls of the bright castle, he could hear footsteps coming from behind him. He turned around quickly to catch whoever was following him, but no one was there. Then something grabbed him from behind and lifted him into the air before slamming the helpless Mushroomer into a wall.
The sound of the hit caught the attention
of Luigi, who was in a nearby room trying to think of a way to defend the
castle. The plumber in green entered the hallway to find Toad unconscious
on the tile floor with no one else around. He knelt down to pick up his
friend, falling to the floor as he was struck in the back of the head by
a heavy hammer.
Iggy, enraged by the loss of his weapon, lunged at Wendy. Wendy was quickly pinned to the wooden floor as he held her down; slowly digging his claws into her arm as blood slowly dripped from the new wounds. Wendy tried to struggle free, but Iggy was too strong and easily kept her down.
Iggy lifted a claw into the air, slashing at Wendy’s neck. Wendy closed her eyes, expecting the end, but her hopes lifted when she heard a loud “whack” and the weight on her disappeared. She opened her eyes to find Peach standing next to her, frying pan in hand.
The hard impact to his skull didn’t keep Iggy down for long, as he quickly picked himself back up. Peach helped Wendy up before hitting Iggy with her pan again to deflect an oncoming attack.
“It’s no use…” Wendy said, holding onto her injured arm. “Whatever we throw at him, he just keeps getting up…”
“If we can’t defeat him, then maybe we can just get him away…” Peach plotted.
Iggy lunged at the pair again, slashing at Peach with his claws but merely tearing her dress. Peach saw her opening and hit Iggy in the head with all her might, sending the Koopaling over the edge of the boat. Sighing in relief, she sank to the floor.
“Nice job, Princess,” Wendy complimented.
“I couldn’t have done it without your
help,” Peach replied with a smile. “Now let’s get that arm patched up.”
Chapter 5: Double Attack
“Wake up, girls; we’ve arrived at our destination,” T toad in a black vest said, shaking Peach and Wendy awake.
Peach woke up first, rubbing her eye with a yawn. “Thank you, Captain Mush, you’ve been a huge help.”
“Yeah, yeah, thanks for taking us here,” Wendy said, her eyes still closed. “Now you go talk to Professor Frankie or whatever his name is and I’ll wait here.”
“You two don’t have to go right now, we aren’t in a rush. I need to pick up some supplies anyway,” Captain Mush said, laughing to himself as he left the cabin.
“Did you hear that? I’m going back to sleep now,” Wendy said, pulling her blanket over her head.
“Oh no you don’t, we’re going into town to find Professor Frankly,” Peach said, pulling Wendy’s blanket off her bed. “You can sleep when we get back.”
“Fine…” Wendy groaned, rolling out of bed. “You owe me for putting in all this effort for you.”
“I do?” Peach mused, leading the way off of the ship. “I’m the one who saved you yesterday.”
Wendy stayed quiet as the pair walked
down the dock, passing a few Bob-ombs in bandanas organizing some crates.
Peach led the way up into town square, seeing a few familiar faces from
the last time she was there.
Lemmy woke up in one of the guest beds in Peach’s castle, sitting up with a yawn. He hopped onto his ball and rolled out of the room to make his way to the kitchen for breakfast.
Tayce T. welcomed him with a happy smile. “Good morning, Lemmy, did you sleep well?”
“Yep, a perfect night,” Lemmy replied with his usual cross-eyed smile. “How’s life been since you got hired to cook in the castle?”
“Fine, I’m obviously a lot busier now,” Tayce T. said as she started to cook some eggs.
“I would assume so.” Lemmy took a carton of juice from the refrigerator before pouring a glass. “Have you seen Luigi or Toad around anywhere? I haven’t heard from them since yesterday afternoon.”
The two continued their talk, unaware
that a figure was watching them from the doorway. Lemmy turned around towards
the door to look for his friends, catching the sight of something pink
rushing away from the area. “Toadette must be practicing being a spy,”
Lemmy chuckled as he left the kitchen, leaving Tayce T. to her business.
“Hello?” Peach asked, knocking on the door of Professor Frankly’s house. “Professor, are you home? We need your help.”
“One moment please,” came a voice from inside the small house. The door opened a small crack before opening all the way. A Goomba with gray hair and glasses stood in front of them. “Ah, Princess Peach, what has provoked this delightful visit?”
“We need your big brain for something, shrimp,” Wendy said bluntly.
“And who are you?” the Goomba professor asked in a quite less cheery tone.
“She is Wendy O. Koopa of the Koopa Kingdom; try to ignore her less than polite demeanor,” Peach said sweetly. “Can we come in?”
“Of course, of course, come right in and relax,” Frankly said, guiding them into his book-filled home. “Now, what is it that you need my help on?”
“Well, someone is attacking my kingdom and we need to find out as much as we can about a strange object he’s been using,” Peach explained.
“Oh, that’s horrible news,” Frankly said, his tone showing more worry than his face. “What kind of object is your attacker using?”
“It’s a big, red jewel that glows as if it was on fire,” Wendy explained, showing its rough size with her hands. “From what I’ve seen, it can send out beams of powerful energy.”
Frankly seemed to jump up in his place before rushing over to one of his many bookshelves and looking through it. He picked out a book and placed it on his table, flipping through the pages.
“Do you know what it is, Professor?” Peach asked, watching the Goomba at his work.
“I think so; your description seems very familiar to something I’ve read about once.” He stopped at a page that had a drawing that almost perfectly matched Wendy’s description. “Is this it, Miss Koopa?”
Wendy stepped over to the desk to look over the professor. “Yes, that’s what he had.”
“The Dragon’s Heart…” Professor Frankly said, his eyes on the page.
“What is the Dragon’s Heart?” Peach asked, looking at the book herself.
“It is the most ancient artifact in the world…” Frankly started to explain. “It was forged from the left over energy from the creation of this world. It holds power beyond anything else and can even raise the dead if used correctly.”
“Raise the dead…” Peach thought out loud.
“Iggy…” Wendy sighed. “That solves one mystery.”
“Is there any way to stop its power?” Peach asked, trying to get back onto the bright side.
“The only way to stop it is to break it,” Frankly answered, closing his book. “I hope this information will help you both.”
“Thank you, Professor, but we need to get this information to the Mushroom Kingdom as soon as possible,” Peach said, opening the door of the small house.
Wendy was the first out of the door, followed by Peach, who closed the door. A beat up-looking Captain Mush ran up to the princesses in a panic, a few bleeding cuts lining his body. Peach gasped as the condition of their captain. “Oh my, what happened to you, Captain?!” She knelt down to catch him as he collapsed, unconscious.
A few screams were heard in the distance before townspeople stampeded past them, a familiar figure standing in the center of the square. Wendy locked eyes with her undead brother before retrieving her wand from her shell. Peach carefully let the fallen Toad to the ground before standing up, only to be stopped by Wendy.
“No Princess, try to find a small boat that we can use to get back, I’ll hold him off,” Wendy said, keeping her eyes on Iggy. “I don’t care if I get hurt anymore; my family has fallen apart anyway.”
“All right, but be careful,” Peach said before sneaking away between two buildings.
Wendy approached Iggy, holding her wand
in both hands, stopping only when Iggy produced two sabers from his shell,
one for each hand. The two exchanged looks before charging at each other.
Lemmy continued down the maze of hallways in Peach’s castle, the smell of the cooking breakfast soon fading away. He checked every unlocked room he passed for Luigi and Toad, but remained unsuccessful. The familiar pink from before caught his eye, and he quickly followed it into one of the bedrooms of the castle.
“All right Toadette, you’re the only pink one in the castle, you can stop hiding from me,” Lemmy said in a joke-like tone. He fell off his circus ball when a hammer flew by his head, a large Koopa looming over him. “R-Roy…?”
Roy’s sunglasses were broken, only the rims remaining, his skin almost pure white, although his head was still its usual pink, if not paler. He lifted Lemmy into the air by his hair, resulting in yelps of pain from the small Koopa.
Roy threw his brother across the room; Lemmy hitting the wall with a thud, a hole getting left behind where he impacted. Lemmy plopped helplessly onto the bed, a bruise slowly forming on the back of his head. He reached a hand in his shell, looking for his magic wand, cursing when he remembered that he had left it in his temporary bedroom.
Roy slowly lumbered over to the bed, producing another hammer from his shell. He rose up his arm for a strike, Lemmy closing his eyes in preparation for the more than likely final strike. The strike never came as a thud was heard from the floor.
Lemmy looked up to see a Yoshi-like figure with a spiked shell standing behind where Roy had been.
Karma sighed, seemingly annoyed by the situation more than anything else. “I go on vacation for three weeks and this happens?”
“Karma, how did you know what was going on?” Lemmy asked, rubbing his sore head as he sat up.
“Easy, I told her,” Ludwig replied, stepping into the room. “Where do you think I ran off to after we left the castle?”
“Umm, aren’t we forgetting something?” Karma asked as Roy slowly began to pick himself up off the floor. She attempted another kick to put him back down, but this time her foot was caught, and Roy threw her down on the floor. Lemmy and Ludwig nodded at each other before attacking at the same time. Lemmy jumped for Roy’s head while Ludwig went for his legs.
Lemmy was simply batted away by Roy’s hammer, hitting another wall before falling to the ground. Ludwig had more luck and took hold of Roy’s legs, flipping him to the floor.
“Fighting isn’t going to help us any…” Lemmy sighed, picking himself up. “Roy was tough enough. This strange monster Roy is even worse…”
“I’m afraid I have to agree with him…” Karma groaned, picking herself up as well. “We need to find Mario or Luigi.”
“Well, we can’t find Mario…” Lemmy said under his breath, hopping to his ball.
Ludwig had been able to hold Roy down
with his weight, but was slowly losing as Roy fought back. Roy was soon
able to throw Ludwig off of him, but was slow to actually stand up again.
Taking their chance, the new group of three ran from the room, continuing
Lemmy’s search for a hero.
Wendy struggled to hold back the twin blades of her brother with her wand. She blasted a small beam at him with little effect. Iggy continued to slash at her, Wendy just barely managing to dodge the attacks and taking one small slash across the stomach.
Enraged, Wendy jumped back from her attacker, charging energy in her wand. The purple dome of her wand slowly changed into a bright, glowing white as it filled with energy.
Iggy charged at his target once more, only to be met with a powerful beam of energy. As the beam dissipated, a hole was cut straight through the monster Koopa.
To Wendy’s horror, he was still standing
as he was before the beam had hit, seemingly unbothered by his missing
section. Iggy continued his charge forward, thrusting one of his blades
into Wendy’s stomach, then quickly removing his reddened blade from his
victim. Wendy fell to the stone ground, struggling for life as her world
slowly turned black.
The threesome of Koopas rushed through the halls of Peach’s castle as fast as they could in hopes of escaping Roy. They could hear laughing coming from one room, and stopped in front of it. Quietly opening the door just far enough for them to see into the room, a horrific scene was revealed.
Luigi was hanging from the ceiling from a chain that was tied to his ankles, struggling in a vain attempt to get free. Toad was merely stuck inside a cage, along with all the Mushroom guards. Dimentio was standing in the middle of the room, laughing as he threw tomatoes at the plumber.
“Well… So much for our ‘Luigi will save us’ plans…” Karma sighed.
“And we can’t rescue him while Dimentio is in there…” Ludwig said.
Dimentio turned just enough that one eye was on the door, and chuckled. “Next time you go sneaking around; try not to talk so much.” He laughed, instantly teleporting behind the three would-be heroes.
Karma and Lemmy took off either way down the halls, leaving Ludwig alone to stare at the jester. Ludwig tried to run in the same direction as Karma had gone, but his fastest run was more of a jogging pace.
“I’ll let you run for now,” Dimentio called to the inventor. “I have something more important to attend to first…”
To Be Continued...
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