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The Riddle of the Labyrinth 53 - Diamond prison

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The Cyborg woman studied the diamond for a lengthier time, her cocoa-brown face devoid of any notable emotions, as if she'd put all of them on hiatus to be able to understand the enigma laying in front of her. When she finally spoke, they could all tell that she had gone through some substantial processing, playing out numerous scenarios in her mind.
"So this should be the complete Alien now? Locked in here like in a private Undermoor," she finally figured.
"Yes," Cleanthia nodded her head. "All of it is in there now.
"And hopefully as restrained as Reikan and the others in the real Undermoor," Chervin added, shivering unnervingly as he recalled the real, Eraldan prison.

"Speaking of Undermoor," Atrey said. "If Saphira makes it through, she'd possibly be able to beseech the High King for her father's pardon."
"You think so?" Chervin turned to look at the cyborg.
"Yes, speaking out of experience, there'd be few things anyone could deny this young woman after her deed of pure heroism."
"Seriously," Chervin shook his head. "Let's not run ahead in speculations now. This is far from done with yet. How safe is this diamond prison really, Atrey?"
"It's very safe," the Cyborg said. "It's a diamond from your Taronda, Chervin, one of the hardest matter in the Seven Cosmoses. It envelopes the Alien's singularity - or worm hole, depending on what view you have on the laws of the universes. A singularity, which in turn contains the Alien itself now. It has become confined in its own jail, the most wretched of ironies, wouldn't you say?" The others looked at each other and nodded. "Yet more important than the diamond's durability is what is enclosed therein now. The size of the entity!"

"You lost me, Cyborg," Chervin admitted and Atrey cracked a smile at how he used the impersonal derogative as an endearment instead.
"Dear magician," she returned. "Have you already forgotten the expanses of that place? An endless labyrinth of ruins surrounded by even vaster desserts. What was in there diminishes even this immense city which is Jareth's Labyrinth. So the main problem for the Alien will not be breaking the diamond, but foremost finding the way out to the edge of its prison."
"It wished to close us in there," Cleanthia said. "Now it shall taste its own medicine."

"Look!" Chervin suddenly said and pointed to the diamond. The sheen, which had been shining with a steady lime green colour had begun flickering. First barely notably, then a faint tremble followed by the quiver of a light bulb on the brink of giving up. Then the flashes came faster and became more intense, and both Atrey and Chervin shielded their eyes, while Cleanthia phased out slightly, almost like a defensive reflex.
"What's going on?" Chervin asked and leaned in closer, peeking between his fingers like a child seeing something scary. The diamond had flashed earlier when he had dared to touch it, but this went beyond anything of that kind. Was the Alien trying, against all odds, to break free? Or was the tiresome thing aiming at communicating with them?  

There was a sound like marrow bones cracking and the green sheen surged into a conflagration large enough to swallow Chervin's head. Then the flames turned from green to navy to black. Black as the depths of space, an unnatural hue that caused actual pain to behold. Chervin flinched away from the sight, his eyes gushing hot tears. The light of the black fires was pallid grey and it washed the small room with the tint of stagnant graveyard water.
"Stop," Chervin begged, lifting a hand, as the sickly grey light pulsed with a speed to match his own heartbeat and the very air seemed to thicken with a fever heat, becoming hard to breath. "Stop, before my brain explodes!"

It seemed as if he was heard, because as soon as he had uttered the last words, the strange emission faded, as if folded back into the diamond, like a flower closing in for the night. And what remained, was an indistinct purplish sheen, like blacklight, so much feebler than the vivid lime and pink of prior.
"What happened?" Chervin asked. "Did the creep – die?"
"Perhaps it killed itself?" Atrey figured, feeling lost as this development went beyond even her calculations. "Such a disaster, coming so far and struggling so hard only to commit suicide," she then tried to make light of it, if only to prevent Chervin from blowing up, the man was a tense as a bowstring drawn too taut.

"You're not that far from the truth," Cleanthia disclosed. "I was able to somehow look into that thing. And it seems like – at least a part of the Alien's nature killed itself. Remember, it consisted of several, amalgamated beings. Earlier captives. And some of them apparently had had enough now and gave in. And what we saw here was the struggle when the remaining parts of the beast tried to stop them."
"But if it died in there?" Atrey frowned. "What became of the souls? Not even souls can leave a singularity of that kind."
"I'm not sure," Cleanthia said. "They're not there anymore. At least I cannot see them."
"So there was a way out after all," Chervin murmured. "By dying."
"Yes," Cleanthia nodded. "For a few subsouls. But as I can sense, the major part is still in there, however weakened."
"Harmless?" the mage queried.
"Too early to say," the Voidwalker replied.  

***

King Jareth had just received the dramatic news that Tilathian had returned home to Ebraa and taken Orora and Sarah with him. Apparently, they were going to a certain Locus of Power, on holy ground – which would be the only way to salvage Sarah's imperilled life.

Now, he sat in his ornate and jewel-encrusted throne and listened to the nocturnal rain tapping against the high windows and rattling against the ledges, an uneven disharmony. Often rain tended to calm and sooth him, but tonight the white noise only made him irritated. Once again he began perusing the crystal, this time going over a faint post-recording of what had already been labelled 'The Heroic Battle of Ergenad'. The fight between Sarah and the Alien. It was hard to see what was really going on, the struggle had been transitory but dramatic. In the twilight of the pre-dawn he saw Sarah reach the shoreside and baulk there, almost hesitating. The next moment something huge, black and scaly rose from the river. First it appeared to him like some large kind of serpent, then he saw that it had tentacles like an octopoid and huge serrated spikes distended from a protrusion which might've been a head. There was something similar to insect eyes covering that carbuncle but nothing which may pass for a gape.

The thing was twisting in the water, slating as one of those elongated tentacles reached out to grab Sarah, who looked almost infinitesimal next to it. The creature held almost half the size of Jareth's own castle, if said castle had been tipped down on the ground instead of surging in the air. Hellfire burned in its fulvous, facetted eyes; a mad glare of defiant intelligence as it reached out for poor Sarah. Yet its sheer size hadn't bothered Julianne's daughter. The beast may have attempted to take her down through surprise, but she had fleetingly leaped to the side, almost like a sun reflection had she skipped out of harm's way, yet with rosy lips stretched wide in screaming terror. Terror and agony as she dashed back up on the shore, a pre-emptive move, stumbling and almost falling on the pebbles.

All of a sudden the behemoth began to trash around in the water as if being seized by electric current. Although the vision was silent, Jareth could almost imagine the squelching sound emitting from the thing. The monster bent and twisted irregularly in a baleful and crazed spasming dance irresolutely altering between attack and defeat. At the same time Jareth spied something else in the corner of the vision, a small figure weaving serpent-like between the trees and entering the beach where it suddenly halted, just the very moment the Alien freak seemed to freeze like a statue in an almost upright position.

There was an impasse, an equilibrium, a short moment of peace, before the Alien appeared to fall back into the river again. Or was it really shrinking? Wasn't it warping out of reality while the newly arrived raised a balled fist, a fist holding some kind of grenade-like outlandish weapon. Then there was a conversion, a greenish ray of condensed light passing between the newcomer's weapon and the Alien, Jareth unable to tell where it emitted from and which was the receiver. Perhaps the ray of force went both ways, he couldn't really deduce it.

As he watched, the Alien shrivelled and disappeared completely and he saw the young woman, whom he now recognized as the Voidwalker Cleanthia, leap forward towards the prone form of the fallen and visibly injured Sarah, squatting on the ground and trying to raise her up. Jareth also saw the fleet feated arrival of his court physician Orora.  

Ending the recording there, he realized this was the third time he had watched the thing without becoming any wiser about what really became of their foe. Putting the crystal down, he drank from his goblet of wine instead, dreaming of intoxication, of a reprieve, however brief, from the austerity of the current reality. The wine smelt musky and dry and tasted like a late summer. A fierce and unrelenting abrasiveness of resin and murky umami, of red setting suns over salty seas and over-ripe fruit. Swallowing it down, Jareth turned to the kneeling servant by the dais of his throne.
"Bring me the Voidwalker," he ordered the man. "I want a few answers."

"Perhaps I may oblige," a clear soprano resounded the moment the servant dashed out the double-doors at the end of the great hall, almost stumbling across the polished marble floor. Jareth turned his head towards the new voice, spotting the Cyborg woman coming towards him, her hips swaying and her deep indigo suit shifting partly to purple as her body moved. In that instance did Jareth realize that she was a very attractive woman, although he could never imagine himself engaging in anything more personal with someone like her. He admitted to his prejudice with a tick of his upper lip before his face became stoic and polite again.
"Atrey, what have you?" he requested as he tucked the crystal ball away into his inner pocket.

"I've been studying that hexagon of hyperdiamond which Cleanthia used," she began, "and it sure is an impossible contraption."
"Impossible how?" Jareth queried.  
"It's harder than anything could possibly be, the atoms so tense that it's a wonder it doesn't weight tonnes and that it isn't deeply dark. Jareth, what Cleanthia has in her hand now is a black hole," the Cyborg woman disclosed as she elegantly sat down in the offered chair, crossing her long legs in front of her.
"You got to be kidding," propping his lower arms on the arm-rests, Jareth leaned forward in his throne while knowing that 'kidding' was as far from what Atrey was doing as you could possibly get. And not unexpectedly she shook her head slightly, her dark tresses swaying, beads gleaning in the lamplight.

"Remember what I told about the black holes earlier," she commenced. "About singularities and event horizons. It's all in there now, in the diamond, binding its content indefinitely to its atoms. The alien together with the singularity it earlier created down in Labyrinth."
"What am I missing here?" the king frowned. "A black hole is supposed to suck all content in. Everything within the event horizon. So why has this object not killed the whole little universe of ours? Not that I'm complaining of course," a faint smile brushing over his features.
"Because it's an inverted black hole."
"Inverted," Jareth understood even less and he emptied his wine goblet, before he remembered his manners and offered of the wine to his visitor as well. But Atrey rejected politely, as alcoholic beverages were of little use to a cybernetic brain like hers.  

"Inverted as in turned inside out," she explained. "The event horizon lays by the border of the crystal, and is facing inwards. That's why we're not becoming sucked in. We are already inside of the black hole so to say."
"But wouldn't that mean that we'd be crushed by the gravity?"
"No, not from our horizon. Only from the horizon that is imprisoning the Alien now."
"I think I'll settle for not understanding this," Jareth shook his head. "If that diamond is really working as a prison for the Alien, then I'm satisfied. Or as least as satisfied as one can be when the outcome of Sarah's life is still in the hands of destiny."
"Come what may," Atrey replied. "But know this, Your Majesty. Sarah fought the Alien and conquered it, thus fulfilling the prophecy of her father. And now, this very moment, she's still hanging in the elusive balance before the second prophecy, the Infraheim one."
"You know about that one?" Jareth asked.
"Of course I do, I sampled all worth knowing before I came here. Including those divinations. Only if not the daemon with the strange seeds share of her gift," she then quoted. "That could mean Orora and her mycelium. Yes, I know about that discovery of hers too. But don't worry about your secrets, Your Majesty, my lips are sealed, as I came here not to spy but to save a handful of universes."

Jareth nodded, feeling an odd sense of relief, as he realized that he trusted the Cyborg. She was a strange woman, he figured. Some days, she could be cold as the heartless machine everyone took her for. However, beneath that synthetic skin she had a moral compass that spun in secret and there were times, like now, when she appeared almost angelic.
"Atrey," he began. "Right now it's not our secrets that worry me, but the wellbeing of Sarah. Tell me, do you think she'll live."
"I do not have the temerity to speculate, Jareth," Atrey lost eye-contact with the king, and let her gaze float out the windows. The sky outside took back its rain and silence descended in the throne room. "I can only speculate, calculate. And while I'm brilliant at calculating, it would now gain naught, so I refrain from it for the time being."
"Then I imagine I'll have to keep on hoping," the king said and put his goblet away. A part of him wanted to pour more of that wine, to snuggle up against that soft pillow of forgetfulness the beverage in larger amounts offered, but he knew he could not do that right now. The Alien might be locked into a diamond prison but the crisis was far from over. "I will hope that Sarah will be well, so that we might thank her for her marvellous and brave deed," Jareth finished and then fell silent as his eyes followed Atrey's out through the window to try to bore through the night and see the future on the other side of the black velvet.

It felt like Jareth at this moment in time held space hooked over his finger, drawn taut and ready to be released. But time dragged in the world he occupied, seeming a hundred years behind the intricate images she'd constructed in her mind. By any human measure, his plans had advanced at an amazing rate but Atrey didn't measure reality in human terms. It was all too slow; the delays between thought and action and achieving final product were interminable, frustrating. Yet Atrey possessed absolute control of her mind, so frustration, a thoroughly human malady that served no purpose, was something she could just eliminate from her skull. Time dragged but Atrey watched with patience while turning a human face to the world.

"Hope," she ultimately said. "A wise woman on Earth once said that hope will be the last to leave a human." The Cyborg's words made Jareth turn again, to face her. There was that emotion again, genuine gentleness, but this time touched with a protective heat that hinted at staggering depth. "Then it might be little comfort if Orora should fail Sarah, however what Sarah did here today will definitely remedy both her and her mother from the shame that has tainted them ever since Reikan's failed revolution. Not even the most hard-core Celestian can with any reasonable integrity deny Julianne and Sara their right place within the Celestian nation again."
"It is a comfort indeed," Jareth murmured. "However miniscule." In the absence of the wine, he had taken to play with the crescent-shaped amulet he carried around his neck, turning it over and over again in a long-fingered hand.

Unbeknownst to Jareth, Nurah had entered the throne room and was now watching him from the sideline, a curious expression flitting across her face as she saw the rare wash of emotions on her King's face. She'd seen him in many conditions. Amused, sarcastic, mutinous, frustrated, drunkenly lost, radiant, enraged, even heartrendingly morose. This was new however. Whereas all of Jareth's emotions were either made out of the stuff of broken mirrors, all turned to show anything but himself, created for deception and deflection – or cuttingly honest, the way only a king could allow himself to be honest, these emotions were genuine and gentle. That, more than anything she'd seen thus far, moved Nurah to start making decisions in her head.

Jareth began asking something more when another servant banged throught the doors, his voice on the top of his lungs.
"Your majesty," he bellowed. "Your majesty, pardon my imprudence, but you have extraterrestrial visitors."
"What now? Who?" annoyance laced the king's voice as he almost stood from his throne. Next moment the poor servant was pitilessly showed to the side as a woman crossed the threshold and Jarets irritation turned to surprise.
"Lady Julianne!" he greeted.
"Your majesty king Jareth of Labyrinth," there was an odd scorn in the honorific as she strode across the red-tiled floor and up to the throne. "Where is my daughter?"

Jareth felt a strange sense of displacement as his memories of Julianne tangled with the woman before his eyes, seeing her for real this time, not through the vapor of the wine and the merriment of the Whitehall Hallow Eve. It was like looking at a reverse ghost, a reality somehow less tangible than the recollections 18 years gone. He had lived those years so gradually but to his eyes she had received them all at once and in studying the new lines time had sketched for her, he felt the faint tug of his own passing years, like a weight in his heart. How much older did he look to her? Jareth shook his head inwards, banishing the broody thought. While he was often bemused by the philosophical notions that made free with his heart and head, long hours of tutelage in self-discipline had also given him the trick of shoving such thinking aside, cubbyholing them for contemplation once he survived his immediate responsibilities.

Jareth settled for honesty as the best approach.
"Sarah is in Terandabar," he began and Julianne cut him off immediately.
"Terandabar? I was told she was here with you."
"It's a long story," Jareth sighed and to gain some time, he introduced Atrey and offered of the wine to the new arrival. Then he braced himself and asked to be heard out, and edgily reluctant, did Julianne grant him that. Hence he King began telling his story from where he had appeared in Chelsea to explain and perhaps apologize to Sarah for what occurred during the Hallow Eve festivity, how the Alien attacked them there and how Jareth fled to the only place where he knew that he could protect Sarah – to Infraheim. "But when Sarah learned that the creature had followed us here, she decided to meet it in battle, transfusing her father's dreadful prophecy."

When he was done, Julianne was oddly silent, facing the king.
"Don't you realize," she finally said trough tightly strained lips, "that Sarah was the very last thing I had left?"
"Lady Julianne?" Atrey now spoke up. "King Jareth is not the one you should lay your blame upon in this case."
"Then whom?" Julianne barely shifted her gaze over to the woman who was sitting on a low chair next to the throne.
"Me," Atrey's response rang clear and direct and Julianne faced the Cyborg as if actually seeing her for the first time.
"Why you?"
"Because I had both the Royal Mandate and physical means to stop Sarah from engaging the Alien."
"Then why didn't you?" in Julianne's face despair battled with puzzlement.

"The Prophecy, right?" Nurah said.
"Damn that prophecy!" Julianne lamented. "It stole my one daughter from me!"
"No," Atrey said. "Firstly, your daughter may yet live. Don't give up on her, Julianne, you should know how stubborn this young woman is. Secondly, Sarah went up against the Alien exercising her free will and with open eyes. She was probably the one of us all who had understood the Alien best of us all after having confronted it twice earlier. Spoken to it. And she took it upon herself to face it down in a struggle. Even if I could've stopped her, it wouldn't have been right of me to do so. Instead I hung back and let another person sneak in and help her without her knowing it."
"Whom?" Julianne asked.
"Cleanthia the Thulean Voidwalker," the Cyborg replied. "She too had early on designated to fight the Alien, but for an entirely different reason – revenge. She wanted to kill the being which had murdered her dear father. I understood that she would follow Sarah if the latter went up against the Alien. None of them could have won alone, but together they were able to defeat the creature. Sarah was able to weaken and distract it enough for it to not realize, until it was too late, that Cleanthia had the power to lock it up in its own singularity."

An avalanche of thoughts invaded Jareth's mind, one of them finally making its way to the forefront.
"You knew this all the time?" he staggered. "How this was going to play out?"
"Not really," Atrey said. "It was first this morning all pieces fell in place and I understood. Thus I hung back and I called back Chervin and Cascal the shaman and let the battle play out in the most beneficiary way."
"And thus you killed my daughter, you damn, insensitive robot!" Julianne despaired and then she hid her face in her hands. Hearing that, Nurah stood from her place and walked over to Julianne and took her arms, did her best to try to comfort her with soothing words imbued with hope. Julianne first wanted to force the other woman away, but she relented because of the pent-up anguish and dejection battling within her chest, the misery wanting to come out, brought her in such a frantic need for human contact, any kind of contact as a matter of fact. She was tired now, tired of raging and fighting and struggling, she just wanted to lay down and give in to sadness and desolation, cry until there were no more tears to cry.

"She's not dead, Julianne," Nurah said. "She's clinging to life because there's something which ties her to life. Something she values more than the absence of pain." Then Nurah turned to face the King, a yet unspoken truth saturating her wise face.

That was when reality in all of its glory finally came back and hit him. Sarah! Saphira! He must go after her. Tell her the truth. A truth which might decide if she was going to live or not.
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