Those Cruel Eyes Edition 1

Chapter 14

"Emmeline!" Jareth yelled, ice running through his veins. He ran off into the grove where Emmeline disappeared, and called her name. "Emmeline!"
"Jareth!" came the petrified scream above him. Jareth glanced up, responding to her voice, and was frozen with dread. Emmeline was being held hostage by an enormous coal black dragon. Along its back were dozens, if not hundreds, of dark bloodred spikes ranging from five feet to half an inch, each tip coloured a poisonous-looking blue. Its claws were webbed and had talons the height of half a door and as thick as a dictionary. Emmeline was struggling with one of the dragon's claws, scratching at it with her nails, but the dragon's noxious yellow eyes were completely focused on Jareth.
It leapt out of the tree, which was well over fifty feet high, and landed so hard on the ground that the tremors made Jareth lose his balance and fall to the ground. Jareth got up slowly, not wanting to startle the beast. His eyes quickly darted from the dragon's eyes to Emmeline, but as soon as Jareth lost eye contact, the dragon attacked. It bellowed a blood curdling roar, opened its mouth wide, and a pillar of black fire erupted in Jareth's direction. Jareth dove behind a tree to avoid the deadly flames. He heard the sound of sizzling bark and the repulsive smell of sulpher. Jareth darted out from behind the tree, his hand accidently brushing the hole lined with a smoking black liquid.
Instant agony. Jareth felt as if his hand was melting off his bone. He gripped his hand and bit down on his tongue to keep an agonized yell inside.
Jareth ignored the pain as best as he could and ran as far away from the deadly acid, nearly running into another tree; tripping over a silver stick delicately laid across a tree trunk. Jareth picked up the silver stick and realized that it wasn't a stick, but a sword!
Ignoring the burning pain in his hand, Jareth picked up the sword, and it slid as easily into his hand as if it were made for him. A small voice in the back of his mind whispered that the sword might be a trick of Hoggle's, but Jareth ignored the voice, brandishing the sword at the dragon. Jareth was more concerned about helping Emmeline than one of Hoggle's pranks.
"Put her down!" Jareth screamed angrily, his fury fed by seeing Emmeline so scared and helpless, no matter how hard she tried to put on a tough face. She had a small, bleeding scratch on her hairline, cut from the dragon's jump out of the tree. The dragon seemed to grin, its eyes sparkling with evil intelligence. It raised Emmeline up to eye level, then pitched her into a tree one hundred feet away. Emmeline hit the tree with a small shriek of pain and fell unconscious. He glasses were lying on the dirt a few feet away. The small scrape on her hairline was widened into a four inch gash across her whole forehead, which was steadily dripping a river of blood onto the mossy ground. With a triumphant roar, the dragon advanced.

Hoggle and Sarah were watching the battle through Hoggle's crystal, placed precariously on Hoggle's slim fingers. At the moment of Emmeline's first scream, Sarah slid away from the crystal and against the hard stone wall of the box behind her. Her face was lined with worry and fear.
"Sarah, come here," Hoggle said distractedly. He was still engrossed in the crystal, shock and terror apparent on his grotesque facial appearance, completely oblivious to Sarah's reaction.
Sarah unwillingly dragged herself back to face the crystal, hearing the urgency in Hoggle's voice. What she saw would haunt her nightmares for the rest of her life: The Black Dragon. Sarah threw her hands up to her mouth to stifle a scream.
This is what they're up against? And it's supposed to get worse? How will Emmeline and Jareth come out alive? Sarah shrieked in her mind. She felt like she was going to pass out. No, she told herself, you have to stay strong. If you give up, how will Emmeline be able to make it out? Sarah forced herself to look in the crystal, and what she saw stopped her heart and heated up her face.
Jareth. Jareth fighting the dragon to save Emmeline, risking his life for her, his fluid grace as he expertly lunged at the dragon, his twinkling eyes, and bright smile. She saw everything about him in a way she hadn't felt since the day Jareth saved her from her husband.
Hoggle had been watching the battle with a smirk on his face, congratulating himself, but a small sigh pulled his attention to Sarah. What he saw in her face lacerated his heart and wiped the smirk off his face. She was smiling absently, twirling a lock of her dark hair with one finger, gazing into the crystal with so much warmth and adoration for that freak that it made Hoggle want to scream at her.
Don't you understand what I feel for you, Sarah? He cried out in his mind. How can you love him when he kidnapped your brother and now your daughter?! Livid and humiliated, Hoggle snatched the crystal back and stuffed it in his vest. Without saying a word or even glancing in Sarah's direction, Hoggle melted away, leaving Sarah sitting against a wall looking taken aback, hurt, and confused.

The beast charged at Jareth baring its foot long fangs. Getting down and rolling away from the lethal daggers, Jareth was desperately trying to check on Emmeline without getting himself killed.
The dragon finally got tired of the dodge-the-fire game Jareth was playing, so it lunged at him, making him swing the sword. While Jareth was immersed in the battle with the dragon, Emmeline had regained consciousness, but because she had lost so much blood and possibly had a concussion, Emmeline couldn't see anything but splotches of green, black, and brown. As she was fighting to see, a dark liquid streamed into her eyes and making that challenge tougher. She took a mud-caked hand and wiped her forehead, her wound stinging furiously as if she had landed face-first in a cactus patch.
When she removed her hand, she saw a whole lot of red. Knowing she couldn't just lie there and bleed to death, she hoisted herself up, using the tree she was thrown into for support. A large sweep of vertigo washed over her and her knees buckled, but she knew she and to get up and find a bandage to stop the bleeding or risk death. As soon as she stood up, though, her priorities changed. Emmeline heard the grunts and yells of pain from Jareth and the loud, angry roars of the dragon. Emmeline stooped back down to the ground and patted it around for a while in search of a rock, but all she felt at first was a wide although shallow puddle of copper-smelling red liquid.
Emmeline realized she couldn't lie there forever, so she pushed herself up on to her knees and, using the tree heavily for support, pulled herself shakily up onto her feet, her knees knocking together. She held a sharp rock she found so tightly in her fist that she felt it ripping a deep cut into her palm. She waited for a moment, and then threw her stone at the large black splotch. The rock rang angrily as it hit a tree and thunked to the ground, grabbing the monster's attention.
The dragon whipped its spiky head in Emmeline's direction, saw an easy target, and charged. Jareth recognized his chance, slid under the dragon, and sank the tip of his sword deep into the dragon's unprotected belly. The dragon froze and collapsed as Jareth scrambled out from under it.
Jareth pushed himself from out under the dragon and sighed heavily, putting a hand to his injured rib. He was bleeding from dozens of scratches across his face and body.
Emmeline sank to the ground, unable to hold herself up any longer. She held her head-away from the injury-and tried not to throw up or pass out.
"Emmeline!" Jareth ran straight for her, helping her up.
"I'm okay," she murmured softly, so her voice was almost silent. "Just have a headache. Can't have anything to do with me being thrown into a tree or anything." She chuckled softly, looking quite sick.
Concerned about her head wound, which was bleeding profusely, but relieved that she was still making jokes, Jareth sat her down gently onto the base of the tree for support.
Jareth and Emmeline glanced at the dead dragon cautiously.
"Is it... dead?" Emmeline asked, her grin vanishing and fear starting to colour her eyes.
Before Jareth could respond, the dragon corpse shimmered holographically and disappeared. Confused, Jareth and Emmeline looked around for the source, but they found nothing out of the ordinary.
"Look!" Emmeline gasped, pointing in the grass where the dragon was. A small crystal orb was resting in the grass with an image of the dragon shimmering mysteriously within its depths.
"This is one of mine," Jareth sighed, smiling slightly at the crystal as the image of the dragon melted away. He shrugged, stuffing the orb into his coat, where it magically folded flat to his chest like it used to. Jareth walked back to Emmeline.
"There a-," Jareth started, but was interrupted by Hoggle's voice.
"You have passed the first test. Hooray," Hoggle muttered sardonically, rolling his eyes as Jareth turned around and looked daggers at him. Emmeline merely stared vacantly at Hoggle.
"There will be three more tests to be able to prove yourself worthy of becoming Goblin King once more," Hoggle grunted unwillingly, like he was reading off a script he wasn't fond of.
"You have passed Strength, but you also have to pass Wit, Repentance, and Power, blah, blah, blah..." Hoggle muttered, rolling his eyes some more. Jareth was getting a headache just watching him.
"You have nine more hours. Break a leg. Literally. Or die, I'm not picky." Hoggle grinned his holier-than-thou grin and melted into the tree behind him.
"If he keeps on rolling his eyes as much as he does, they'll fall off his face." Emmeline grumbled.
Jareth ignored her teenage muttering about what she would do to Hoggle if she had a brick, Jareth continued on his train of thought as if Hoggle had never appeared.
"There are three more tests," he said, "if this one was Strength, which other creatures will we meet for the rest?"
Hoisting herself up, Emmeline grunted, "I'm not sure. The good thing is that this one might be the hardest because it was all about physical strength. The others will be easier, like wit, because you have to use one of the greatest muscles in the human body."
"The quadriceps? Triceps?" Jareth asked.
"No! The brain, dummy." Emmeline smiled. "Now I'm concerned that we'll fail."
"Why?"
"Because I have to do it with you!" Emmeline snickered.
Jareth laughed good-naturedly. "Yeah, you're probably right, but it can't be as bad as having to do it with you."