It had really been too long, Jareth realised. He almost hadn’t recognised Sarah. The girl was now a woman, and her shy prettiness had blossomed into confident beauty. Even covered in dirt, blood, and a truly hideous pink housecoat, he realised, she’d never looked so beautiful.

The opposite was true of Linda. Either she was pouring all of his – his! – magic into maintaining the illusion of herself and had gone over the top, or she was losing control of his magic.

Which didn’t seem to be the case. The first wave of goblins were standing frozen as if they’d been dipped in water and then dropped into liquid nitrogen. More hurried to fill the gaps, but Jareth could already tell that this war wouldn’t be decided by and army. It all came down to a contest of power – power, and the ability to wield it.

In which case, Linda had the upper hand. Jareth found himself in the unenviable position of trying to take on a devious and underhanded enemy after years without practice. A few things gave him hope: it was, after all, his magic that both of them were using, and he had much more experience with it. Linda, also, was rattled by his mere appearance, and would be more so if he could continue to keep her off-balance.

And Sarah was here. And she hadn’t slapped him yet.

Might as well begin, then.

The Queen was in the middle of freezing a goblin who had bravely (or foolishly) attacked her directly, when she stopped dead, her illusion-self wavering like a mirage on a hot desert. With glacial slowness, she turned on the spot to face her opponent.

The Goblin King’s grin was like an offensive weapon. As Toby watched, the Queen shook again, and her face momentarily betrayed something that might have been fear. But it was gone in less than a heartbeat, and she flung out a hand.

Toby felt it in his bones, the force of it taking his breath away. Several goblins toppled, and Sarah, who appeared to be wrestling with an armour-clad goblin, grimaced. But the Goblin King just laughed.

“Linda, Linda, Linda. Is that the best you can do?”

The Queen’s hair began to coil and uncoil like Medusa’s snakes. “Don’t you dare call me that,” she snapped.

The Goblin King raised an eyebrow, and the Queen shivered. “Whyever not? It’s your name, isn’t it?”

Toby missed the next part of the exchange, as an enormous axe blade skimmed past his nose and swung up into the air. He looked up, only to see it coming down for another stroke. As he scrambled out of the way, he turned around to see who – or what – was waving an axe at him, especially one half as tall as he was.

“Oh, no,” he mumbled.

Sarah whirled around when she heard Toby’s shout, not the wisest course of action. Luckily, Hoggle brained the goblin she’d been holding at arm’s length before it had a chance to take advantage of her distraction.

“Sarah, what’re you – oh.”

Sarah couldn’t find anything to say either. She’d thought that Hoggle had damaged the gigantic robotic guardian enough during their fight at the gates of the Goblin City that it wouldn’t run any longer. Apparently, judging by the fact that it was even now clumsily walking through the wreckage of the castle doors, this was not the case.

Sarah glanced towards the clear spot in the hall where the Queen and Jareth were fighting, hoping to get a clue as to who had raised the metal monster. Judging by the triumphant smile on the Queen’s face, it wasn’t on their side.

“Damn,” Sarah muttered. “Guys!”

Ludo, on the other side of the hall, dropped the goblin he’d been good-naturedly dangling upside down. The stick the goblin had been holding broke neatly in two, and the little biting monster on the end latched itself neatly onto its owner’s behind. Sir Didymus, who had apparently been duelling himself vigorously while several bemused goblins watched, delivered a smart blow to each of his onlookers and leaped astride Ambrosius, who promptly ran from the now enraged goblins. They both reached Sarah at about the same time.

“You called, milady?” Sir Didymus inquired, as he dismounted.

“Sawah need help?” Ludo asked eagerly.

“Yeah. We’ve got to stop that thing,” Sarah said, as the aforementioned thing swept ten goblins out of its way with its axe and let out a metallic, thundering roar. “I’m just not sure how.”

“There’ll be someone in the head controlling it,” Hoggle volunteered.

“Then we’ve got to knock its head off somehow to get at the controls. But how are we going to do that?”

Ludo shrugged, and then took a few steps backwards as all eyes turned to him.

Irene took the entrance of the metal monster as her cue to leave the main hall. After all, there were all these convenient little halls down which countless goblins had already disappeared. And – though she hated to admit it – she wasn’t much use in the middle of a battle. She was, in fact, in the way. All in all, now seemed like an excellent time to make her exit.

There was one small problem with this otherwise perfectly reasonable plan. She had no idea where she was going.

Irene muttered a word she’d never let her children hear her say when the latest hall ended in yet another fork. “This whole damn place is a maze!”

She didn’t spend much time deciding which way to go, however, since the sounds of a fight came echoing down the corridor to her right. “All right,” she said under her breath. “Not that way, then.”

A few steps along the left-hand hall, Irene came to a dead end. A large, wooden door stood smugly shut before her, and she could swear the lock was grinning at her. When she pushed on it, it refused to budge.

I’m not going to panic, Irene told herself. I’m going to deal with this calmly and rationally. Just like everything before it.

The shouting and metallic noises were getting closer.

And then, the entire hall began to shake. Several large chunks of rock fell out of the ceiling, and a few “oof”s from the hall behind Irene revealed that the combatants had lost to the rocks. They’d probably have devilish headaches later.

Irene bit back a scream when two armour-clad goblins, one carrying a pike, the other and axe, rounded the corner and came face-to-face with her. They might be on my side, inasmuch as I have a side...

Then they started to point at her. And shout. And the smaller one was pointing that pike right at her.

As they charged towards her, Irene sidestepped the pike, then gave it a push. The goblin holding it spun like a top, knocking into its partner and sending them both sprawling with a giant-sized clatter of armour. Irene stepped over them and picked up the axe, not remembering to say “Thank you” until she’d already raised the heavy thing to hit the door with. The goblin she’d taken it from only groaned in response.

At the first blow, the door shuddered, and the lock shouted, “I will never surrender! Threaten me all you like!” Irene nearly dropped the axe at hearing a lock speak. It seemed that no matter what she saw, this place always had something up its sleeve to surprise her.

“Who said this was a threat?” Irene asked the lock, using her best ‘mom’ voice.

“I thought...uh...” the lock backtracked.

“This isn’t a threat,” Irene said, hefting the axe for a second blow. “This is a promise.”

There was a click as the lock unlocked. The door swung gently open as Irene pushed it. At first, it was too dark to see anything, but once the door opened enough to let some light in, it gleamed off of more metal than in the rest of the castle put together.

“Oh, my,” Irene whispered.

She’d found the armoury.

The cascade of rocks had neatly knocked the head off of the metal giant, but they’d also put a sizeable dent in the Goblin King’s forces. Sarah sincerely hoped that nobody was too seriously hurt.

“Great work, Ludo!” she congratulated her friend.

“Huh. Yeah, great. Just one problem – there’s no one at the controls!” Hoggle shouted. “What’s keeping it going, and how’re we supposed to stop it?”

“We’ve got to get somebody up there,” Sarah mused. ‘But how?”

“Sarah?”

“Toby!” seeing the look on Toby’s face made butterflies of fright begin to flutter somewhere under Sarah’s lungs. “What’s wrong?”

“Other than everything?” Toby looked around and quickly stepped out of the way of a blow form a goblin in what looked like a leather-and-chain-mail skirt. “Sarah, I don’t know where Mom is, and you know what she’s like. What if she met up with some of these angry little – ow!” Toby shouted as the goblin’s sword found its mark in his leg. Sir Didymus, apparently glad of having somebody to fight, charged at the goblin, and they began an energetic and rather noisy duel.

“I’m sure she’s fine,” Sarah tried to reassure her little brother. “She made it this far – what the...?”

Everyone, including Sir Didymus, who received a few hits for his distraction, turned to see what Sarah was looking at. She couldn’t say she blamed them. Irene, dirty, ragged, and in a state of general disarray, had just re-entered the fray. And somewhere in the castle, she’d managed to find a cannon.

“What was she going to do with that?” Toby asked, clearly confused.

“Huh, she can barely push it,” Hoggle scoffed.

“Heyyy, that’s it!” Sarah said, as something dawned on her. “Those things shoot little round goblins, right? We can shoot one of those into the robot!”

“I don’t see any cannonballs,” Sir Didymus said, as he parried his opponent’s thrust.

“Hmm, that’s right...” Sarah bit her lip. They’d come too far to give up now, and she was sure that something would present itself. “What could we shoot at it?”

Sir Didymus knocked his opponent out with a flourish of his staff. “I volunteer!”

“Are you sure?” Sarah asked. Suddenly, the plan didn’t seem quite so clever. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

Sir Didymus drew himself up to his full height (still not much taller than Sarah’s knees) and puffed himself up proudly. “Are you saying that this is too dangerous a quest?”

“Well, it’s a cannon -”

“I insist that you allow me to do this, milady.” He struck a pose that Sarah assumed he thought looked heroic. “For the good of the kingdom.”

Sarah sighed. “Just be careful.”

She had to smother her giggles when, minutes later, her small knight flew through the air, legs oscillating wildly, and a battle cry of sorts tearing from his open mouth. It was too serious to laugh about.

But still.

There was one heart-stopping moment where Sarah thought he wasn’t going to make it, but her fears were alleviated when Sir Didymus found a foothold and scrambled up into the metal guardian’s control booth. It swung its axe at him in an enthusiastic but not particularly well-aimed attack.

“How’re you doing?” Sarah called up.

“I can’t quite seem to figure out how to work it, milady,” Sir Didymus answered sheepishly. Below, ad spider-like goblin squeaked and scurried out of the way of the robot’s descending foot.

“Just push buttons. Sooner or later, it’ll break,” Hoggle advised the knight.

There was a flurry of motion from atop the advancing robot, where Sir Didymus was apparently following these directions, and then a plume of thick black smoke rose from the metal monster’s neck. “It’s goin’, all right!” Hoggle shouted, shuffling slightly so that Irene was between him and the robot. Sarah had to shake her head. Some things never changed.

“Get out of there!” she called up to Sir Didymus.

“How, milady?”

“Just jump!”

The words had barely left Sarah’s mouth before Sir Didymus hit the floor. He was not a moment too soon, since a scant few seconds later, sparks flew from the robot’s neck and it rocked on its heels.

A cheer rose from the invading forces, and a small group of goblins swept Sir Didymus up onto their shoulders. But their relief was short-lived, as the robot shook itself rather like a dog, and then, regardless of the flames now crackling merrily where its head used to be, kept coming, laying into the battlefield with its axe.

Sarah managed to suppress a scream of frustration and just a little bit of fear, but a squeak still leaked out. “It’s unstoppable!”

“I guess we’ll have to break it down completely,” Toby sighed.

“Why would you do that?” Irene asked, and Sarah groaned. “When you can just pull the plug?”

Sarah opened her mouth to calmly scream at her stepmother that it didn’t have a plug, that was sort of the point of being run on magic, when a flash of insight momentarily blinded her. Turning her back on the advancing robot, she found herself again watching the magical battle between the Queen and Jareth. The victorious smile on the Queen’s face was more terrifying than the metal beast she’d summoned.

Sarah couldn’t believe it had taken her this long. Pull the plug...

She took a few steps toward the silent war of spells, and then broke into a run.

Jareth was not losing. This was a setback, true, but he was not losing.

He didn’t understand it. Linda was pouring all of her energies into maintaining her now very stretched-looking appearance and the guardian she’d called up. So how had he not won yet?

“Linda, you’re not...concentrating,” he said, using the most intimidating tone he could muster, at the same time as he lashed out at her. She flinched, her illusion flickering, but he thought that was as much from his use of her name as from his spell.

He was proven right moments later when she laughed calmly and without real humour. “On you? Oh, I’m so sorry, but you see, I don’t have to.”

“Linda, you’re really overacting this role.”

She flinched again, and scowled. “Hmmph. Just keep trying to fight me with magic, Goblin King,” she sneered. Jareth answered with a sneer of his own, one he knew was better and much more effective than hers. Linda’s face froze up again, twisting into something that resembled one of the goblins she disliked. “You...” She seemed at a loss for words. “Get out! You have no power here anymore!”

The line sounded familiar. Oh, yes...it was nearly identical to what Sarah’d said when she left. Would that damn book never leave him alone? You have no power over me...Could he ever forget?

A slow smile crept across Linda’s face, and then that face melted into another, less severe one. Sarah Williams, age fifteen, stood before him.

“That’s right, you lost,” she said, as if just remembering. “You let your feelings get in the way. I wonder, will you do the same again?”

No, he couldn’t forget. But maybe he didn’t need to. Maybe what he needed to do was remember.

Linda’s disguise shattered as his blow hit her, and he was a little surprised to see how haggard she looked. Thirty years of bearing a constant grudge had really taken their toll. But almost as soon as one illusion disappeared, she’d created another too-perfect self to hide behind. It was rather pathetic, really.

She bounced back quickly, though, flinging his own spell back at him. “Go on trying to fight me with magic,” she repeated. “It’s your magic I’m using. You’re just making me stronger.”

“Really.” He couldn’t help but smile. “Then I don’t need it to win.”

“What?” Jareth took it as a compliment that for just a fraction of a second, fear skittered across her fabulously fake ocean-blue eyes. “Oh, really. Care to explain?”

“You’re the ruler of the Labyrinth, aren’t you? The one in charge of its twists and turns. The one with the magic. And I’m the one who just defeated that Labyrinth to make my way to your castle beyond the Goblin City...” ‘The child’ didn’t seem to fit here. “...to take back the princess you have stolen.” Much better. “I don’t need magic to defeat you. I only need words.”

If there had been colour in Linda’s face, it would have drained away. “No – you can’t – that’s not how the story goes -”

“Oh, but it is. Plucky heroine – or hero – saves day from corrupt ruler, tra la la, tea and buns for everyone. And you, ever so thoughtfully, cast me as the hero.”

Now Linda looked desperate. Her blows whizzed about with reckless abandon, and Jareth laughed. She might be able to use his power, steal his spells to make her stronger, but she’d do well to remember whose power it was in the first place and wonder if it also worked the other way around.

Linda’s lips narrowed until her mouth resembled a bloody gash. Evidently, she’d realised her random attacks were playing right into Jareth’s hands. She raised both hands, and flung her head back dramatically.

And stood still.

The whole room seemed to be holding its breath.

Then Jareth realised what was happening. She was pulling all the available magic in the room in to herself, concentrating for one decisive blow. Somewhere behind Jareth, the gate guard stopped in mid-swing. Locks and doorknockers fell silent, illusions vanished, and somewhere in the depths of the castle, the water pump stopped dead. Jareth tried a simple charm and found that he was, like that night when Linda had stolen his throne, utterly without magic.

Best to get this over with, then.

As Jareth opened his mouth to say the words, someone’s hand touched his shoulder. He turned, ready to blast whoever it was for interrupting him – and found himself speechless.

Sarah was looking back at him.

“Let’s finish this, shall we?” she said, turning to face her mother. Suddenly feeling like nothing was beyond him, not even moving the stars, Jareth reached out and grasped her hand.

Linda finally looked back at him, and her expression of triumphant hate vanished as it was replaced by one of shocked betrayal. “You -” she began, but it was too late.

Sarah and Jareth said the words together.

“You have no power over me!”

The Queen fell.

AN: ZOMG!

This took a lot out of me. I had no idea this was coming when I started the story...so I didn’t really have a plan. Made it a bit hard to write this chapter, that did. *nods*

I know the whole hand-holding thing might not really be quite Goblin King-enough, but...harmless fluff. The story needed some, in my humble opinion.

Thank you all for reading, reviewing, and just generally making this story great. It would never have come this far if it weren’t for you guys! There’s one more chapter and an epilogue still to come, so please stick around.

*dies* Long chapter is looooooong...