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World 4-1: Okay Broomer
A crescent moon grinned from a black velvet night over a midnight blue land accented red by lava glow. Evil faces of shadow and blood light twisted over the hills of coarse volcanic stone. Skeletal trees stretched barren claw branches to the pitiless sky and skull monuments of freakish size leered from the tops of cinder mounds. A blasted soot trap of a land. Bowser breathed in the sulfurous air. Just... lovely. World 8. His kingdom. If he could keep it.
Before Kammy descended into view, one could hear her grumbling.
"It's so cold this time of year! Spoiled brat, that's what he is, dragging an old woman out of bed in the middle of the night. No wonder Kamek allowed himself to die. He knew he'd find better working conditions on the Other Side." Like the last, blighted leaf of autumn to fall, Kammy traveled a meandering path down to the rooftop landing pad.
"Wonderful to see you again, my lady. It has been too long," said Bowser. He stepped forward to help her off the broom.
"Pah!" She waved him away and marched for the roof stairs, eager to take shelter in warmth. She looked mostly the same, perhaps a bit more stooped beneath her well patched robes, but her dismissive hand flaps were as graceful as ever. Her tongue still held its edge. "Spare me the regal courtesy. Politeness suits you about as well as a necktie on a gorilla."
Bowser escorted her to the study, where a hearty fire roared in an enormous chimney of slate and black iron. A kettle of worm root tea steamed.
"Really, boy. The middle of the night! The queen will very much still be there tomorrow, unfortunately. Is the rush really necessary?" She downed a long, loud slurp of tea. Half a snail scone lay in crumbs over her lap. Fed and warmed, her grumpiness receded an iota.
Bowser leaned over in his chair, wagging his eyebrows. "Are you telling me secret night meetings and the plotting of bloody deeds have lost their savor?"
Kammy rolled her eyes, a gesture visible even through the opaque bottle lenses of her spectacles. "Don't waste any more of my time than you have to. And don't you give me any lip about impertinence. I'm not on your payroll anymore so don't expect the subservient act from me!"
"Wouldn't dream of it, you decrepit hag. Now, if you're done wheezing and creaking, let's get down to business. I need your help. Unless a week from now you want to be licking Peach's slippers clean for the privilege of staying alive. She holds different views than I do about the proper conduct of servants."
Kammy tried and failed to suppress a shiver. Then her beak assumed a wry set. "Since the days of your wasted youth you've gotten better at the art of persuasion. Where has my nasty, uncouth little boy gone?"
"He's grown up to be a wicked king." Bowser grinned hard enough to let some teeth show and leaned back to chug some tea. Same as the piece in the dining room, the back of his high-backed chair was perforated with holes that accepted his spines with precision fit. "Peach still thinks I'm a child. By this time tomorrow night I'll show her otherwise. Or die trying."
"Likely the latter." Kammy sniffed. "I almost regret I won't get to see you ripen into full rottenness."
"Full of encouragement, as always."
Fire glared off Kammy's eyeglasses, turning the lenses into bottomless holes of orange light. "What do you need from me? If it's battle magic, I believe Kamek left you plenty of apt pupils fit to toss into the meat grinder."
"Naw. Mostly green horns and amateurs. Our training program for mages died with Kamek. It'll take us a year to churn out a class of journeykoopas, and that's even if I could convince you to take the job of teacher...?" Bowser pasted on his most ingratiating smirk and gave the witch a pleading look.
Kammy shook her head. "Not a chance. I'm more inclined to eat the young than instruct them these days."
"I was afraid of that. But the rumor mill tells me you have a promising apprentice of your own, hidden away. Either she's too tough to chew or your love for teaching still beats out your hunger."
"Don't believe everything you hear."
"And accept you're happy living alone, with no one to boss around? We've always had that latter passion in common."
Kammy smirked and wriggled in her seat. "Well, there's so much I've learned down through the years. It'd be a shame if all my secrets were to die with me."
"I need her for a special errand. Rumor is she's a real Captain Falcon with a broom. Which comes from studying under a former broom racing world champ, I bet."
"Who's been feeding you these tawdry lies? I'll pickle their tongue." Kammy flicked snail crumbs to the carpet, doing her best to suppress a grin. She hated for anyone to know how much she enjoyed flattery.
Bowser nodded. "I'll have them silenced immediately. Your apprentice would provide vital help to our cause. With the plan I've worked out, she'll stay distant from any fighting."
"Promises, promises."
"One flight, and she goes right back to whatever nest she calls home. Think of it this way. I take a dirt nap tomorrow because I don't have the very best working at my side, then my kingdom falls, and your star student will live in a world of danger unimaginably worse than what she'll face tomorrow night in a single, brief sortie."
Kammy's hacking grunts of disgust were sincere this time. "Hurmph. Sweet talker. Fine. As long as it's a quick run."
"It will be. For her."
"Only one quick run. Done and done. Anything else, you waste of eggshell?"
"Yes. Stand in for Kamek tonight. Advise me."
"Certainly. Don't do it. That's my best advice, right there. Sell this heap and go on permanent vacation. Preferably to somewhere tropical, where they serve good drinks. Strongly consider taking me along. While you fight against the queen, you'll get nothing so good out of life as that."
"Not sure that's a vacation I'd survive to enjoy for long."
"No, but it'll last longer than this fool mission of yours, and be more fun besides. Life's about quality, not duration. Take it from those who know." She ran a wrinkly paw over her aged cheek.
Bowser rose and stood by the fireplace, a chill creeping up the inside of his shell that had nothing to do with the dropping temperature outside.
"Maybe I'll take you up on that, if things go badly. If I survive to run away."
"You won't get the chance," squawked Kammy.
"Then I'll fight all the harder, knowing I don't have an out." Time and distance had changed nothing. The decrepit witch had been his childhood governess, always older, always a step ahead, and she could never ever fail to let him know it. Bowser forced himself to breathe slower. "Help me or don't, but I'll make it worth your while. Your pupil will want for nothing, if her future's what you're worried about."
"She'll be wanting breathing privileges."
He clenched a fist, leaning against the mantel to hide it. "Since when has mere death been more than the great Kammy can handle?"
"It's not my power that's falling short. It's the queen's might surpassing all. She has more of it than is seemly. Perhaps, instead of futzing about with a spoiled brat, I should fly on over to her boudoir tonight. Bargain with someone who has a bit of real sense between her ears."
Bowser launched across the room. Kammy almost slipped away at an oblique angle to space-time into some obscure dimension, but she wasn't as agile as she used to be. Snarling, Bowser hauled her up by the neck and squeezed hard.
"Think you're the only one with someone worth protecting? Cross me, hag, and tomorrow the queen will have company in my stomach."
"I'll skin you. Skin you and boil your bones for broth," Kammy seethed. He held her until she calmed into an icy silence. Then he dropped the magikoopa back into the chair like dumping a bag of trash. He returned to his chair and they glared across the room at each other. Between them the kettle had frosted over, the tea within frozen solid.
Bowser gave in first, snorting, then rocking with idiot mirth. Kammy cackled, slapping her knee. "Ah, just like the good ol' days," she said, wiping away a fake tear. "Heh ehhh. We're burning nightdark, so lay out this plan of yours and I'll tell you what little I think of it."
For the better part of an hour, Bowser and Kammy fell into cozy routines they had developed growing up and growing old as co-conspirators. The king brought the goals and objectives, the magikoopa suggested practical intermediary steps and tactics. Bowser brainstormed and Kammy critiqued. Soon they had refined the original scheme into a game plan that, if one were to view it from a skewed perspective, might almost work.
"One last thing, grandma. Whip out your crystal ball and see if there's anything to see," said Bowser.
Kammy huffed. "You never believed in the scrying crystal."
"Yep." Bowser nodded. "I think it's full of crap. All those canny predictions came from that pickled walnut of yours. The rest was just theater."
"My, where did you buy such a silvered tongue?"
Bowser traced spirals with the tip of his index claw into the armrest varnish. "I've seen ghosts. Talked to them, walked through their haunts. Their king is a gibbering idiot and his subjects are worse. No spirit in our world has anything useful to say. But this is the Queen of the Toads we're talking about here. Way I figure it, if she traffics with higher powers as gossip says, then maybe you can use that thing to intercept some of those spooky messages. Then again, if Peach herself spreads those rumors, then what's the harm in listening to one more fortune cookie reading?"
The shifting shadows deepened across the magikoopa's lined face, as if, even while sitting still, she somehow drew back from the fire. Her beak took on a grim set, cold where her frowns of disapproval and anger had been animate with warmth. She spoke in funeral tones. "If the crystal's readings are so much japery and hokum as you say, then take warning, boy. Do not malcontents first conceal their treasonous intentions in half-joking mutterings? Does not the angry mob first whisper and speculate and finally shout of the violence they desire, all in the course of bringing it to reality? Do not forest fires and earthquakes and half-mile-high waves arrive in the company of their own horrible noise? Beware the chatter of nonsense and easy lies, o king."
Bowser rolled his eyes. "Now I understand all the screeching you used to pass off as lullabies. You weren't trying to put me to sleep, but make sure I never woke up."
"Or maybe the whining a certain snot-nosed baby drilled my eardrums nonstop, driving me mad and threatening to put me in an early grave."
"Seriously though, prognosticate for me already. The night's nearly over. I promise I won't rent out any headspace to riddles and bad poetry."
"You always were good at forgetting." Kammy sniffed. "Fine. But I'm not responsible for what the Other Side has to tell me."
She produced from thin air a cluster of unpolished, purple crystals. Kammy set it down on a side table and began to stroke the hexagonal minerals. An umber glow rose within the crystals, the color at odds with the medium which channeled it. Bowser's eyes felt sore looking at it. He wondered if he had time to run and get a snack. He rose as Kammy began a keening chant. Yeah, definitely snack time.
A loud, brittle snapping, as if from glass overheated to the point of cracking, startled Bowser into halting his kitchenward trek. Steam boiled up from the scrying crystals. Lamps dimmed and the hearth's warmth retreated. Kammy turned to face her king, spectacles shining with a strange light that did not originate from the fireplace. She spoke in a voice not wholly her own.
"When the hand of fate holds you in its fist, turn from ugliness to beauty."
A long pause. Bowser noticed his breath no longer fogged from his nostrils. Light sources quit their cowering and resumed their previous luminosity.
"Wait, that's it?"
Kammy shuddered, then sagged, suddenly boneless. Bowser squeezed her hand and plied her with melted tea. After a short while, the old magikoopa coughed and sucked in air so hard her throat whistled.
"Hope whatever was said helps," Kammy croaked. "Better make a note because I remember none of it."
Bowser had not the heart to tell her it was just another fortune cookie saying. Even so, after the aged matriarch beat a hasty retreat to the rooftop and set off on the long flight back to her warm hovel, Bowser took care to repeat the message from Beyond until he had it memorized. Something about this eldritch advice appealed to him. Simple and direct, so that the customary vagueness didn't grate as it normally would. Chose beauty over nastiness. What a novel idea. Kinda demanded to be remembered. Who knew when a line of quality gibberish might come in handy.