Mario and the Spirit from the Outer Realm

Prologue

There was no mistaking the boundary between the Mushroom Kingdom and Dark Land. If the mountainous rift in Mushroom World's crust didn't make it obvious enough, then the abrupt change in sky colour, weather systems and plant life removed any doubt of where Princess Peach Toadstool's kingdom ended and King Bowser's began.

Mario's brother Luigi had once remarked how it looked like someone had taken two completely different planets and smashed them together. Now, as Mario trudged alone up the steep slopes towards one of the few accessible crossing points into Dark Land, he couldn't help but agree. He didn't know of any place that looked like this back on Earth.

This wasn't the first time Mario had taken this path to the border. He'd travelled through here many times to rescue Princess Peach from Bowser's clutches in the past. But this time there was no princess to rescue. This mission had been different. In fact, everything about it had seemed wrong.

It had all begun one night with a dream. Mario didn't believe in dreams, but he'd woken from it with such a start he'd even disturbed Luigi, a habitually heavy sleeper. Luigi, being Luigi, had insisted that Mario tell him about it before going back to sleep.

His recollection of it had been hazy at best. Rosalina, Watcher of the Cosmos had appeared to him, telling of a gaping wormhole that had opened up right over Bowser's castle and had linked Mushroom World with the Outer Realm. Mario didn't know what the Outer Realm was. The dream hadn't lasted long enough for him to find out. All he understood was that the wormhole was bad and Rosalina needed his help to destroy it. He remembered something about first having to destroy five warp portals concealed in various locations on Mushroom World, and that Rosalina had given him a talisman, enabling him to summon help whenever he needed it.

Of course the next morning, he dismissed the whole episode as mere nonsense, until Luigi found the talisman while vacuuming under Mario's bed. This had rattled Mario, but as Luigi had rightly pointed out, the talisman was real. Mario couldn't just ignore the dream. He had to at least investigate.

So Mario had set off on what he believed would be a wild goose chase. But just as the dream predicted, he'd found the warp portals hidden in far-flung provinces around the planet. And, as everyone had come to expect, he overcame armies of Bowser's minions in order to destroy them. Each portal had been a wonder of alien technology, a ball of shimmering blue light projected by small cylinder-shaped machines on the ground. But nothing he'd encountered during this quest had given him a clue as to who had put them there in the first place. All Mario could be sure of was that they looked far too sophisticated for Bowser to have developed on his own.

The faint smell of lava in the air told him he was nearing the border. He stopped on the pathway and arched his aching back, allowing himself a few minutes to rest. If the wormhole was at Bowser's castle, there might be a chance he'd find the mastermind behind the portals there, too. He hoped so. He didn't have the energy to carry on looking, and this was what bothered him the most.

Exhilarating as his adventure had been so far, there'd been times when he'd felt almost completely drained. It wasn't that he was missing Luigi on this quest. He could have used the talisman to summon his brother at any time if he'd needed his help, and so far Mario had resisted. It wasn't that the Luma, a floating star-shaped creature that kept him company some of the way had been particularly unhelpful. It was just that he didn't feel like he was firing on all cylinders all of the time. Like missing those power-ups when he most needed them. Not quite getting that wall-jump right. Mis-timing those fireballs... It wasn't anything serious enough to put him out of action, but it was just enough to make things more tiring for him than they should have been.

As he forced himself to press on, Mario considered the reasons for his mediocre performance in the adventure so far. Perhaps he was getting old - not quite as sprightly as he once was. Or else, as Luigi might say, perhaps he'd lost his Guiding Spirit. He shook his head at the thought of his brother's superstitious nonsense. Perhaps he just needed a holiday. Yeah, that sounded about right.

He toiled up the hill until he reached the border of the two kingdoms and stood for a moment, a solitary, stocky little figure at its summit; the bright blue skies of his adoptive homeland behind him, the fiery darkness ahead. Bowser's castle loomed on the horizon, just as it always had, and as usual the intervening terrain crawled with fire-breathing koopas and menacing flame-throwing machines.

Familiar as it looked, the view from here was always daunting. Now, dominated by the yawning wormhole that snaked up into what he presumed was outer space, it looked positively terrifying.

Mario straightened his red cap, and cracked his gloved knuckles, a look of fierce determination on his face. The final phase of the adventure had come.

"Here we go..."