“Saving my mummy and daddy is tenty times as important as getting a stupid sword,” insisted Princess Rainbow. “Promise you’ll rescue them! Promise!”
“Fine – if they’re still at the palace, I’ll bring them back,” huffed Frog. “But only so they can make up numbers in the DAFT army.”
“I’ll come with you,” said Kryl. “I have the kroak cloak, too. I can camouflage myself, or—”
“Or pretend to be someone else?” interrupted Frog, pointedly. After a moment, he shrugged and said, “Fine. You can help me carry the King. He’s pretty heavy…”
As Frog and Kryl made their way over to the blue door, they activated the kroak cloak – and disappeared. A moment later, the door opened … and closed behind them.
“Please bring back my mummy and daddy,” said Princess Rainbow quietly. “And some treasure.”
It had been almost an hour since Frog and Kryl had gone through the blue door. Man-Lor was piloting the Omnium Gatherum through the sky, since Nigel was still busy baking. Princess Rainbow, meanwhile, kept trying to plait the rarewolf’s tail fur to make him look “extra-pretty”.
“Princess used to plait Man-Lor’s hair,” Man-Lor sighed.
“Nigel, are you making plumberry pie for my surprise Princess Plumberry Pie Party?” asked the princess hopefully.
“If only, by gosh,” muttered Nigel, sighing a long sigh. “I’m sorry to say that—”
“Blast it all!” interrupted the rarewolf, pacing up and down. “They’ve been gone too long! If that idiot Frog has gone and got himself killed, I’ll … I’ll kill him!”
“Baa?” said Sheriff Explosion, waking from a nap.
“You need to b’lieve like you say you do, fluffy-wuff,” Princess Rainbow replied, klik-klak-ing over to the blue door in her tiny heels. “Greeny promised he’d save Mummy and Daddy, and he promised he’d save the world. I b’lieve him! You should just b’lieve that everything is going to be good and it will be goo—”
The blue door was blown open, turning it to splinters and flinging Princess Rainbow across the room.
“Everything is bad! Everything is so bad!” screamed a battered Frog, as he stumbled through the doorway – now little more than a stone frame – dragging an unconscious Kryl behind him. As Frog collapsed to the floor, sunder-beams streaked through the doorway, shattering windows and blasting great chunks off the walls.
“Gah!” cried Nigel, leaping for cover behind the stove. “What’s happening, by gosh?”
“Kroakans everywhere!” Frog cried. He turned back to see dozens of Kroakan troopers racing from the palace towards the magical doorway, their sunder-guns blazing. More windows were shattered and the blue table obliterated as the Kroakans advanced.
“They’ll overrun the house!” Nigel shrieked, as a sunder-beam burned a path through his hair plume. “If they don’t destroy it first!”
“I’ll … defeat them,” wheezed Frog, trying to get up. “Just give me a minute… I just need to get my mightiness back…”
“Too late for that!” growled the rarewolf. He made for the door as more sunder-beams scorched his fur. “Find something to block up the doorway! I’ll buy you some time…”
“You can’t fit through…” gasped Frog. “You already tried … your rump is too big!”
“Perhaps I just lacked the proper motivation,” replied the rarewolf. “Now, for once, just do as I say!”
The rarewolf went to leave, then he turned back.
“Save the world, Frog,” he added. “I believe in you.”
“Wait!” cried Frog, but the rarewolf was already leaping at the doorway, forcing himself through the cracking stone with all his might. With a colossal effort he struggled to the other side. Frog heard him cry, “Let’s see how you handle an enemy with teeth!” as he pounced on the Kroakans.
“Fluffy wuff!” Princess Rainbow squealed, as she and Frog struggled to their feet.
While Nigel tried to block up the doorway with chairs, they watched the rarewolf tear into the Kroakans with tooth and claw, tossing them like rag dolls or swatting them with his paws. At first he seemed to shrug off the searing sunder-beams, but the Kroakans kept coming at him, one after the other, their weapons blazing. Soon, the beams began to take their toll. The rarewolf cried out in pain.
“Rarewolf!” cried Frog and Princess Rainbow together, as the rarewolf slumped to the ground. He tried to get up, but was quickly buried beneath the Kroakan hordes.
“Hang on, rarewolf! I’m coming!” Frog cried, pushing past Nigel’s feeble chair fortifications. He was about to step through the doorway when he felt a huge hand press on his chest. He looked up and saw Man-Lor staring back at him, shaking his head.
“This is job for Man-Lor,” began the barbarian. “I am Man-Lor.”
Man-Lor pushed Frog and the princess back towards Nigel, and then grasped the doorway in his massive hands. With an almighty heave, he wrenched it out of the floor. His great muscles strained as he carried it across the room, before kicking open the front door.
“The rarewolf is still in there!” squealed Princess Rainbow. “Stop, champ’un!”
But for the first time in his life, Man-Lor did not do as the princess commanded. With the last of his strength, he pushed the doorway out of the house. It toppled, spiralling through the air, and plummeted towards Kingdomland. Within seconds, it had disappeared into the clouds.