The Labyrinth-Ateez x reader

Saints

Goblin City was a shantytown, numbering about ten blocks of ramshackle houses, hiding in each other’s shadows, with winding lanes between them. The buildings rose to sharply pointed eaves or conical thatch roofs. The windows penetrating the walls were so higgledy-piggledy that from the outside you might wonder if the houses had floors at all. Most of the buildings were decorated in the Goblin style, timber trimmed to a rising point like a waxed mustache, goblinomorphic feet or horns carved into a pediment. The cat-prowled lanes were littered with scraps of food tossed from the windows, and other garbage so rotten that it would be an unsavory task to analyze what it had once been. The place was huddled in the shadow of the castle, which rose behind it in bonnet-towered and turreted splendor. A wide flight of steps, the main entrance to the castle, faced the inner gates of the courtyard, and must have formed an imposing approach before the shantytown had risen up to interrupt the vista. Sir San by Yunho, Wooyoung, Y/N, and Mingi tiptoed through the marketplace just inside the gates. It was dawn and the city was apparently fast asleep. Seeing the castle looming up ahead of them, they made their way quietly through the lanes toward it. Here and there they crept past a snoozing goblin, propped against a wall. Sir San cleared his throat and announced, loudly, “This stealth is alien to my nature.” “Ssshhh!” Yunho told him. “Quiet, yer windbag!” Wooyoung added, in a growl. “Sorry,” Sir San apologized, in a voice hardly lowered at all. “I know not the word fear.” “I know,” Y/N answered, “but I do.” “And I does, too,” Wooyoung added. “Shush!” Beyond the shantytown, they came into an open square. The steps up to the castle were on the far side. Everything was still eerily quiet. They began to walk softly toward the steps. Y/N’s heart was pounding. “We’re going to make it,” she whispered. “How boring,” Wooyoung told her. He should have known better. When he had heard her use that phrase, the penalty had been the slashing machine. This time, it was war. A bugle sounded, and from both sides of the square the goblin army suddenly came charging at them, with pounding feet and clanking armor and a weird, ululating war cry. Scores of helmeted heads could be seen scuttling along the lower ramparts of the castle. There was only one thing to do: run for it. And there was only one way to run — back into town. The armies were issuing from twin corridors, which curved around the sides of the main steps so that their exits faced each other. A platoon of bombardiers trundled a cannon in the vanguard of each army, and as the corridors were on an incline, and the cannons were heavy, the cannon platoons were going to collide unless they hauled back hard. Which they did. Unavailingly, however, for the press of infantry and cavalry behind them drove them on. As the four invaders raced for the cover of the town, they heard a stupendous smash, like a thousand empty cans crashing together. They turned around, and watched wave upon wave of the goblin soldiers piling upon top of each other. On the ramparts, an inaudible bugler was red in the face with blowing the charge. Hongjoong was standing perpendicular at a window of the castle, watching the action. He winced, almost imperceptibly. Wooyoung led Y/N, Mingi, Yunho, and the fox boy Sir San in a sprint along the mazy lanes of the town. Goblin heads popped out of the windows above them to watch. Sir San was protesting, “We must stand and fight them face to face. It is the only honorable …” Wooyoung suddenly stopped, his arms spread wide in warning. The rest halted behind him. At the far end of the street, a detachment of goblins appeared facing them, spiky with spears. “Uh-oh,” Y/N muttered. “This could be it.” “Fear not, sweet damsel,” Sir San told her. “These puny goblins are no match for Sir San and Yunho.” He raised his sword, and was about to charge the army single-handed when Yunho grabbed his wrist and held him back. Y/N called urgently from a doorway. “In here!” She had found a deserted house in which to make a stand. It was built like a tower. Reluctantly, Sir San was led by Yunho inside. Y/N slid the bolt. She was grinning with excitement. However extreme the peril they were in, nothing would ever be as daunting as the old junk woman. “You hold the doorway,” she told Sir San. and Yunho “Wooyoung and I will guard that window. And you, MIngi — up on the roof.” Mingi nodded obediently. “Mingi — up.” He climbed the winding rungs of the stairs. “Look out!” Y/N cried suddenly. On the wall of the room, she had seen goblin shadows, snouted and horned, cast through the window by the rising sun. Sir San at once took up his on-guard position beside the door. Y/N and Wooyoung stood by a dresser full of china. Y/N called up the staircase. “Mingi, are you ready?” “Mingi — ready.” A goblin smashed the window with his pike, and stuck his head inside to see who was in there. Y/N, standing to one side of the window, brought a dinner plate down upon his head. He collapsed onto the windowsill and rolled outside. Another took his place. Another plate served the same purpose. At once, a third head was poked in. This one had time to peer at the defenders. “Wooyoung!” the goblin exclaimed. “You used to be with us.” “Yes,” Wooyoung agreed, and broke a teapot on the goblin’s helmeted head. Another ugly head took its turn at the window, and another, and as fast as their pointed ears and jagged teeth appeared they were stunned by Y/N or Wooyoung. Sir San was watching with mixed feeling. He had to hand it to the girl, she was beautiful, and she might make a decent commander of horse one day. On the other hand, she had posted her most valorous knights inside a bolted wooden door, where nothing at all was going to happen. Inexperience, that was all it was. He was wondering whether to disobey orders and join them at the window when an axhead shaped like a trefoil splintered the door. Through the crack it had made, he saw mad red eyes watching him and heard voices talking rapidly. This was more like it. He squared up. Then, through the crack, he saw half a dozen goblins charging with a battering ram. In a trice, he slid the bolt back and opened the door. As the ram went past him at full tilt he and Yunho dealt with each of its bearers adroitly with a thrust of their trusty swords. “Have at thee!” he hollered excitedly. “En garde, sirrah!” He slammed the door shut and bolted it again, and was trying to use the battering ram to shore up the splintered door when it was burst open by a fresh squad of goblins. He had no time to grab his staff. They leaped upon him, pinioned him face down to the ground, and, holding his hair, began to bash his nose on the floor. After a while, they paused to examine their work. “Ha!” Sir San shouted tauntingly. “Had enough, have ye? Craven curs, how little it takes to subdue varlets such as ye are!” They started to give him another bashing for that, but Y/N had seen what was going on. A well-aimed chamber pot sent the goblins flying, and in a moment Sir San was standing over them. “Saints and tails!” he exclaimed. “Is it worth blunting my sword to dispatch the likes of ye?” Y/N and Wooyoung were still holding the window, but their reserve of crockery was running low, and the horde of goblins was not abating. When there were no more dinner plates, jugs, or soup bowls, they had to use teacups and saucers, but sometimes it took two of those to deal with each goblin. Another one of them had time to recognize Wooyoung. “What have we done to you?” the goblin asked. “Not me,” Wooyoung replied. “Her — you stole her baby brother.” “So we stole a baby! That’s what goblins do. You know that, Woo —” His sentence was ended by a soup tureen that Wooyoung had been saving for a special occasion. On the roof of the tower, Mingi was showered with spears. He simply ducked below the parapet. Then a detachment of commando goblins stormed the outside walls of the tower, clambering up ladders with the idea of overwhelming Mingi. He was not readily overwhelmable, kicking them down to the ground one by one as they reached the top of the ladders and peered over the parapet. The artillery was called up. From a cannon, a goblin with a spiked helmet was fired at Mingi. The outcome was that the goblin’s helmet was impaled in the mud wall of a nearby house, leaving him stuck out behind it, flapping his limbs. Yunho was listening keenly. Outside the door, he could hear two goblins conversing. “She’s got brains,” one said. “Yes,” the other replied. “I could do with brains like hers.” “So could I,” the first said. “To eat!” Yunho was incensed. To hear them impugning so beautiful a damsel without mercy was more than his knightly honor could tolerate. Throwing open the door and Sir San by his side, they cried, “Ye Goths and Vandals! Have at ye, then, for the foul blasphemers that ye are of a maiden’s virtue.” Y/N looked across and saw Sir San and Yunho level their swords and charge out. “No!” she cried. It was too late. Sir San and Yunho came back a moment later, San on his back, head first. Yunho followed. The peerless knight-in-arms was up and at them in an instant. This time, they bolted with all around the town again, until they came face to face with a bristling line of spears. More spears appeared behind them in the narrow lane. “Don’t worry, Yunhi,” Sir San told him. “I think we’ve got them surrounded.” With a dazzlingly rapid series of thrusts, parries, and flicks, they disarmed all the adversaries in front of them, and charged triumphantly forward into a balcony beam, which knocked them down. By the time they were on their feet, they were hemmed in by spear points. “Ha!” they snarled. “Can’t take any more, eh? Very well. Throw down your weapons, and I’ll see to it that you’re well treated.” As the spears came down at them. Meanwhile, Y/N had an idea. “Mingi,” she shouted, “call the rocks!” The noise of the battle was too loud for Mingi, at the top of the house, to hear her. She would have to go up to him. “Wooyoung, retreat!” she called. “Up the stairs.” “You first,” he called back. She did as he said. Wooyoung followed her. Sir San and Yunho, hard pressed, ran into the house just in time to cover their retreat. They came up the stairs backward, ceding one step at a time, fending off their attackers with cut and passado. Y/N raced up to the top of the tower. “Mingi,” she panted. “Call the rocks. Call the rocks, Mingi.” Mingi did not need the second bidding. He threw his horned head back, closed his eyes, and bellowed longer and louder than an alpine horn. The tower quivered and the earth shuddered. A distant rumbling was heard. Bits fell off the castle walls. While they were waiting for the rocks to arrive, their immediate position was perilous. Sir San and Yunho could not hold back the invaders for much longer. Mingi had kicked away the scaling ladders, and so they were going to be trapped at the top of the tower unless there was some way down the outside. Not even Mingi’s friends the rocks could help them up there. Y/N looked over the parapet. All the goblins were congregated at the front of the house, struggling to get in after those who were forcing Sir San back. The lane behind the house was empty, which gave Y/N an idea. Just below the tower roof she had passed a room with two beds in it. The goblins had not yet advanced that far. She ran down. “Hold them back for as long as you can, Sir San and Sir Yunho,” she called. “‘Twill be the greatest pleasure of our life, fair maid,” they called back up to her. Swiftly, Y/N knotted sheets and blankets together in a rope. Then she ran back up to the tower roof, tied one end of the rope to a column of the parapet and threw the rest over the side. She looked down and was relieved to see it reached nearly to the ground. “You first, Wooyoung,” she said. He hesitated. “I’m a coward.” “No, you’re not.” He paused, almost smiling. “You’re right. I’m not. Funny, I always thought I was.” He grasped the rope, stood on the parapet, and shinned down to the ground. Then he held the rope to anchor it for Y/N. She followed him down. “Mingi!” she called. “You next! Tell Sir San and Sir Yunho to come after you.” Seeing the bulk of Mingi loom above the parapet. Mingi came down, a little too fast, scorching his hands, but he landed safely on the ground. Now it was for Sir San and Yunho to make good their escape. The three of them, their heads craned back, saw the boys come onto the parapet with their back turned and their sword arms working hard. With Yunho’s free hand he took hold of the rope and let himself a few inches down the outside of the tower and let San follow suit. Then they saw  San raise his sword and unhitch the rope from the parapet. They plummeted. Y/N pressed her hands to her cheeks. Her mouth opened in horror. But the resourceful knights knew what they were doing. They landed in a summersault, landing on their feet beside their friends. Y/N used the breath she had been holding to gasp, “Sir San! Sir Yunho! What did you do that for?” “Prithee, sweet damsel,” Sir San answered, “wilt thou raise thy lovely eyes aloft?” Y/N looked up, and saw a ring of baffled goblin faces staring angrily down from the top of the tower. “Thou wouldst not have wished them to join our company, wouldst thou?” Sir Yunho asked, his eyes twinkling. During their escape, the rumbling of the rocks had grown into an oceanic roar. They came rolling across the plain by the hundreds, answering Mingi’s call, and when they hit the outer walls of the city they built themselves up until the next to arrive could just roll up the slope and vault inside. Soon they filled the streets, knocking goblins down like bowling pins and ruthlessly pursuing those who fled. There was no hiding place. The boulders crashed through the doors of houses where the army had taken cover, and when the goblins jumped spreadeagled out of windows, the rocks were close behind them. Whole platoons of goblins were walled up by rocks stacked against doors. The artillery commander, knowing no other way to fight, ordered the cannon to be loaded and discharged at the invaders. Just as the fuse was ignited, a rock stuffed itself into the mouth of the cannon, which exploded, leaving the commander a blackened, ragged scarecrow. Y/N led her friends back through the chaotic town to the square in front of the castle. A couple of stray halberdiers boldly confronted them before the steps. From behind them, Y/N heard a loud rumbling. She whipped around and screamed. A boulder was rolling at them. It leapfrogged them and dropped splat on the halberdiers. “Rocks — friends,” Mingi remarked, with a touch of pride. At the top of the steps was a tall, narrow, grotesquely carved door, the ceremonial entrance. Y/N pushed at it. It was locked and solid. Mingi walked past her and broke the door down as though it were matchwood. Inside the castle, a grand corridor ran ahead of them, and at the far end of it, through an open door, they could see the throne,. “Justin,” Y/N whispered, and ran to fetch him. If Hongjoong were there, he could not stop her now. Nothing could. The chamber was deserted. In the middle of it was a cradle, empty. The clock showed three minutes to thirteen. On his perch, the dragon shifted from foot to foot. He opened his snout and made a noise like ghastly laughter.