Author's Note: Oh my god, I am so sorry about the delay. There was a bunch of shit, like holidays and wisdom teeth removal and the return of Sherlock and a brief stint into the deep dark depths of the Hobbit fandom, all of which I feel terrible about. I also feel terrible because this chapter is mega, meag short. But I'm back in school and going to work regularly, which means I should be scribbling frantically between answering emails and not-actually-taking notes. I'm going to seriously try to update by next Sunday, but for now here's a mega short update while I wait for a stream for the last Sherlock episode.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything and I'm a terrible lazy human being omfg sorry.
Stiles took the first left he could and ten feet down that path hit a 'T'. One hallway went back toward the outside of the labyrinth, if he was keeping his mental map straight, and the other… He peeked around the corner and spotted something in the distance, just barely visible over the top of the labyrinth's walls. It didn't look much like a castle to him, but it was so far away that it was difficult to tell.
"Totally going that way then," Stiles muttered to himself. He took off down the hallway at a jog, ignoring how his sides ached. The hallways themselves were a little wider than the span of his arms if he held them straight out and the stones underneath his feet and along the walls were various sizes and shapes, though they were placed evenly enough. The hallway he was jogging down turned slightly to the right before turning sharply toward the left. The only problem was that it was a dead end.
"Dammit," he cursed, coming to a stop at the dead end. The far away shape he hoped was the castle was to his left, which meant the only option he had was to go back to the 'T' and turn toward the outside of the labyrinth. He tried to catch his breath, unexpectedly winded from jogging down the two hallways, and turned to stare at the shape in the distance. He leaned back against the wall behind him.
"Stiles, no," Eric shrieked. But Stiles couldn't hear her and it was too late already. The wall behind Stiles shifted into an opening, too fast to track, and Stiles fell backward.
"Ouch," Boyd muttered under his breath, wincing as he watched their packmate fall on his back. In the corner of his mind where he could feel Erica a jolt of pain inched through, along with the feeling of breathlessness. He winced a bit more in sympathy, reaching out to curl his hand around Erica's wrist, lest she throw herself at the glass wall again in frustration.
"Where the hell did that come from," she snapped, whirling to face the Goblin King. Boyd didn't much care for the way the glittery king acted, but at least he looked human. The goblins circling around them, skittering about and giggling whenever they found something Stiles did amusing was freaking him out. They reminded him of the kanima a little bit, with their green skin and little dirty claws. Some of them even hand tails, which was just a little bit more than he could handle.
The Goblin King rolled his eyes at Erica's question, like she was dumb, which made Boyd bristle more than anything else. "The Labyrinth is always changing," he said pointedly. "I do hate repeating myself, you should know."
"Oh my god," Stiles moaned on the other side of the glass wall. "What the fuck?"
"Language," the Goblin King muttered, slouching further into his chair.
I'll give you some language, Boyd thought darkly.
Stiles laid on his back from the second time in the span of ten minutes, breathless and aching. He wasn't quite sure what had happened, just that he had tried to lean against a wall that apparently hadn't been there a second after it had. The opening was still there, his legs sticking through it, and he blinked at the sky.
"Alright," he said, scooting to sit up and dragging his legs up to his chest. The back of his head hurt from knocking against the stone and he ran his hands over his buzzed short hair, wincing when his fingers skimmed over the back of his skull. "So, the walls move. I can deal with that." He struggled to his feet and took in the hallway he was in now, which looked like all the other hallways had. There was the opening he fell through and then the hallway extended out, a choice to go left or right.
"Wots he thinks he's doing," something said, a little bit muffled. "Fallin' all over the fraggity walk-walk like that? Don't he know we're sleepin'?"
"What," Stiles asked, spinning in place, trying to spot the thing that was talking. He checked the walls for more little blue worms, but nothing caught his eye. "Christ, whatever," he muttered, turning to go to the left. He stopped short, however, confronted by the sight in front of him. It was a wall, right where the rest of the hallway had been. "Oh come on," he complained. He turned around, noticing that the opening he had fallen through was missing as well, which meant he only had one option.
"Right, because that's playing fair."
"Fair," the Goblin King repeated. Boyd wasn't sure, but he sounded either amused and extremely annoyed. "I would have thought if there was one boy to be taught the lesson that life isn't fair it would be him."
"What's that supposed to mean," Erica asked lowly. She looked scared for a second; Boyd felt it like a flash of lightning down his spine. Her heartbeat thundered in his ears, like it always did, even when she was out of his sight.
"It means exactly what it means," the Goblin King answered cryptically, "and nothing more."
Erica growled. She twisted around until she was facing the Goblin King and Boyd noticed that her claws were beginning to peek from her fingertips. "You talk like you know who Stiles is," she pointed out. "Like you've met him before." Boyd had to admit, Erica was right; the Goblin King had tossed out several critical comments about Stiles behavior, much like an uncle who hadn't seen someone since they were a baby and were noting all the things they thought would be different. "Have you met Stiles before?"
"No," the Goblin King said shortly.
"Then how do you know about Stiles?"
"He's a runner in my labyrinth," the Goblin King replied drolly. "Of course I know about him, it's in the magic." His heartbeat was steady, but something was off. Boyd didn't know anything about magic, or much about being a werewolf, to be honest, but he would have bet money on the fact that the Goblin King knew Stiles from somewhere else. It was in the way his eyes followed Stiles, the way he spoke, the way he took actual offense to Stiles' stupid comments about the eyestalks and the glitter. It reminded him a little of Derek, how the older boy had tried to act like Stiles was full of shit and didn't know anything when Stiles was probably the only one who had a clue what to do anymore. But there wasn't anything to do about it, because calling the Goblin King out on his shit would just piss him off and Boyd knew better than that. Erica rallied against the bullshit answer though, anger swirling in the pack space in his head, and he grabbed her, pulled her back against him.
"Let it go," he whispered. He reached through the pack space, past the part in there that now belonged to Stiles and tried to press his feeings against hers, to show her he wasn't buying it either. After a minute she turned and settled back, facing the glass wall once more, but not until she had given the Goblin King a snarl and a glare.
"I'm quaking in my boots," the Goblin King drawled. The goblins around them giggled, a pitch that made the hair on Boyd's arms stand straight up. "Honestly, I am."
"Fuck off," Boyd grumbled, turning back to pay attention to Stiles once more.
Stiles was walking down the hallway, one hand leaning against the wall. He didn't give a crap about the glitter getting all over his skin anymore, considering the number of times he'd fallen down already. He'd also given up looking for the voice, especially since he hadn't heard it since the two openings had disappeared. Whatever that thing was, it didn't matter. He needed to get to the castle. The hallway he was going down lead him back in the direction of the worm, or at least he thought so. He'd always been better with directions than Scott, but that wasn't saying much. The hallway got a little odd after a while, taking a sharp indent toward the castle as the whole thing zig-zagged, turning the edges of the walls into a point that he crept around warily. He hadn't any evidence of a living creature since the voice he hadn't been able to pinpoint and in his mother's story there had been that little dwarf guy that had helped her back at the front gate. His mother had called him something, something that started with 'H', but Stile couldn't think of it. It was on the tip of his tongue… But if the size of the fairy population outside said anything, that dude didn't still work outside the gate, spraying them away. Stiles wondered where he was and if he could get him to help too. He didn't have any jewelry to use as a bribe, though.
He turned a corner that lead toward the vague shape in the distance and saw an opening ahead. It looked a little bit like it opened into a courtyard of some sort, but Stiles couldn't tell all that well, because it was around another slight corner. He hurried up a little bit, curious to what would be in the courtyard. He was more than a little bit disturbed to find what he did.
"Oh my god," he exclaimed, jumping back a couple of steps. "What the fuck are all those hands doing on that fucking column?"
They were large, way larger than human hands. Stiles wondered dimly if they were something really creepy, like mummified giant hands. Actually once that thought it struck it wouldn't leave him alone and he inched forward carefully, absolutely fascinated. They were all pointing, every finger but the index finger curled into the palm, and they were all pretty much facing different directions. There weren't enough hallways for all the hands, but as Stiles crept carefully around it he noticed that the hallway openings sort of moved, shifting along the wall. He assumed that all the hands got a chance to point to an opening at least sometime, which seemed kind of cool.
"Dude," he muttered, peering closely at one of the hands . It was huge. "These have got to be mummified giant hands."
"They've got to be what," the Goblin King said. Erica sputtered in a little laugh and even Boyd felt a grin cracking his face. God, but wasn't that just like Stilinski? Mummified giant hands, what the hell went on in that kid's head?
"Well," Erica said, grinning, "are they?"
"No, they are not," the Goblin King said. He sounded baffled, but when Boyd peeked back the king looked to be grinning a little bit around the edge of the hand he was leaning on. "Mummified giant hands indeed," the king continued to grumble to himself. "Like I would be able to kill enough giants to get all the hands needed for all those pillars," he continued, "what a task that would be. Interesting idea though… It has merit."
"She'd be angry," one of the goblins nearest to the throne pointed out. "She likes the trollses."
The Goblin King sighed, seeming all of sudden like a sullen child. "Don't remind me," the slouching king muttered softly. To Boyd's shock and horror he then kicked at the goblin, who flew across the room with a high pitched little shriek. The shriek was sort of… gleeful?
"Me, me," the hordes of creatures called out. "Kick me next, kingy, kick me next." Boyd blinked at the lot of them, utterly baffled. They liked the abuse? The goblin who had gotten kicked tottered back to its place at the bottom of the steps of the chair, where it sat down with a pointy toothed grin that stretched rather proudly across the width of its face.
"I flew," it told the other goblins smugly.
"Hush, or you're all going in the Bog," the Goblin King snapped. "I'm trying to see which hallway he'll take."