100 Themes Challenge Ch. 12

100 Themes Challenge
Chapter 12

# 43 Dying

It was late, far too late to be walking along a sidewalk lit every twenty-five feet with a pool of golden light from a nearby streetlamp, but that was exactly what Sarah Williams was doing. Her low heels clicked on the cement and her skirt made a soft whooshing sound as it moved with her legs. She hadn't intended to stay so late, but sometimes, she got caught up at work. There was always so much to do and so little time to do it in at the bakery where she worked as one of the managers. It was her duty to order inventory and handle the financial side of things, which was what she'd been doing tonight… month-end was always a killer.

A brisk breeze blew down the street and Sarah shivered and picked up her step. She didn't notice the streetlamp behind her wink out, but she did notice when the one in front of her did. She stopped shortly and sucked in a gasp of cold air. The darkness pressed in on her from all sides and time seemed to stretch on as the still of the night bore down on her. Sarah blinked once and suddenly the streetlamp flicked back on, burning her retinas for a moment until her irises adjusted. Her heart pounded from the rush of adrenaline that had shot through her system. "Move, Sarah," she muttered to herself.

She doubled her pace and made it to her apartment in record time and with no more incidents. The key rattled in the lock as her hand shook while she opened the door, but the minute it was open she rushed inside and re-locked it with both dead bolt and chain. She stood there for a long minute simply breathing with her head resting against the cool wood and trying to calm herself. There was really no reason for her heart to be galloping the way it was. After all, street lamps flickered all the time; she was just unlucky enough to have been caught under one when it happened. There was no reason to suspect anything supernatural about the incident.

Once her heart was under control and her hands had stopped shaking, Sarah turned around to face the inside of her apartment. The lights were out, but she could've told anyone that directly to her left was the kitchen counter and in front of her, about twenty paces away, was her living room couch, not to mention the chair that was pulled out from the table where she'd sat that morning to eat her breakfast, but had been in too big of a hurry to push it back in. Letting out a long sigh, the brunette woman pushed off the door and maneuvered through the obstacle course of furniture to her bedroom door. Just as she was about to open it, a soft creak drew her attention. It was the kind of soft creak heard when someone shifts slightly while sitting on a leather sofa. The kind of leather sofa that sat in Sarah's living room. Her adrenaline spiked again and her heart pounded. There was someone in her apartment.

Whoever it was obviously knew she was there, and had to know that she knew now. "Who's there?" she asked with less confidence in her voice than she would've liked.

There was a long stretch of silence where Sarah hoped that the creak had been in her imagination, but that was shattered when a low masculine voice answered back, "I think you know who I am, Sarah."

The brunette was now on the verge of outright panic, but she tried to keep her cool as she turned toward where she knew the couch to be and spoke to the barely visible man sitting there. "What do you want?"

She could just barely make out his wealth of pale hair seeing as some of it caught the stray bits of moonlight filtering from the window nearby, but the rest of him was lost to the darkness. She simply could not imagine why the Goblin King would be in her apartment at this time of night, but every instinct was telling her to get away. She ignored them though, reasoning that he was only a man… a man with magic, but a man nonetheless… that and there was a Louisville slugger sitting propped up against the wall nearby in case he did have foul intentions. "A strong drink would be nice, for starters," he answered her question.

Sarah was broken out of her frozen stance by his request and she reached over to turn on the lamp sitting on the nearby end table. The 40 watt light bulb lit the area and his lean form was finally visible to her. He was wearing all black, including a loose poet's shirt, sinfully tight breeches, and leather riding boots with a silver buckle on the side. His gloved hands were folded in his lap, one leg was crossed over the other, and she couldn't help but stare at his uneven icy blue eyes. They looked so old, as though they'd seen so much and held so many secrets. She crossed her arms over her chest, her button up cardigan bunching with the movement. "I beg your pardon?"

"I said, that a strong drink would be welcome, though I suppose tea would do if you don't have anything."

Sarah's eyes flickered up to the top of the refrigerator where a bottle of Jameson Whiskey sat. "And why would I offer the King of the Goblins a drink at two o'clock in the morning when I should be going to sleep?"

"Because the King of the Goblins has something very important to discuss with you and it's considered polite to offer a drink to guests… or so I'm told."

His eyes never left hers, and his mouth quirked up at one corner as he finished. She blushed as she realized that despite his not being welcome, he was a guest and was correct in that offering a drink was polite. "What if I don't want to hear what the King of the Goblins has to say?" She asked remaining steadfast in her position next to her bedroom door.

"The King of the Goblins would consider that to be too bad and would tell you anyway," he paused. "And I would listen if I were you; he's not in the best of moods."

Sarah squinted slightly as she perused his face. Even though he was mocking her, he did seem serious. Giving in, she dropped her arms to her side and trudged back to the kitchen to pull two short tumblers out of the cupboard above the sink and the whiskey from the top of the fridge. After she'd poured them each a glass with ice, she moved back into the living room and offered him one of the glasses before settling down on the opposite end of the couch. She would've sat somewhere else, except that the couch was the only piece of furniture in her living room at the moment, besides the end table with the lamp and the coffee table with a small television. Taking a drink to fortify herself, she leaned back against the armrest and started the conversation. "So what's so important that you can't wait till the morning to tell me?"

"I'm dying," he said simply.

Sarah stopped breathing for a moment and her eyes swooped over his body again, searching for any telltale signs that what he said was true. She noted that he did seem kind of haggard in appearance, dark shadows under his eyes, the hallows of his cheeks seemed to be sunken in even more than the last time she'd seen him, and the way he sat indicated that he was quite tired. "You're what?"

"Dying, yes you heard me correctly. Well, actually it's the labyrinth that's dying and seeing as we're so interconnected, I'm going along with it."

A long silence followed this statement in which Sarah's brain refused to process anything. Finally, she asked him another question. "Why are you telling me this?"

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair that she now noticed seemed more pale and kind of limp. "Where to start," he muttered. "I guess the simplest answer would be that I have no one else to tell."

Sarah's heart clenched a little at this revelation. It appeared that the Goblin King was much more open when he knew that his death was imminent. "How – How long do you have, do you think?" she stuttered.

"I'm not sure, but I've been on a steady decline for about the last seventeen years." He took a long sip of the amber liquid in his glass and made a face as it burned down his throat.

Sarah, meanwhile, was doing some quick mental math and was not liking what she was coming up with. If she was subtracting correctly, it was seventeen years ago that she'd run through the labyrinth. Sweat broke out across her brow and her hands felt clammy. "W-Why is the labyrinth dying?" she asked dreading the answer.

"Because the magic is being sucked out of it. Which brings me to the other reason I'm here telling you this," he paused to take another sip of whiskey. "You are the reason the labyrinth is losing its magic."

"But how?"

"When you won, you were given the choice to become a Queen at my side or to leave the Underground. You chose the later, but the labyrinth, in its infinite wisdom, left a portal open between your world and the Underground so that you could choose to come back if you so desired. The magic of the labyrinth has been slowly draining through that portal for the past seventeen years, hence my visit." He finished and Sarah noted that he was breathing a little more laboriously as though the effort used to tell her all this was too much for him.

The brunette sat in silence as she absorbed what the Goblin King had just said. If it was true, and it certainly looked like he was dying, it was all her fault. "Why don't you just close the portal?" she asked.

"I can't. The labyrinth won't let me. Believe me, I've tried."

"There's no way to close it at all?"

"I didn't say that…"

"But…"

"I just said that I can't close it."

"Well then who can?" He leveled his gaze at her. "Me?"

"And that brings me to the third reason I came tonight."

"What makes you think I can close it?"

He shrugged. "It's the only thing I haven't tried. When all else fails, the only course left, no matter how improbable, must be the answer."

"But… I wouldn't even know where to begin closing a portal between our worlds!"

"It's not that hard, and I would be there to guide you."

Sarah downed the rest of her whiskey and set the glass down on the end table. She stared at the beige carpet for a long moment before she looked back up at him. Her eyes seemed to sweep over him once more before she asked, "What would I have to do?"

The Goblin King smiled a genuine smile and rose unsteadily to his feet, setting his finished glass of whiskey down on the table next to hers, before offering her a hand. She took it hesitantly and allowed him to help her up. Both of his hands came up to grip her biceps tightly and he closed his eyes. That was when the room started spinning and everything seemed to fade away only to be replaced with a familiar scene of a windswept hill and a few scraggily trees. Sarah stood very still as she regained her sense of equilibrium, and she noticed that the Goblin King's grip on her arms did not lessen, in fact in seemed to tighten. She looked up to his face to see he was still concentrating. He started to mutter something in a different language and the dizziness spinning through Sarah's head increased steadily until it felt like she was in the middle of a tornado.

What the hell was going on? What was he doing? His muttering continued and she felt her knees give out from under her as her strength was sucked from her body. He knelt with her, keeping her upper body from collapsing with his tight grip. "Stop," she demanded weakly, her voice a ragged whisper.

He did not listen though and continued with his spell, the words becoming stronger, louder, more forceful. Sarah felt so weak, she could no longer even hold her head up and it lolled to the side and back as she struggled to gasp in air. Every single muscle in her body was strained and she didn't know how much longer she could stay conscious. At that moment however, he completed his incantation and let go of her arms. She fell to the side, unable to even lift an arm to catch herself. Slow, shallow breaths wheezed in and out of her mouth and it was an effort to even keep her eyelids open.

The Goblin King however looked to be stronger than ever as he stood to his full height and sucked in a deep breath and let it out. His face was still pale, but it was back to its former rich sharp planed features; his hair shone in the dim moonlight, returned to its anti-gravitational state. His body was once more the well-toned, long limbed, impressive specimen it was when she'd first seen him in her parent's room. "Thank you, my dear," he said sardonically as he crouched before her weak and withered form.

"W-What… did you… do?" she stuttered out.

"Merely took back what was mine, plus interest," he replied with a smirk.

She didn't have the strength to look at him, but she tried her best to furrow her brow. "What do… you mean?"

"I did not lie to you earlier, Sarah. The labyrinth and myself were dying from lack of magic. However the reason might have been made-up. When you won the challenge of the labyrinth, you were given the option of staying here to become the next Goblin Queen, to take my place as it were, but since you decided to go home, the magic went with you. I knew that would happen… it was why I pleaded with you so hard to stay. I spent several years researching how to get the magic back and I finally found it late one night. However in order for the magic to return, I needed you to return willingly, so I studied you for a few years to learn how best to get you here and eventually decided to play on your sense of guilt and honor."

"You… jackass," she muttered.

He laughed, a sharp cruel laugh. "Yes, well what's done is done and as you humans say, there isn't a thing you can do about it." He chuckled again then looked at the outrage in her eyes. "Oh do cheer up, I doubt you'll die. You humans are so resilient for being mortal. I'm sure you'll recover in a few days time."

"And… then what?"

He shrugged. "What does it matter to me what you do? You've served your purpose to me."

"Will you… send me home?"

"Hmm…" he pondered the question. "No, I don't think I will. I rather like the idea of making you suffer as much as I did over the past seventeen years. Do you know what it's like to slowly starve from lack of magic?" Acidity filled his voice now and his eyes were trained on hers with intensity. "It's like trying to survive on only bread and water. It can be done, but you weaken and slowly decay."

Sarah shivered at the idea of spending the rest of her life in the Underground with the Goblin King. "You… you can't… What about… my family?"

"It's not my problem. Nor is it yours any longer. They don't exist to you anymore and there is no way for you to return. Perhaps if in twenty or thirty years time I feel you've suffered as I have, then I might let you see them again, but don't count on ever returning to your world."

Tears formed at the corners of her eyes and she tried to suck in a breath to let out a low sob, but her lungs ached and she ended up coughing instead. "Now, I think it's time we move this to the castle beyond the goblin city. Perhaps once you've recovered, you can get started on repaying me by cleaning the castle? It shouldn't be too hard; I'm sure the goblins will help you out." He couldn't keep his face straight as he said this and ended up laughing. "Come." And with that he transported them to the castle.