The Luigi Story

Chapter 7: The Castle part 2

We finally reached the spiralling staircase that would lead us down to the alleged bunker. It was heavily damaged and it was slippery from the rain, but it was passable. We walked down slowly, but the passage was completely dark. The lights there had failed and there was no light coming from above. There were other routes down, but with no light to guide us, it would have been a maze down there. Captain Toad ran back upstairs and left me with Goomofsky.

'What do you think?', I asked Goomofsky.

'Something crazy must have happened here' Goomofsky replied. 'Did you see all the battle damage in the main hall? I think that is where the second explosion came from.'

'How so?', I wondered.

'It looked like the castle guards were making a stand', he replied. 'They must have fought off the robots for some time...maybe until they breached the east wing of the castle? After the robots got what they were coming for, they shot down the castle tower. Or at least that is how I saw it.'

'That is a good observation, Goomofsky', I replied. 'What do you think that we will find down here?'

'It is my job to make observations', Goomofsky replied. 'As for the bunker, I do not know where it is. I did hear rumours, but could not verify if they were true or where the bunker was.'

Captain Toad returned before we could finish the conversation and in his hand he held three wooden torches.

'I remembered that we crossed a couple of torches on our way', Captain Toad said. 'I figured that we could use them to light our way. It took a bit longer to find some matches, but I managed to get a matchbox from one of the sleeping chambers.'

'Good thinking, Captain Toad, I said as I took on one of the torches.

Captain Toad gave the other to Johnny and wanted to hand one over to Goomofsky, but quickly realized he had no hands to hold it with.

'Sorry, Goomofsky', Captain Toad said. 'I forgot that you were a Goomba for a moment.'

'No worries', Goomofsky replied. 'Let's get going and find this bunker.'

We lit the torches. We could see that we weren't so far away from the bottom of the stairs and resumed going down. Once we arrived at the bottom, the hallway went in to three directions. We could see that the right tunnel had collapsed blocking that path off, leaving only the left and in front of us open.

'Which way do you think it is?', Captain Toad wondered out loud.

'Let's go to the left', Johnny said. 'We can go to the south side of the castle through there. I think that would be the best place to hide a bunker.'

'It's your call, Luigi', Goomofsky said.

I turned towards the left tunnel and then looked back at the front tunnel. Doubtingly, I started walking into the left tunnel with the others behind me. The tunnel was damp and water seeped through small cracks in the ceiling. Each tunnel was just a small segment which connected the cellars to each other. These were mainly used for storage of wine, old furniture and other random stuff from the castle. It seemed that nothing had happened down here, but I assumed the red mist would have spread around here, if the castle had suffered the same fate.

The chambers offered us nothing. Each cellar had more and more stuff, but none seemed to have a big giant bunker door or something else that might look like it. We walked around some more and finally reached the collapsed tunnel. It was a dead-end and headed back into the nearest chamber.