OoOoOOooo

Chapter 3

Oooooooo

The first invader in Gekko's water was unwelcome, but almost he could ignore it. The human was slimy, and his water was turbulent. If it had been just in Gekko's river, he would have washed the human out to the sea and let the dragons there take care of the offensive person. But it wasn't in his river. It was in the Labyrinth. The stones were calling to him again.

It was easy enough to pull the air from the human's lungs. Easy enough to expel him to the side of the pond where the fairies could feast on the body, if they cared to. Gekko knew the body to be foul and lacking nutrition, but the fairies seemed to exist on dust, so they might be fine.

The next invader came more quickly, and was even more offensive than the first. The second Gekko could not expel as easily as the first, as the Labyrinth seemed to find some sort of mineral joy in drowning it. But that meant that Gekko could see flashes of the human's past.

A child hid in the corner, its face turned away and turned down to the floor. It was dirty, thin, with bruises on the left arm. Water was leaking from the eyes as well being on the floor- it appeared that the sink was dripping, and it was eating into the floorboards of pressed together wood. Gekko approved. Though the general state of confinement for the water seemed unpleasant.

A bottle of fermented water shattered against the wall, bringing Gekko's attention back to the child, who was now cowering in a pool of glass and the partially evaporating liquid.

Gekko slid through the water, coming up underneath the Labyrinth and physically expelling the bloated corpse into the Labyrinth proper.

The Labyrinth, however, was upset. It was not enough time in the water.

"Not enough time?" Gekko spit out incredulously. "He is quite, quite dead."

There was a feeling of many hours- perhaps ten?

"He is dead. The time can pass as easily on the ground as polluting my water." Gekko replied decisively. That said, he went back to the main river, grumbling the whole way.

Behind him, Hoggle gasped as he discovered the remains.

After this, it was an almost daily struggle to get the Labyrinth to spit out its prey. The images were never fun that he got from the people lured into his depths. They came from places where the rain was acid, there was constantly salty tears in all the memories, and occasionally blood or something even less pleasant. He was getting a thorough education on the various fluids that humans used to intoxicate themselves, fill their veins with confusion, leaked out of their bodies from basically all over... it was something he could have easily have continued until the end of time and been fine not knowing.

Unacceptable.

Gekko curled protectively in the depths of the first underground tunnel. And waited.

Soon enough a human appeared around the corner. It approached timidly, poking at the wall with one finger and frowning. A plant with eyes on stalks blinked in a suspiciously coordinated pattern. The depths between the eyestalks were sharp with teeth and it was dripping poisonous ichor. There was a blue centipede that followed the swaying of the faintly glowing golden orbs. The human started away as the tentacles tried to trap him.

"EEEEEEELlllloooo." Screeched the centipede, rearing up and gnashing its mandibles. Red fabric lashed out from below the glinting jaws and snapped at the human, who fell back with a cry.

The reeds around the pool tangled the human's feet. Fairies flew up in a cloud of blurred wings and shining, ivory teeth open wide, their tonges bright pink, cyan and glowing lime. Soon their mouths were filled with bright red and the human was bleeding from a hundred bites. It fell back, back.

Gekko was there to meet it- snapping off its head and spitting it out down the corridor. He knocked the rest of the body into the wall, where it made a noise in between a thud and a crunch, with blood spraying out from the neck and making a wild pattern against the glittering stone.

The eye stalks pulsed with the arterial spray as it slowed and finally stopped while the centipede went after the head. It picked it up by the stump of neck remaining and placed it between its front limbs, then expertly gnawing at the skull and twisting so that the top of the skull and scalp popped off, revealing the slightly mushy and reddened brain. Another centipede crawled out of the wall, this one with a large, gravid midsection. It delicately sucked the brains out of the skull.

Gekko approved, despite the continued complaints from the Labyrinth. It was wholly impossible for the human to return from death now, even with the most extreme of interventions. And with the brain destroyed, only the heart could give memories, if it were to fall in the water. Since none of these wastes of space had had souls to speak of, that was a non-issue.

"What... what are you lot doing?" Jareth stormed into view, wearing a cape that was fluffed up in his agitation. "You never let anything get past the very beginning! There are twelve hours and thirty eight minutes left! What are we supposed to do?" He didn't seem particularly disturbed by the centipedes drinking from their grisly cup, nor the eye capped tentacles that were trying to caress him.

"Tha misssssusss wanted teeeeee." The first centipede clacked.

"She always wants bleeding tea!" Jareth snapped. "That doesn't mean you need to decapitate a Runner and feed her brains!"

"Warm like teeee." The centipede argued.

Jareth rubbed his eyes with his first two fingers. "Fine, fine, whatever." He sighed. "With you this terrifying this one must have been quite a horrible person, that this is their expectation. Not that I couldn't figure that out with where I got the child from." He dropped his hand and spun on one heel to one wall. Gekko had a brief moment of panic as he thought himself discovered, but Jareth just waved a hand and conjured a large, flat round object with two metal bars attached to its middle, radiating out.

The Goblin King idly spun the larger bar around and around, the shorter one following suit. "Having to re-order time, ridiculous. I suppose it is nice to not have to defeat the Labyrinth again, though..." There was a deep, reverberating chime, then another, then another and again- repeating thirteen times in total.

With a shimmer of something akin to heat haze, the two centipedes shrunk, the head dropping with a thunk and then a splat, rolling with a scrape of bone on rock. Two tufted worms were left- one with a fashionable red scarf, the other in a delicate blue bonnet. The eye tentacles shrunk down to short stalks, and it lost its teeth entirely.

"Well, Goblin King- fancy a drink? The missus just brewed up a cup."

"Oh, yes, dear. I did!"

"That's quite alright." Jareth grimaced.

"Oh, no, dear- I do love brain- good for the young'uns, you know. But the tea inside is made from some absolutely lovely tea leaves that Sir Didymus was so kind to fetch us from over by the Bog." The worm in the bonnet said cheerfully.

"I think I'll live without it."

"Suit yerself." The two worms shrugged and retreated back into the wall proper.

"This just doesn't seem like the work of an insect..." Jareth mused to himself, pushing at the battered head with the toe of his boot dubiously. "What's said is said and the child is mine regardless." He rolled his wrist and a crystal appeared. He threw it at the body and both parts of it disappeared, along with the blood and other bits of tissue strewn about the corridor. "Just remember that the farther they get, the more energy and imagination is infused into the Labyrinth. Killing them accomplishes nothing."

"We win, don't we?" The missus asked, shrugging. "And they deserve it."

Jareth sighed and leapt into the air, changing into an owl and flying off into the glittering fog.

Gekko huffed and settled down for a nap. He had a feeling that wouldn't be the only one for tonight. And regardless of what that bird brained king wanted, it was a much nicer conclusion in Gekko's eyes. At least he didn't have to deal with any foreign memories or emotions. He didn't know how rivers that went through cities managed it.

OoooOOoo

"Oh, don't go in there, dearie."

Gekko opened an eye, looking up at a young human girl talking to the worm. Who was still a worm. If anything, he looked more friendly than he usually did, with big bushy eyebrows and his scarf looking quite cozy.

"Why not?" The girl asked.

"There's a dragon in that water and he's a bit grumpy." The missus noted.

"Hah! That's a way to put it, love." Mr. Worm replied.

"Oh? Maybe he would be less grumpy if he had someone to talk to?"

"Why don't you just run along, dear. You're little brother is waiting for you, isn't he?" Mrs. Worm suggested.

"Oh!" The girl ran off into the distance, her sudden movement causing dust to kick up in her wake.

"Well, she didn't want to go that way. It leads straight to the castle!" Mr. Worm shook his head. "The King will not be pleased."

"Why are you helping that one?" Gekko asked. They had not seemed at all sympathetic to prior human Runners.

"Well, we are reflections of the Runner- the whole Labyrinth is. When they are horrible, dark, dangerous, nasty people, then we are, too." Mr. Worm nodded sagely.

"And when a flighty dear like that accidentally wishes away her little brother, we are a bit fluff headed as well." Mrs. Worm added.

"It's more common that we are selfish and cruel, but inside still a decent sort of being." Mr. Worm shrugged. "When the Runner wins, anyway."

"The Runner will win?"

"Probably already has." Mr. Worm said fatalistically.

"Well, the Labyrinth would be fracturing then, wouldn't it? She came though here."

Gekko looked after where the girl had been running. If it fractured, would it go back to his river? That... might be problematic. It was just recovering from the last upset and he almost had the basking spot back to where it would be usable. And if someone else were to conquor it, would he lose control?

When he felt the Labyrinth starting to shake and dissolve, he disagreed. Though movement was good, stability was as well. They couldn't be flash floods all the time. He settled into his deep currents and pulled the rock with him. It stayed.

Gekko smirked. Today, water won rock's game.