They had spent two whole DAYS wandering around in the Forest Maze. Without Geno around to be their guide, that was a VERY STUPID idea to go in there. Not a shortcut at all. Bowsette very nearly felt remorse for burning down that doll several months ago, but he was also really powerful and trying to kill her, so she felt justified about it. Yep. Definitely.

But now they were finally near the western edge of the continent, and had reached the Quiver Cliffs after all.

Everyone was very tired. Aside from eternally-peppy Goombella, all seven of them looked like the energy had been completely drained from their bodies.

“Princess... I can’t walk any further...” toadette whined. “Too much adventure... for me...”

“We’re almost there,” said Peach. “Almost there...” She carried such a big pack on her back that it was pretty conceivable that she was the strongest one of the bunch; that bag carried a full five changes of clothing and was probably heavier on her back than Bowsette’s own shell. How did she do it?

Captain Toad pulled out a map, trying to pinpoint exactly where they were in relation to the spot where Merlon’s hut most likely laid. “Hmm... this thing is hard to read,” he said. “Are you SURE we’re in the right place?”

“Umm...” Toadette tapped him on the shoulder and pointed straight ahead, up a hill where there was a small hut, shrouded in an aura of magic.

“Oh. Yeah. I guess we are sure.”

Luigi began to shake and shiver, living up to this place's name as he quivered.

They ventured onwards, up the hill and as they approached, the area around them got darker and darker, more and more hazy, almost like they were entering an alternate dimension. Spooky stuff.

Suddenly, Merlon appeared in front of them as a large disembodied head glaring down at them. “INTRUDERS. STATE YOUR BUSINESS."

“It’s-a me, Mario,” said Mario.

“And it is I, Princess Peach, Royal Monarch of the Mushroom Kingdom, the Great Priestess of the Toadstool Way.” Now THAT was a royal title Bowsette could approve of. “We have come to seek your help, to call you back--”

“ENOUGH. I HAVE HEARD ENOUGH. I DO NOT WISH TO CONTINUE THIS CONVERSATION.”

Geez.

“Please!” Toadette shouted. “We’ve travelled for four days to reach you, and we need a place to rest! Will you please... let us... stay with you for just a bit?”

“NO.”

“Come on...”

Luigi got down on his hands and knees bowing. Apparently that piqued Merlon’s perverse interest, because he seemed to change his tune somewhat. “YOU KNOW WHAT? FINE. I’LL LET YOU ENTER MY RESIDENCE... IF YOU CAN PASS MY TESTS. THE THREE TRIALS OF THE MAGICMANCER.”

“We’ll be up for anything you can throw at us,” said Captain Toad.

“OH, BUT WILL YOU BE UP FOR THIS?” Before them appeared a large lion with the face of a Koopa and colored in metallic blue, green, and red. “OR THIS?” A large pit of spikes formed. “OR HOW ABOUT THIS ONE?” A giant book thudded onto the ground. Its title read “A Thousand and One Bad Jokes: Unabridged and Uncut.”

“IF YOU SURVIVE MY TRIALS OF STRENGTH, SKILL, AND ENDURANCE... YOU WILL BE WELCOME. BUT IT MAY COME AT A GREAT COST. HEED CAUTION BEFORE--”

Bowsette stuck her fist at the air and screamed, “C’mon Merlon! Bowsette’s here to see you and if you don’t let us in right now I’m gonna personally walk over and clobber you!”

“OH. OH MY. UM, YES. PLEASE DO COME IN.”

“See? I’m learning a whole lot about peaceful negotiations from my girl Peach over here,” Bowsette said. Peach blushed and laughed, but the others were a little bit put off.

The dark aura around the hut dissipated, and the seven of them were allowed to walk to the door and knock on it.

A head popped out. Merlon, again. “Who is it?” he asked.

“Me and them,” said Bowsette.

“Oh, uh... Yes, come right on in!”

***

“Absolutely impossible,” said Merlon. “A... Mushroom Soul? What IS that? Mario, where did you find such a thing?”

Mario shrugged. “It was an adventure.”

“If it is an ethereal being of cloud and smoke, one that can seal away magical energies... then...” Merlon began rummaging through some books, opening up a bestiary of sorts. “And you found this not in the Beanbean Kingdom, correct? Hmmm...”

Merlon’s hut was much more spacious on the inside, Bowsette realized. While it looked like it was barely enough room for one person to sleep on the outside, this hut actually had four or five separate rooms, and a full kitchen. It looked fairly similar to his house back in Toad Town, but with more portraits up on the wall and warmer colors in the interior design. In fact, there was a picture up on the wall next to where Merlon was standing with a large family photo of all of Merlon’s wizardly brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, and ancestors, either in flesh or in spirit. There were enough of them that, had they each the same power that Merlon possessed, they could easily conquer the planet if they wished. Bowsette took great note of that in the event that she decided to take over the Earth one day.

“Mario,” Merlon said. “You fought in the war in your younger years, yes? The Kremean War, that is. Of course you did, my apologies. You and your ‘Mario’s Bombs Away’ endeavors, I forgot...” He stopped on one page in the book and showed it to everyone else. It was a large lanky monster in the shape of a humanoid, but with ghostly features. “If you remember the War, then you surely remember these. The Shroobites. Mad Scienstein had created these creatures on his own using the DNA of some long-lost alien species, and they wreaked havoc on the battlefield, tossing Kremlings aside like it was nothing and... Well, surely you remember.”

Mario nodded.

“But they were defeated.” Merlon flipped the page. “Their very essences were wiped out by a magic spell after the war, one of the design of my relative Merlyia. They had grown too powerful, so she eradicated them to keep the balance of power steady. You seem to have unleashed that essence back onto the world, Mario.”

“Uh oh,” Luigi gasped.

Mario shrugged.

“So what you’re saying is, half of my soul is trapped inside some giant demon monster?” Bowsette asked.

“Precisely that, yes,” Merlon said. As he said this, though, his eyes caught wind of Bowsette’s ever-shapely figure and began to stare with no shame whatsoever. He only averted his gaze once she audibly growled at him.

Toadette covered her eyes. “I don’t wanna do this anymore!”

“That’s okay,” Merlon said. “It would not be possible anyway. The Mushroom Soul is of a level of being that would be too much for even myself to communicate with.”

“And there is no other way to restore her?” Peach asked. “We have come all this way, and...”

“None. Bowsette is a husk of her former self and will remain that way for the rest of her life.”

Bowsette tensed up at this. She... she really was doomed? Her ultimate failure wasn’t something she could fix with determination and willpower, but something fundamentally, permanently erased within her, a handicap that would forever hinder her?

Something was just about to break within Bowsette, make her do something drastic like throwing furniture across the room or going into her shell and never coming back out even if people asked very nicely, when she realized something--

That bestiary Merlon was holding.

On the book’s spine, it was “Creatures of Might and Magic,” and in a smaller font, it read, “Written by the Wizard Merlon.”

This lying cheat!

She grabbed him by the collar and pulled him up to eye level where she could yell at him up close. “You ain’t getting away with this so easy, wizard!” she shouted. “The Mushroom Soul ain’t some special evil demon. You know good and well you can fix this yourself, don’t you?!”

Merlon was scared stiff. Literally, he was petrified and caught in stasis.

“Let him down,” Peach commanded. Bowsette complied and set him back on his feet.

When Merlon came to, he launched into an accusatory attack of his own, but looking directly at the princess. “You can’t be serious about this, Princess. Please, reconsider,” he pleaded. “This woman is more powerful than you could possibly imagine. I have viewed her magical essence. The Mushroom Soul isn’t even comparable to the horrors you might unleash if you--”

Peach slapped him. “Bowsette is the only being standing between the Earth and Morton Koopa beginning another reign of terror. We have to stop him before he revives himself, and there’s only one way to do that. To trust the one who defeated him before to do it again.”

“P...P-princess...” Merlon looked away in shame. “I am unwelcome in the Mushroom Kingdom. The acts that Bowsette compelled upon me... the pain I caused...”

“I don’t care what you did in the past. I don’t care what she did in the past, either. I care what we can accomplish in the future.”

Peach really was a benevolent ruler. Bowsette would have executed Merlon for lying like that.

“I’ll go with you and communicate with the Mushroom Soul,” Merlon said. “It has been done before, when we originally sealed it away into the pieces Mario collected. But if it unseals Bowsette’s power, then we will have to face the consequences. And they will be instant.”

Dang, that was pretty indicting. What the heck did Bowsette do to him besides beat him up and turn him into a powerless bureaucrat who took the brunt of public blame for her careless foreign policy decisions?

“We’ll lead the way,” said Peach, with a soft smile.

That seemed to cheer him up a little bit.

Though he was a lot more interested in looking Bowsette’s way. She covered herself with her hands and scowled.

Merlon must have seen the same exact vision Bowsette was shown back all that time ago when he had first captured her in Toad Town. He knew even back then that Bowsette was a Koopa Royal, and yet he did nothing about it. That was heartening to know that he accepted her in this form, but it made her wonder what he knew that she didn’t.

Bowsette’s own knowledge of her family history was that eons ago, a celestial dragon came from the stars to grace the Earth with its presence, and in that time it found love with none other than a Koopa. Over the next thousand generations the Royal Family descended from that original love, the original purity of the celestial blood thinning out every generation but always remaining strong. Now, it was nearly gone, and marrying commoners with no significant power like Bowsette did was helping end the line entirely. Morton himself seemed to suggest that only Bowsette or Morton Jr. even had the celestial blood content necessary to bring him back to life, and that the other Koopalings were too far gone to be of any use.

She DID have dozens of clones of herself in the form of the Koopa Kids but she kind of forgot about them. Theoretically they’d have the exact same amount of celestial blood, but there was probably some loophole around that that made them useless, just as they were useless in everyday life at accomplishing much of anything.

Merlon, though, seemed to know more about all of this than he let on. Back when he had captured her, he did ask, “Did you even know that inside of you glows the heart of True Royalty?” and then added, “Probably not. Your kind was always ignorant to your own capabilities.”

Whatever he meant, he was adamant and stern in his warnings against Bowsette regaining her power. The fact that she was a bit of a notorious villain probably didn’t help, but there was something he wasn’t telling, and she was going to figure that out.