Weight of the World
It had to be done. There was no way around it. It had to be done.
The planet filled the view screen as the TARDIS hovered in orbit. The Time Lord stood by the central control console and stared at the image. He knew what had to be done. There was no way around it. There was no other choice. It had to be done soon.
The Jigguragh had awakened. A race of massive space-faring creatures, they lived and died in the vast vacuum of space. Yet they were born within the core of a planet.
A single pregnant Jigguragh would burrow into a planet to lay its eggs. The heated core would sustain the eggs until they were ready to hatch. After centuries of maturation, hundreds of newborn Jigguragh would then burst out through the planet's surface, tearing it apart.
It was through no fault of their own. It was their nature. Not a particularly intelligent species, the Jigguragh lived by a primitive instinct of survival. They did not choose their birth planets by whether they were barren or inhabited. They were not evil. They were not even aware of the lives they were destroying.
Despite their benign nature, they had been hunted to extinction.
Or to near extinction, apparently.
The Time Lord paced within his time machine.
These creatures below were the last of their kind. The last...
They had to be destroyed, here and now, before they spread across the galaxy to threaten other planets. They had already awakened. The Jigguragh were hatching. The destructive force required to stop them would obliterate the entire planet.
And this world was inhabited. A highly intelligent humanoid species. Over a billion lives.
They were already dead. Nothing could be done for them.
The Time Lord clenched his fists, torn in his resolve.
No. They weren't already dead. They were all still alive, going about their lives, their monotonous daily routine, unaware that a savage force had awakened within their planet and would soon tear its way through the ground beneath their feet.
Nonetheless, nothing could be done for them. They were a lost cause. The Jigguragh were awake. They would tear this world apart and move out across the galaxy to find another planet to burrow their way into, beginning the process again. It's possible that the next planet may be uninhabited, but Jigguragh lived for several millennia. There would be several more planets after this. He couldn't just follow them all and keep an eye on them for the rest of his lives.
They had to be stopped, here and now.
He had recently confiscated a phasic temporal explosive from a mercenary group within a distant star system. Illegal nearly everywhere within the twelve known galaxies, he had been bringing it back to Gallifrey to be dismantled and destroyed when he became aware of the situation on this planet below.
Action must be taken.
Originating from a race whose policy was more of observing than taking action, the Time Lord was torn by indecision. Not one who usually felt bound by the rules, the severity of the consequences of this decision weighed on him greatly.
One world and a billion lives now, or several hundred worlds and countless lives later?
It was a decision that should be brought before the High Council of Gallifrey before any immediate action was considered.
The High Council. Their hands bound by their own self-imposed law of non-interference. All the planets in the multiverse could fall one by one to this scourge, with Gallifrey the last remaining world intact, before they would bring themselves to even begin considerations of any sort of action.
The Time Lord glanced at the interdimensional explosive where it sat on the floor nearby.
They were not aware of his acquisition of this banned weapon. They would not question his return to Gallifrey without it.
The Jigguragh moved quickly. By the end of the planet's next revolution around this system's star, the world would be reduced to rubble.
The lives of its inhabitants were already lost. There was only one thing left to be done.
He approached the temporal bomb and activated its controls. He had already programmed it moments before. He just needed to send it on its way.
With a bright glow, its power coils surged with energy, and the weapon vanished into phased dimensional shift.
He flexed his fingers. They felt numb. He had a twisted pain in his gut and his legs were weak. He stumbled towards the TARDIS console and fell to his knees.
What had he done? All those lives...
It had to be done, he told himself. The decision had to made. Action had to be taken.
A bright flash of light brought his attention to the view screen.
A world was dying.
Chunk by chunk, the planet's surface was torn away, dissolving into minuscule particles, shifting out of phase with reality as they were ripped away from this dimensional plane. All life was vaporized. A billion lives reduced to atoms, and their atoms in turn reduced to nothingness.
He had difficulty breathing, his hearts racing, his emotions raging. It seemed as if time stood still, this moment forever burning itself into his mind.
A sudden thought surfaced through the whirlwind within his aching head.
He had become the destroyer of worlds.
He stared at the death throes of a once vibrant world, and through his tears, he laughed.
He destroyed a world. Slaughtered billions. To save the galaxy, a world had to die.
Was he a destroyer or a savior?
For some, it was a fine line between sanity and insanity.
His chest hurt, he was laughing so hard.
Perhaps he was insane...
He had seen eternity... the whole of the vortex, the gap in the very fabric of reality...
His head was pounding... throbbing to the beat of distant drums.
Taken at an early age to enter the Time Lord Academy... You stand there, eight years old... staring at the raw power of time and space... just a child. Some would be inspired... some would run away... and some would go mad.
One day, he would finally leave Gallifrey. He would go off on his own and choose a name for himself. Actually more of a title than a name.
He would become the Master, and the universe would fear him.