By: Daniel Kendle
The swamp seemed endless, cypress trees making a wall separating the dingy glen and algae-coated waters. Occasional islands of thickets and ferns dotted the horizon line. The canopy of leaves above let stars barely peek through the brush, like mice through floorboards in an abandoned house.
The moon was as red as the blood on Fozzie Bear’s cloak.
He solemnly trudged through the mirelands, his sword at the ready for any ill-fated vines in his path. Lily pads buckled under his weight.
“Um, Fozzie, shouldn’t we be heading back now?” Asked Robin the Frog. He held his glaive like how a small child holds a picket sign; clutching it tightly to his chest, the weapon 2 or 3 of him tall. Fozzie turned back slightly, face obscured by his hood.
“Tsk. I knew I shouldn’t have let a kid come with me on a mission like this,” said Fozzie, slightly miffed. “We’ve hiked for 3 days and 3 nights, Robin, all to reach this swamp. Are you saying you want to quit, when we’re almost at-!” He stopped, seeing Robin’s worrisome stance. He was quivering in tandem with the cattails.
“Uncle Fozzie, the bugs here are way bigger than the ones in Muppet Kingdom. One of them even picked me up and lifted me a few feet into the air yesterday!”
The bugs in the swamp were huge; most were around a man’s arm in length, and double in width. When dragonflies flew overhead, their wings made the sound of helicopter propellers. Fozzie didn’t care, and treated them with the same dignity as the flora in his way.
“Don’t worry, Robin, I’ll fend them off for you. Still, a knight-in-training such as yourself oughta know how to deal with some lousy insects,” Fozzie said, and started walking again.
Robin prepared to say something back, but a wave of determination came over him with that latter statement. He followed Fozzie, glaive now at standby.
The pair continued crossing the great marsh, stopping every hour or so to rest their aching bones. The stars were now obscured by a dense patch of fog.
Fozzie took a swig out of a flask the size and shape of a hockey puck (not that either of them knew what that was). Robin ignored his uncle’s mead addiction and kept hopping across logs and mounds of peat. They were now completely surrounded by cypress trees.
Suddenly, Fozzie stopped, holding out a hand behind him. He was looking at a large, tall structure in the distance.
“What’s wrong, Uncle Fozzie?” asked Robin. Fozzie knelt down, smiling.
“Nothing. In fact, quite the contrary. We’ve finally arrived at our destination…” he trailed off, before snapping back to reality. He looked back at the black tower.
“…the Doom Spire.”
Seemingly in defiance of its name, the spire wasn’t all that impressive, actually – except for its height. Jet black with obsidian bricks, it was around 100 stories high. The structure eventually collided with the night sky, camouflaging itself among the cosmos. Meanwhile, the front door contrasted poorly with the inky black stone. It was small, made up of rudimentary pine, and looked to have been constructed on a meager budget. Fozzie didn’t seem to notice. Robin did.
To the left of the door was a mechanism not all too different from a simple doorbell. An emaciated cord limply dangled from a pulley above them. Robin pulled it whilst Fozzie was preparing to knock.
A deep chime emanated from inside the Doom Spire. It went on for a solid minute, the adventurers awkwardly waiting for the tune to end. Fozzie exchanged his sword for a damp bundle in his pocket, wet from the water surrounding the small island they stood on. He pulled out a few rusty coins, then sheathed it away.
Just as he did that, the door slowly opened from inside. There, in the entryway, stood Rizzo the Rat, Eldritch Gatekeeper of the Beguiling Void (as his name tag read).
“I presume you 2 have an appointment?” He asked. One of his whiskers was missing – as well as his right ear.
Fozzie said nothing, but instead counted out the coins in his palm. He then gave them to Rizzo, who quickly hid them away. 3 went into a fanny pack, the 4th he slipped into his lone sock. He beckoned the pair inside.
“It’s a dreary day outside. How far have you 2 traveled to get here?” Rizzo asked, leading them up a spiral staircase.
“From the Muppet Kingdom, sir!” Robin chirped. Fozzie ignored them. “We’ve been hiking the entire time. About 3 days and night’s time to reach the swamp.”
“Oh, the trip must’ve been such a burden on your bones.” Rizzo mused. “Don’t worry, our waiting room has some lovely chairs imported from lands far away.”
“Waiting room?” Fozzie asked suddenly, just as the trio reached the top of the stairs.
The room in front of them was the tonal opposite of the Doom Spire’s exterior. While the outside was jagged, dark, and bizarre, the waiting area seemed almost intentionally-contrasting. The walls were a pale beige, a light floral pattern etched into the wallpaper. Said walls complemented the gray floor and brown ceiling, the latter of which was where a typical office light hung. Well-furnished chairs lined the walls, along with what was likely Rizzo’s desk. Several abstract paintings dotted the room.
There was also a live zebra standing next to the desk (this will be more important later on).
“Please, make yourselves at home. Master K is a very busy man; it’ll be a bit before you see him,” Rizzo said, and returned to his cubicle. The duo sat on the furthest seats from the zebra.
“Uncle Fozzie, throughout this adventure you’ve never even explained what we’re doing here,” said Robin.
“Oh, right. I – we, I suppose – are here,” Fozzie leaned in closer, now whispering, “on a revenge mission. To kill Mr. K.”
Robin gave him a blank stare, unimpressed by Fozzie’s theatrical reveal. He started fiddling around with a Rubik’s Cube he pulled out of his back pocket. The peppermints in the bowl to Robin’s right were beginning to thin.
Fozzie sighed, and he himself began fooling around with a book about crossword puzzles. But just as he was trying to remember an 11-letter word for an amusing misuse of wordplay (‘malapropism,’ as would later be deduced), an announcement came over the intercom.
“‘Bear, Fozzie’ and ‘Frog, Robin the’ to Master K’s oarfish, please. Again, please report to Master K’s oarfish, please. Thank you.”
Rizzo calmly got up and walked over to a plain metal door, opening it for the pair. They thanked him and started up another spiral staircase.
“When you reach him, remember to wipe your feet off before heading inside. Mr. K hates grime in his workplace,” Rizzo called, and shut the door behind them.
Upon climbing the flight, the 2 stopped just outside of Mr. K’s office, wiping dried mud off of their once-sparkling boots. The doormat to the room was a rug made of the pelt of a prehistoric squirrel. Fozzie and Robin had no way of knowing this, but the squirrel was once a barber on the other side of Muppet Kingdom, in a more high-end district.
They gave one another a determined nod, and both thrust open the doors to the studio. There, perched on a throne made out of discarded whale bones and trimmed with gold, sat Mr. K.
“Fozzie, my friend, it’s good to see you after all these years!” Mr. K exclaimed, a little too happy for the gravitas of the situation.
“We aren’t friends anymore, you snake,” Fozzie hissed (ironically-enough),” or should I say…”
“…Kermit.”
The frog stiffly rose from his seat on the throne and began descending the shallow steps towards his new arrivals. With each pace he took, each joint in his body seemed to roll and rattle, as if his mangy skin was the only thing holding his body together.
“I see the art of magic has taken a toll on your mortal form,” Fozzie remarked. “We’re both in our mid-30’s, yet you look 3 times that age.” Kermit chuckled at this.
“And as if your comedy is any better, after 10 years apart. When we played together as kids, the act of faking laughter was, well, that: an act!” Kermit had now stopped at a tarp covering a large object. Robin watched the 2 bicker, unamused by either comebacks.
Fozzie scowled slightly. He drew his rapier from his belt which made Kermit don a stool-eating grin.
“At least you spent your time well: learning how to fight.” He said.
“Agreed.” Fozzie quickly pointed the blade at the frog. “So let’s test that fact.” Kermit chuckled again (his strange bray was starting to get annoying by now), and patted the caped object. The morning rays coming in from the grand arches in the walls gave the room a divine aura.
“Easy, tiger. Since you’ve come all this way for a fight to the death, I might as well make things interesting for you and your… friend, there,” he said, lazily gesturing to Robin. The little frog was about a quarter of Kermit’s size, and was staring off into space during the former pair’s confrontation.
“My name’s Robin, sir.”
Kermit ignored him, and gestured towards the cloaked object.
“My acquaintances, do you know why I was banished from the Muppet Kingdom? Why, it was all because of this gadget right here,” he said, patting the tarp again. Kermit and Robin gave him a blank stare.
“Not impressed? I guess I’m not surprised – I guess it’s time to actually reveal it to you both!” Kermit laughed, and pulled off the white cover. There, in the middle of the throne room, stood the ultimate weapon.
A door.
To be fair, it was a very nice door. It was made up of mahogany boards, indented with simple, yet well-constructed engravings, with brass hinges to its right. The knob was also brass, and very polished, too. Then, of course, there was the large, green eye posted along the top of the frame. It watched the puppets, curiously.
Somewhere downstairs, the zebra neighed (this was its importance).
“With this magical door,” Kermit sneered, “I shall be able to access the powers of an alternate plane of reality. From there, I can snatch the most powerful item in the universe: the Antimatter Amulet.”
“The Antimatter Amulet? But with that, whoever holds it and its power can destroy entire universes in seconds!” Cried Robin. Kermit laughed and nodded.
“Exactly, pipsqueak. Now that the door is awake, I can finally achieve my life-long desire!” Kermit started walking towards the now-opened door, but 2 things stopped him.
- He had forgotten to do his laundry. Usually, his house cleaner Dennis would come by on Tuesdays (today was a Wednesday), but unfortunately Kermit misremembered that Dennis was bed-ridden from a minor foot infection. In that moment he felt horribly guilty, and promised he’d visit him once he was back from the astral plane.
- A wooden bolt from Fozzie’s crossbow, right in the thigh.
“I guess that’s that, Uncle Fozzie,” Robin said. The two were standing outside of the Doom Spire, “but I must say, that was a rather anticlimactic confrontation.”
“I’ll say,” said Fozzie, “and what’s worse was that Kermit survived, still managing to worm his way into the “doortal,” as I’m calling it. Wakka-wakka,” Fozzie said sarcastically. By the time the pair had reached the front doors to the tower, Kermit was already long-gone.
“Oh well. These might be famous last words (they were), but I don’t think he’ll be bothering us or the Muppet Kingdom any time soon,” Robin shrugged.
“Agreed. Now, let’s start the trek home so we can tell the king about our success.”
The pair began traversing back through swamp, sticking to the path they had blazed before. But as they were doing that, something from inside the Doom Spire happened.
The door was still awake, looking around with its single eye at the heaps of damage sustained upon Kermit’s entrance. Any time a mortal entered the portal, a large blast would occur, signifying the change in the astral plane.
However, that didn’t apply to inanimate objects, because just then a small item popped out from the swirling, spiraling void. It clattered to the floor a few feet away from its origin point.
It was a necklace.
