FACING DESTINY
Rise Of The Labyrinth
Everyone was still startled to see the Evil One himself standing before them. The grass withered at each step he took and the air around him seemed to dry up as he approached the shackled Fidget and grabbed him by the hair.
"OW! I actually felt that!" Fidget exclaimed.
"I'm personally enraged that the Batrishan Priests and Kaïra ripped you away from me, making my plans delay, but such a dark aura and physical health..." The god snickered. "I'm actually relieved that they spared me the agony of raising a child."
"Raise a child? As if!" Anubis snorted. "You couldn't even keep a tantrum to yourself?"
"Wait, you actually know him?" Marion asked her husband.
"Which god doesn't?" Anubis rolled his eyes as if he were reliving a déjà vu. "Jareth was jealous that his sister Discordia, for being a pure villain, was favored by their father, the entity of Evil, so he tried to become the Dark One in order to make his father proud. Naturally, he was rejected again because of the villain motto."
"The villain motto?" Emma asked.
"That being evil must be for yourself and not others," Maleficent said. "Jareth didn't realize that being evil meant being dedicated to it and not just do it to please others."
"And of course that's why my sister was so favored even after I did everything to please my father!" Jareth snapped. "I then used my powers as the Dark One to wreak havoc upon all the mortals until every single god and my father rallied against me, stripped me of my powers, and sentenced me to eternity in the Underground, leaving me no choice but to steal children and feed off their essences as they grew up being my slaves!"
"You bastard!" Killian spat. "Even Peter Pan was better at you for stealing boys!"
"Yes, I never liked Pan. So I was left to concoct a plan that would help me to regain both my powers as the Dark One and my immortality."
"And that's why you raped Svjetla and created Fitzgerald," Theresa said. She looked at Fitzgerald, who looked more terrified than ever.
"So, this is the infamous Fitzgerald Denada Cortés." Jareth turned his attention back to his son. "The Batrishan Prince Of Darkness, the Old War Hero Of Aldorada, the One Who Has Made Pacts With Five Immortals, The Crippled Vampire...or best known as FIDGET THE BAT. Tales of your cruelty have been transferred through my kingdom, but never did I imagine that it was actually the Batrishan hybrid that I sired!"
"Gee, glad that I have a fan who actually wants to destroy me!" Fidget snapped sarcastically.
"Oh, I don't want to destroy you." Jareth shook his head, making everyone confused until he clarified. "I want to put this in you and then parasite your mind and soul so that I can reincarnate myself in your body, erasing whatever will you have in your soul, and destroy you from within while I destroy and rule, well, everything!" He juggled a crystal ball with some sort of dark mist trapped inside. The heroes gasped when they recognized as a very familiar source of darkness.
"The darkness that creates the Dark One," Emma gasped. "I...We threw it away!"
"How do you throw away darkness like it's a piece of garbage?" Theresa asked skeptically to the Savior.
"Long story short, the Savior and her friends managed to extract the darkness when she got affected by it and they sealed it in a bottle that they threw it in a cavernous bottom beneath the town that leads straight to Tartarus," Jareth explained. He held on to the crystal ball like a child unwilling to share his toy and snickered in mock. "The problem is that it got sidetracked by a rockslide and ended up going towards one of the tunnels that lead to my kingdom. My most faithful guard found it floating in the Bog Of Eternal Stench and brought it back to me. Let's just say that the darkness and I had a...friendly reunion." He then walked back to Fidget and once again gripped on the latter's hair, making Fidget yelp in agony. "Naturally, because of the new laws my paternal created, I couldn't welcome the darkness back in my body, but I could repossess it if I force it in the body of my offspring with powerful godly ancestry and reincarnate myself in the Batrishan on the day the eclipse finally arrives."
"No kidding!" Fidget muttered. "Usually I'd go with a bottle of sangria to celebrate family reunions, but you are a complete lunatic!"
"I'm glad you appreciate my evilness, but unlike you and a majority of these pathetic mortals, I don't believe in love." The Evil One looked at Kaïra. "You can relate to that, can't you, Kaïra?" He then spotted the sickle spear in her hands and snatched it out of her. "Laevateinn...I see you've been keeping it clean!"
"So the rumors going on among the gods were true!" Anubis gasped and looked at Kaïra. "You did steal Laevateinn from Jareth in the Underground!"
"Mother...Is this true?" Theresa asked her mother, who looked too humiliated to answer.
"Allow me to fill in for your weak godly mother," Jareth told Theresa cruelly. "Just about a year after I caused the Batrishans' extinction, your mother turned sixteen and had to do this Asgardian coming of age ceremony to prove her worth among the gods, and Yggdrasil the Tree of Life was so fateful enough to give her the quest of fetching Laevateinn, this charming sickle spear that I'm holding right here." He waved the sickle spear he was holding.
"I apologize in advance, but what is so peculiar about this one sickle spear?" Killian asked bluntly.
"Mostly for creating earthquakes, opening the earth to unleash an army, or more diverse powers," Anubis explained to the pirate. "But no one can wield Laevateinn unless they are tricksters."
"How fitting," Fidget said while giving a bitter stare at his patroness.
"Correct you are." Jareth nodded. "As the god able of twisting wishes and manipulating people, I 'granted' the wish of one of the guards who guarded Laevateinn back in its original vault in Asgard when the guard said he wished he didn't have to guard Laevateinn. So, I stole it.
"To speed the story up, Kaïra and four of Thor's spawn go to the Underground for Kaïra's quest to fetch the sickle spear, but I'm no fair player. I sped time before they could even solve my Labyrinth and had the group separated, the Thor offspring were sent off to be killed while I took Kaïra back as my captive for her essence."
All the villains and Anubis gasped at the mention of essence. "How dare you!" Maleficent exclaimed in disgust. "Stealing godly essence is the worst crime you godly people can commit!"
"Why, what does it do?" Mary Margaret asked, not really looking forward to hear the answer.
"It involves a god forcing a goddess to marry him without her consent and then violating her so that he can forever consume her godly essence, the worst part being that she'll still be alive and weak at his mercy." Anubis held Marion protectively in his arm. "When Jareth was banished to the Underground, he was forbidden to drink a single drop of nectar and eat a single bite of ambrosia, the food of the gods."
"And the food of the gods is essential for their survival," Mr. Gold filled in, "because when they start starving from no godly food, they proceed to feast on human essence."
"So that's why Jareth has been stealing children whenever someone wished to not have to deal with them!" David realized. "It was to make sure that he'd have essence to feast on!"
"Precisely. They're still alive and aging, but their souls get trapped in my precious crystal balls that I archive and consume at every meal. Of course, feasting on godly essence was a better solution for my hunger." Jareth looked at Kaïra in sadistic hunger before going back to a bitter frown. "But on the day I was to finally consume Kaïra's essence - make note that I had snacked on her godly essence- and I was on the verge of biting her to mark her as mine, I noticed an odor that wasn't hers. No, that odor had the scent of hybrid blood..." He then looked at Fidget. "Some of that blood belonged to your mother on the night I assaulted her."
Fidget's mouth dropped in horror as Jareth continued his story. "The fact that I smelled your dead mother's blood and mine on Kaïra meant only one thing: that Kaïra held you in her arms and therefore knew what happened to you. I tried to force her to tell me your location, but she wouldn't out of pitiful love for you. Next thing you know, she escaped with Laevateinn, which he stole, and became a goddess of the dead while I had to spend eras hunting her down just so that I could find you and get my hands on her essence once and for all. I even had to destroy her husband and son while she ran off with your girlfriend." Jareth briefly grimaced at Theresa before going back to his son. "Dating the daughter of your would-have-been-stepmother? You couldn't have gotten any lower."
"Any lower? Any lower?" Fidget snapped at him. "For my entire life, I thought that my biological parents abandoned me to save myself from your massacre and I cared less about who they were because I had an actual family, real friends, and a loving fiancée back in Aldorada who loved me, cared for me, and praised me as the hero I aspired to be for my country. But now, I see that the father who sired me is nothing but a jealous monster who killed a priestess just to make a weapon and exterminate an entire species just for one tantrum! You never were and never will be my father to my eyes!" The crystals shackling him were starting to crack, much to everyone's shock. "I am not the son of Jareth and Svjetla but the son of Hernan and Geneva Denada Cortés!" The cracks were getting bigger. "I'M FIDGET THE BAT!"
The crystals finally shattered, freeing Fidget, who instantly swung his peg leg at Jareth's face and sent the god crashing into a nearby tree. The crystal ball containing the darkness slipped out of his fingers. Quickly, Hermia flew and caught it before handing it to her father.
"Fitzgerald!" Theresa got up and ran to hug him. He returned the gesture.
"YOU DON'T KNOW WHO YOU'RE DEALING WITH, BOY!" Jareth got up and raised Laevateinn in the air before smashing it into the ground. The earth began to shake and cracks were starting to make their way towards town.
"He's trying to destroy the town!" Lily gasped.
"I...I think it's worse." Tristan pointed at the sea, which began to shake unnaturally once the cracks reached the port. Then, like magic, rocky walls bigger than mountains rose up from the ocean, making the water cascading down and lower its level as the ground continued to rise up and form one giant maze-like fortress crowned by a castle that completely dried out the ocean.
"The Labyrinth," Kaïra, still shackled, gasped.
"He rose it from the Underground!" Anubis exclaimed.
"And I'm far from over!" Jareth held Laevateinn in the air and send thunderbolts in the clouds, darkening them. "Fidget the Bat, by the River Styx and every single blood of evil in my veins, Storybrooke will suffer even more than it will if you don't go to my castle at the heart of my Labyrinth with the darkness before the eclipse arrives! And don't worry, I'll make sure that your patroness pays dearly first!" A cloud made of crystal shards surrounded him and Kaïra and made them disappear from the others.
"He's gone! And he's got my mother!" Theresa cried in fear. "I can't let my father's murder consume my mother's godly essence!"
"As much as I want to save my patroness and spare the town, I can't just walk in the Labyrinth with the darkness in my hands!" Fidget pointed at the crystal ball Bartok was holding. "It would be like giving Jareth a wrapped present!"
"It's...like the prophecy," Emma realized.
"'The race through time you must take to when the fate of balance has begun. The race through fate will be at stake and soon shall rise the Evil One.'" Killian quoted the prophecy before going back to Fidget. "You see what's happening, Fitzgerald? Your fate's at stake because your father is rising to power!"
"He's not my father," Fidget growled.
"'To when the fate of balance has begun,'" Tristan quoted. "That must have been when Rosetta and I went with the other pilgrims to the Batrishan Sanctuary! Because that's where the Batrishans got massacred the most ever since Briga took Fidget away when she found out the priests were after him!"
"And then the next lines say that 'after three centuries, the sun will darken again. From the underground the maze shall rise.'" Hermia pointed at the Labyrinth, which was impossible to ignore from the sight. "The eclipse is returning after three centuries on Fidget's 300th birthday and Jareth used Laevateinn to rise the Labyrinth from his kingdom in the Underground!"
"Gee, now I know how the Savior feels!" Fidget grumbled. Emma stared at him, shocked that he used her as comparison.
"And what about the last lines?" Hermia asked. "The ones about 'through crystals shall be heard the goddess and Batrishans scream in pain. From his crown, the Prince Of Darkness' evil will terrorize. The cursed dagger will bond with the dragon, who seeks her enslaver's demise and the loyalty of her heir. The worlds' town will face the agony as darkness, evil, and malevolence rule the air.'"
"Let's hope we stop Jareth first before the second half of the prophecy comes true." Fidget cracked his knuckles. "The only question right now is how to do it."
"The crystals."
Somebody who just spoke startled them. They turned and saw someone of the female species slouching on a tree and smirking at them. Her main clothing was a revealing latex corset, a black showgirl skirt, black stiletto biker boots, black diamond cuff bracelets that reached her elbows, black lipstick and fingernail polish, and black diamond earrings. Her hair was pulled up in a curly updo and she wore a black peacock mask worthy of a performer at the Rio Carnival.
"Somebody went nuts on the black." Fidget flinched.
"Not all of can be perfect, handsome." Romana pulled off her mask. "If you want to make your way through the Labyrinth, you'll need insider help. And I hate working for free, so let's hope you can pay."