Author's Note: Okay so this is mega short and like, really lame? Which I apologize profusely for, but I'm in a funk and go between absolutely delighted in life and utterly disenchanted and annoyed by life and it's making it difficult to get anything done. Also this story keeps wanting to fight me like crazy. Here's a little bit of it that I've got done. I hope you guys enjoy.

Author's Note P.S.: Shout out to all these people who follow/favorite this story like every week. It amazes me that you do this and delights me, while at the same time shaming me into not forgetting it. Go you people. I applaud all of you.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything but my own sorry excuses.

"I hate you," Stiles told the pillar with the mummified giant hands pointedly. Which would have been funny, considering they were pointing, except that he was beginning to hate the word point in every context of the word. "I hate you so goddamn much." The pillar didn't respond, thankfully, because if the pillar of hands started to talk Stiles was officially checking out. But they were still irritating and unhelpful, just as they had been for the past hour.

"I've been wandering in circles," Stiles moaned, staring at the hands woefully, "and all you fuckers do is point."

"They're hands," the Goblin King said, for the third time. Erica had been amused at his indignant muttering at first, but it was quickly becoming a little bit annoying. "What do you bloody well expect them to do other than point and grab?"

Stiles had been going in circles for at least an hour. So far he had hit four dead ends and three roundabout ways that only lead back to the same exact pillar of hands. Erica had been a little confused at first, not understanding the layout of the labyrinth, but the Goblin King had projected a little map at the corner of the glass wall that projected the labyrinth's view from the sky, tracking Stiles as a little blue dot walking through the walls. Watching the boy was becoming frustrating for everyone in the room, monarch included, as Stiles became more and more turned around no matter which path he chose. He'd been down them all and every single one of them lead back to the pillar without fail.

"Isn't there supposed to be a way through this," Boyd asked, for the fifth time. "If this is the point and there's not actually a shot-"

"There is always at least one path from any point that will take you to the castle," the Goblin King snapped, for the fifth time as well. "The boy just hasn't found it yet."

"He's been down every turn," Boyd snapped. Erica could feel his exhaustion, his anxiety, all of it bunched in the tense line of muscles across his shoulder where it pressed into her own. She tried to push some calm toward him, but she was at the end of her rope as well, fraying quickly under the pressure. Stiles had eleven hours to reach the center and from what she could tell he was going to be stuck in that same section with the sandstone and pillar for several hours more.

"Do you think I don't know that," the Goblin King seethed. He had gone from being cool and unaffected to acting like a sulking wet cat in about twenty seconds flat, a moon swing that put even Derek to shame. For a brief second a surge of power rushed from the chair upon which he sat, washing over and through Erica as if she wasn't there; it felt oddly like Derek's alpha power, stealing her breath away for just a second, but then she reached for her pack, the ever present feeling of Boyd and the annoyed, bubbling feeling of Stiles, and the odd jarring in her bones the power wave caused vanished. From the overview of the labyrinth in the corner of the glass wall Erica could tell all the walls were rearranging furiously, distorting and rushing and twisting together as if they were snakes.

"Oh come on," Stiles shrieked as the pathways in front of him began rearranging themselves. He spun around, looking for one that wasn't changing, but every single entrance was wriggling about as if possessed. He hadn't seen a pathway move in the last hour he'd been lost, though several had, so it was odd to be able to watch them change. "Stop it," he shouted, stomping his foot upon the ground.

The world stopped spinning around him, leaving six new openings. Stiles groaned loudly, eying each of them in turn, before blinding picking one out and marching forward. The path he chose lead forward, towards the castle in a way, but veered more and more to the left as he left the courtyard with the pillar behind. It turned sharply to the right at an almost ninety degree angle before snaking back around toward the left. Stiles stomped down the pathway, scowling all the way, cradling his left shoulder with his hand as it throbbed in its socket. His body was really, really beginning to protest the abuse that had been dished out on him, his right knee giving a slight twinge with every step, his shoulder throbbing, his head spinning with a lightheaded feeling of pain.

Abruptly Stiles came to a dead-end with two outlets, side by side. Both seemed to lead to the castle he could see in the distance, which he had been doing his best to keep in sight, both of which seemed to end in right turns. Shrugging a little he swore quietly under his breath and picked the left outlet, only to find that there was an opening in the left wall that was almost invisible until he was on top of it. He surged down it, feeling hopeful for reasons he couldn't place.

"Whoo," Erica hollered, heart pounding with excitement and hope. The little air-view map of the labyrinth was still in the corner of the glass wall, so she could see that for the first time in an hour Stiles had veered out of the area in which he had been trapped. "Halle-fuckin'-lujah, baby!"

"Yes, yes, we're all grateful we don't have to watch him blubber around the same seven hallways for eleven more hours," the Goblin King drawled smugly. "Quiet down."

"Shouldn't you be pissed he's gotten further?" Boyd asked, twisting to look behind them. It was typically hard to put their back to anything they considered a threat, instincts humans usually ignored so much stronger with the wolf in them now, but as the minutes slipped by the Goblin King became less and less of a threat. He had kicked around a few more goblins in the hour Stiles had been hopelessly lost, to his subjects glee, and somehow watching him interact so peacefully (which, really, it wasn't peaceful, but it was the closest word Erica had) with his subjects had taken away some of the danger which lurked around him like a cloak. He had also, somewhere between one glance and the next, lost his ridiculously black sparkly spike-ridden rocker outfit he had been wearing before. Now he was lounged back in a pair of black leather pants so ridiculously tight Erica wasn't sure how he could stand it and a long sleeved, floppy sheer white shirt with a v-neck that dipped almost to his belly button. His medallion necklace was visible now more than ever, glinting slightly in the strange sunlight still pouring in from the windows.

"Easy defeats are boring," the king said. He smiled again, that predatory hint of fang peeking out at the corner of his mouth. Erica should have found it annoying, frustrating, frightening, but it was too much like Derek, all bark and no bite, and so she turned around to watch Stiles again without another thought.

Stiles rounded a corner and came face to face with another boring hallway breaking away from the one he was in. It looked like it lead straight toward the castle, so without a second thought Stiles stepped through the break in the hallway and into the next.

"Bye-bye, fraggity stompy boy," a voice said from behind Stiles. He whirled, eyes ripping away from the sight of the castle in the distance because he recognized that voice. It was the same chattering little sound that had complained when he fell through the first opening in the hallways, but the sight that greeted him wasn't that of a little creature.

"You've got to be kidding me," he said flatly. The opening he had just gone through was no longer there. "I'm not sure why I'm surprised," he continued, blinking blankly. "Of course it's a fucking dead end."

"No we ain't," someone snapped, offended and right behind him. Stiles whirled, mouth open to reply, but he never got the chance. The words were stolen right out of his mouth by the utterly absurd sight behind him.

"We used to be a dead end, though. Didn't we?"

"Everythin' in here's a dead end at some point, so we must have been."

"If everythin' in here's a dead end at some point how's anyone expected to get anywhere?"

Stiles swore, drawing the creatures' attentions back to him. He swore loudly and angrily, continuing on with every foul word he had ever heard for quite a while. He remembered this part of his mother's story quite clearly, though he had never understood it at all. Two creatures stood in front of him, their bodies made out of a shield, arms curling around to clutch it, a set of head and shoulders on the top and bottom of each shield. One shield and set of heads wore red while the other wore blue and now they were all staring at him blankly, a little gobsmacked by his language he would assume.

"Let me guess," he said, stomping forward to stand only a few feet from them. "One of you always lies and the other always tells the truth?"

"Well," said the top head of the red shield, "yes."

The bottom head of the blue shield chimed in, "how did you know that?"

"Lucky guess," Stiles muttered darkly.