AN: Sincere apologies, I'm writing the final chapter and it's taking a while to set the scene. TRIGGER WARNING: Sexual assault

Half an hour later, Sarah found herself sitting in Amanda's office around her desk with the homeless man, who'd she'd discovered was actually called Sir Balthazar of the Western Forest, Noble Steed who had raided someone's gym bag left in the work lockers and sat sniffling and looking very uncomfortable while her usual clothes dried and Rosa, who for once was too shocked to speak after all she'd seen and heard.

The door from the alley had led directly to a network laid out under the city, which Amanda had explained was not visible or accessible to mortals under any circumstance, but Sarah was a special case, and "I lined the entire thing with the very last of my silverwort to make sure you and your friend could get through it without losing an eye or a hand."

Sarah had just followed mutely, hazel eyes glimmering in the dim light to the sound of their shoes collectively crunching along the pathways, but Rosa had hopped back. "An eye! A hand! Sarah what are we doing with these cokeheads, let's go!"

And it turned out that Amanda was not Amanda at all. Her name was actually Celeste, and she was a low level priestess. All this she had explained to Sarah and Sarah nodded while Rosa said nothing.

"I have been in London for a very long are others from other realms here too. We live as mortals do, blending in and not attracting attention. We act sometimes as the unwanted, horrible bosses or the homeless," she explained, cupping her mug of tea.

"So Jareth sent you both to watch me?"

"Oh no my lady, but news travels fast in the Underground. You apparently don't know this, and it seems high highness didn't tell you, but you are somewhat of a celebrity in the Underground. You were the only person to run the Labyrinth successfully - it's turned you into something of a legend." said Celeste.

Rosa looked at Sarah, who was staring back at Celeste in total confusion. "A celebrity?"

Celeste nodded. "Yes, my lady. There have long been creatures from the Underground in the Aboveground, and wherever you go, news of your presence travels fast. It was not coincidence that our paths crossed. But even without the two of us, the Underground would have found someone you to offer its protection."

"Why…. why would I need protection?" stammered Sarah.

Sir Balthazar spoke now. "My lady, as the only person to complete the Labyrinth, and a mortal no less, you were a source of delight to those with kind hearts in the Underground, but a source of fear for those who make an enemy of his highness. If you as a mortal and a mere child at that could run the entire Labyrinth using no more than your own skill, the right kind of training could have made you positively lethal. You were like a light in the darkness that we felt obliged to protect. The runner of the Labyrinth is much too precious to let back into the world without protection following her."

Sarah nodded as if she understood, but none of this made sense. She took a moment to sink her face into her hands and rub her tired eyes. Celeste stood up and folded her hands in front of her.

"Do you need some tonic, my lady?" she asked.

"No," said Sarah, not looking up. "I'm just thinking about what just happened. And about … about Jareth."

Noble Steed let out a sob from the corner of the room.

"So this Jareth guy is his highness." said Rosa, matter of factly. She thought back to her grandmother's stories, the drawing she'd done for Sarah. "So he's real, this goblin king. My grandma told me about him, and I'd drawn him for her when I was a girl. But I thought it was just a fairytale. Jareth is actually real," she babbled. She was rambling, Rosa knew that, but she couldn't stop the words as they spilled along. Celeste nodded. "And you're not really homeless, you're a mystic knight." she said, tipping her finger at Sir Balthazar. He said "Yes, my lady."

"And you are, like, an old timey something-or-the-other or like a human WhatsApp…" she said to Noble Steed, who wiped her tears with the back of her hand and shrank into herself. "I'm not a human I am Fae and nothing is up. I'm a messenger, it's a very noble profession." said Noble Steed. Her lip trembled and her eyes filled with tears. This day was taking its toll on everyone.

Sarah looked up and spoke gently to the frightened fae. "It's alright, Noble Steed. She didn't know any of this. She's just trying to make sense of it."

"So do you want to tell me what you really are then?" she said, crossing her arms and looking at Sarah.

"Me? I'm just me, Rosa!"

"Right…"

Celeste neatly interjected. "We don't have much time, my lady. It's important that you hear what we have to say next. Jareth gave us his blessing once we came to know of his comings and goings Aboveground. We offered merely to ensure that you stayed out of harm's way and safe from enemies. But events since then…" her voice trailed off and tears formed in her eyes.

Sir Balthazar took over where she left off. His voice was steadier than Celeste's who was still struggling to keep her tears back, but Sarah's senses were alert and she was tuned into the edge of desperation in even his voice. "My lady, a most extreme tragedy has befallen our kingdom, and as much as we wish we didn't have to ask you, it appears that you are our only hope."

"Me? Why? What's happened?"

"Your last night with his majesty, Cenric tracked down the Goblin King."

Sarah's hands flew to her mouth. "No! That's not possible. How could Cenric possibly find Jareth with all the protection he had around him?"

Sir Balthazar laced his fingers on the desk in front of him and nodded. "He used a dream vector. He used you to locate Jareth."

"But how?" said Sarah, shaking her head. "I thought we were safe! Jareth said he'd cloaked everything! How could they have found us?!"

"My lady, can you recall any strange dreams you had that night, strange people you saw in those dreams?"

Sarah nodded. How could she forget. "I was in a marketplace, there was a man there-"

"What did he look like?"

"Well, he was tall and he had very white skin and very black eyes. His laugh was truly horrible."

"Meridian," whispered Celeste.

Noble Steed's hand went to her mouth in horror and Sir Balthazar groaned. "Good gods, how did they…..We're fortunate he didn't reach through the dream vector and kill you outright. He must not have been able to extract from Jareth your true identity or importance."

Sarah was looking back and forth between the three fae now. "What's a dream vector?"

"A dream vector," said Celeste, "Is a manifestation that can reach into a person's dreams and engage them to deliver a message or extract information. Sometimes they are harmless, lovers sending messages to each other when they're forbidden to meet. Most fae are immune to them, we all wear amulets to protect us from just this sort of intrusion, since we're suspicious and a sleeping mind is as good as an open door."

"Their rarity is perhaps why his highness neglected to bestow an amulet on you…" said Celeste. She had sat back down now and was twisting a ring on one of her fingers. "He had only factored in physical harm. Physical intrusions. And his cloak spell is a very good one. Only someone with Meridian's dark magic was able to find this convoluted way around it. He had to insert himself into your dream and work hard to make sure you followed his script." She clicked her tongue, shaking her head. "If only we'd thought of an amulet…"

Sarah looked up. "But I do have something, look!" she pulled out the key dangling from the ribbon on her neck. "Jareth gave me this!"

"No, my lady. Jareth passed that on to you. The Oracle gave you that, and that I'm afraid is just a key." said Sir Balthazar.

"Whoa whoa, wait a second. Jareth said the Oracle stuff was top secret. So how do you two know about it?"

Celeste sighed. Sir Balthazar leaned in to her and whispered, but Sarah heard. "Shall I tell her?" Celeste shook her head.

"We know about the Oracle, my lady, because of the emergency message network Jareth put in place in case such a disaster ever occurred. Of course, he never thought he'd have to use it. But such is life. Cenric's men, they work fast. They shut down all magic in the immediate area after they captured his highness. Their black magic is strong, unfortunately." Celeste got up and walked around her desk to the large cupboard behind it.

"There was only enough time for Kahina to send us a message with a quick description of your destiny, since she knew your destiny is tied to all of ours. She also sent us this."

Celeste opened the door. It blocked Sarah's view as she reached inside to pull something out.

"My lady, you know little of us, and I expect no promise of you. But I speak from the very insides of my soul when I say, you are our only hope." Celeste had been recovering her composure, but her voice had started to falter again. Noble Steed sat in a corner weeping quietly, and even Sir Bathazar had allowed a few tears to fall, though he was trying his best to look stoic.

Celeste pulled out a long, old-looking bow and arrow. It was the bow and arrow the Oracle had shown her, the one from her mother.

"Oh my god…" whispered Sarah.

Celeste took the bow and arrow and laid it neatly at Sarah's feet, but Sarah was even more shocked when she didn't get up again. She remained where she was, kneeling before Sarah, weeping freely now. Noble Steed and Sir Balthazar joined her, shocking Sarah even more.

"Daughter of Afriti, on behalf of the Underground, I beg you. Take this bow and arrow, and fulfill your destiny. You have blood in your veins which aligns your destiny with ours. Slay Cenric, save our kingdom, Cenric thought he killed all your kind but he didn't not, your mother, she got away and she made you, and you are all we have now! You are the only one who can do it! You are our only hope. Please, my lady, we beg you, we beg you!"

She grabbed onto Sarah's elbows, sobbing desperately. Sarah tried to steady herself and lift up Celeste at the same time.

"Celeste… I know you think I'm some kind of legend, but I'm just an ordinary woman. Believe me if I could help, I would, but I don't even know what I'd have to do to save you. I've never even tried to shoot a bow and arrow, much less one with so much riding on it." whispered Sarah, herself starting to cry now at the hopelessness of their situation. But Celeste shook her head. She looked up at Sarah, her eyes wild with thoughts.

"You don't need to know, my lady, you already know. It's in your blood. You must trust me on this. There is one arrow here, and with this arrow your blood will guide you at the right moment. If Cenric falls, they all do."

Sarah looked at Celeste. She cried, thinking of Jareth who had tried to protect her and failed. She felt his own sense of despair and anger deeply, like his feelings her entwined with hers. The three fae continued to kneel, looking up at Sarah desperately. The Labyrinth runner. Their only hope.

Inside her heart, fear began to melt, leaving behind something shiny, something sharp. It was her courage, and it had finally found her.

She stood up straighter. Rosa noticed the sudden change in her friend.

"Sarah… what are you doing?"

"I'll do it." said Sarah.

"What?!" screamed Rosa, as the two female fae dissolved into tears and Sir Balthazar wiped his eyes and quickly took a piece of paper to make a list.

"My lady, we are eternally grateful," he said, beginning to write.

"The world you are going to, my lady, is a terrible place. We have very little time, they will have kept our king alive for now but tomorrow at dawn he will meet his doom in front of the entire kingdom."

Sarah coolly watched Sir Balthazar as he wrote things down and drew diagrams for her. "Given that our magic has been compromised, the only way to reach Cenric's kingdom is through a water portal."

"Where do we find one of those?"

"There's one in Hyde Park, not far from here. It's where Noble Steed was able to emerge. They seem to have neglected to shut that one permanently, but that doesn't mean it's open all the time."

"The Serpentine" said Sarah, nodding.

"Yes, yes that's right," said Sir Balthazar. Behind him, Noble Steed and Celeste were preparing this and putting together that, provisions and clothes, things Sarah would need.

"Can you swim, my lady?"

"A bit."

"Alright. What you need to do is dive down into the water portal. As you do so, we will be on the shore casting a portal opening spell. You must not have doubt in your mind. You must continue to dive, keep going down, and at the crucial moment, when your feet touch the bottom, you will feel a shift around you, like an electricity. How can I explain it, the water will… it will jump around you. At that moment, push off from the bottom and keep going to the top. You will emerge in Cenric's kingdom."

"How much time do we have?" asked Sarah as Celeste and Noble Steed ran over to her, quickly stripping off her clothes and dressing her in new ones.

Celeste looked at her watch. "Around six hours. If you go now, you will have enough time to acquire the smell of the place, so that no one will see you coming by scent alone. Any later, and you'll still smell mortal. Cenric's people could sniff out a gnat in a dung pile."

"We think his highness will be kept in the prisoner's tower. Beyond that, we cannot tell you. I beg you, be very, very careful. You will see things that will turn your stomach in that kingdom. Do not intervene, and do not react. Otherwise you will single yourself out to them as not one of their own, and they will not kill you immediately. They are so very cruel…"

"And how will I know what to do? What about this arrow? I can't learn how to shoot it in just a few hours..."

"You will simply know, my lady. As for the arrow, your blood knows, even if your mind doesn't. When the moment comes, listen only to your blood, and let it do the word. On that we only ask that you trust us." said Sir Balthazar.

"One last thing, my lady," said Celeste. "One feature in common with Cenric's kingdom and ours is that the right way is always the wrong way. If you turn right, if you pick the door on the right, you run into trouble. Turn left, always."

Sarah nodded. It made sense all of a sudden. She's turned right in the Labyrinth and ended up having to run the full length of it. She'd picked the door on the right and ended up in the Oubliette. Right is wrong, left is right.

She and Noble Steed stepped back. Sarah was dressed now from head to toe in black. A long-sleeved black linen dress covered her body, and over the top of that, a black hood. Under the dress, a pair of black boots reached up to her knees.

Sarah picked up the bow and arrow. "Let's go." she said firmly.

"Now wait, wait just a second." said Rosa, finally standing up after watching all this in shocked silence. "You're not going through with this stupid plan are you? You don't even know these people!"

"Rosa, I don't have time, but please just this one last time, trust me!" said Sarah.

"No! No way! Not this time Sarah! Not with this bunch of I-don't-know-whats asking you to basically drown yourself in the Serpentine! No!" Rosa was crying angry tears now. "Don't do this!" she said weakly at last.

Sarah hugged her. "Go home, I'll meet you there."

Rosa hugged her back, sobbing. "I'm not going anywhere until you're back safe and sound. Here, take this." She slipped a bracelet off her wrist. It was silver with a single green stone on it. "For good luck. My grandma gave it to me…"

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Sarah stood at the edge of the lake in Hyde Park. It was dark now, and they'd lost a little time waiting for people hanging around to leave. Once the coast was clear, Celeste and the others quickly began to set out the items for their ritual.

Noble Steed was watching the sky. She was waiting for the moment Venus aligned with the portal. Rosa was sitting on the grass holding Sarah's hand. No one spoke. Now was not the time. Sarah stood still, feeling the weight of the various things strapped to her. Small provisions. The bow and arrow. A bottle. A mirror. A dagger.

Celeste began to incant on the banks. "Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered, we seek passage through the portal from Aboveground to the dark kingdom of Lord Cenric for this queen to reclaim her king…"

Sarah turned in surprise, her concentration broken for a moment. But there was no time to think. Noble Steed, looking to the sky suddenly hissed. "NOW!"

And with that, Sarah let go of Rosa's hand and jumped into the water.

The cold was a shock, and it was hard to see where she was going in the darkness, but Sarah poured her energy into every stroke, moving down, down, down, past the murkiness and the trailing reeds that made her wince whenever they touched her skin.

She kept going. How deep was the Serpentine? She didn't remember. Perhaps she should have asked. Her mind began to falter.

No, she shouldn't doubt. On the shore, her friends were looking out for her. She had to make it. She just had to.

Sarah kept going, her lungs burning from lack of air. Every instinct in her screamed for her to turn back to the surface. The reeds swept against her, making her fight every instinct to gasp and pull back. Air, she needed air. She was so far down now, and she didn't have enough air left to go back up.

Her throat closed in on itself, desperate for air. There was nothing now, as Sarah's arms and legs ached, pumping and kicking. Suddenly her fingers touched something grainy, something rough. The bottom.

Sarah crouched in the darkness, waiting. One second, two.

Air, there was no air. One breath, just one. She dug her nails into her palms, fighting the urge to open her mouth and flood it with water, when the water around her jumped exactly as Sir Balthazar had described it would. Sarah pushed off against the bottom with renewed energy, working her way to the dull light at the surface.

This body of water was more shallow, and Sarah broke the surface in moments, gasping hungrily for the air. Her heart was pounding so loudly that it made her ears ring. Dirty water and twigs raced into her mouth every time she gasped for another, delicious breath. Still gasping, she looked around. She was in a forest of some sort, just outside the gates of the kingdom. Just beyond the lake and the trees there was a clearing, and beyond that, the city gates, which were open. There was light, but it wasn't coming from above - even down here the sky was black.

She swarm to the shore, sitting on the dirty bank to get her bearings and strap the bow and arrow to herself. Enough time to smell like the place, isn't that what they had said? Well, she's certainly managed that, sitting here in this mud with the rancid water from the lake all over her. Whatever material this dress was, it was already starting to dry, she realised. She opened the bag Celeste had given her, and was surprised to find the contents dry. A little water, some nuts and some dates. She ate it all quickly, swallowing without hardly chewing, when a sound caught her attention.

She'd heard that sound before. But the last time, it had been merrier, more musical. This sounded more fractured, infused with fear and pain. Like an animal calling for help. Sarah quietly crept along the bank and realised what she was hearing.

In a clearing a short way away from the lake, a large group of orcs were gathered around, laughing. She looked closer, and was disgusted when she realised what they were doing.

A nymph was in the centre of the group. Hopelessly outnumbered, she was pinned to the ground in a display of pure cruelty. One orc held one hand above her head, the other her other hand. Two more were sitting on the ground, laughing at her efforts to free herself as they each held a leg, forcing them open. Her green patterned skin was flashing in distress as she shook with each grotesque thrust the huge orc on top of her was making. He laughed at her misery, and pumped his hips harder.

"Deeper! Faster!" the other orcs egged him on. The ones holding the nymphs legs moved them wider apart. She tossed her head from side to side, her emerald green hair covered in dirt and twigs, screaming. The orc didn't let up, he pulled at her hair and her skin as he kept going. "Thirty one!" cried someone, as the orc got up and walked away, grinning. The nymph seemed to wilt in the hands of the others, but no sooner had the first one left, another immediately took his place and resumed the savage assault on the nymph, the knives on his belt clanging noisily with each thrust. "Thirty two!" came a voice, laughing and clapping, and Sarah looked around to realise that there were people watching this. Not only that, they were enjoying it. Men, women and even children from the kingdom beyond the wall were coming and going, and stopping to laugh at the scene. Some tossed coins at the orcs, others clapped. One of them was keeping count.

The sound of the knives on the orcs belt picked up speed. "I'll give you 500 to see how many she can take at the same time!" someone shouted, and the orcs scrambled excitedly, tossing the nymph about, lifting her slender legs this way and that until she disappeared in a scrum of their large bodies. "That's it! Keep going she likes it!"

"The last one this lot caught lasted four days of this! It was so much fun, I watched almost all of it! These guys know how to pace them just right! That's a skill, you know."

"Yes but that one was not yet mature. This one is fully grown. She'll last at least two weeks!" A child clapped in delight and picked up a stick. He approached the scrum of bodies and found a patch of the nymph's skin to dig the stick at, laughing at the flashing colours her pained skin emitted. "Thirty three, thirty four, thirty five, thirty six and thirty seven all at once!"

Sarah felt sick to her stomach. She was shaking. These people were monsters.

Don't interfere… don't intervene.

Tears stung her eyes as she forced herself to walk away. She clenched her eyes shut, feeling her way along the wall, begging for the sound of the screaming nymph to recede. They would kill her with what they were doing to her, there was no doubt about it.

She took a few steps, keeping her head down and found her path blocked with bodies. Cautiously, she raised her head, only to find herself in the midst of another group, doing the same thing to a different nymph. Only this time, the only noise was the jeers of the crowd and the grunts of the orcs. The nymph herself had mercifully fainted during her ordeal. But she was still alive. The flashing colours of her skin told Sarah that much.

She looked around her, further into the distance. Another group had set up torches further along the wall and she could just make out a thin, distressed nymph dashing between orcs, her musical voice wailing mournfully. The orcs laughed as they tossed her about, ripping the gossamer fabrics from her body until she was naked. The nymph tried fruitlessly to escape as orcs blocked her path. Two of them grabbed her arms to stop her covering her nakedness. They forced her to the ground, struggling.

Another two grabbed an ankle each. "Fresh one over there!" came a shout, and the crowd excitedly began to shift along the wall to the newly arrived victim who was now pinned prone on the ground. A huge orc, grotesquely swollen, placed himself between her legs. Sarah looked away as the nymph screamed with the first thrust, squeezing her eyes shut and trying to steady her breath as a cold sweat drenched her back.

Her head spun. What was this revolting place? Who were these people who delighted in such cruelty? No one had exaggerated, then. Cenric and his people were worse than she had thought. She pulled her hood down low over her face and tried to collect her thoughts. The nymphs' screams started to become overwhelming.

Don't forget why you're here, she reminded herself. Her legs turned to jelly. Stumbling along her way inside the kingdom's walls, as soon as she had put some distance between herself and the crowds, Sarah doubled over and vomited.

She let herself sink to the floor for a few moments. In the darkness, she crouched, her ears ringing. Her legs and arms ached, and while her dress was dry, her wet hair felt like an ice cold vice on her head. She leaned a cheek against the cool wall, only to flinch and move away a few seconds later as something unseen scratched her cheek. She peered at the bricks - they were edged with minute, thorny plants. A warm trickle edged down her face. She put her fingers to her cheek and found bright red on their tips when she pulled them away, along with dirt.

What have I got myself into? How am I supposed to do this?

But there was no time to think. A shadow loomed over her, reeking of cheap spirits. Sarah looked up, making sure her gaze was steely and unreadable.

"How much?" asked the figure. He was visibly pleasuring himself as he spoke.

Despite the fear coursing through her veins, there was no way she could be caught out now. Sarah stood up to her full height. The man was a little taller than she was. She spat on the ground and sneered at the man, pulling the dagger that Celeste had given her out from among her robes. "Be gone, pestilent grub, or I'll cut that thing off right now."

The man grumbled and wandered off. Too close. She had to get moving.

Sarah stood up and began to walk. Ahead of her was a large square. She skirted around it, looking for a place to quietly hide herself for the night. The square was being brushed and cleaned. A wooden platform had been raised in the centre. It was being scattered with a thick layer of straw to collect the blood. Jareth's blood.

Sarah's shaky nerves began to steady, and a quiet rage filled her. This man-monster, this weak king, this Cenric and his hideous followers thought they were going to kill Jareth in the morning. "Over my dead body," she whispered quietly to herself. She felt rage well up inside her, making her hot. But then, she realised the heat was coming from somewhere else. It was getting more intense. She pressed her hand to her chest and realised that the heat was coming from the key.

Follow the key a voice seemed to tell her, like a whisper into her mind. Sarah let the key go, and saw to her surprise that as she walked, the key shifted slightly this way or that. The time had come. The key was about to make its purpose known.

She walked through empty streets and tall dark gardens. Everything was dead. Everything smelled of decay. The key continued to lead her, until it came to a tower.

The prisoner's tower. Sarah's heart leapt. Jareth would be there. She looked around, and realised that the tower was on her right, while the path back to the main square was on her left. She didn't hesitate. As quietly as she could, Sarah slipped unnoticed into the prisoner's tower and began to climb the winding stairs.

As her foot hit the first stair, somewhere deep inside Cenric's kingdom, the ancient Oracle of his kingdom stirred with a start from her sleep. Her beady eyes looked around as dust settled off her body.

"Here is doom." she groaned, then fell back asleep.

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Back on the shore of the Serpentine, Celeste was on her knees, eyes closed, casting protection spells. She knew there was little point, the portal was closed now, and her magic was useless in the dark realms. But she had to keep trying.

Rosa was watching the still surface of the water. She hadn't spoken at all, but now she turned to Noble Steed.

"Do you think she got through?" asked Rosa.

Noble Steed took her hand. "I hope so, my lady. I hope so."