“...and that’s what he’s planning. it has to be. Now that he’s been dead himself, clearly he doesn’t care about causing the deaths of all life on Earth. He just wants to cause suffering.”

Bowsette and Peach rode on the Bone Dragon through one of the endless tunnels underneath the continent, where an ancient people once made their home to avoid the death and destruction caused by the Dread Lords.

The same Dread Lords that Bowsette’s biological father wanted to resurrect.

“Yeah, that’s not good,” Peach said. “I... I think my father used to tell me stories about the Dread Lords, like as scary stories to freak me out when we went camping.”

“They were real. Just like the celestial dragons that descended to Earth many eons ago, so too did the Dread Lords. Only they did not come as a gesture of curiosity and peace from galaxies far, far away. They came from deep in the core of the Earth, gestating in eggs and then bursting forth onto the surface to wreak havoc and feast upon the populace. They were defeated somehow, some way, but that information has become lost to time.All we know of them is the stories passed down, and the occasional Dread Lord bones we discover in our exploring.”

“And this Bone Dragon here...”

“Is a baby Dread Lord that must have died without ever having reached the surface. It’s extremely small. And my pet, luckily.”

Peach crossed her arms to think. “Yeah... this really sucks, doesn’t it?”

“It means that the Crystal King’s comments about the Axe weren’t just some stupid passing reference,” Bowsette said. “He must have realized Morton’s plan and thought that I already knew about it. The Axe might be the only thing with the power to actually fight one of those things. But without the Firestone Amulet, without the False Millenium Star...”

“Bowsette, can you PLEASE elaborate on this stuff for me? What is any of this? An Axe? What?”

The Bone Dragon moved upwards as they approached the Mushroom Kingdom and the surface.

“It’s a long story. A very long story.”

“Well, I’m a long girl. Tell it to me.”

“L-long girl? What?”

“Uh, nevermind. I just want to know about your past, Bowsette. We’re married now, so I get to know these things.”

“Okay. The reason I haven’t told you about a lot of these things is because I was going to get around to them when I told you about... my first wife, Clawdia Koopa. And I guess now’s the perfect time to start from the beginning.”

“Please... Please do.”

But they didn’t have time. The Bone Dragon emerged in the surface, in an area right in Peach’s Castle grounds, where it had emerged a first time.

And there were hundreds of Toads dressed up in military uniform, with Peach’s image in the stained glass portrait at the top of the castle removed and replaced by the logo of a Toad.

What?

“What?” Peach gasped.

There had been a coup while she was away.