A/N: BONUS CHAPTER! As much fun as I had writing this, it just doesn't feel right to me! I hope you don't mind. Some of my favorite chapters are coming up. Thank you for reading, let me know if you like it! Thank you so much for 19,000 views!
ALSO FANFICTION HAS BEEN SO GLITCHY! It keeps uploading duplicate chapters?! Sorry for the confusion!
Peach nervously held the lantern in front of her torso as the king escorted her back to her room. As always, she tightly followed behind him, wary of his tail and spikes, though clinging to him out of habit.
She held the lantern close to her chest, his fire sending a wave of familiarity through her as it warmed her collar. The two hadn't done so much as look at each other as they left the opening, both too deep in thought to engage in a forced conversation. Instead, her mind wandered as she analyzed the path they traveled down.
After all, she hadn't been able to see it on their way there. To her disappointment, it looked like every other part of the tunnels and only caught her attention for a few moments before she noticed something new out of the corner of her eye.
Peach's feet came to a sudden stop, scratching the rocks beneath her, and bent her head to the side with a curious hum. Her hair drooped over her shoulder as she looked towards the wall, trying to squint and focus on whatever had subconsciously caught her attention.
King Koopa stopped in place as he felt her movement behind him halt. He looked over his shoulder towards her, annoyed and curious as to what had caused her to stop so suddenly, but arched a brow as she had her hand trailing over what seemed to be a dull wall.
"What is it?"
Peach forgot she had company; her posture stiffened as she awkwardly shifted on her feet to face King Koopa though her eyes continued lingering on the wall to her left. His eyes squinted as she struggled to cover up her blatant distraction, but a part of him found it amusing.
"Nothing. I just saw something… glitter through the stone," she whispered as she tried to find what had called out to her.
It was faint and dull, only lasting for a fraction of a second, but King Koopa's flame within her lantern had lit up something within the wall; something glimmered and sparkled bright like a shard of glass or metal. But, no matter how she squinted, she could not find it again.
She lifted her lantern as her left hand traced the wall and its deep cracks, looking and feeling for...well, she didn't even know what she was looking for, but she knew she would know when she found it! Her hand ran across the deep cuts and engravings against the stone in every direction but she was unable to feel anything but rugged, forgotten stone. She bit her lip as she squinted, the glitter having disappeared, though she swore it was still there.
King Koopa noticed her frustration and snatched the lantern out of her hand, holding it in place for her to which she whispered a quick thank you and continued squinting for what she had only seen for a matter of a second. Now able to use both her hands, she looked even more fiercely.
He squinted and lifted the lantern higher than she had, lighting up the wall from a completely different angle. Instantaneously, Peach gasped in excitement as a small glimmer of light twinkled and moved with the shifting light.
At just the right angle, a small, almost-invisible speck of light fought through the stone and reflected from within a paper-think crack. It shined and twisted like a minuscule piece of glitter, easily overlooked, but with Peach's light-sensitive eyes, her eyes sparkled at the familiar sense of light, even if it were so small that it couldn't even light up her face.
Peach smiled in glee and spun on her toes to face the phantom. She pointed eagerly towards her findings. "That's it!" She cried. "There's...there's something in that crack! Something glimmering!"
The phantom raised his hand, the speck of glitter's light reflecting into the center of his palm. He lowered his head next to her, only able to see the source from her angle. He moved the lantern left and right, and the light shifted with it. Whatever was lodged in the crack of the wall was a reflective object and…unfamiliar.
"Odd," he mumbled.
His eyes landed on her.
"Move to the side," he ordered as he shoved the lantern into her chest.
Peach nodded and took a few steps away from the wall. The king glared at her, silently urging her to move more, to which she complied with a nod, almost 10 feet away from the beast. The light from the lantern was only able to silhouette him from the distance and she had to squint to fully see him through the darkness.
Only after getting far enough did she realize she didn't understand why she had to move. As soon as she opened her mouth to ask what he was doing, she yelped, covered her ears, and her eyes squinted shut as a large boom, followed by a puff of debris, clouded her view of the phantom. She groaned to herself as the vibration instantly gave her a headache.
After the debris settled and she was safe to move, Peach took a step towards him in worry, only to be shocked into place as a second boom echoed through the tunnel and rattled the tips of her shoes. Debris and chunks of stone landed around her feet with violent cracks, and a sickening crunch of stone echoed around her.
After a few moments, the vibrations faded.
She coughed as the thick dust dried her throat.
"King Koopa, are you-"
"I'm fine. Come here."
She wafted the debris away from her face as she slowly approached him.
The smoke was heavy and she could only see his silhouette through the dust, framed by the light of the lantern in her arms. From what she could see, he was shaking his claws in front of him, knocking off large bits of cobble and dirt onto the floor from his knuckles.
Peach sighed in both relief and frustration as she finally cut through the haze. She crossed her arms, rolled her eyes, and only momentarily forgot about why he had acted so brutishly
"You can't just break walls without telling me-"
Peach's scolding words trailed off into a whisper, after pushing through the smoke, a thick, cold blue light peering through the hole in the wall he had created, trickling against the stone and up her body. Something in her tensed out of discomfort until she locked eyes with her captor. The blue light was strong enough for her to see all of him, almost as powerful as the sun, though his colors were dull and distorted by the light.
The light crawled and coated every inch of his frame, illuminating him enough for his face and body to not be mangled by the shadows, and instead his full form was visible to her, unmodified from the darkness. As usual, his features were distorted into a frown, and his eyes were smothering a distant flame within them.
It was one of the rare moments where she could…see him outside of dimly-lit candlelight or weak lantern light; she could see every part of him in his full glory. She had always seen him in the shadows; she had seen his eyes peer through the dark and his scars lightened by his flames, but she had never truly, fully seen him clearly in such an intense light. It was strange, but without the darkness, he was even more intimidating to her. Though he did not flinch, she could sense something in him shift in discomfort as she looked at him in such a way; without a word.
He didn't look like a phantom with his features distorted in the darkness…he looked like him.
He seemed satisfied, and even entertained, with how easily he had broken the wall with his fist. Thankfully, the force didn't seem to have harmed him at all, so all of Peach's worry fell.
Even so, anxiety sat at the back of his eyes as his glare shifted from her to the opening he had created.
She followed his gaze towards the blue light; the supposed source of the speck of glitter. Her eyes widened as a wave of discomfort returned to her again. Something about what they were wandering towards scared her, and she couldn't tell why, but her apprehensive fear only made her want to venture further with King Koopa there to keep her safe.
The opening was not a cave or a forgotten section of the labyrinth, or a reflective rock as expected, but a… marble-floored, impressive room that was shockingly large, reaching further than any room she had ever seen; it was large enough for a king and his people.
Peach gasped, her voice bouncing off the marble, as King Koopa pushed Peach to the side and entered the mysterious room with a subtle scowl. Feeling a bit anxious being left alone in the dark corridor, she quickly followed behind him.
Her heels clicked against the marble and her body shivered at the cold air the second she entered.
Once she stood next to the king, a few feet into the foreign room, she spun in a circle, analyzing every detail with a mixture of excitement and awe. Her dress spun with her as she took in every detail that adorned the forgotten walls.
The floor was polished and made of marble, patterned with blue and gold designs between the sheets of stone. Though extravagant, large cracks and chips scattered against it due to years of neglect. Patches of green moss and plant life pushed through the cracks and an occasional blue flower popped between the tiles, and she couldn't help but beam in excitement at the sight of real plant life!
Even if it was just a flower and some moss.
She looked up.
The ceiling was just as impressive as the size of the room, stretching upward beyond where she could dream of touching. Beautiful murals of clouds and stars sat on the roof, but large holes in the ceiling had collapsed with the Darklands' obsidian snapping through the marble, destroying the center of the art beyond recognition and hiding whatever sat at the center of the wondrous display. She frowned, but only for a moment, as countless other aspects of the room caught her attention.
Large, spiral white pillars connected to the ceiling and were etched in gold, connecting with the marble floor. A large, elegant torch sat on each pillar, its flames large and tinted blue, seemingly lit for eternity. At the far end of the most distant wall, a large opening, engraved with golden details against its rim, was blocked off by what seemed to be solid stone; there was no entrance or exit besides the one the king had created.
Just like the singular, massive opening, there were large windows across the walls to her left and right, blocked off by stone. They were draped with elegant royal blue curtains that were worn away with age.
It was as if it had sunken from the surface into the cave; it was clear this building was accidentally preserved from being so deep underground, but it was not meant to be there.
"Where…what is this place?" Peach asked in awe.
"I have no clue."
She looked back at him.
"You didn't know you had a place like this in your kingdom's basement?" She teased.
He rolled his eyes.
"It's a ballroom. Not from the Darklands, obviously. But, how…" his voice trailed off in pure disbelief. Something about King Koopa, the royal who seemed to know everything about history, not having any knowledge about her discovery made her heart grow in both awe and fear.
"Ballroom?" Peach asked in amazement as she returned to the scene. "I've never seen one in person before."
"Consider yourself lucky, I'd kill to have never seen one. Ballrooms are for glorified political events. Nothing more than that."
Peach hummed, ignoring his pessimism.
"I wonder who…danced here. Who stood here! Have you always ruled here? As much as I…like your kingdom's decor, this feels very different from it."
He released a small 'pft.'
"I'm a few hundred years old, give or take. As far as I know, we're the only ones who've reigned here for thousands of years. Unless there's a secret mole society living here that I'm unfamiliar with."
Her wonder-filled eyes fell to worry.
"Thousands?" She repeated. "Then…then we're the first people to stand here…in…in so long."
The thought made her hands run numb. The curiosity; the wonder made her heart race, but out of more emotions than she was ready to define. It was as if every part of her had just woken up from a nightmare; she was alarmed and scared, yet…she felt alive, thinking about a society whose past was forgotten.
What had happened? Who had been here? Where did they go? Why didn't they come back? Why didn't King Koopa know about them?
Were they still here?
The questions made her heart beat with both desperation for an answer and fear of what had caused whoever had lived here to vanish. Looking at the ballroom, she could imagine a mysterious society dancing and celebrating, but the vacancy of their existence was haunting. She felt as if her finding of the room was closer to trespassing than discovery as it was clearly preserved away from society for an intense period of time.
Peach's hand reached out to one of the large pillars to her right as the king stood in frustration at his inability to find an answer. She ran her fingers in the grooves and traced the worn golden coating.
The pillar was tall and stretched over twenty feet tall to the ceiling. Large ivory vines crawled and twisted against its surface, expending cracks from the marble due to the plant's tight pressure. The stone was thick but cracked and worn with age. She ran her index finger against it in circles, wondering what had happened here for the room to have been carelessly abandoned.
How much did she truly not understand? There was so much she wished she knew. About the Darklands, about the Mushroom kingdom, about her past with the king…about everything.
She ran her fingers against the velvet leaves and vines before a small pebble of marble fell from the pillar, landing between her feet with a small click.
"Peach."
The king's voice was hushed and hardly more than a growl. Peach recognized the severity behind his tone and looked over her shoulder towards him with a frown. She parted her lips to ask what was wrong, but his face intensified, and she remained silent from the urgency behind his eyes.
She anxiously pulled her hand off of the pillar and clamped it against her chest.
The second Peach's hand nervously left the structure's surface, a large, cracking snap murmured and echoed off the marble and spiraled up the pillar, splitting it in two, the cracks splintering and shattering through the material. She shrieked and took a step away from it, nearly frozen from fear, but thankfully the thick vines wrapped around its core shakily held the two halves together, though the vines quickly started stretching and snapping against the marble's weight.
As she continued backing away, the crack spread and mangled the marble underneath her feet, following her footsteps with a distorted crunch. It trailed between her heels and ended at the tip of the phantom who was frozen in fear for only a few seconds before he reached out to her, but it was too late, and the large pillar, no longer shakily held in place by vines, fell towards her, sending shards of marble and gold in every direction.
Peach blinked and he was in front of her, launching forward and lifting both his claws into the air, allowing the chunk of stone to slam into his shoulder and his shell with a powerful boom. The heavy force crushed into him, forcing a growl and frustrated grunt out of him as the weight pushed him back.
It was the first time she had ever seen him flinch.
He bent under the pressure, but after a moment, he stood up, lifting it over his head. Small puffs of fire sparked out of his mouth as he grinded his fangs together, but beyond that, he was unflinching. Though, it seemed that was as far as he could push himself, as the marble's weight was too much for him.
Peach couldn't move as her eyes widened and welled with panicked tears. She clamped her hands over her mouth as she tried to silence the sickening adrenaline that made her too dizzy to think or leave him.
King Koopa could feel her horrified eyes watching him so he angrily looked over his shoulder. "I'm fine, give me a damn minute! I need you to get away-"
Crack.
The two sank a few inches as the dark crack underneath Peach thickened and splintered in several directions, spreading out from under her like a spider's web to each corner of the room, and caused the floor beneath them to begin bowing againt the weight of the pillar. King Koopa continued urgently demanding for her to run away, but she did not flinch or even comprehend the idea of leaving, and instead forced herself up and pressed her arms against the chunk of stone. She groaned as she tried to straighten her shaking legs and push the pillar with him, but her frail body only trembled underneath it. Her mind was blurred with the need to help him, oblivious to the fact that she was unable to begin helping him physically, and continued pushing.
To her surprise, King Koopa burst out in exhausted laughter at her futile efforts. His amusement fell flat as they sunk a few more inches.
"Peach!" He yelled again, though she did not flinch. "Get the hell away-"
Crack.
Peach screeched at the top of her lungs as the floor beneath them finally gave out and they were sent plummeting into a pit of pure darkness, the marble flooring crumbling and shattering into a consuming abyss beneath them.
A/N: Thank you for reading!