Black light poured from the mystery block and swallowed her hand, sludgy, slimy goo pouring out of the cracks, as the block collapsed around it. It gripped at her muscles, tugging itself along her scaly skin with squelching ferocity. She felt her arm collapse below its constricting embrace, and both her eyes and her son’s swung to look in horror as the shining black slime pulled away from the powerup within.

It was a mushroom shaped like a Princess’s crown. She gaped, bewildered, and the roar of terror that threatened to erupt from her throat turned to a wheeze instead, as the great swarm of glistening darkness that she’d fashioned the force of the powerup into flung itself wholly around her chest and she felt it cave in beneath the crushing weight of its intent. She locked eyes with her son, but before she could say a word, the void rushed over her face and swallowed her whole.

Cracking and gurgling noises filled the hallway, as her son watched her shrink and bend, the crown stuck to her faltering hand, the massive frame she so proudly stomped through castle and across field with withering away till she was left with a body maybe the size of her former leg. Still the black slime quivered, and the crown wobbled in her hand before following the tremors up her arm till it came to a rest atop her head. Eventually, she realized she was no longer choking, realized the slime was retreating, changing shape and texture as it flowed across her changed body and its … pink flesh?

She stood, abruptly, rocking back on the heels that formed and hardened as she stood, her gown rustling and unfolding around her feet. She blinked at her slender hands, watched the velvety fabric of her gloves crinkle around her wrist and fingers as they clenched in fists. Her breath caught in her throat. A roar came barreling out after, but her new throat turned it into a shriek.

“Mirror,” she croaked, her new voice sounding so bizarrely familiar to her ears despite it all. “Where’s the nearest mirror, son.”

Her boy startled. He’d been looking at her like he’d seen King Boo and didn’t trust what would happen if he looked away. “D-dad?” he said, before faltering.

“I need to see it,” she hissed, feeling her mouth set in a comforting snarl, fangs locking together. Comforting in a way that unnerved her all the more for how much it shouldn’t have done at all. She reached up, felt her horns still intact astride her head. Everything felt right, was the problem. Everything felt like it belonged where it was supposed to be, which meant she had no idea what had just happened to her beyond what she could see.

But she had a guess. She hadn’t gotten this far by accidentally ignoring the obvious, only by doing that deliberately, so she had a guess. She followed her son as he led her through the halls, much darker and more colorful to her new eyes than they’d been, moments before; it seemed to take forever. She didn’t like how many more steps she had to take to get everywhere, or how she had to gather the gown in her fists to keep up. The gesture snagged on a faint sense of having seen it, or done it, before, somehow, and that thought in itself was so disorienting she nearly tripped in her heels. She didn’t trip. She felt like she should have tripped.

She wished she’d tripped, when she got a look at herself in the mirror. The only echoes of her once-magnificent reptilian ferocity were the teeth in her mouth and the swishing, spiky tail visible behind her. Her entire frame was smothered within the layered gown of black fabric that had become of what spilled out of the mystery block, but beneath it she could see she was small and pink and frail, like the Princess she had locked away in her cage of a room. Almost exactly like that Princess, in fact, and suddenly she understood the horrible truth of the powerup she’d suborned to her purposes. Her mouth went dry.

“I’ve become a Princess,” she said, miserably.