A/N: Hey there. Welcome to Part II of the Crimson Cub saga. This is actually ahead of when I'd planned to begin this story - I'd actually hoped to finish 'The Raggedy Man & the Regal Girl' and 'Forever Running' before I got to work on this. But ideas began popping into my head - and I wanted to get them onto the website before they faded from my brain. Besides...if I'd stuck to the original plan, the wait would have been too long for some. Anyhow, here it is...such as it is so far. I hope you enjoy reading this chapter and the chapters to come. :)


Prologue

The lesser life-forms of the Cosmos oft spoke rumours and tales of fates worse than death...but very few beings actually knew what such a fate would entail. And it was most inopportune for him that he did – for to truly know, one must experience a fate as the one he had been condemned to twice over. His own race could not hold even the ghost of a flame to the accursed being who had robbed him of his power. The weaklings of the Osiran Race had imprisoned him for 7,000 years in the Eye of Horus...but as he had neared the objective of obtaining the freedom that should long have been his...a Time Lord insect deprived him of his physical body in the Time-Space Tunnel connecting the Eye of Horus to the Scarman Priory. With that act, every irritating little Termite from the Homeworld of the Time Lords – Gallifrey, if he recalled correctly – had earned his enmity forever more.

He had long desired to crush those miserable insects...but while he had earned his freedom from Horus' curse of everlasting incarceration, most of his power had been destroyed – with only his mind-based power left to him – by the insect who styled himself as 'the Doctor'. How he loathed that name. His temperament had been much like that of Horus – taking the view that all sapient life-forms were worthy of life. How laughable...had he fully succeeded in freeing himself, he would have been able to crack the Earth open and hurl the remains into the never-ending blackness of Space. Those pathetic Humans were not worthy of having evolved...anymore than any other life-form in the Universe. The Time Lords...the Sontarans...the Cybermen...the Daleks...all of them had the bare-faced effrontery to declare that theirs was the most powerful race in the Cosmos...he could have crushed every last one of them and ended their petty little Wars single-mindedly – not even the Nightmare Child or the Could-Have-Been King would have survived. And once he had regained his power...none would survive – not even the accursed Doctor. The Oncoming Storm...the Bringer of Darkness...he disputed both titles with all vigour in the Cosmos. The Last of the Time Lords and the Last of the Osirans would meet again beyond all doubt...and the Osiran would triumph over he who would not receive the mercy of his gift of death. And the Doctor was just the beginning. All life was his enemy...and all life would either perish or despair...

But first, he would need to regain the powers he had lost. Having one's body aged to death might have befallen a being less possessed of the guile and ingenuity which Osirans were infamous for. But the wiser of his enemies should recall that his mind was always several steps ahead. Before the other Osirans had cornered him on Earth, he had created the means for his life to continue beyond the expected lifespan of his race. Once he had performed this nigh-impossible feat – for it required but the greatest forces of will – he had sealed the devices that had long ensured his continued existence away inside a place so well-concealed that none of his fellow Osirans had been able to find it. This place he had returned to after he had been robbed of his body...and he waited...waited until the Time Lords and the Dalek Empire were but memories to the Universe at large. Once both enemies were gone, he contacted a group of lesser beings that titled themselves as the Family Slitheen (this they did with no small amount of pride...but he could not afford to antagonise them) – and offered to provide them the resources they would need to compete amongst their rivals if they but provided him with the component necessary to complete one of the devices whose key component had succumbed to the ravages of Time. The gullible fools agreed – for it was an offer they could never refuse. But promises to other life-forms had no validity – they too would perish under the Reign of Sutekh the Destroyer...and all that did not would be trapped forever in the most crippling of despairs and agonies ever known in the Cosmos...