Chapter 12

The blood came in spurts at first, gushing out a frightening speed. But now, after hours of consistently applying pressure, it had been reduced to a slow drip. Aladdin could tell immediately that he had lost a lot of blood – the floor was covered in it, and some of it had mixed with the black sand still lying on the floor and created a strange clot-like mush. He had not known he could bleed that much and still live, but he was grateful.

He rested for a few days, fearing that straining himself by trying to navigate the maze, and possibly having to fight something or someone else, would only make his wounds worse. But he had run out of food long ago, and was starving. The lack of nutrition wasn't helping him heal any faster. The wounds never seemed to heal correctly, and he was slowly getting weaker and weaker. For the second time since entering the maze, he wondered if he was dying…

Mirage was thrilled to discover that although her precious creation had not killed Aladdin immediately, the wounds he sustained from the fight were still slowly doing their work. He looked pale, sickly. His injuries would likely become infected. His chances of surviving were becoming less and less. Even if he found the strength to keep moving and face the next challenge, it would almost certainly finish him.

She could already see herself parading through the streets of Agrabah as queen, watching the crowds lining the streets cower in fear. Since her strange meeting with Mozenrath, she had taken to picturing Jasmine being dragged behind in chains, or paraded in rags inside a golden cage. Part of her had always envied Jasmine's beauty and power – to gain what little she had, Mirage had been forced to sacrifice her female beauty and become something mutant, something abnormal. Her countenance and manners were still sensual and alluring, but no man would ever want a creature that was neither animal nor human, and evil beyond imagining.

No one, that is, except the one man who had known her and loved her before she sacrificed everything. Her one-time lover turned nemesis, Fasir, always seemed to be waiting in the wings. But she had been so busy plotting Aladdin's downfall that she had not thought of his uncanny ability to discover and interfere in all of her well laid plans. For a moment, she had quite forgotten about him, until he appeared, uninvited, while she stared at Aladdin's wounded body through her portal.

"You have gone too far this time, Mirage." The withered but firm voice sent shivers down her spine. Between Fasir and Mozenrath, she had dealt with far too many interruptions to her peaceful plotting.

"Who are you to tell me that?" she snapped. "Your magic is useless now! Aladdin is nearly dead."

"Nearly, but not quite," Fasir replied, the hint of a smile appearing on his lips. "He fights for something you no longer remember - love."

Mirage chucked. "Oh, not this silly debate again. I've told you before, love is for the weak. His love for that silly girl weeping in the palace will not save him this time.

"That is not the love I meant," he replied. "It is true he fights for the queen, but he also fights for something even deeper - his love for Agrabah."

At this Mirage could merely glare and hiss quietly as he continued.

"The city bore and bred him, he rose to great heights there. He will fight to the death to keep it from you."

"You're an old fool! Aladdin will fight and he will die because he cannot win! His love for Agrabah only serves to make him weaker, and if you DARE try to help him -"

She whipped around to face him, but he was already gone. She knew he had something up his sleeve, though what exactly she could not guess. Even she had to admit that his powers far outmatched her own. If he chose to intervene, she would have no power to stop him. From this point on, she realized she might have to fight a war on two fronts - the first being her goal to kill Mozenrath and gain sole possession of the throne, and the second being her new goal to counteract any attempts by Fasir to help Aladdin.

As she gazed at the battered, broken man before her, she could not help feel a hint of glee, and pray to the gods that his days were numbered. But a sense of dread was growing within her, a foreboding that none of her evil machinations was quite able to quell.

It was dark again. So dark that only the light of the moon guided Aladdin's footsteps. A cool breeze drifted through the maze. It brushed past his scraped knees, his bruised ribcage, through his dirty, sweat drenched hair.

He wandered aimlessly, running into dead ends at seemingly every turn. Occasionally it felt as if someone were walking with him, as if there was someone there, but he knew he was completely and utterly alone.

Then, from the darkness came a voice. a voice he had not heard for many years. It whispered like the wind and penetrated his soul, making him instantly stop mid-stride. It called to him in a wailing, helpless voice that sounded close yet far away.

"Aladdin! Aladdin...where are you?" After one endless minute of staring and listening, he let the words his had longed to say slip from his lips.

"...Mother?"

It stopped, and all was still again. Without a second thought he began to run, crashing into dead ends and retracing tried paths trying to find that voice. The voice of his sole companion for the brief amount of his childhood in which she lived. The voice of the woman whom he had watched die of disease and heartache when he was only nine years old. The woman who had nursed him, protected him, loved him. The woman he had forced himself to forget because the memory of her was too painful to bear.

Soon he was sprinting. Then, without knowing it, he was screaming.

"Mother! MOTHER! Where are you?!"

He waited for the voice to come back, waited to hear her tell him she was there and that everything would be alright. He remembered how she held him as a boy, how their troubled lives and desperate poverty were distant memories when he snuggled into her chest in their dingy hovel. One foot in front of the other, one never ending drive to find something, anything, to keep him going in the middle of this nightmare.

It did not matter that she was certainly dead. It did not matter that he had held her hand as she slipped into eternity and felt the life drain out of her. All that mattered was that he had heard her voice for the first time in a decade, and a glimmer of hope had entered his heart.

He called and called with reckless abandon, tears streaming down his cheeks. But there was no answer, and no breath left in his tired body. He collapsed against a nearby wall, his breath heavy and panting. She was not there. She had never been there. Why had he thought so? Silly, he mused. Stupid. The tears fell hard and fast, and soon he was sobbing. For for the first time since she died, he allowed himself to cry for her.