107. Thirteen Hours

THE SPACE BETWEEN

The Starlight was well on its way to its next destination, though where that was, none of its regular six passengers could tell at the time. The Mist Engine chugged away, pushing them onward into the depths of the cosmos.

This particular voyage had been rather a long one, and Twilight Sparkle found it only sensible to use the down time to study. No aura had forced the group to change bodies yet, and so it was as a four-legged unicorn that she set up shop in a spare reading room aboard the ship, spreading the Guide and several thick research books around the new journal devoted to documenting the group's travels and experiences. Twilight had asked if she could bolster it with certain research findings, and so was updating it with her most recent object of study: goblin politics and civilization.

Goblins had not, in fact, been relevant to the majority of the Element bearers' journey so far. Or, in all sincerity, at all. However, Twilight was not one to pass up information she believed could potentially be useful. Goblins had caught her eye, and so it was goblins that made for the study subject of the day.

Pinkie Pie, passing the reading room, noticed Twilight's plethora of books spread about. "Hey, Twilight!" she greeted, hopping into the room. "Whatcha doin'?"

"Studying goblin politics," Twilight answered. "It's fascinating. Did you know that even though goblins have spread to hundreds of thousands of worlds in the cosmos, the entire goblin nation answers to a single king in a city on a single world? He's pretty lax on governing, though. The Guide actually describes him as 'The host of some of the best raves in the cosmos.' Though there's also this old superstition that the goblin king will kidnap anyone you say you want him to take away out loud, but that can't be anything more than an old pony's tale. Nothing that isn't a god can hear you EVERYWHERE in the multiverse, and if that were true, a lot more beings would go missing on a daily basis. Anyway, most goblins just kind of do their own thing and end up working with other rulers on other worlds, but if the king stepped in, they'd have to obey him."

"Sounds pretty neat!" Pinkie replied earnestly. "But you can't be having fun spending all your time in here reading. It's like you're doing homework! For HOURS! You know what? You should come down to the party room I'm fixing up on the lower floor! There's this giant old room that looks like it used to be a ballroom, except that it's all dusty and plain, so I decided I should fix it up with some streamers and confetti and turn it into – "

"Pinkie Pie," Twilight said sternly, "I'm trying to read."

"I'm just saying you don't HAVE to spend the whole trip reading!" Pinkie went on. "You can take a break and do more fun things!"

"This is fun for me," Twilight stated, turning her gaze down to the pages.

"Aw, pshaw!" Pinkie scoffed. "Trust me. If I got you out on the dance floor, you'd be super glad you did that instead of this!"

"Pinkie. Pie," Twilight growled. "I'm in the middle of a very important study right now."

"But we haven't even met any goblins – "

"We might! You never know!"

"But Twilight!" Pinkie moaned. "We don't know how long we have until we land on the next world, and it might be in so much trouble that we have to get going right away, so if we have a break where we can just have fun, we should probably just do that and make the most of it – "

"PINKIE PIE!" Twilight screamed in frustration. "STOP INTERRUPTING ME WHILE I'M TRYING TO STUDY! SERIOUSLY! YOU…ARE BEING…ANNOYING! YOU KNOW WHAT? I WISH THE GOBLIN KING WOULD COME AND TAKE YOU AWAY! RIGHT NOW!"

"But – "

Then Pinkie Pie was silent. Twilight's eye rested on the last sentence she'd read, and she was almost trepid about continuing to read on, fearing that the second she did, she would be interrupted once more. However, after a few seconds of silence passed, Twilight figured she was safe to continue. "Thank you, Pinkie Pie," she said, taking the silence as acceptance of her wishes.

There was no reply.

That struck Twilight as immediately odd. She figured Pinkie would at least whisper a quick "You're welcome" and then leave. Looking up, she found she was alone in the room.

Pinkie Pie must have left when she realized how upset Twilight was, Twilight figured. Then again, she realized, Pinkie was probably pretty upset herself. It sank in that Twilight had pretty much told her to her face – and yet without looking at her – that she wished Pinkie would be kidnapped. A threat that Twilight took incredibly lightly, since it was a silly superstition and no more in her eyes, but Pinkie might have thought Twilight was serious. Come to think of it, Twilight realized that she'd been quite brash in her actions. Pinkie had been pretty obnoxious, but going again over what Pinkie had said, Twilight wondered if perhaps Pinkie had felt lonely for Twilight's company and wanted to spend some honest bonding time with her. Twilight had been devoting quite a lot of time to her studies onboard the Starlight, and she had to admit to herself she'd been distant.

With a sigh, she got up, using a single magic spell to close all the books at once. She resolved to track down Pinkie Pie and apologize.

...

Finding Pinkie turned out to be more difficult than Twilight expected. She walked through the "party room" Pinkie had described – which did in fact look as though its prior purpose was to be a ballroom; its architecture was rather grandiose, with pillars carved in sunlight gold and midnight blue, and matching streamers and a disco ball had been hung rather recently in order to give it an air of more levity – to find it completely empty. At the opposite door from where Twilight had entered, she ran into Applejack.

"Hey," Twilight asked. "Have you seen Pinkie Pie?"

"No," Applejack replied. "Come to think of it, she's been awful quiet the past few minutes. Whatcha need her for?"

"I was…" Twilight considered talking about the incident, but figured it wasn't that big of a deal. "It's not important. I just wanted to talk to her about something."

"Well, I ain't seen her," Applejack stated. "Sorry, Twilight."

"It's all right," Twilight told her. "I'll find her."

As Twilight and Applejack parted ways, Twilight muttered to herself, "Pinkie Pie is the loudest pony on this ship. She should NOT be this hard to find. I thought I would have been able to hear loud music or screaming or a cannon going off from three floors away."

There was suddenly a soft "ding," signifying that the ship was coming near to its destination. "A-ha!" Twilight said triumphantly. "Pinkie Pie will definitely come to the control room to see where we're headed, and I can find her that way!"

However, when Twilight entered the control room and looked around, she could only see four others: Applejack, Rarity, Fluttershy, and Rainbow Dash. Before Twilight could ask if any of them had seen Pinkie, Rainbow Dash spoke up frustratedly: "Hey! What gives!"

"What gives about what?" Twilight asked.

Hovering a few feet in the air, flapping her sky-blue wings casually, Rainbow Dash extended a hoof toward the map screen. "That!"

Twilight looked to the screen to see that according to it, the Starlight had not in fact reached another world. It wasn't even in the proximity of anything labeled. Furthermore, usually, the "ding" signified that the ship was still approaching, coming in for a landing. However, the map indicated that the ship had simply stopped in the middle of space.

"Did we just…stop?" An edge of unease crept into Fluttershy's voice. "It…it isn't possible for us to just get stranded out here with no way of moving, is it?"

Twilight had to admit to herself that she didn't know, but she felt she had to remain calm in order to keep control of the situation. "I'm sure everything's fine," she stated.

She didn't have time to make a hypothesis about why the ship had stopped, nor suggest a way to get it moving again. For throughout the room, there blew a great gust of wind that came from nowhere at all. All five ponies present shielded their eyes, for upon this wind, there seemed to blow a great quantity of glitter, or perhaps a shining dust or sand that sparkled like glitter. The entire control room went dark momentarily, then light again, then back to dark.

"WHAT'S GOING ON?" Rarity yelled over the blustering of the wind.

Slowly, the gust faded, though the lights remained down. The five looked back up to the great map screen, seeing a black silhouette contrasted against it, blocking most of it from view. They were not alone, but the sixth who had joined them was most certainly not Pinkie Pie. The figure looked humanoid, tall in stature, with billowing fabric surrounding its body.

Twilight called up her wand, pointing it at the figure: "Lumos."

The light from her wand was just enough to illuminate the figure's features, and all could see him clearly. He was clothed entirely in black, with a high collar around his neck and a long cape that flowed from his ensemble, making him seem to take up more space than he actually did. His skin, by contrast, was somewhat tan. His hands were clothed in black leather, but his face was not obscured, though it was decorated with thick black eyeliner that seemed to join the outer corners of his eyes up to his tapered brows, and pale eyeshadow had been liberally applied within the lines drawn. His golden hair was voluminous, teased into a lion's mane that puffed upward and then shaggily flowed down past his shoulders.

"Who are you?" Twilight asked, incredibly perturbed that a stranger had been so easily able to transport himself onboard.

From within the folds of his cloak, the man produced a crystal sphere of perfect clarity, about the size of a baseball, which he offered to the five, holding it out on the tips of his black-gloved fingers. "I've brought you a gift," he said.

"That doesn't answer my question," Twilight growled.

The man ignored her, beginning to sweep his hand back and forth, juggling the sphere upon the backs of his fingers. "If you stare into it, you will see your dreams," he explained. "Perfect for you. After all, the Elements of Harmony can't work if there are only five. Now that you've nothing to do, it's only sensible that you should have something to fill the void."

"What do you mean, nothing to do?" Rainbow Dash barked indignantly. "We've got PLENTY to do. And what do you mean there are only five of us?"

"Your friend who bears the Element of Laughter," the stranger answered, looking Rainbow Dash in the eye as he continued to play with the dream-sphere, now crossing it back and forth between both of his hands. "You've wished her away, and now she belongs to me."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Applejack replied sharply. "We didn't wish Pinkie Pie away! She's right…well…she ain't here at the moment, but…"

"I believe you made it expressly clear," the stranger went on, and now his gaze was fixed solely on Twilight. "You wished that I would take her away…right at the moment. So I did."

Twilight felt as though she'd been hollowed out. "I didn't…" she sputtered in horror. "I didn't know…I thought it was just an old pony's tale; I just wanted her to leave me alone for a few minutes so I could study…I didn't think it was real…"

"Twilight!" Rarity cried. "You DIDN'T!"

"I found an old superstition that said if you wished the Goblin King would take somepony away, he'd do it," Twilight admitted. "I didn't think it was possible, but I was reading about it when Pinkie interrupted me, and she was getting on my nerves, so I…so I…"

"WHAT DID YOU DO TO PINKIE PIE?" Rainbow Dash shrieked, flying up to stare the stranger in the eye. "WHERE'D SHE GO?"

"Rest assured, your friend is in no danger," the caped stranger said, and all the while, the dream-sphere kept flying from the back of one hand to the back of another and then rotating through all ten fingers before beginning the cycle again. "She is in fact being treated as a guest in my kingdom."

"Then that would make you the Goblin King," Twilight said softly.

"Indeed I am," the king confirmed. "Jareth, if you are desperate for a name, though I would prefer 'Your Highness.'"

"Yeah right!" Rainbow Dash growled. "I'm not callin' you anything nice until you give Pinkie Pie back!"

"Do you truly want her back?" Jareth questioned. "You seemed quite desperate to have her out of your manes."

"Yes, we DO," Twilight emphasized. "She is loud, and she can be annoying, but she's our friend. She's MY friend. I NEVER meant for this to happen!" She blinked rapidly; her eyes were moistening. The reality was hitting her hard: one ill-spoken sentence had literally transported Pinkie Pie into the clutches of a goblin tyrant. And she had been the one to speak it.

"If that is the case," Jareth told them, "then turn around."

Confused, Twilight, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Fluttershy, and Applejack did as they were told, expecting to see the back wall of the control room. Instead, they found that as soon as they turned, they were no longer aboard the Starlight at all.

...

THE OUTSKIRTS OF THE LABYRINTH

The sun was either low or high in the sky; not knowing the way time worked in this world, the five ponies weren't sure whether it was twilight or dawn. The sky was certainly a bright flame-orange. The five as well as Jareth stood upon a hill that was raised enough for them to take in a grand vista. On the horizon, a grand castle jutted into the air, dark against the fiery skies. Spreading outward from it was what appeared to be an enormous maze the likes of which none had ever seen before. To compare it to the Apple family's Nightmare Night corn maze would be an insult. The maze – or, more correctly, the Labyrinth – spanned what seemed to be the size of a small nation, and while the tint of the sun made it hard to tell, its walls seemed not to be constructed of any uniform material, but some of stone, some of hedge, and some of variegated other substances.

"Your friend lies in the Goblin City in the center of the Labyrinth," Jareth explained. The five ponies turned to regard him; he stood near a tree, and inexplicably, an ornate cuckoo clock had been nestled in the lower branches of the tree, conveniently enough for him to point to. Its numbers did not run from one to twelve, but instead from one to thirteen, with its 13 taking up the topmost spot on the clock face. "You have thirteen hours to make your way there and find her. If you do, then I will let her go. If not, then her stay will become permanent." Jareth gave a sly smile. "She will be treated with all the honor and amenities of a true guest, of course. If you should wish to abandon her here, that is quite understandable. After all, I get the feeling that you don't truly want her back." His eyes were once more on Twilight.

"STOP IT!" Twilight cried in desperation. "I KNOW I screwed up! I should NEVER have wished anything bad would happen to her! But I DON'T want her gone!" Inwardly, she wondered briefly if it were actually Twilight that Pinkie was better off without. But she brushed it off; it was the panic of the situation exacerbating this emotion.

"Twilight might've said the wrong thing," Fluttershy said, stepping forward with a new solidness in her voice and staring Jareth down, "but that didn't give YOU the right to come in and take our friend away! This isn't Twilight's fault! It's YOURS!"

Jareth flinched when he looked at Fluttershy's gaze; he averted his eyes slightly. "I did as I was asked to do," he reiterated. "Demanded to, in fact. If you want to waste time placing blame, you're more than free to do so…but the clock began ticking the moment you arrived."

Jareth didn't remain to hear anything further. He simply faded out of view until he was gone completely.

"What…just…HAPPENED?" Rainbow Dash cried in disbelief.

"I think he took us to his world," Twilight answered. "The Starlight must be where he stopped it in the Space Between. That's why it stopped: Jareth stalled it!"

"Why is he making us do all THIS?" Rainbow Dash asked, bewildered.

"Goblins and faeries have a lot of cultural similarities," Twilight answered. "It's one of the things I was reading about when…" She swallowed the rest of that sentence. No use going over her misstep yet again. "There are longstanding faery traditions of playing games with mortals and non-faeries. Games that don't seem to make sense and are based on chaos. If I had to guess, I would say this is Jareth's idea of a game. Or, if he's just watching us go through his Labyrinth, his idea of a show."

"We better get goin'," Applejack suggested, noting that the minute hand of the thirteen-hour clock had already moved two slots off center. "We've got no time to lose if we're gonna find Pinkie Pie."

"Right!" Rainbow Dash landed all fours on the ground and began running full speed toward the maze. She considered flying, but that would have left the others behind. As it were, Rarity, Fluttershy, Applejack, and Twilight were all able to keep up relatively easily, and the five made a mad dash down toward the outermost wall.

"Twilight," Fluttershy asked, "did you really do it? Did you wish Pinkie Pie away?"

"I did," Twilight sighed. "She was annoying me, and I thought it was just a stupid superstition. But that's no excuse. This is all my fault, and now the only thing I wish is that I'd never made that wish."

"I don't think anypony blames ya," Applejack told her. "Sure, I don't know the situation. And to be honest, I'm bettin' you were probably downright rude. You can be that way sometimes, y'know? Then again, Pinkie does have a habit of oversteppin' her bounds sometimes. But nopony expected some kinda Goblin King to get involved. Fluttershy was right. It ain't Twilight's fault. It's that Jareth guy's."

"I know," Twilight said somberly. And yet it still felt as though she had more to answer for than he.

...

GOBLIN CITY, THE LABYRINTH

"But Twilight, what if the next world we land on is already at war and – huh?"

Pinkie Pie stopped short and blinked a few times. Somewhere between starting that sentence and the middle of it, she had spontaneously changed locations. The hallway she was in bore no resemblance to anything she had ever seen on the Starlight. The Starlight's halls were all wooden at the core, and whatever structure she was in now was carved out of rock. Windows carved into the wall with no panes or curtains filtered in a pleasant amount of light, playing off the sandy color of the stone.

"Is this some kind of prank?" Pinkie Pie asked, thinking perhaps Twilight had transported her somewhere nearby for a bit of a joke and could still hear her. "Because I gotta admit, you really got me good, Twilight!" She chuckled. Never had she taken Twilight for the sort who could be that spontaneous.

However, when Twilight didn't answer, Pinkie Pie began to doubt that this was in fact a joke orchestrated by her friend. With a suspicious "Hmmmm," she began to trot down the hallway to see what she could find.

As far as she could tell, the building she was in was very large. Perhaps it was a castle. The hallways seemed to wind on forever, but eventually they would give over to a larger chamber, and Pinkie Pie was treated to quite bizarre architecture. Somewhere in the heart of the building, she found a great passageway with stairs that went every which way: up, down, sideways. Most of them seemed physically impossible to get to by simply walking.

"This is my kinda place!" Pinkie decided before taking a stairway that led her diagonally and upside-down out of the room.

At some point, she reached the top of a tower. The uppermost room was rather elegantly furnished, with gold trim and silver benches for sitting. Peering out a window, she saw the rampart of the castle – for it was indeed a castle – and a diminutive, dark-armored guard bearing a spear twice his (or her; Pinkie couldn't tell at that distance…maybe even xyr) height as he (or she or xe) paced the length of the wall. The wall was built so that the guard was continually ascending a flight of stairs. More windows in the tower let Pinkie take a look around, and as she spotted more guards, she determined that the entire rampart was a set of ascending stairs that looped right back around to each other. Nowhere did she see where the stairs descended or even leveled off; they just went up and up and up, even though the wall's height remained static.

Continuing her exploration, she found in the lower levels a courtyard that opened up to a pool of clear water. A waterfall on an upper bank continually refreshed the pond; a quick scan of the area revealed that the water was actually flowing uphill in order to reach the waterfall and flow back down to its point of origin.

Turning away from this pool, Pinkie Pie ran into the first being she'd seen face-to-face since entering this odd castle: a goblin. She was shorter than Pinkie and quite stout, clad in black armor and a black helmet. Her skin was quite literally olive toned, a light but striking green, and her scruffy hair was silver. "There you are!" the goblin cried in relief. "We've been looking all over for you!"

"Well, I've been looking all over for somepony!" Pinkie sighed in return. "Though at first I thought that somepony was gonna be one of my friends…but now I'm really not sure what's going on. Ummmm…what's going on?"

"You're the new guest of the king!" the goblin cried. "Your friend wished he would take you away, and so he did! I'm just glad you can actually talk and don't just cry all the time. It's really no fun when the guest is a baby!"

"Waaaaiiiiit a minute," Pinkie interrupted. "Are you saying that somepony kidnapped me right off the Starlight?"

"It wasn't a kidnapping!" the goblin insisted. "That other pony wanted you to leave! She said she wanted the king to take you away, right then!"

Pinkie Pie shook her head. "Twilight didn't mean it," she stated, though it wasn't without a grain of doubt. "So does that mean the legend about the goblin king was REAL?"

"Of course it's real!" the goblin insisted. "He takes away anyone he's asked to take!"

"Then I'm in…" Pinkie realized with horror.

"You're in his castle in Goblin City!" the goblin cried happily.

Pinkie Pie gasped, long and dramatically. "I gotta get outta here!" she cried, brushing past the goblin. "It was really nice to meet you and I hope you have a good day but I GOTTA GO!"

"WAIT!" the goblin tried to call after her. "You can't go! You'll never find the door from the inside! Not when you're the guest!" But Pinkie was too far away to hear her.

Pinkie Pie learned the hard way that no matter which way she ran, there never seemed to be a door that led to the outside of the castle. Sometimes, she would peer out a window and get a visual on what was quite obviously a gate, but when she positioned herself at the place inside the castle where that gate should have been, she was greeted with a rock wall. After a few mishaps of this manner, she decided to try the windows. One of them was only about one and a half stories up, for whatever sense that made, and was quite large. Pinkie stepped up onto the sill and looked down to see a clear expanse of grass to land on. "Hasta la vista, goblin castle!" she cried happily as she leapt out the window, braced for impact –

And found herself flying down another stone hallway, as though she'd leapt from the outside in instead of the other way around.

"WHAT?" Pinkie cried. She tried the same thing with another window and was thrown down yet another hallway. At that point, she extended a hoof to point accusingly at the nearest window. "Tricky!" she called it. "Veeeeery tricky!"

Having exhausted all the obvious options for escape, she sat down to think it over. "I've tried the doors and I've tried the windows," she muttered. "But those can't be the ONLY ways out of the castle. Maybe there's a basement that leads to an underground water system? Or maybe one of these walls has a trap door in it! Or – "

The sounding of two trumpets, off-key in the first place but especially dissonant against each other, diverted Pinkie's attention. She turned to see two more goblins – one taller than her, with a face like a bull, and one even shorter than the first, wearing a helmet that obscured all of his face except for his mouth – blowing the horns that produced such a ridiculous noise. "We welcome our guest in the name of Jareth, the Goblin King!" the duo proclaimed in a pair of very deep voices.

"The king wants to see you down in the throne room!" the bull-faced goblin said happily.

"We are to bring you there at once!" the armored goblin added, revealing that he had the deeper voice of the pair.

"Weeeeellllll…" Pinkie thought it over, putting a hoof thoughtfully to her chin. "I've already tried all the obvious ways to get out of here. And apparently I AM the guest. I dunno…it feels more like I was kidnapped than anything, but if I'm the guest, then running out is really, really rude! And either way, it's probably better if I know exactly what I'm dealing with. Guess it can't hurt." She turned back to the goblins, who'd patiently waited out her monologue. "All right! Take me to the throne room so I can meet this Jareth!"

"Right this way, Miss!" the larger goblin said as he gestured down the hall. He and the smaller goblin led the way, and Pinkie followed.

"You'll have to tell us your name," the small goblin said. "That way, we can announce you properly."

"My name is Pinkamena Diane Pie!" Pinkie said proudly. "But you can just call me Pinkie Pie."

...

The throne room was surprisingly austere. It did not sport a vaulted ceiling or a chair of gold. The circular chamber was carved of the same sandy rock as the rest of the castle, with some iron weapons and some waxy white candles affixed to the wall. The floor was mostly flat, save for a shallow pit in the center of the room, about a foot and a half deep. As for the throne itself, three stairs led up to a chair with a curved back that seemed to surround its occupant. Said occupant, the Goblin King himself, sat in a lazily angular position, one leg draped up over an arm of the chair as his back rested against the other arm. Perhaps a hundred goblins, all of varying shapes and sizes but none taller than four feet, were crowded into the chamber, bustling about and chatting about various subjects. Jareth ignored them for the most part, turning their voices into white noise in his mind. He was currently interested in only one thing: to see what his newest guest was like.

When Pinkie was led into the room, the dual trumpets sounded again, quieting down the myriad goblins. "Presenting Pinkie Pie!" the tiny, armored goblin bellowed.

This snapped Jareth out of his reverie, and he looked directly toward the pink pony. Looking back, Pinkie was quite surprised to see that Jareth bore very little resemblance to his subjects. Somehow, she doubted he was fully human, but he didn't look fully goblin either. She could already tell that if he stood to full height, he would absolutely tower over them all.

Furthermore, he was quite beautiful as far as Pinkie Pie was concerned. However, given what had happened the last time she'd thought that about someone who'd kidnapped her, this fact only served to irk her.

"Pinkie Pie," Jareth repeated as he looked her over. "What a lovely name." His smile was playful.

"Um…Your Majesty King Jareth?" Pinkie gave a quick bow. If she wanted him to listen, she knew she would have to execute such courtesies. "I'm sorry that I'm asking this after I only JUST got here, but I really need to get back to my friends. Can you tell me the way out of here?"

Was it truly wise to expect him to answer? She didn't know. But it was worth a shot.

"Your friends!" Jareth repeated, giving a snide chuckle. "It's rather amusing that you still call them that. After all, they wished you away."

"It was only Twilight who did that," Pinkie argued. She then realized what she'd said, and amended it with what she felt she probably should have said instead: "But she didn't mean to! It was all a big misunderstanding!"

"It didn't seem that way to me," Jareth pointed out. "I saw very little of what happened, but your friend got my attention the moment she said my name. She seemed to find you loud, aggravating, and altogether repulsive. I can't help but wonder if she finds herself better off without you."

It was partly his game, his way of stirring her emotions up. But at the same time, his story was true. The moment Twilight had begun talk of the Goblin King, Jareth had looked in on the scene; he always did and always does when his name or title are spoken. All he saw was Pinkie causing a disturbance in Twilight's studying as Twilight repeatedly told her to leave. Then Twilight had said the words that always began the fun. While Jareth did not doubt that there was friendship between the two, he wasn't able to gauge the nature of it, or how often Twilight and the others were simply annoyed by their pink friend.

"You don't know the first thing about Twilight Sparkle!" Pinkie snapped. "When she makes a friend, she doesn't give up on them! Well, except for this one time back in Canterlot when she apparently had five other friends that our princess thought would make up the first Elements of Harmony, and she just left them all behind without so much as a goodbye…but that was a long time ago, and she's done a lot of growing up since then!"

"If you insist," Jareth stated casually.

"Speaking of the Elements of Harmony," Pinkie brought up, realizing what might be the most powerful argument in her arsenal, "if they don't have me, the others can't use the Elements to save the worlds! And that's bad! Even for you! If you're really the Goblin King, then you have to care about what happens to all the goblins. What if there's an entire world of goblins out there that needs our help, and now they can't get it because you took me outta the picture? Huh? Did you think of THAT?"

"It crossed my mind," Jareth replied, standing up from his throne. The other goblins gave him a wide berth so he could step down onto the main floor and approach Pinkie. As he did so, Jareth produced another crystal sphere from thin air, holding it outward on his fingertips as he crouched to meet Pinkie's height. "That's why I gave them a chance to get you back."

The crystal was before Pinkie's eyes, and within it, she saw an image of exactly what was happening just outside the Labyrinth gates: Twilight, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, and Applejack making a mad charge for the maze's entrance.

"Aaaa-HA!" Pinkie cried triumphantly. "My friends DO want to get me back! Even Twilight!"

"They haven't been challenged just yet," Jareth pointed out as the sphere dissipated. "We shall see as time goes by just how much you're worth to them."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Pinkie asked indignantly.

"Only that it won't be as simple for them to reach this castle as they think," Jareth replied, standing back up so he could return to his throne. "They may very well give up and go away."

"They're not gonna!" Pinkie insisted. "And I'm gonna get out of here so I can meet them halfway!"

"How are you planning to leave?" Jareth challenged. "By the door? A window? Were you perhaps expecting there to be a secret waterway in the dungeons?"

"Well…" Pinkie had to admit she was out-argued there.

"And even if you did leave," Jareth pointed out, "you and your friends would be attempting to meet halfway in the midst of an elaborate Labyrinth. You'd have as much chance as they of getting hopelessly lost in its twists and turns, or perhaps imprisoned in an oubliette. Provided that they don't end up with the latter fate, your chances are much better if you remain in one place and let them come to find you."

"Hmmmm…welllllllll, I guess you're right on that one. You win this round, JARETH!" Pinkie snapped, no longer bothering with formalities.

Jareth was more amused than anything by this. "In the meantime, you will be treated as a guest. I'm rather glad that you can look after yourself: a distinct advantage over having to deal with a baby. As such, I won't be wasting much of my time looking after you. Feel free to wander where you please. You may even choose a room for yourself. If there's a room I don't want you in, you wouldn't be able to get inside of it anyway."

"All right," Pinkie growled. "We'll play it your way. But no funny stuff, okay? Try and pull a fast one on me and you'll find out why you don't mess with Pinkie Pie!"

Jareth was silent a moment. Pinkie wondered if her vague threat had angered him, and if he were about to strike out in revenge. Instead, he burst into very emphatic laughter, presumably at the thought that Pinkie Pie could do a thing to touch him.

"Hmph!" Pinkie turned tail and shuffled off down one of the hallways. Jareth didn't seem to care, and none of the goblins followed her. It seemed she really did have a modicum of free will here. However, the castle was still a prison, and she doubted she'd exhausted every single method of escape.

Then again, Jareth had brought up a good point. Out one of the higher windows, she'd caught a glimpse of the massive maze. Her friends were already trying to carve a path to the center. If she got herself turned around in the same maze coming from the opposite direction, they might never find each other. And hadn't Jareth said something about "oubliettes"?

"At least he's more upfront about being mean than Loki was," Pinkie grumbled to herself as she trotted down the hall, now not entirely certain what she was looking for.

...

THE GATE OF THE LABYRINTH

Hoggle's contract with Jareth had effectively broken a long time ago, ever since the last person to enter the Labyrinth from one of the outside worlds had bested the Goblin King in more sense than one. Thereby, Hoggle had no obligation to exterminate the doxies that gathered at the gate every spring. He certainly wasn't getting paid for it. However, it struck him that if he wasn't poisoning doxies, then no one was poisoning doxies, and the creatures would just multiply until there was a crowd of them as thick as an ocean surrounding the outer wall.

Hoggle was an average dwarf, his bright white and very thin hair nestled between two large ears betraying his age, as did the wrinkles that creased his thick-browed, large-nosed, and bark-brown face. His manner of dress was casual: a roomy white tunic, a minimal brown leather vest, a pair of light brown pants, and black leather shoes. For this job, he carried a container of gas set up to shoot at anything airborne. On his way to the outer wall, he grumbled about how bright orange the sky was; it was hurting his eyes. He grumbled about how someone really should be paying him for keeping the doxies away. He grumbled about what a pain it was to walk all the way from his home to the outer wall, though at least he had been assured that the two locations wouldn't change up again for a while. Nothing in the Labyrinth had moved ever since that same incident that had severed Hoggle's ties with the Goblin King. At least one couldn't grumble about that; it was wildly convenient to wake up every morning to find that one's house had not in fact taken a trip all the way to the other side of the maze.

Outside the Labyrinth's limits at last, Hoggle easily spied the small creatures, glittering against the wall. They put on airs that they were friendly and carefree, maybe even playful, but Hoggle knew far better. They were predators, plainly and simply. He shot the first one down in a cloud of poison gas, and it splashed into a nearby rectangular pool of water.

The sound of twenty thundering hooves alerted Hoggle to the fact that somepony was approaching. He looked up, out at the fields beyond the gate, to spy Twilight, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, and Applejack charging toward the maze's entrance. It was concerning enough that Hoggle didn't recognize any of them. It was far more concerning that they were coming from outside.

"Oh, no," he muttered. "The King's got another one…"

The five ponies pulled up short when they reached the imposing stone wall. "Looks like we have to figure out how to get in," Twilight mused.

"No problem!" Rainbow Dash said cockily. "It's just up and over!"

She flew casually up to the top of the wall. Before she could enact the "over" half of her plan, however, the wall caught up to her, growing in height so that it again stood between Rainbow Dash and the maze beyond. "Oh, so THAT'S how you wanna play!" Rainbow Dash barked at the stone before flying upward once more. The wall kept pace with her, growing and growing in height. As Rainbow Dash accelerated, so did the wall. She forced herself faster and faster, but always the stone was parallel to her course. There was a BOOM somewhere along the way; her speed had propelled her right into a Sonic Rainboom. The wall was still just as fast.

From below, Hoggle was struck speechless as he watched a veritable rainbow explode outward from the winged pony and the wall grow higher and higher. "She'll never get over that way," he muttered. Others had tried, but the possibility that someone might try and fly over the Labyrinth wall was the very first thing Jareth had covered for.

At last, Rainbow Dash halted. There wasn't much higher she could go in the sky without hitting atmospheric obstacles, and she was worn out besides. Yet the wall still rose before her. She lazily made her way back down, and as if to taunt her, the wall became shorter and shorter: still tall enough to be in her way at all times, but only a few feet overhead. By the time her hooves touched ground, it was in the exact same position as it had been before she'd attempted the flight.

"There has to be some kind of magical entrance," Twilight muttered. "Maybe there's a riddle we need to solve in order to get inside. Or maybe we have to use a spell."

They hadn't noticed Hoggle yet, and Hoggle figured that was just fine by him. He'd considered for a brief second that maybe, just maybe, he should assist these ponies in their quest. Then he squashed that thought immediately. Why should he bother? It wasn't his problem. And frankly, he didn't want to get mixed up in it if Jareth had taken another captive and invited anyone or anything else to play his game. In short, he was hoping that if he turned his back on it, the problem would just go away. And so he literally turned away from the ponies' fruitless efforts to find the gate, shooting down another doxy.

"Excuse me? Hello!"

That had been directed at Hoggle, and he knew it. He ignored it.

"Um…excuse me?"

Now the voice was closer, and accompanied by hoofsteps. One of them was walking toward him. He didn't need this. He didn't want this.

"Hi – " A hoof tapped Hoggle on the shoulder.

"CAN'T YOU SEE I'M BUSY?" Hoggle bellowed as he whirled to face Twilight.

Twilight flinched, backing up a few steps.

"We're sorry to bother you," Fluttershy said, "but we were just wondering if – "

"Well, you can keep wondering it, whatever it is!" Hoggle harrumphed, shooting yet another doxy to the ground.

Fluttershy gasped sharply. "How…how COULD you?" She looked down at the corpse of the tiny creature. It looked to her like an average pixie, with a humanoid body, golden hair, and billowing white clothing, its paper-thin wings shining orange in the sunlight. Tears came unbidden to Fluttershy's eyes.

Hoggle turned away from her to continue his task, but was stymied when Fluttershy leapt between him and the doxies. "You put that down RIGHT NOW!" she commanded.

And overcome by a strange instinct, Hoggle dropped the gas container.

"You have no right to pick on poor little faeries like that!" Fluttershy snapped, not noticing that a couple of the doxies had landed on her wings. "You're working with the Goblin King, aren't you? Doing a nasty thing like – "

Several of the doxies nipped at Fluttershy's wings at the same time. She shrieked, bolting a few feet away to shake them off. "They bit me!" she whimpered, hiding behind Rainbow Dash. "I was only trying to help them!"

"I don't think those are ordinary faeries," Twilight observed. "I don't even think they're pixies. I think those might be doxies."

"Don't be silly, dear," Rarity argued. "Doxies don't look half as beautiful as those things. Besides all that, they're blue."

"What's wrong with blue?" Rainbow Dash snapped.

"Why, nothing!" Rarity replied. "Hence my 'besides all that'!"

"Maybe Fourth Earth doxies are blue," Twilight suggested, "but we already know that creatures look different on different worlds. This must be a different evolutionary branch. Pixies and doxies have common ancestors, after all."

"Well, aren't you just an encyclopedia!" Hoggle huffed. "If you'll excuse me, I have to get rid of these damned things before they eat everything in sight!"

"I still don't think you should just kill them all," Fluttershy said quietly. "Maybe there's another way…"

"Actually, we have a question," Twilight interrupted. "We're trying to find our way into the Labyrinth, and I thought maybe, since you lived here, you would know how to find the gate."

"And what business do you have with anything in there?" Hoggle grumbled.

"Our friend is in there," Twilight said sternly.

"Well?" Hoggle urged, beginning to realize that this problem wasn't simply going to go away if he ignored it. "Which one of you went and did it?"

"Went and did what?" Applejack asked.

"Wished 'the goblin king would come and take your friend away, right now!'?" Hoggle clarified.

Twilight shuffled her front hooves. "It was me," she admitted softly. "I…I didn't think he really would."

"Don't you know that's exactly the reason most people DON'T go around saying it willy-nilly?" Hoggle barked. "Why bother wishing for it if you don't think it will happen?"

"I got angry," Twilight clarified. "I messed up."

"What's your name?"

"Twilight Sparkle."

"Of course it is," Hoggle sighed, though Twilight couldn't see any reason he would have anticipated what her name would be. "Now don't tell me. Jareth took your friend away, and now he's given you thirteen hours."

"That is exactly what happened," Twilight confirmed.

"Oh, this isn't good at all," Hoggle moaned. "Last time, when he got all besotted with Sarah, he changed everything all around! Who KNOWS what chaos he'll cook up this time if you don't get to him soon enough!"

"Changed everything?" Rainbow Dash repeated.

"The Labyrinth!" Hoggle blurted in frustration. "He changed the Labyrinth! Mixed it all up and around, first to confuse her, then to impress her! Never mind what effect that had on the rest of us! Thankfully, ever since she won his game, he's had the good enough sense to leave well enough alone!"

"I take it this 'Sarah' was somepony else whose friend was taken by Jareth," Rarity inferred.

"A baby brother, in fact," Hoggle clarified. "Hmm. Perhaps he won't change things around too much. After all, he likes things the way they are because of her. All the same, we can't risk it! We just can't!"

He told himself it was a matter of principle and ethics. That if he helped these five reach Goblin City sooner rather than later, it would preserve the order of the world that everyone had gotten used to. Though in truth, it was something a little more. There was something deep within him that actually felt for these five, and he hesitated to think of the purple unicorn as a mere idiot who should have been more careful with her wishes. She did seem awfully remorseful.

"I must be going soft," Hoggle muttered. Then, slightly more loudly, "All right, all right, you win. I'll show you how to get into the Labyrinth. No wordplay even needed. You're lucky, you know. Jareth would always make me wait until they'd asked the right question exactly. But don't think I'm letting you go in alone! You don't have any time to waste!"

"Are you coming with us?" Fluttershy asked.

"Me?" Hoggle was taken aback. "I don't want to be involved in this disaster any more than I already am! No, I'm going to find you a guide, let them take you to the center, and be on my merry way!" He stopped to think. Who did he know who could lead the way down the twisting paths of Jareth's domain? Only one answer stood out to him. He wasn't sure if she was going to appreciate it, but he had to try. After all, a long time ago, he had promised her that if she needed him for anything at all, she could simply call upon him. Now it was he who needed her. "I just hope she'll come…she might not, y'know. I wouldn't blame her, either!"

On that pessimistic note, Hoggle walked toward a spot on the wall where he'd let a long wooden plank lie horizontally against it on the ground. When he picked up the plank and turned it sideways, it looked roughly like a door about his size. He placed the plank on the wall, where it seemed to fuse with the stone, becoming part of it: becoming an actual door. "There we go…" he muttered as he opened the door.

A tumble of fluffy, fringey blankets in varying ostentatious colors sprang out from behind the door and formed a dogpile of fabric over the hapless dwarf.

The five ponies watched in confusion as Hoggle struggled out from beneath the pile and stuffed the blankets back where they'd come from, slamming the door on them while muttering, "Damn linen closet!" He then separated the plank from the wall, turned it over so that the opposite side rested flat on the wall, and reattached it. This time, when he opened the door, it led into a spacious, dark room filled with strange objects. The observing ponies spied dresses and suits tailored for humans hanging on small racks as well as shelves of trinkets of all sorts.

"You all stay here, and don't one of you move, now!" Hoggle ordered. "I'm going to see if she'll help us!"

"Pardon," Rarity asked, "but who is 'she'?"
Hoggle stared patronizingly at Rarity as though she should have known the answer before asking the question. "Sarah, of course!" he barked before vanishing through the door, closing it behind him.

"You think we should follow him?" Twilight wondered out loud.

"I think we should wait," Fluttershy countered. "He may not have asked politely, but he didn't want us to move."

"Time's running out," Twilight reminded her.

"Okay," Rainbow Dash agreed. "If he's not back in fifteen minutes, we keep going to try and find the way in."

...

THE HENSON COLLEGE OF FINE ARTS, 202ND EARTH

Sarah Williams was learning the hard way why one should never put off writing a one-woman show until the last day.

She had enrolled in the Henson College of Fine Arts in order to study drama; her heart called her to the stage. It had been a journey that was sometimes rough yet altogether very rewarding. That particular night, when she got back to her dormitory after one very strenuous day of class, she felt the roughness more than usual. She'd been assigned the project of the one woman show a month ago, to be presented as a mid-semester evaluation in her drama class. At the time, her head had swirled with ideas about heroes and princesses and heroes who were also princesses. Fantasy stories were her forte, and she intended to make a play all about them. Perhaps she'd even draw a bit on her singular life experiences, though no one needed to know that they weren't just figments of her imagination.

However, the deadline was three days away, and Sarah's other classes had piled daily homework on top of her to what she considered a ridiculous level. She somewhat stormed and somewhat sulked into the room, flinging down a heavy backpack onto her bed. She then took a good look at herself in her full-length mirror, staring down the young woman of pale skin and long, dark hair, clothed in a thigh-long violet tunic and comfortable jeans that had seen many a wear. "What am I going to do?" she asked herself. "You…" She pointed to the glass. "You got yourself into this mess, so you're just going to have to buckle down and figure it out!"

Faced with a mirror, she wondered if perhaps now was the time to call upon old friends. When they'd first promised to always be there when she wished, fully six years ago, she'd called upon them often. High school had made her face challenge after challenge that put her into the sort of despair that required a touch of escapism in order to deal with it, though she was always careful not to lose her grip on reality. As she grew, she called upon them less and less, for she had grown busy with studies and found herself generally content. All the same, she never forgot about them. She supposed she owed them a visit just to check in, sometime when she was less busy. At the moment, however, her frustrations were high, and she wondered if they perhaps could offer support.

That train of thought was cut off by the opening and shutting of the door. Sarah's roommate had gotten back as well. "Sarah!" Helena Campbell greeted enthusiastically. Helena, a pale young woman who wore her black hair short and was that day clothed in a lacy green tee and jeans that didn't look dissimilar to Sarah's, spoke with a pleasant British accent that revealed that she was not native to the United States; while she had enrolled in the American college that was Henson due to its reputation as a fine art school, her home and family were across the Atlantic, in Brighton. That was also the residence of a long-distance boyfriend, Valentine; he and Helena wrote back and forth faithfully. Sarah was at times jealous that Helena had someone in her life like that: someone to love and go back to see during every summer. "Have you got a lot of work to do?"

"Too much," Sarah sighed.

"Perfect," Helena replied.

"Why is that PERFECT?" Sarah asked, befuddled.

"So have I," Helena explained, shuffling about to organize the books she'd brought back and gather her art supplies. "I've got a portrait assignment due tomorrow, as well as some other things. But I ended up running into Bastian on my way back here, and he said he'd got so much homework, he wasn't going to make it to his book club tonight. So I figured we could all have a study session together. The usual group. I told him I'd ask you if you could come, and he would ask Richard. I told him either I or both of us would meet him in our usual place at the EPAC." She pronounced this last word "epic." "So, are you coming? I figure I could draw one of you for my assignment. I think Bastian said he had some sort of creative writing essay. Perhaps you and him could trade some ideas. Your work is something creative, right? Something theatre?"

"A play," Sarah confirmed. She beamed with relief. The study group that she and Helena had formed always made her happy. Meeting up with Helena, Richard, and Bastian to pool resources was one of the things she most looked forward to, but due to their conflicting schedules, it wasn't always possible. "Of course I'll come." She began to scoop unnecessary textbooks out of her bag and put notebooks and pencils inside.

"Great!" Helena remarked, packing her own bag. "Now let's just hope Richard can make it, and we'll have all four of us!"

...

The Ende Performance Arts Center (EPAC) was the central building of the Henson College, and as such, it was the largest and most ornate in architecture. It housed several stages large and small for use in theatrical and musical performances. Helena and Sarah crept stealthily into this building. There was no show currently in production – the school's rendition of "As You Like It" had wrapped up the week prior – so they felt safe that their usual meeting spot would be undisturbed.

This spot was a costume and prop room located on the uppermost floor of the building, in a partition that could almost be termed an attic. There were several reasons no other students had claimed it as a study spot at first. The room showed its age, with peeling paint on the walls and floors that creaked. And, as all buildings of age and repute at all famed colleges, it came packaged with its fair share of ghost stories. Nearly everyone on campus believed the EPAC's upper levels were either outright haunted or simply creepy. This never bothered the study group (though Richard had gone through a phase of light heebie-jeebies when he first joined the other three in the old room of odds and ends, and as the youngest of them, the others had all been using the EPAC before he came along and he had very little weight in voting to change the location). The biggest problem they had with it was that occasionally, they would enter the room with full intent to do homework, but end up trying on costumes and playing with props, creating elaborate roleplays that turned very distracting.

By the time Sarah and Helena arrived in the rickety old room, the other two members of their group were already seated at a small, circular wooden table nestled between racks of frilly costumes. Bastian Balthazar Bux, well on his way to a degree in Creative Writing – for as much as the stage called Sarah and the paintbrush called Helena, the written word called him – was a peach-skinned brunette, slightly heavyset, sporting a bright red sweatshirt declaring he belonged to the "HCFA" in brilliant white letters. Sitting next to him, first-year Richard Tyler made a striking contrast. Richard was quite well-read, but wasn't sure if his heart lay in Creative Writing or elsewhere. He'd only just begun to explore the artistic pursuits, claiming he'd lived rather a sheltered life, and that this was entirely his fault, as he was always one to stay indoors and read while his peers played outdoors. He was tall, lanky, and blonde, with the palest skin of anyone present, and his eyes were shielded by glasses with thick, black round frames. His thin frame was clothed in a white tee and a denim jacket. Between Bastian and Richard, they'd spread a canvas of papers out over half the table.

"Sarah!" Bastian greeted pleasantly when he noticed that the pair of women had arrived. "Helena!"

"Bastian told me you had a lot of homework," Richard stated. "Something tells me you've been putting off your projects." He gave a smirk.

"Not true!" Helena retorted teasingly.

"I only waited a little," Sarah explained. "Then, before I knew it, I was only three days away from when I was supposed to present it, and…I could work on it a lot better if I didn't have to study for this test – "

"Okay, you work on whatever it is that's due in three days," Richard interrupted, "and show me the stuff you have to study for that test. I'll start making some flash cards so you can multi-task."

"Don't…you have anything to do?" Sarah asked, feeling somewhat guilty about pawning part of her studies off on Richard.

"Not that much," Richard answered. "I had a free hour earlier to get a lot out of the way. What's your project, anyway?"

"I have to write a one woman show," Sarah explained. "I've got a few scenes done, but I'm not sure how they connect."

"And I have ten dollars on the fact that Bastian can see a connection in them right away," Richard stated proudly.

"I can probably help," Bastian confirmed. "You mind reading what you have to me?"

"Not at all," Sarah said, relieved. "Here…just let me…" She removed one textbook from her bag. "I bookmarked everything that's on the test." She pushed the textbook toward Richard, who eagerly cracked open the book, poring over it with a highlighter and readying an index card. "Helena also said you had a creative writing assignment," Sarah went on to Bastian.

"Writer's block is the worst," Bastian sighed.

"After I read you my scenes, can I look at what you have?" Sarah asked. "Maybe I can think of something inspirational. A direction it could go."

"What are you here for, Helena?" Richard asked.

"A portrait assignment." Helena had already unpacked a sketchbook and several pencils of varying darkness. "All I really need's one of you to look at for a few hours while I draw."

"You should draw me!" Bastian volunteered.

"I wouldn't mind being drawn either," Sarah added.

"So long as I don't have to hold still," Richard chimed in.

"I might tell you to hold still at a few parts, but I should just be able to get it from watching you do anything," Helena explained. "Now, if you're all willing…"

"Bastian did speak up first," Richard pointed out.

"Then Bastian it is," Helena decided, taking a good look at the brunette author-in-training. She lay a soft pencil to paper, tracing the round outline of a head.

"This is why we'd be lost without Richard," Bastian commented to Sarah. "He's got everything under control."

"I like to be organized," Richard replied. "I just thought I was pointing out what was rational. I know you three could handle this without me…but I'm flattered anyway."

"So how much have you got in that play?" Bastian asked.

Sarah flipped open her composition book to about midway.

An hour passed. Helena's portrait had begun to take on definite features. Richard kept at making flash cards while discussing various studies he'd read on studying itself ("Did you know that you're fifty percent more likely to remember something if you say it out loud than if you just think it?"). Sarah had exhausted her supply of scenes in her play, and Bastian had noticed a connection between her disjointed writings that she hadn't picked up on. While Sarah mapped out the transition she now had to make in order to solidify the emerging theme, she looked over Bastian's writing, asking him several things she wanted to know about the fates of certain characters and the layout of his setting. The desire to properly answer those questions led Bastian down a new path, and his story continued, filling his own notebook.

That was when, at the opposite side of the room, unnoticed by all, the irregularly shaped door opened up in the wall and Hoggle slipped inside. Hearing four voices in the room and recognizing one as belonging to the person he'd come to retrieve, he ducked behind a clothing rack, peering through the hung-up gowns and jackets at the study table. The rack was wheeled, and so inch by inch, Hoggle brought it closer to the table, keeping himself obscured. The four students were so engrossed in their studies that they didn't notice a mobile clothing rack. When Hoggle was directly next to the table, he hissed, "Sarah!"

Sarah's head snapped up sharply from her composition book. She could have sworn she'd heard someone hissing her name. And not just any someone…

"Saraaaaah!"

"I have to go to the bathroom," she said quickly as she stood.

"I'm not sure we needed to know that," Helena teased.

"I'll be back in a few minutes," Sarah continued before setting out to the far end of the prop room. Hoggle ducked from rack to rack and behind several shelves, keeping pace while keeping out of sight.

Sarah crept into a corner that was obscured from sight by a set of the taller shelves in the room. Hoggle reached that location at the same time.

"Hoggle!" Sarah whispered frantically, now seeing that her suspicion was confirmed: she had recognized the voice. "What are you doing here?"

"I've come to ask for your help," Hoggle whispered in return. "Jareth's gone and kidnapped another one! The first one since you told him off! Some stupid unicorn wished he'd take her friend away, and now, if we don't hurry, they'll never find her, and the whole Labyrinth will change again!"

"What are you talking about?" Sarah whispered. "Why will the Labyrinth change?"

"Because that's what Jareth does when he has someone new to play with!" Hoggle explained. "He hadn't changed things at all since you left, and for the most part, he left us all alone! But now…who knows?"

"What do you want me to do?"

"Get the unicorn to the center! You remember how to do it!"

"Why can't you do it? You live there!"

"Well…because I can't!" Hoggle folded his arms.

Sarah had only just been relieved of her schoolwork stress, but her heart was now beating much faster. This was something entirely different. Hoggle was asking her to simply re-enter that strange world she'd explored when she was fifteen: to retrace the steps she'd taken then. At the very least, this friend of a unicorn was at stake, but it sounded like there was even more than that. A large part of Sarah wanted to reject it all. She couldn't simply uproot herself to go on a dangerous quest.

But another part of her felt not only obligated to go; she wanted to go. If she said no, she would be stranding beings who needed her help. If she said no, someone else would have to suffer the strange bewilderment she had undergone in her younger years: a bewilderment that had ultimately changed Sarah for the better, and an incident that she ultimately had to experience for herself, but all the same, a journey she was glad to have friends upon. And furthermore, as frightening as the Labyrinth could be, particularly with Jareth at its heart, Sarah often dreamed of it at night. While she had called upon the friends she'd met in it, she hadn't once returned herself, feeling it was risky to get that close to Goblin City again. Yet she desired to see it all again: to traverse its lush forests and explore its underground passages.

What she ended up saying was "I can't just leave my friends behind. We're in the middle of a study session!"

"Well, then, we'll just have to explain it to them!" Hoggle insisted, putting his hands on his waist.

"Explain – "

Before Sarah could protest, Hoggle strode right out of hiding, making his way toward the study table.

"Hoggle, NO!" Sarah cried out loud, following him to the table.

"You're Sarah's friends, aren't you?" Hoggle asked, addressing Richard, Bastian, and Helena.

"Who're you?" Richard asked, utterly perplexed.

"He's…my uncle!" Sarah cried, returning to the table. "He came to give me terrible news about a family emergency."

"And you found him on your way to the bathroom?" Bastian was skeptical.

"I am NOT her uncle!" Hoggle folded his arms. "I'm Hoggle, and I'm from the Labyrinth!"

Sarah could see there was no trying to cover this up now.

"That whole world could be in trouble thanks to one stupid unicorn," Hoggle went on, "so I've come to ask Sarah to come back and take her to the Goblin City!"

Sarah's stomach boiled with anxiety as she wondered how her friends would take such a wild statement. When they didn't react, she put her hands into the air, then dropped them to her sides, trying to decide how to begin. "It's a place I went when I was younger," she tried to explain. "It's complicated."

"Was it in a drawing you made?" Helena asked at long last.

"No," Sarah countered. "It was real – "

Helena shook her head. "No, Sarah. Were you…" She was almost embarrassed to ask the question. "INSIDE your drawings?"

"I was actually going to ask if the Labyrinth was inside of a book that you went into," Bastian added.

"Or if the book came out to you," Richard chimed in.

"Why…why would you ask that?" Sarah was dumbfounded. But the answer to her own question was surprisingly easy: "Did those things happen to you?"

Helena, Bastian, and Richard all exchanged glances of surprise.

"I never told anyone because I thought they'd think I was a loony," Helena admitted. "Never even Valentine, even though I first met him there. Another version of him, anyhow."

Bastian shook his head. "You're not crazy, Helena. It was me who almost WAS crazy when I went to Fantastica."

"I tried telling my parents about the time all the books in the library turned real," Richard admitted. "Halfway through, I could tell what they were thinking, so I acted like I was just telling a story I made up."

"Dad still thinks I'm just talking about a made-up game I played when I was twelve," Bastian added.

All three turned back to Sarah. "And you," Helena prompted.

"It wasn't a book or a picture or a library," Sarah explained. "It was somewhere I went when I made a mistake and wished the Goblin King would take Toby away. Somewhere I learned a lot of things."

"I learned a lot of things in Fantastica," Bastian pointed out.

"And I learned a lot of things in that library," said Richard.

"I think the biggest thing we didn't learn was all of this about each other," Helena observed. "If I'd known the three of you had all been places like the city from my drawings…"

"I think we might have some things to talk about," Richard summed.

"Can you do it later?" Hoggle stamped his foot. "We've got business!"

"So you're from the Labyrinth?" Helena asked.

"He looks kind of like a hobbit," Richard whispered to Bastian.

"Not HOBBIT!" Hoggle stamped his foot again, having overheard Richard's comment. "HOGGLE!"

"I think I have to go," Sarah said apologetically. "Someone there needs me. It might even be the whole world that needs me. But if it's anything like it was last time, I really will be back in a few minutes. By your clock, anyway."

"Actually…" Bastian stood up. "I think I should go with you. I guess there's no hiding it anymore. I did a lot of heroic things in Fantastica. Maybe I can help you out!"

"I'm not letting you go off without me, either," Helena added. "What if you run into a sphinx? Do you know how to stump a sphinx? Because I do."

"Whatever you have to do, it probably will be easier if all of us combine our skills and experiences," Richard pointed out, also standing up. "Besides, we're friends. We stick with each other."

"Maybe more than ever," Bastian mused. "What if all our stories mean we're connected? All four of us apparently went on strange adventures, and we know that doesn't happen to just anyone."

"It could be fun!" Helena suggested.

"It could also be dangerous," Sarah warned. "Are you sure about this?"

"More dangerous than fighting Smaug from the inside?" Richard asked with a proud smirk.

"More dangerous than infiltrating the fortress of Horok?" Bastian added (though perhaps this wasn't the best example, as he had to keep reminding himself that that witch had wanted him to win at Horok for her own purposes).

"More dangerous than using a moody tower to escape a Queen of Shadows?" Helena added.

"You really all want to come," Sarah realized. "You'd really all do that for me."

"Friendship friendship, how sweet and touching!" Hoggle mocked. "Now can we get GOING? They've only got thirteen hours!"

Sarah turned back to face Hoggle. "How do we get there?"

"Follow me!" Hoggle scurried back to the door he'd placed between the worlds, pushing it open and rushing through. Sarah crouched slightly in order to get through it herself. Once on the other side, she meant to tell her three friends through the door that they could still turn back if they wanted, but Bastian, Richard, and Helena rushed through the door without pause or a second thought.

...

THE GATE OF THE LABYRINTH

The makeshift door slammed behind the four Henson College students and fell back to the ground outside the wall, taking on the form of an unassuming plank once more.

"Here are the idiots that made that wish!" Hoggle announced, pointing toward the five waiting ponies.

"HEY!" Rainbow Dash snapped. "Who're you calling an idiot?"

Sarah was rather surprised to see not a single unicorn, but five brightly colored ponies. She presumed all had the ability to talk. As unusual as the sight was compared to her home, it was rather par for the course for the Labyrinth.

"I presume one of you is the famous Sarah?" Rarity said questioningly, looking back and forth between Sarah and Helena.

"That's me," Sarah confirmed, stepping forward. "Are you the unicorn that wished your friend away?"

"That's actually me," Twilight clarified, stepping forward herself. "Hoggle said he was going to ask you to guide us to the Goblin City."

Sarah nodded. "I guess I am."

"So you know the way to the center?" Fluttershy asked.

"I know one way," Sarah explained. "The way I went." She turned to Hoggle. "Do you know a faster way?"

"You think I've really memorized the ins and outs of this place?" Hoggle huffed. "It may have settled down, but that doesn't mean I know much about it outside of where I need to go and where I need not to go!"

"It looks like you're the expert," Twilight pointed out.

"Who're your friends there?" Applejack asked.

"Me? I'm Helena Campbell," Helena answered. She half expected the ponies to make a crack at how her name lacked panache.

"My name is Bastian Balthazar Bux," Bastian said proudly. There would have been a time he would have apologized for his own name, complaining that it was all B's, but that time was long gone.

"I'm Richard Tyler," Richard added.

"We were all at the same school as Sarah," Helena explained. "When we heard she had some sort of great adventure to go on, we decided to come along. After all, we've apparently all had great adventures ourselves. We can help each other!"

"What about you?" Sarah asked Twilight. "Who are you?"

"I'm Twilight Sparkle," Twilight said. "And these are my friends…" She pointed to each in turn. "Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, Applejack, and Rarity." She then sighed mournfully. "We usually travel around as a group of six, but Pinkie Pie…"

"That was the one you wished away," Sarah realized.

"I didn't know it would happen!" Twilight argued all over again. "I THOUGHT it was just a silly superstition!"

"You took it for granted that it was impossible," Sarah reiterated. "I did the same thing. It doesn't seem like it should be that easy. That you can just say the wrong words and lose somebody. But you can never take anything like that for granted."

Twilight hung her head in guilt and shame. Sarah felt as though she'd said the wrong thing. "But don't worry!" she said quickly. "We'll get your friend back. If I could make it to the Goblin City to get Toby back, then we can definitely do it this time!"

"That, or you're taking it for granted that it'll be easy as last time," Hoggle huffed.

"Well, last time, she didn't have us," Bastian pointed out. "Or them!" He gestured toward the ponies.

"Well, now that you've all met, I'll be on my merry way," Hoggle decided. "Good luck – "

"But, Hoggle," Sarah interrupted, "you DO know this world better than I do. You may not know all of it, but you do live here. I really do think we need all the help we can get."

"You know why I thought of asking you?" Hoggle folded his arms stubbornly. "Because I sure wasn't going to be their damned guide back to Goblin City! If I never see that place again, it'll be too soon!"

"That's not very brave of you," Bastian pointed out.

"If you hate it that much," Helena added, "why are you sending your FRIEND right to it?"

"Well…I, er…" Hoggle didn't have an excuse for that one.

"He doesn't have to go if he doesn't want," Fluttershy volunteered. "We can – "

"I'm right here, y'know!" Hoggle huffed.

"You don't have to go if you don't want," Applejack told him. "We've handled worse before. We can take it from here. 'Sides, I think Sarah's right. She made it through once. She can make it through again, and so can we!"

"You DON'T have to go," Sarah told Hoggle plainly. "But I want you to come with us. I've missed you. So…will you come with us? Please?"

"Auugghh…" Hoggle always found it difficult to say no to her. He considered her his best friend in all of existence. And when everyone else put it like that, it was rather cruel of him to stay back and send the others on toward Jareth's clutches. He'd left the sort of dwarf who would do things like that behind long ago. "All right, all right!" he relented. "I'll go with you. Doesn't mean I'm going to be happy about it!"

"Thank you!" Sarah got down on her knees in order to be at the proper height to hug him, and then she did so. Hoggle never had been much of one for hugs, but from her, he was all right with them.

When Sarah stood back up, she announced, "We need to open the gate." She began walking along the length of the wall, looking for it.

"That's what we were trying to find," Rainbow Dash told her. "There doesn't seem to be a gate anywhere! And you can't just fly over!"

"It's all about taking things for granted," Sarah explained. "And knowing how to look at things. If I remember, the gate was right…here."

One minute, it just looked like an ordinary blank wall. But the moment Sarah pointed the gate out, all ten present could see it: vast and ornate, a double-doored gate set into the stone. It was a wonder how anyone could miss it.

"But how – " Rainbow Dash began to ask. She cut herself off out of bewilderment.

"I guess it's some kind of glamour," Twilight theorized. "You can see through it if you're actually committed to looking at what's REALLY there and not what you expect."

"That's exactly it!" Sarah cried. "There are all kinds of things like that in this Labyrinth."

"Then we'll be ready," Twilight said with a nod.

She then turned to face the gates, staring them down with determination. Her horn glowed with its maroon aura, and the same aura filled the cracks in the gates. The immense gates creaked open until they were wide enough to admit the newly formed exploring party.

"I don't have a good feeling about this," Richard groaned.

"You don't ever have a good feeling about anything," Helena reminded him.

Bastian put a comforting hand on Richard's shoulder. "We can do this," he said confidently. "We've faced all kinds of things in our own stories. I know we can make it!"

That did, admittedly, make Richard feel quite a bit better about the situation.

With that, Twilight, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Applejack, Fluttershy, Hoggle, Sarah, Helena, Bastian, and Richard took their first step into the Labyrinth.

...

Chapter 107:

· Labyrinth is one of my MAJOR nostalgia fandoms. It's one of the earliest movies I can recall seeing and one of the things I blame on getting me into fantasy and fandom. It was, in essence, my gateway drug, and I still enjoy revisiting it to this day. I knew I had to do something with it. This was originally just going to be kind of a fun "filler episode," but I actually have found other things for Jareth to do later in this fic, so good thing to have him introduced.

· That being said, I'm going to be making up some new locations in the Labyrinth to expand the world. I'll do my best to keep them in the spirit of the film. I realize there is a manga out there that adds new stuff, but I am wholly disinterested in it and will be ignoring it. As far as Labyrinth is concerned, this is filmverse only.

· A lot of Jareth's castle already is stuff I made up. Since the heart of it is an M.C. Escher illusion, I drew upon other well-known architectural illusions to build the rest.

· The term "doxy" comes from the Harry Potter extended canon. Even though the "faeries" in Labyrinth look like more garden variety faeries (though I'm thinking that the smaller type will actually be "pixies" for extra clarification), their major trait is that THEY BITE, and that's a doxy.

· I figured that Hoggle's little door trick he pulls in the Oubliette is one he can use to get to other locations, including other worlds if he wants.

· The Henson College is of course a reference to Jim Henson, creative mind behind Labyrinth and MirrorMask. The Ende Performance Arts Center is a reference to Michael Ende, author of The Neverending Story. The number "202" has no reference; I fully used a random number generator between 1 and 616.

· Even though I haven't yet found a source confirming it yet, Ophira informed me that one cut of MirrorMask's script ends with Helena going to an art school. I figured Sarah would pursue an artsy career…probably acting or playwriting, given her love of cosplay LARP in the park and her obsession with memorizing passages for recitation.

· On 202nd Earth, the year is 1991 (I took it upon myself to set Labyrinth in 1985; I have a bit of a timeline written up for 202 to make it all fit as best I can). Sarah and Helena are 21, Bastian is 20, and Richard is 18.

· Helena Campbell is from the movie MirrorMask, which was produced by the same studio as Labyrinth (but Neil Gaiman was added to the mix). The film actually started out as a Labyrinth sequel, but got changed into its own thing partway through, so the crossover was natural.

· Also, I don't know anyone who DOESN'T ship Helena/Valentine. So here, she's dating the 202nd Earth version of Valentine (since she left the other version QUITE behind and he doesn't WANT to be a waiter, so he would never go to her Earth anyway). And actually, I didn't even think of it beyond BroTP until the very ending when she DID bump into the Earth version, so I guess I technically do ship her with the Earth version way more than the drawing-world version.

· Bastian Balthazar Bux is from The Neverending Story. I actually first got the idea to add him to this crossover after revisiting the first TNS film and realizing the parallels between it and Labyrinth. I then went to search out the book of TNS out of curiosity, and I ended up freaking loving it, so I think I'm actually going to go mostly bookverse for him, with some filmverse elements cherrypicked in because that's what I do.

· Richard Tyler is from The Pagemaster. Which might seem like the outlier film of the four (and it's the weakest of the four, definitely), but I ended up watching Pagemaster in the same night as TNS and being all like "THEY'RE BOTH ABOUT BOOK ADVENTURES. THEY HAVE TO BE CONNECTED!" And boy howdy am I glad I added Richard to this mix for reasons you'll see later on.

· A lot of stuff about the Henson College was actually based on my own alma mater (which was only a liberal arts college, not a fine arts one). The EPAC is based on the performing arts center I got familiar with, which had all sorts of creepy rooms to hide in.

· I'm rather aware that Creative Writing is a degree to be found more in a standard English program than a fine arts school, but to me, it's an art, and it's the only major Bastian COULD have (and probably the one Richard will have…either that or he goes for a career as a book illustrator), so it's now curriculum at HCFA.

· In the original rough outline of this, I was going to have Coraline Jones instead of Bastian and Richard – she was going to be aged up as well – and Sarah, Helena, and Coraline wouldn't have shown up until the END of the story. I then found a much better place for Coraline to go (even though it will take me freaking forever to reach it), I got the ideas for Bastian and Richard, and I realized the team would do me much better if I got them in at the beginning rather than saving them for a Deus Ex Machina.

· The dragon in The Pagemaster is Smaug and you can't prove me wrong.