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// Chapter 17 The Dark Palace 
// Story: The Legend of Cadance A Shining Link to the Past 
// by Forgotten Legends 
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	Shining pulled out his lantern due to the fact that there were no lights in the palace. As he passed a wall he saw a trail of oily wood along the wall. Shining blew a flame from his lantern and lit up the wood and he saw the palace illuminate. He saw a chest inside a doorway. Shining opened the chest and found a key and a map of the palace. It was made with some kind of glowing paint as it glowed in the dark chest it was in.

Shining looked at the map and saw that the chest with the item inside it. He traveled over to its room and opened the chest and saw that it was a heavy hammer. Shining thought it may come in handy in other places as well as in here. Shining traveled down to the stairs to the basement of the palace. As shining reached the basement he saw another wall lined with the oily wood.

Just as Shining lit up the wood he saw that there were several skeletons along the floor. He was surprised when the skeletons came to life and were attacking him. Shining pulled out the hammer and hit the skeletons one by one and they were shattered when the hammer hit them. Shining saw that the one had a large bag of rupbits in one of its bags. He counted them and saw there was a total of sixty rupbits in it.

Shining entered the room next to him and found a stone tablet and written on it was the same one as in the previous temples he went to. A blue portal appeared as he finished reading it. He saw light in the boss chamber room and thought this was very odd. As Shining went into the room and saw a huge monster with a heavy iron mask. The monster snarled at him and swung its heavy clubbed tail at him.

Shining dodged the tail but as he did a bomb fell out of his bag and detonated on the monster’s mask. He saw that the mask had a chunk of metal missing from it. Shining thought his bombs would possible do more damage to the mask then the hammer. So he threw another bomb and it blasted another chunk off of the mask. Shining saw that half of the mask was gone so he took a look at his bomb supply while the monster was dazed by the explosion.

Shining saw that he had two bombs left in his bag. He grabbed one of the last two bombs and tossed it and it hit the monster’s mask. The mask had only one piece left. So shining grabbed the last bomb in his bag and threw it at the mask clearing it from the monster’s face. Shining noticed that the monster started to get even more aggressive in its attack style.

Shining saw it would breathe a stream of fire at him every so often. Shining held up his shield to protect himself from the fiery blast. He saw that the monster had a glowing green lump on its head. Shining took out his bow and shot an arrow at the spot and saw that the monster was in horrible pain. He fired arrow after arrow until the monster died and blew up in a puff of white smoke.

Shining picked up the heart shaped gem and felt even stronger as he knew that he had seven hearts worth of stamina. Just then Shining saw a large crystal fall down from the ceiling and inside it was a maiden.

As she awoke she said to him, “Thank you I am free and I shall head to the church to wait for the other girls so we can help you saw Equesrule.”

Shining saw that the crystal shrank as the girl vanished from the crystal. He picked it up and put it in the front pocket of his bag. Shining looked into the mirror and was sent to the entrance of the palace. He saw that his cousin was waiting for him at the stairs up to the entrance