There had been a wrenching sensation for Toby just after his sister had said something he hadn't expected her to. "I wish the goblins would take you away right now," she'd thrown at him. It had startled him, to a degree, but he hadn't even tried to think that she meant it in a mean way. He hadn't even been scared of it, as he might have been given she'd already wished him away once to the Underground, but instead the words had left him speechless just before the world had gone insane.

It hadn't been terribly painful, that wrenching sensation, but more as if vertigo had hit him. The room had gone dark, but the remaining lights in his eyes had swirled like some strange form of bright chocolate on dark chocolate. There had even been sparkling areas at the edges not unlike glitter, and he decided that the dizziness was too much for him. He'd had a fever once, when young, that had left him seeing and hearing things in a dream-like state. Hallucinating as he was, the brief periods of regular consciousness that came to him meant that he'd moved and had tried to take his weakened body out of bed. He'd found it impossible due not only to his frailty, but also to the way the world had spun out of control until he passed out once more. He'd recognized a hospital then, though, and when the sickness had finally passed, he'd awakened in one of their beds. He was home a day later, safe and sound, a "miraculous" recovery from a disease that nobody had identified then or since because it had never been infectious.

He felt that way now as he opened his eyes and felt hard stone beneath him. It felt as if he were looking at a pale, washed-out world through eyes that didn't want to see vibrant colors any longer, tired of it all. He wasn't sure if it was something he was feeling or something that was happening due to the lighting around him, but it held his groggy attention for several long moments. The castle walls were grey and yet drab rather than weathered. The moss had browned in death, and the water stains that marked leaky places long filled with water scudded with a neon-green film of algae had simply become forgotten dark spots. The air was dank and yet dry, tired and warm as the last breath of summer if the summer knew that it would never come again and had finally just stopped fighting the inevitable conclusion.

It took those few moments of looking around at the exhausted colors and scents and even sensations for Toby to realize that he was actually looking at something that wasn't his room. With that realization came a widening of his mismatched eyes and a scrambling to his feet. He wasn't sure where he was for only a fraction of a second, and then he recalled that his sister had said her story about the Labyrinth and the Underground was real. "She sent me here," he said, the fear that had initially risen up in his chest immediately easing as he took a better look around. "She sent me away again to save me. Why did she…?"

He had turned a slow circle as he'd spoken, but at the end, his eyes fell upon the window. Perched on the sill, and careful of every one of the broken glass shards still poking up like razor-sharp fangs from the shutters, sat the barn owl who had been upon his arm in his room. He knew the owl instantly, recognized it, but said nothing for a long while. He wasn't sure that it wouldn't speak to him on its own, given who it was, and he wasn't entirely sure what to say to it. Really, Toby mused rather sarcastically, what am I supposed to say? 'Hi, Jareth, sorry about my sister and all that, but do you think you might could help me out with a few questions?'

Now that he was actually in the world, he was almost afraid of it. He and some of his more intellectual friends had joked about the Fourth Wall in comics and how breaching it often meant that the artist was making some form of funny comic rather than a serious one. Garfield, for instance, breached the Wall without shame, but Peanuts never really acknowledged an audience was reading it to remain humorous. For Toby to actually be in the realm where the book, and his sister's stories, had taken place felt almost like he had deliberately turned to his audience and climbed into their laps to have a chat with them. It felt entirely too strange to be real, and yet there it was.

Looking at the owl forced him to look at himself to make sure that he wasn't as tattered. He'd felt a connection to the creature as his birthday had approached, but it had been at its worst just before he had vanished from his world. Toby had almost felt as if he could sense what Jareth had gone through during his trials with Sarah, the frustration and such, much less earlier in the year when the owl had first appeared. Though it had never spoken to him while awake, in his dreams it had always told him how he should behave if he wanted to be a proper sort, and that often meant some form of cruelty involved, some game, some dark purpose.

It was silent here, though, just as it was when he saw it at his bedroom window. It didn't make the feeling of being connected to it somehow any easier, though. As he looked at his hands in sudden uncertainty, he saw that they were just fine. They looked exactly as they did every day that he had glanced at them to wash them, long and something of an artist's, but though he figured it'd ease his mind he was wrong. Something about them didn't sit well with him, and he clenched them with a frown of confusion. It hit him a moment later, however, as to what was wrong. "I'm… bright," he said in shock, eyes widening once more. He took another good look around at the owl and the surroundings before looking at his own hands. He shook his head a moment later. "No, it's the light in here, that's all," he consoled himself.

Jareth hooted from the window, a softly eerie sound that was almost a challenge for Toby to prove his theory by having a look out at the world below. Toby looked up at it and let his hands move to his sides, but they wound up in his pockets. He watched the owl with wariness he hadn't felt when he thought he was dying, only a few moments before, but he also knew that he was also no longer being drawn from by the very world he now stood in. He wasn't sure how he knew other than he had been leeched while away, and was now just fine while here, no sensations of that kind plaguing him. "What do you want?" he finally challenged the owl back, not about to start guessing at what Jareth might want of him, and not sure that he wanted to trust the Goblin King's desires.

The owl fluttered his worn feathers, tilted his head at Toby, and remained silent. Toby, uncertain just yet, demanded immediately, "Say something to me! Don't just sit there staring at me like you don't know what I'm saying, because I know you do!"

When the owl hooted at Toby irritably, clacking his beak and flapping his wings, Toby narrowed his eyes at Jareth suspiciously. "So, what? You took the form of something that can't talk?" When Jareth shot a withering look at him, Toby lifted his hands with a hint of a smirk. "Oh, right, my bad," he corrected himself. "You didn't have a choice this last time." He lost the smirk a moment later, however, moving towards Jareth with a frown of thought to him. "Well, then… how am I supposed to ask you anything, other than by sleeping all the time?"

When Jareth hooted at him mournfully again, Toby lifted his hands in exasperation. "Oh, fine!" he snapped, then waved them at Jareth in a sarcastically magical manner. "Abracadabra! I give you the power of speech, Jareth the Fallen King!"

When Jareth looked about to hoot again, Toby expected a screech that would probably mean something along the lines of "Don't mock me, mortal boy!" Instead, he nearly tripped over his own feet as Jareth blurted out, "Oh, wonderful! You're not as much of an idiot as I thought you'd be! Congratulations, Toby."

Toby was so shocked by this development that he actually ignored the biting comments and rested against the wall near the sill for a moment, as if he were afraid he'd fall over, all while staring at the snooty barn owl. "You…" he tried to say, gabbling haltingly in his distress. "You… I… but how…?" He then looked at his own hands as if seeing them for the first time, and a moment later pushed off the wall to face Jareth at the window fully. "How did I do--" he began, but the realm outside of his view obliterated that question immediately.

Jareth noticed and, with a last puff of his plumage, turned his head so that he could see what Toby could. "That," he said after a moment, "is the remnants of my Underground and kingdom." There wasn't a hint of sarcasm in him this time.

Toby simply stared at the wasteland before him. The remains of the Labyrinth were only half visible from his vantage point, but they were shockingly meager. Most of the walls of the Labyrinth were dead, had they been alive to begin with, or reduced to mostly rubble. The sky was a dark hue, a violet and pastel mix that looked like evening and yet had none of the spectacular vibrancy associated with that time of day. Dust swirled easily from where the goblin houses within the walls sat and rotted, and metallic bits of armor rusted on the ground. There were skeletal remains as well, large and small, that were only vaguely recognizable in the dim light. Fires were going here and there, even outside the gates in the garbage piles, but they seemed to give off no light or heat. They were almost reflections of true fires.

"What happened?" Toby asked in growing horror. One of his hands moved up to rub at the back of his neck. "Sarah never said anyone had died in that last battle. Was there some kind of rebellion? What…" He trailed off as his hand caught his attention once more, bright as it was. Compared to the rest of the world he was now in, it radiated heat and light all its own, the way a blood-red might look against a drab grey-brown that wasn't meant to be noticed. He had seen that even black could be intense with its depth, of course, but even the black areas he saw held a certain lifeless quality compared to what he cast upon his own skin.

He recalled his dreams, then, and how the Underground had looked as if all the colors were being leeched out of it along with its life, and he knew before Jareth spoke again that it was exactly that reason why he, Toby, was the sole difference in this land. "This land is dying," he said simply, almost coldly. "It will die completely if there isn't something done about it soon. That is why you've been brought here, Toby Williams. You are the promise of new life, a new Underground, and new magic." He turned around to face Toby squarely, peering up at him with large, dark eyes that looked ancient more than cunning. "Without your help, all dreams in your world, and all magic that is possible, will end."

Toby focused his attention onto the owl as he directed most of the commentary to him. "Heavy," he agreed, though it was mostly inaudible. "What am I supposed to do to fix it?" Sarah knew something, he realized with growing horror. She knew something, but I didn't want to listen, and I don't know why anymore!

"You must become the new King of this land," Jareth said briskly. "Doing so means that all will begin anew."

Toby shook his head a little. "I can't do that," he tried to explain as a bit of desperation crept into him, and fear that he would never see his parents again. "I have too much on the other side, like my family and my friends! I can't be here. I'm only fifteen."

"If you don't accept the mantle and the title, with all that goes with it," Jareth continued, and this time there was a bit of sting to his gaze that smacked of arrogant dismay over Toby's choice, "then your world will be without dreams. Dreams of any kind. Where do you think the creativity of your kind comes from? Thin air? We are the source for them, and the source of that source is the ruler of this realm. Hope? You would have little to none in your world, as linked as it is these days to the dreams of its people. Everything you give up on that side would be the consequence you would have to accept in order to save it, boy."

Toby flared up in anger at first, ready to debate hotly with the fallen King, but then felt it stifled and, at last, snuffed out completely. "Then I have no choice in the matter?" he asked at last, slumping a little in defeat.

Jareth would have rolled his eyes had he been capable of it in his owl form. "I can see that I have a great deal of work to do with you before you can even begin to consider your choices," he sighed dejectedly. "And I have only thirteen hours in which to do it before this world ends."

"Thirteen…?" Toby spluttered, taken aback. "But I thought you said the world's magic was dying out? How can the old rules still apply?"

Jareth cracked his beak at Toby, a sound standing in for a clucked tongue easily. "Much work, indeed," he mused as he turned away. "Explore the castle. I'll return shortly with help in your first lesson."

"But… hey!" Toby called out as Jareth lifted off from the sill and winged his way into the gloom of the Underground. He frowned and tried to pierce the darkness with his eyes for a short while after the small shape had vanished, but ultimately sighed and went to find out more about the castle he'd heard about all his life.

(tbc)