Here it is goblins! Part three! I hope you enjoy it! Thank you so much for sticking with the story through all the twists and turns! I am forever grateful! Love you!
Chapter 1: It's a Present
Silvery showers were pouring over the sandy Labyrinth and it chilled the kingdom silly. Sillier, should be said rather then just silly. The rain was not so strange, but the texture of it was odd, thicker and almost like it was made more of minerals, hard and stony then liquid. The goblin inhabitants were perturbed by its feel, and they were worried by what it meant. There were few things that could worry a goblin… But the death of their king was one thing.
"Sarah?" Jareth had her struggling to move free of his arms and a cold air had settled over the room. "There's no one in the room."
Sarah wrenched herself free and dove for the twitching figure in the darkness. But just as she reached it, it moved and she crashed into the wall. Head throbbing she flipped herself over and the shadow was above her, floating in the blackest robes she'd ever seen, a white face glowing from inside the security of the hood. Hundreds of thin, wiry braids were hanging from the hood. They were a dull red color, like dried blood.
"Who are you?" Sarah screamed, her words more feverish then she could ever remember them being before in her life. "What do you want?"
The voice that came from the shadow and the milky distorted face was like a warm wind, soft and whispery, but haunting in a way Sarah couldn't fathom. The creature suspended above her was not a mortal but not an immortal. It was much stranger, the ghost of the in-between and the child of Limbo. God knew Sarah had had enough of Limbo. "I've come for what was asked for."
"I don't understand."
A hand made of bones and charred muscles strings moved free of the spinning insanity of the shadow and pointed to where Jareth lay. Sarah followed the hand and gasped. On the bed Jareth had collapsed, a sheen of sweat sprung from his skin which had paled.
"Jareth!" Sarah sprung to her feet and was at his side. His eyes were half open and spinning in his skull. He whispered her name through his peeling, chalky lips.
"You see, Sarah," the shadow was at her ear and it froze her body. "I have been promised certain souls and when my promised souls are not given to me, I take another."
"You…y-you can't have him." Sarah could barely force the words out of her mouth, it was dry and her tongue felt enlarged and swollen beyond use.
"It's a long process; I have to drain him of his immortality, like draining him of blood. But it is a painful way to die. After his power has been diminished all I have to do…" The strange spirit swooped downward so they were lying alongside his body. The bony hand reached for the amulet around his neck and yanked it off. They tossed it away and Sarah picked it up, watching the spirit with a furious eye. A long pointed nail of the bone-hand slit a cut on Jareth's lower lip and bright little red drops bloomed on the white of his flesh. All in one movement the hood was tossed free of the spirit's head and the small heart-shaped face of a girl who hardly looked twelve was exposed to the dim light. The child had huge eyes, gold with silvery glints. A full head of red curls and braids were tangled about her face and they hung in large chunks all down her back. Sarah gasped as the child leaned down and kissed the king, taking in the blood into her body. When the blood-drenched kiss ended Sarah was nothing but a ghost of a woman, swaying as the realization hit her.
"You're Death." She choked on bile that rose from within her and she fell to the ground, weak and sick.
"Ha! Clever child and you do know whose soul I was promised that I no longer can take?" She licked her lips, dyed red.
Sarah's eyes widened and she rose to her knees. "Please! Take me instead of him! Please!"
"I cannot, now, now sweet pea! No need to cry! I will give him a sweet death." She smoothed Sarah's hair out of her face, leaning over Jareth's body to reach her. What she hadn't considered was the fact that Jareth was still alive and he erupted beneath her, throwing her to the floor.
"Sarah!" He had a grip on her wrist and was starting to gather his glittering magic when Death froze all of time and the darkness grew heavier until they could not even see their own faces in front of one and other.
"Jareth?" His arms moved to hold her; they smoothed her wrinkled gown and warmed her.
"Sarah, I love you." His touch began to soften and she realized that he was vanishing, or maybe she was? But at the last moment he shoved something into her hands, a shape unfamiliar and rough. Then he was gone and she was floating alone in some vacant space, which became a soft bed and became her bedroom. Aboveground.
"No!" She jumped up. Nothing had changed. Her room was the same. Inside her the feeling that her entire Underground and Hell experience was a very long, feverish dream. But the ring she felt on her left hand ring finger told her otherwise and the blue gown she'd fallen asleep in with Jareth confirmed it all. She looked down at her hands where the object Jareth had given her lay, wrapped up in rough lacey material. She quickly untied the mess and found the violet crystal. The one she had given Jareth as a gift. With it were two necklaces, one his amulet, and the second the one he'd given her to match his. She tied both of them around her neck absently.
"Why this?" She asked the air. "Why did you leave me with only this?" She looked to her mirror and called Hoggle's name. When there was no answer she tried Dydimus, then Ludo. Then she even got up and tried to walk through the mirror herself. That only gave her a bruise and a worse temper then before. "Uuuugh! This isn't fair! We did right! We saved each other! We went through Hell! Literally! Is this some sort of joke?" She fell to her knees at the mirror and swung her fist at it. A bit too hard and it shattered into a thousand glittering pieces around her.
"Damn." She stood and brushed shards from her gown. Then she noticed movement, only slight movement, in the broken mirror bits all over the carpet. She dove to the ground to watch as she saw tiny faces, people, bodies and gowns and dress-shirts glinting in the glass.
Sarah.
"Jareth! Are you there?"
I love you…
"No!" She gathered up the shards in her hands and squeezed them, trying to fall back into Underground.
"Sarah!"
"Irvus?" Sarah turned and saw the Dark King, Radiance at his side. Sarah felt her anger swell up inside her and then she stood. "How could you? After all we had been through, you took him from me!" She exploded and white flames began to leak off her skin. Irvus looked appalled.
"I did nothing!" He said, watching the flames warily. "It was my mother! She sent my half-sister!"
"Where is he Irvus!" Sarah screamed and a bolt of lightning whipped across her tiny bedroom and shot into his throat. As though it were a hand it lifted him, struggling upward as she screamed.
Radiance silenced Sarah, placing her soft hands on her shoulders. Sarah turned to the girl.
"I can show you the way, Irvus doesn't know."
The beam of lightning was abruptly cut and the king fell to the floor with a thump. He glared at Sarah through his shaggy hair.
"Irvus open the gate," His wife ordered. He stood and angrily turned to the clear wall in Sarah's room. He touched the wallpaper with his little finger and it blinked and a wide gaping door broke the wall paper and replaced Sarah's wall.
"My Lady Death lives in a very strange world, Sarah." Radiance said. "I will take you there if you like. I know the way."
"Yes," Sarah said. "Please take me there!"
The once cat-girl smiled and Sarah saw that there was still a hint of feline quality in her. The Dark King brushed his hair from his eyes. "You may want to change, Sarah." He said. "You too my dear."
Sarah retreated to the bathroom, listening to Radiance declare proudly. "I always wear my robes, I shall wear nothing else!"
"But you wear nothing under them!" Irvus complained.
Sarah fought the bitter tears that followed as their laughter chased her down the hall.
Jareth had been floating in the murky clouds for so long. His skin was slick with his sweat, the fever inside him rising in temperature slowly.
When at last he felt himself land on the earth it was not solid ground he landed on, but instead cool moss. The clouds moved away into nothing revealing a field of moss, endless tangles of green and thorns and vines. He cursed, loudly and up from the vines popped a bright blue face with huge black eyes and a heart-shaped nose.
"Hello!" The creature said and Jareth stopped, mid-curse. He stared at the thing, cat-like as it was, covered in blue fur. Rounded ears sprouted tufts of yellow fur. A curved smile exposed very square, very human teeth… that were bright orange. Jareth shook his head and fell back into the moss.
"Why does this stuff always happen to me?" He mumbled.
"Cindy! Who's that?" A low, feminine voice made Jareth sit up and he found a woman standing near him, the blue cat at her heels. She wore a sky blue dress that stopped a few inches above the ankle and a dirty white apron that covered her very pregnant belly. Her yellow hair was a curly mess half tied up under a midnight blue hat with a cerulean blue train of silk, while the other half hung free down to her hips. She had dark eyes, he couldn't tell if they were blue or brown, and she was frowning at him in a thin-lipped way.
"Why! Peaches and cream! We got the Prince of Underground with us!" She burst out and the frown changed, transforming her face from curiously bland to beautiful.
"You know my title?" Jareth asked, confused.
"Well, a'course I do!" She said, smiled. "I should fetch Maddy, he'll know what to do with you."
"Maddy?" Jareth blinked.
Her hand flew to her mouth, "Oh! There I go again, forgetting my manners! Always with royalty too. My name is Alice, Alice Hatter. Maddy's my husband! Oh, you may have met him. But you'd only know his title, Sir Mad Hatter. I wonder if you met him? Don't just lay in that moss! Come on up, now there's a lad. Fancy threads you got, bit rumpled if you don't mind me saying."
Jareth wasn't sure what to say. But he wasn't given an opportunity. The girl turned on her heel and started walking down the mossy path, strange cat in tow. Jareth stumbled dizzily at first, his head throbbing and followed, listening to her gab as she walked. He wondered if it was her hormones working against her or if she was always so damn chatty.
Neither of them, or the blue cat noticed the small red-headed child lurking behind them as they walked. But Jareth felt the same crippling weakness over his body as he felt when Death was near him. He prayed quietly that where ever she was, Sarah was alright. With Death hunting them there was no way of knowing what was safe and what was deadly.