The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush: 2025 Edition - Episode 27

When the messenger boy stumbled into town, more dead than alive, he brought word that an ancient and most valuable relic had been discovered high in the mountains. There was little interest from the townsfolk. Weak with exhaustion, the messenger managed to murmur that the Wurst im Mund cable car led to the very spot where the relic was hidden, and suddenly the village was alive with questers, Mogey and Smush chief among them.  

After a very pleasant ride up the Wurst im Mund, the questers followed the messenger's directions to the mouth of a dank and mysterious cave. Above the cave's entrance, an inscription had been carved into the living stone: Farcimen non Pemittitur. 

"What's that mean?" Mogey whispered to Smush.

"Probably just nonsense words," Smush replied, taking a big chomp of one of the frankfurters he'd bought at the Wurst im Mund food court.

The questers gathered at the mouth of the tunnel, but they dared not enter, for standing in the opening was a knight, his pristine armor shining in the mountain sun, a white sash stretched over his chest.  

"So can we, erm, go in? Or what?" asked Toadly Punt, a tailor from the village who was part frog and part monkey. 

"First I must assess whether you are pure of heart, my funky friend," the knight announced. 

"Hey, how'd you know I was part frog and part monkey?" 

"The knight knows all," the knight stated pretentiously. "But I was referring to your tie-dye vest." 

"Alright then," said Toadly, satisfied by the funkiness of his vest, "do your thing."

The knight stood motionless for several moments, then thundered, "you desire to use the relic for personal gain. Your heart is impure! You may not enter."

Toadly walked away blubbering. One by one, the other questers stepped up, but each was met with a similar judgment by the knight. When finally Mogey and Smush's turn arrived, the knight paused longer than he had for any of the other questers.

"C'mon, Mogey - let's go," Smush muttered at last.

"Wait!" the knight called out. "Your hearts were difficult to assess, I admit. You," he pointed to Mogey, "have an entire buffalo chicken eggroll lodged in your left ventricle somehow. Yet that does not mean your hearts are impure. You may enter!"