Those Cruel Eyes Edition 1

Chapter 18

Soon they reached to great beast. She was motionless, but not made of stone as it had appeared from afar. Emmeline went up to the lion, arms outstretched, but snatched her hand back as if electrocuted.
She backed away from the creature rapidly, grabbing Jareth's sleeve in the process and pulling him with her.
"She's alive," Emmeline whispered, her voice palpable with terror. "She's breathing!"
Jareth and Emmeline stopped backing up when they were a safe distance from the slumbering lion- bird creature. It heard their whispering and lifted its giant head off its paws, revealing the face, not of a lion, but of a beautiful woman, eyes the color of the night sky speckled with stars.
"Who goes?" a loud and imposing voice echoed around their minds, the tenor that of a male versus a young woman. Emmeline clutched her head and sank to her knees as her dull headache mounted into agony. She tried to scream, but the only noise that escaped her throat was a raspy yell of pain.
Jareth ran to her side and tried to help her up, but she shoved him off.
"I'm fine," she gasped unconvincingly. Jareth helped her stand, and her headache subsided to a dull throbbing behind her eyes. She pushed Jareth off her and rubbed her temples.
"I will give you as many riddles as you have tasks. You have one chance to make a mistake, and you will have one minute to answer correctly. No more, no less. If you do not answer the riddles correctly after one try, or you run out of time, I attack to kill. If you somehow answer all of my riddles correctly, you will leave this desert unharmed and with another power, and I will destroy myself.
"Here is your first riddle:
It is greater than God and more evil than the devil. The poor have it, the rich need it and if you eat it you'll die. What is it?"
Emmeline looked at the ground, terror and worry filling the lines in her forehead as she tried to break down the complicated riddle.
"Greater than God and more evil than the devil.." she muttered to herself.
Jareth was also having trouble. The Master at Magic, Riddles, and Mischief, has met his match.
"Thirty seconds," the sphinx said quietly, a smile in her voice.
Jareth puzzled, wishing he had paid more attention to human religious figures.
Emmeline was looking at the sand at her feet, struggling to solve it.
"Five seconds... Four... Three... two..."
"It's nothing!" Emmeline shrieked desperately.
"Correct," the sphinx replied, the victorious tone gone.
"Care to fill me in?" Jareth asked, turning towards her.
"An old Bible thing from church," she started, "The pastor was very adamant in making sure that we all understood that nothing and no one is greater than Our Lord God and nothing and no one is more evil than the devil."
"Here is your second riddle," called the sphinx, interrupting them. "What always runs but never walks, often murmurs, never talks, has a bed but never sleeps, has a mouth but never eats?"
Emmeline's eyes widened, and she looked over to Jareth desperately, but his face was blank; expressionless.
His mind was whirling. Runs but never walks? Murmurs, but never talks? Doesn't eat? What? Out of the blue, a song itched in his head, an old memory he hardly remembered from when he had first discovered the Labyrinth. He was running through the field before the stone walls, not paying attention to his feet when he plunged into a river that sucked him straight to the Castle, where he was found by the King.
'Hm, that doesn't look very comfortable.' The King observed, taking in Jareth's soaking frame.
'Not really,' he replied.
'Funny thing about rivers,' the King said while helping Jareth out, 'Is that, even when they are louder than these damned goblins, they still sound like they're whispering instead of talking.'
"Ten seconds," the sphinx's booming voice pulled Jareth back to reality.
"Um... a river?" he guessed.
"Correct," The sphinx's voice was harsh.
Emmeline looked at him and opened her mouth as if to say something, but the sphinx cut her off.
"Your third riddle," The sphinx intoned impatiently.
"I never was, am always to be. No one ever saw me, nor ever will. And yet I am the confidence of all, to live and breathe on this terrestrial ball. What am I?"
"Oh shit," Emmeline gasped, looking at the sphinx cluelessly. "I thought this was supposed to get easier!"
The sphinx, fed up with Emmeline, speared her eyes with her gaze. Emmeline froze, caught in the creature's gaze. Out of nowhere, she screamed, startling Jareth and forcing him a few steps away from her in alarm. After what seemed like forever, Emmeline's agonized screams stopped and she collapsed on the ground in a dead faint.
Jareth ran to her side and held her limp form in his arms.
"Emmeline!" he yelled, terrified that she was dead. He put his ear on her chest and sighed with relief: her heart was still beating and she was breathing.
"Thirty seconds," The sphinx interrupted, smirking cruelly, "And I kill her first."
Jareth looked away from the sphinx and to Emmeline's serene one, struggling to think; regret and guilt washing through his heart as he thought of Sarah and Isadora, and where Emmeline might have come from.
If only I could go back... that's it!
"The present and the future," Jareth breathed, amazed.
The Sphinx gave an angry shriek of a snarl. Its ferocious eyes burned with fury.
"You have defeated me with your cleverness. I shall now destroy myself. Here is your reward." Lifting one giant paw, the sphinx rolled a small crystal orb to Jareth's feet, where it rested. She turned and then jumped from the cliff behind her. As soon as the sphinx jumped, Emmeline had regained consciousness.
"Wha'?" she mumbled, shielding her eyes from the sun with a sand-coated arm. "What happened?"
"We won, Emmeline! We won!" he hugged her, helped her up, and the two set off on their way.