That evening, I tried to make my gathering of extra food as discreet as possible. If I was going to keep this a secret, I was going to have to support her child as much as possible. When I got up from the table with a full plate, the men cast a few stares. "Just feeding the slaves." I said. In fact, this wasn't entirely untrue, since we had plenty of slaves from today's conquest in the holding room. My route included the intricate passageway that led up from the holding room to the lower lobby, then up to the upper lobby, and then my room. Peach was sleeping gently, the way you'd expect a princess to sleep. I ended up snagging my foot on one of the loose stones in the room, and the noise I made getting to the table to set the food down woke her up.
Wordlessly, she looked at the meal in front of her. Five pieces of tender roast meat with something resembling creamed corn. She sat up and got a fork and knife. Before she ate, she asked me, "Why did you kill all those people?" "Because they were doomed anyway. The castle would've flattened them.", I said. "But you could've evacuated them and then there'd been no body count." I let out a heavy sigh. She was right. Because of that massacre, we will probably be under attack for some time. But I already knew that when I did it. I had a reason for my destruction.
"Peach" I said solemnly, "look out at that city. What do you see? Because I'm certain you don't see the same thing I do." I paused, and then said, "To me, people are weak and flimsy. Even when I was young, I knew I was evil. When I wanted, I could make anyone bend to me. If I wanted to frighten them, or hurt them, they'd run away, crying and quivering, even grown men, and all the people were always the same, and I could bend their lives to my whim, like controlling the hapless wind. I hate all the people down there, and any sort of people are all the same, weak and stupid. That's why I killed them." She looks at me, and says, "So, I suppose Boswer is different from them." I turn around, and sit down on the bed with her and say "No, he's just like them. Not in body, but in spirit, he is weak. Look at him, he even needed that stupid Destiny Spear just to feel good about himself."
"But I stay with him for one reason: this castle. It's my nest from the world. Whenever I got sick of the world, I discovered his castle. That's why I'm his sergeant, not because I like his cause, but because I want to stay here, away from the world." She reflects on this, and then looks at her growing child inside her. "What about Mario? Isn't he strong?" I reflect on this, and say, "He is strong, but he's too strong nowadays. Ever since he became a military power." "What do you mean?", she asked. "Think about it." I say, "Why do you think he brought you to the castle landing even when he knew it could endanger his child?" I waited a few moments for her to say something, but I looked over at her and she was silently crying. And then she said, "Sergeant, I'll let you in on a little secret. Mario has no child."
I sat on the bed a little while longer, watching the world outside turn to black. The castle blended with the rest of the world, and I shifted into an endless tunnel of sleep.