Heavy Is the Crown- Chapter Twenty-Three

For three months the civil war raged on, claiming hundreds of lives on both sides. With Wunderweiss now aiding the rebellion, yet keeping Godash's secret, the Loyals lost ground at a steady pace. But a single battle brought the two sides to a stand-still once more, with the death of Prince Joren and the crippling of general Edward Meechum, his right arm torn off. The two leaders had clashed in the fields south of Pangos, fifty miles east of the capital. As Meechum ran Joren through with his spear, the Prince unleashed a devastating bolt of magical lightning that blew Meechum clear away, his arm welded to the spear through Joren's chest.

Meechum survived, but just barely. The pause in skirmishes had held for four days when Bowser finally arrived in the hospital in Telucha, where Meechum had been taken. He blustered right past healers, nurses and guards, pushing them roughly aside until he stood by Meechum's bed, staring down at his stand-in father figure.

"Meechum," he rasped. He surveyed the damage as clinically as he could, holding back his rage. Yet as bad as the yellow tribe warrior looked, he managed a smile for Bowser.

"I believe this calls for a field promotion, my young friend," Meechum said weakly. "You're in charge now, until I can take the field again."

"I don't think," Bowser began, but another commander, a blue tribe in full chain armor, stood from his seat on the other side of the bed.

"The other commanders already signed notices of acknowledgment," said the blue tribe. "Sir, you are now general Bowser Entem, commanding officer of the Douard Rebellion." He handed Bowser a scroll, which listed his full name and title. He laid it out on a rolling tray for patients, and took out a pen, scribbling out his last name and writing in simply 'Koopa'. He then rolled it back up and tucked it in his belt. "Sir?"

"No family may guide a nation by name alone," Bowser said. "If I am to lead my people, then let them know that all koopas are equal. Such would be the will of great Douard." The commader nodded, saluted, and left the room. Bowser took up his seat, glowering at the other staff who'd rushed in after him. "Leave us," he rumbled, and they did. He rolled his chair close to Meechum, taking up his remaining hand. "Are you in pain, my friend?"

"Some."

"Take rest, then. I'll help you. This is a story my mother used to read to me when I was a boy," he said, recalling the tale from rote memory. "Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Red Riding Hood."

Godash paced back and forth in the dungeon cell, waiting for the warlock to appear. He'd called for him three times, and was about to do so again when Gannondorf came falling out of the shadows in the corner of the chamber, covered in bandages and tattered clothes and cloak.

"Your timing is horrible," the half-orc snarled, clutching his left arm to his stomach.

"What the hell happened to you?"

"An elven lad named Link," Gannon snapped, spitting a bloody wad of phlegm off to one side. "I barely managed to escape, thanks to your distracting me. What could you possibly want from me right now?"

"The Coins," Godash said, pointing to the pile, which appeared to be half gone. "There's no way we went through that much money."

"Well, where's your partner," Gannon asked, easing himself into a seated position on the floor, letting out a long gust of air. "The wizard Wunderweiss."

"He defected to the rebellion. Why?"

"Because I made that deal with the two of you," Gannon said. "When he left your company, he voided one half of our agreement. What you see here is what you have." Godash snorted, pacing with his hands on his hips.

"This is ridiculous. This rebellion needs a sure lesson in towing the line. Prince Joren is now dead, the Shadow has joined Douard's army, and our great engineer has been with them since the beginning."

"Ah, yes, young Bowser. Do you even remember him, Benjamin? Do you recall your connection to him?" Godash narrowed his eyes, trying to think back.

"No, I don't."

"Allow me to remind you, then," Gannon said. "His father was Luther Entem, a green tribe builder of tremendous talent. His mother was Cassandra, killed when an assassin struck down Prince Nurik." Godash sucked air in between his teeth. "You realize now, don't you? Yes, you began your dealings with me to enrich yourself and gain power in the Empire, but somewhere along the way, you became more focused on political clout than your personal fortune."

"He's the mutant child," Godash said, his mind now racing into the past. "The one whose parents chose to lose status rather than give him up."

"The same," said Gannon with a flash of teeth.

"By the gods. How much does he know," Godash asked, grabbing Gannon's cloak and pulling himself down, so they were nose-to-nose. "How much?"

"Everything," Gannon whispered. "He investigated. He found out about the Thwomp that killed his father, your contract with Ardin, and your manipulations here in the capital. He's been piecing things together since he was but a boy. And do you know who his tutor was when he lived with Prince Nurik, after his father was killed?" Godash let go of Gannon and backed slowly away from him.

"No," Godash breathed.

"His tutor was the great philosopher Arnold Douard," Gannon said, giggling darkly. "You have created your own destruction!" Cackling with mad glee, the warlock rolled back into the shadows, leaving behind only the echoes of his twisted mirth. Godash screamed, fleeing from the dungeon.

The Mushroom King stood in his personal vault, the scent of orange cream still heavy in his nose. The chambermaid had lathered the stuff on her skin, and it rubbed off on him during their coupling, enough so that even now, an hour later, he still smelled it.

The object before him, with which he'd become mildly obsessed, didn't precisely strike him as special. For all intents and purposes, it looked like any ordinary green pipe, of the sort used by pirana plants and for accessing hard-to-reach places. He had tried sending guards through it, but they just stood inside, heads visible over the rim as they stood on a black flooring.

Gannondorf had told him that when the time came, a stranger from another world would come through it. The king's task was to immediately convince this far traveler that his nation needed his help. The warlock gave no further explanation than that.

So every day since then, the king came here once or twice during the day to stare at the pipe, willing a champion to come through. Yet nothing happened, and the pipe just sat there, looking useless. He wondered at times if he'd perhaps been swindled.

"He wouldn't dare," he mumbled. "Not if he knows what's good for him." King Toadstool reached out, touching one hand to the green metal. There was a hum in the pipe, one that hadn't been there previously. It was subtle, but he could feel it in his bones, a magic so deep he could scarcely think of where it must come from.

His faith restored, the Mushroom King left the vault, his mind awash with good vibes.

The priest rapped on the bars of Douard's cell gently, bringing the philosopher out of a light doze. Douard sat up, offered the preacher a smile, and walked over to the bars. "This is an unexpected comfort," the old koopa said. "To what do I owe the pleasure, father?"

"Oh, I wish I wasn't here," said the priest. Douard cleared his throat, nodding.

"Not a fan of mine, I take it?"

"Oh! Oh no, it's not like that, Douard, no! It's just, well, the reason I'm here, that's why I don't like it." The priest looked aside, sighed, and met Douard's eyes. "Arnold Douard, I am father Ian Harvin, of the United Church of the Gods of Famicom. I am here today to take your final confession. On the dawn of tomorrow's day, the Emperor has decreed, you shall be escorted to the Great Courtyard, where, before all witnesses who would come, you shall be hanged from the neck, until you are dead."

Douard once again nodded, his grin still intact. He walked back to his cot, opening his journal and retrieving from within an envelope he'd made from a page in journal itself. He brought it to the priest and held it out to him.

"I have not believed in the gods in a long time, padre," Douard said. "But I do have faith in the people. Deliver this message to a young man in the rebellion, a koopa named Bowser. That will suffice for my final confession." The priest took the envelope, hiding it in the inner pocket of his outer robe, and bowed his head.

"I am so sorry, Douard," he said. The old koopa put his hand on the priest's shoulder and gave it a light squeeze.

"I know," Douard said. "So am I."

Godash had sent word throughout the city that there would be a public execution the next morning, though he hadn't released a name. He'd grown increasingly paranoid, and didn't want to risk word getting out to the rebellion until the deed was done.

He also wanted his new Grand Magus, a wizard named Flassa, to have the chance to lay down as many magical traps as he could on the outskirts of the city. They wouldn't be much of a match for Wunderweiss, but Godash was counting on his cowardice to keep him from returning anywhere near the capital.

As evening drew its dark blanket across the sky, Godash sat on the Emperor's balcony, sipping wine and trying to decompress. He'd spent most of the day trying to figure out the Empire's newfound money problem, along with handling field reports from various commanding officers around the nation. Defection had come almost to a complete halt, thankfully, and a few units had returned to the fold, begging forgiveness for their temporary leave of reason. These men and women he'd ordered executed on sight. The narrative became crystal clear; 'Rebel and die'.

Gannondorf had claimed that Bowser would be his undoing. He couldn't imagine a lowly mutant undoing his decades of plotting and manipulations, not at first. However, given how things were going now, he slowly began to see that he had been too arrogant, too cocksure of his cunning. Now, if he wasn't careful, he would pay the ultimate price for such hubris.

He needed someone like Ardin, but the toadstool freelancer was said to be dead, slain by a poorly aimed Bullet Bill while traveling. The Shadow were gone, having sided with the rebels. His options were limited for an assassin or strike force.

"I'll figure something out," he said to himself. "I always do."

Father Harvin, like all members of the clergy, served his flock before serving the Empire. Even during the rebellion, priests of all faiths were allowed free passage wherever they went, traveling unmolested. This had been ever true, and even applied to those priests from Mushroom Kingdom who, on occasion, passed into Empire territory. Gora Empire was almost universally secular, as was the Mushroom Kingdom, but neither government had ever gone out of its way to step on the toes of any form of worship deemed lawful.

So it was that he was able to hop through several Warp Zones over the course of half a day, arriving just outside of Telucha as evening took deep hold. His mount, a loyal steed he named Klutz, was flagging badly by the time he passed into the city, locating a stables quickly. As he paid the stablehand for his services, he asked, "You wouldn't happen to know a young man named Bowser, would you, sir? I've a letter for him." The stablehand, a paratroopa dressed like an assassin, smiled wickedly at him.

"Oh yeah, I know him, padre." He offered his hand to shake and said, "Name's Rompus."

Bowser sat out on the hotel's back deck, a mug of steaming coffee on a small end table at his right side, the letter open on his lap. Silence surrounded him, but this was false quiet, brought on by his inability to process those sounds he could detect in town due to what Douard's final words to him were. It wasn't an overly long letter.

'My great pupil, Bowser,' it began. 'Know this- if you are reading this, then I am either already dead, or am about to be. Do not attempt some foolhardy rescue, for it would only end badly for you. Instead, heed these words- the days of the Empire and its caste system must end. The rampant corruption which has sickened this nation, rotting it from the inside, must be cleansed. This nation was once the most revered of all the lands of Famicom, when it was a kingdom-republic. If you love this land and its people, you must fight to make it such a place again, a land where all voices are equal, and none is considered unworthy by the accident of birth. Go now, my boy, and remember well all the lessons I have taught you.'

If Douard was dead, it would mark yet another person close to him killed because of Benjamin Godash. No 'if' on this one. When is more appropriate. Would the rebellion falter upon hearing word of the philosopher's demise? He didn't know, but soon enough, he would find out.

Gannondorf growled as he removed another layer of bandages, tossing the bloody things aside like so much detritus. He cursed the young elven man named Link, removing his clothes and easing down into the hot spring off the main chamber of his mountain fastness. A pumice stone in hand, he scrubbed at the quickly healing wounds, grimacing, uttering epithets as he washed.

He had removed the enchantment on the Coins upon his latest return from Gora, vowing to be finished with the business between them and the Mushroom Kingdom. It had been fun, toying with such insignificant creatures for a time, but he could ill afford such distractions now that the Kingdom of Hyrule had him branded for execution on sight. Were it not for his secret lair and its bounty of natural resources, he might have been forced to flee to the lands of Sega.

Gannon found his thoughts straying toward one particular Gora resident, however, the young man named Bowser. His future had been rife with failures when Gannon peered into it, but his defeats were ever ephemeral, temporary. He would continue to be a menace to his enemies for a long time to come. Bowser would even become a father not too far in the future.

"Some achievements outweigh our losses," he mused to the emptiness of the cavern.

Godash stood on the platform next to Douard, a velvet hood on over the philosopher's head to conceal his identity from the crowd. The Advisor's skin tingled, and a mad laughter kept threatening to overtake him, giddiness born from some primal part of his mind to cope with the weight of what was happening all around him.

Godash leaned in close and whispered, "I'll bet you never thought it would come to this."

"Actually, Benjamin, I've always known I would die," Douard replied, infuriatingly calm. "Every man does, eventually. But hanging? A formal execution? No, I can't say I ever saw that in my future."

"Well, it comes to you now," Godash said. "Your friends in the rebellion will cower before the Throne once you are dead. Without you, they stand for nothing."

"Ah, but you are wrong," said Douard. "They fight for my ideas, Advisor, not for me. There is something far nobler in that than in fighting to maintain a system of oppression and unquestioning obedience."

Godash just stood trembling with anger, hatred pumping through his every thought. He was supposed to be in control, supposed to be commanding the Empire and leading it toward a glorious time of conquest, crushing the Mushroom Kingdom under heel! What had happened? Where did everything go so wrong?

I should have let the old fool give his speeches, he thought. It was the first time in weeks that his internal voice spoke clearly, unobstructed by mental fog. He wasn't a real threat when he was just talking. The moment I had him jailed, I opened up the door for this rebellion. And now, I'm about to make a martyr of him. It was now too late to undo what he had set in motion. All he could do from this point forward was try to use what resources the Empire had left to strike back with all available force.

He leaned in one more time to Douard and whispered, "I should have left you alone. I realize that now." But the philosopher made no reply, offered no retort. Godash nudged him forward, where the executioner fitted the noose around his neck and removed the velvet bag, drawing a gasp from the crowd.

A minute later, the trap door fell open, and the Empire's greatest thinker dropped to his demise.