A/N: I wonder if anyone has realized the theme of Jareth's animal forms yet.
"Hoggle! Sir Didymus!" Sarah called as the Goblin King's illuminated form shrank a considerable amount. "Jareth's changing again!"
"Thank goodness!" Didymus sighed as he jogged around a scrap heap and over to the girl, dwarf in tow.
"Yeah, I was goin' stir crazy." His companion grunted.
"Indeed, and we were unfortunately unable to find any supplies, my lady. Everything in this detestable landfill is either useless, broken or simply too heavy to carry."
"Don't worry about it, guys." The girl said dismissively, keeping her focus on Jareth as he…vanished. "Hey! Where did he go?"
"Look!" Hoggle pointed at the pile of now empty bandages on the ground.
Something small and thin was wiggling beneath the bloody strips of cloth. Cautiously, Sarah reached out and lifted the material, only to jump back with a startled gasp.
A five foot long, pearl-white snake sat coiled in the dirt.
"Ugh," Sarah moaned, "I hate snakes!"
"Well, my lady, you must try to remember what is on the inside."
"Right," Hoggle grumbled, "a Goblin King…much worse. Besides, looks like he's a Blizzard Corn Snake. So he's not venomous or anythin'."
Sarah rolled her eyes at the dwarf as she stood up.
"Jareth wouldn't bite me even if he was."
"And just how do you now that?" Hoggle questioned arrogantly. "By the way you two have been so touchy-feely lately?"
Sarah's mouth opened and closed in astonishment. Her cheeks went red.
"Mind your own business, Hoggle." She muttered tersely, gathering Jareth up into her arms and draping him around her shoulders. "I believe you mentioned a secret entrance to the Firey Forest earlier? Well we've only got six more hours, so let's get going."
The group reached the refrigerator on the outskirts of the Junk Yard in a matter of minutes. With a forceful heave, Hoggle pried the door open only to groan once he saw what was inside.
"What's wrong?" Sarah asked, leaning over to get a better look.
A stairway led down into the fridge and at the bottom…was a tight cluster of thorns blocking the entire passageway.
"Confound it!" Hoggle screeched, slamming the refrigerator door shut. "I've just about had enough of this!"
"Calm down, Hoggle." The girl comforted. "We'll find another way."
"Yes, of course we will, Sir Dwarf!" Sir Didymus declared. "We shall simply re-trace our steps. Don't lose heart, my friend."
With a slightly doubtful frown, Hoggle nodded and followed along behind his friends as they headed back to the woods surrounding the Bog. As he passed the last mound of garbage, he paused when something caught his eye.
Picking up the item gingerly, he gave it a careful shake. A smirk appeared across the dwarf's face at the tiny splashing sound he heard and he discreetly stashed the object into the knapsack before hurrying to catch up to the others.
The group took the long way around the woods to avoid the main part of the Bog, much to Sarah's chagrin.
Though she hated the idea of coming across that horrible stench, she was very worried about Ludo and would've felt better checking on him. Plus, the walk had to have taken at least half an hour!
"Ah, here we are!" Sir Didymus exclaimed, coming to a stop before a stone wall, thirty feet high.
"Yup, that's the Lookout alright." Hoggle declared, craning his neck to see.
Sarah bit her lip nervously.
"How are we going to get up there from here?"
"I guess one of us will have to climb and hoist the others up one at a time." The dwarf suggested, fishing the rope from the knapsack.
The teenager examined her friends and then the wall with determination.
"I'll do it."
"What?!" Hoggle barked. "Sarah, no! It's too dangerous."
"I agree, my lady." Didymus joined. "Tis no job for a lady as fair as thee."
"Guys, I'm the biggest and the strongest right now. It'll be easy for me to lift you two up." The girl argued, taking the rope from the dwarf. "And don't worry, I've climbed trees my whole life and I used to rock-climb every year at summer camp."
"Well…," Hoggle hesitated, "if yer sure, then alright…but be careful!"
"I will."
After wrapping the rope about her waist and knotting it for good measure, Sarah re-adjusted Jareth's position on her shoulders more securely.
"Hang on tight." She whispered to the Goblin King and began her ascent.
"Sir Hoggle, what in the world is a…summer camp?"
"Almost there." Sarah panted, reaching for another niche in the rock.
All and all, the exercise hadn't been too difficult, especially with Hoggle and Didymus shouting words of encouragement from below.
Pulling herself up, she pressed her leg down so she could stretch the last few inches to reach the top, only to yelp in alarm as her foothold unexpectedly gave way. Clinging to the edge of the Lookout for dear life, her eyes widened when she felt a constriction on her throat.
"J-Jareth!" She choked, twisting her head from side to side. "Jareth, too-too tight!"
The pressure automatically relaxed and Sarah ignored her aching muscles as she finally managed to scramble onto the Lookout.
"Heh," she laughed feebly, winking at the snake, "piece of cake."
Thankfully, it hadn't taken too long for Sarah to get Didymus and Hoggle onto the Lookout. Though, the rope turned out to be a few feet short and the two goblins had to scale the wall about a quarter of the way themselves.
"C'mon!" Hoggle urged in excitement, directing the group along the Lookout. "Before we fell in the Bog, Didymus spotted the Firey Forest right…th-there. Aw, no!"
Quirking an eyebrow at her friend's abruptly somber tone, Sarah turned to see the dwarf and knight standing as still as statues. Slowly, she approached the pair and gazed out over the Labyrinth to see what held their attention.
Off in the distance, the glen of trees they'd seen and identified as the Firey Forest earlier, was now completely overrun with the Fairy thorns. It looked like a giant dome of dark brown and black spines.
"No." Hoggle croaked.
"No!" He repeated in a louder voice. "No, no, no, no, NO!"
"Hoggle, it's ok." Sarah soothed, hiding her disappointment. "Let's just go back to the Hedge Maze. We'll try the path you and Jareth took."
"What's the point?" He grumbled. "Let's face it, we're fightin' a losin' battle here. We've only got six hours left and we're nowhere near the Stone Quarter! The thorns are everywhere so we're goin' in circles and thanks to Mya, we're out of bandages and I only have a few drops of Fairy antidote left!"
Sarah blinked in confusion.
"What are you talking about? You hade half a bottle full and no one's been poisoned since Ludo scratched his arm."
The dwarf shook his head.
"When I was dressin' Jareth's wounds, I had to give him the antidote. Since Mya made that Minotaur, there was a distinct possibility that its horns were coated in Fairy venom and there were thorns in the Junk Yard, too. I had to be sure."
"Hoggle," Sarah whispered, kneeling to his side, "I know the odds are against us and…I know you're scared. I still am, too. But, remember why you set this challenge up in the first place? This is our only chance…and even if we don't win…honestly, I'd rather die than give into Mya."
"I love you and Sir Didymus and Ludo and…e-everyone in this place," she blushed and purposefully avoided meeting Jareth's eye, "and I'll do whatever it takes to keep you all safe. This isn't over yet, so we can't give up now. Please, Hoggle, I can't do this without you."
"My lady is right, Sir Hoggle; courage, my friend, courage."
The dwarf stared at his friends searchingly for a moment, before a small smile appeared.
"Well…mine and Jareth's trail didn't come to a dead end so…let's give it a shot."
"Gee, Hoggle," Sarah giggled, "if you'd taken only a couple of extra pages, you would've found this in nothing flat!"
"Oh hush!" The dwarf snapped, glaring at the Stone Quarter directly across the chasm in front of them. "Just gimme the rope."
Forcing herself to stifle her laughter, Sarah handed her friend the rope and watched as he fashioned the end into a lasso.
With the grace of an expert, Hoggle twirled the rope over his head like a cowboy and tossed the loop over the crack where it latched onto the round tip of a pillar, knocking off what looked like a large bird's nest.
"That should work fine." He mumbled, giving the rope a harsh tug to test its strength. "I'll just tie this end around the roots of these hedges and then we'll each take turns-"
"Um, H-Hoggle?" Sarah stammered. "What is that?"
Whirling around, Hoggle gulped at the sight of a silvery swarm rising out of the toppled nest.
"Damn it!" He hissed, backing away. The rope slipped from his grasp and fell away into the canyon where it hung from the opposite wall. "I thought that was a crow's nest. I just hit a Fariy hive! Run for it!"
The group promptly turned tail and fled, though Hoggle had to drag a thirsty-for-battle Sir Didymus along with him. The sound of flittering fairy wings chased after them, getting closer and closer.
"Don't look back!" Hoggle yelled. "There's enough of them to poison us all!"
By the time they reached the clearing, the fairies were on them. Desperate, Sarah grabbed her friends and huddled together behind the stone-book throne, silently praying that they'd get out of this alive somehow.
Suddenly, Hoggle wrenched himself free from the group and charged into the center of the space, yanking something out of the knapsack. With a wild cry, the dwarf raised a rusty spray can to the sky and squeezed the trigger.
The fairies seemed to let out a chorus of pained, high-pitched squeaks as an enormous cloud of white mist poured from the can. Immediately, several fairies that were the closest to the Labyrinth's gardener hit the ground dead.
All at once there was a bright explosion of light and, for a second, Sarah thought Jareth was transforming again, until she saw the rigid form of Mya.
The Fairy Queen hovered over the cowering dwarf, her burgundy eyes blazing with rage.
"How dare you?!" She seethed. "You worthless peasant! How dare you murder my babies?! You're going to pay dearly for that, you repulsive bastard!"
Before Sarah could move an inch, Mya seized the frozen dwarf by the shirt front, hoisted him into the air and sank her sharp fangs into his neck. The spray can clattered to the flagstone.
"HOGGLE!" Sarah screamed in horror, bursting from her crouched position and sprinting towards her friend.
"Take him away!" Mya ordered her fairies as she hurled the twitching and rapidly paling Hoggle over her shoulder. The fairies caught the dwarf easily and vanished over the western hedge wall.
"Please, please!" Sarah begged, tears streaming down her face. "He-he didn't-!"
In less than a heartbeat, Mya was a breath away from Sarah's face. Her expression was twisted with barely restrained fury. Without that child-like grin, her ashen skin and black eye shadow made her appear deranged.
"Listen, you filthy human bitch!" She seethed in a voice like acid. "If you or any of the rest of your little posse even try to pull another stunt like that, I'll bite what's left of your friends and make you watch as they bleed to death from every pore in their bodies. Are we clear?"
For once in her life, Sarah was too frightened to reply. All she could do was utter a pathetic whimper.
"Good!" Mya snarled. "Now get your trash out of here! NOW!"
Shrieking like a banshee, the Fairy Queen slapped her hands together and a wave of thorns instantly flooded the area.
Spinning on her heel, Sarah raced back to her friends and led them down the only clear passage, as fast as her feet could carry her.
She didn't even notice, at first, when Jareth started to glow again.
A/N: And the stakes just rose higher.