.: :CHAPTER TWELVE: :.

Men are strange creatures, marked by strange contradictions. They are both the authors of stunning splendor and terrible ugliness; love and war, hate and selflessness. They are a race of dreamers conjuring visions of wondrous things, yet never are quite able to fathom the true beauty of their limitless reality.

Instead, they assign the magic that lives on the edges of their imaginations to another realm - a place that at first did not exist.

In the beginning, there was only the Aboveground.

One place, one people.

Ignorant of the power in which they dabbled, early Men began telling stories. They spun tales of creatures in strange lands, of circumstances outside the reach of mortal experience. Amid survival in an unfeeling world, fantasy was as much of a comfort as the fire that roared in the dark as the story tellers told their tales. Indeed, as much of a necessity to survival itself.

After all, where is the line between what is real and what is imagined? Do not both shape Man's perception of his world?

And so creativity took on its own truth, the tales of Men a life of their own. The telling of stories inspired fear, shaped love and hope, blossomed dreams - the three most powerful forces known. Three faces of one magic called later by those born of it The Unseen. A new fabric had come into the weaving, a power brought in existence- but it was a power without direction. Without structure. A shifting mass, morphing between the various beliefs and dreams of Men.

Until it found a common ground. A shared myth across Man's many cultures.

A collective shape and form; that of a maze. Thus, the Labyrinth -the foundation of the Underground - was born.

But the race of Men was still young, and fable was in its infancy. Over time stories grew in the retelling. The Unseen magic surged, unintentionally tapped through the hearts of the listeners, and characters began one by one to take their place in the realm of the Underground. In the realm of Unreality.

Those spawned by the imaginative powers of fear were balanced somehow with those created by dreams of hope and kindness. All the elements took a turn in the dance of birth, so all the elements had a part in the creatures born.

With one possible exception – an ultimate character, that of a King.

A King. That is the best word for him, but his identity is not so easily defined. The compromise the forces found in his formation was a confused one, a mass of feared angry gods and fantastical fairy-tale rulers. Two driving forces, good and evil, working against each other. So split by the compromise that created him his eyes could not even be matched.

He was called Jareth.

There seemed to be one missing balance in his nature – he had no love in him, no kindness. There was humor and cruelty in his eyes, yes. A tone of pleading and command in his voice, absolutely. But there was never a twinge of affection, a softness of pity. There was never any evidence of love.

For a time the inhabitants of the Underground were in constant flux. There was a steady flow of new creatures being spoken into existence and everything was constantly fresh and new. However, with the final burst of energy that created by rule the most powerful creature (their King), the world of the Aboveground was changing.

Stories no longer carried the magic they once had. The unintentional force that had given man's imagination such power was slipping away.

The King saw the Labyrinth start to die from lack of powerful dreams. Between the two realms of Aboveground and Underground is a delicate balance -both must carry an equal weight of dreams in order to survive. The King knew he must take direct action, that he must find a way to channel dreams himself directly into his kingdom. He knew he had to cross the barrier that separated reality from unreality.

This was the first time he crossed into the Aboveground. And the first time he crossed, he had power only to enter that realm through the heart of a man.

The King reached out to the last great Storyteller, setting the stage of the dilemma the Underground faced. And in response, a story began to grow in the Storyteller's imagination. His listeners sat rapt as he spoke of a power: a power as clear as hope; a power that must stand the trial of fear; a full, rounded power that gave life to dreams themselves. This, the Storyteller told his audience, was the only power in existence that could capture the force of imagination and preserve it. The dreamer must give of them self freely to this.

What was truly in the Storyteller's heart was never understood by his listeners. In their imagination the power he spoke of took the form of round clear crystals, which became the manifestation of the King's power in the Underground.

However, it was not in the interpretation of men that the Labyrinth was to be saved but in the powerful imagination of the Storyteller himself. The true power he spoke of was never understood, and left a hole in the story - a part needing to be completed. All those who dwelt in the Underground felt its absence. The Storyteller felt its absence. And so, to his last audience he told of the Legend.

He spoke of a girl who would understand the true power which he had described, who would understand in the earnest language of the heart what his words had skewed. A girl who would fill the gap in the story created by the different Parallels of perception in which each of us dwell.

Needless to say, the Storyteller was from the rare Fifth Parallel.

Three days after spinning this last tale, the influence the King had exerted broke the Storyteller's mind. He lapsed into madness and is forgotten by Man's history.

The King and the Labyrinth went on, using the power the Storyteller had given to cross into the real world and release the Twelve Objects. Each object was designed to appeal to different Parallels. None were designed to appeal to the Fifth - even the King had not the power to create such an object, or even understand its form. Instead, he focused on keeping dreams active in the select individuals who found the Twelve Objects. He harvested these dreams and their Unseen power to maintain the balance that kept his world alive.

All this time, the King lived a life free of love.

But, in the best clever fashion of a story teller's plot, he would find there was love in his heart. Find it as he looked into the eyes of a young girl, discovering in her uncertainty his own vulnerability...

So his fate was fulfilled, and with it the Legend spoken of by the last storyteller began to come to pass.

And the crystal necklace was born.