Catyuy is... FANTASTIC. She's a fan, she's a cheerleader, she's a member of the team, she's occasionally drum major and often half of the marching band. Today's her birthday, and while she deserves all the beautiful and brilliant things in the world, all I have are words. Humbly and gratefully, I bring them. This is a side-story to the ALH!verse, for those keeping score.
The Oracle of the Twelve Nights
There was an interdimensional rift based on the fourth planet in the Medusa system. Most of the system had long since been abandoned by the original inhabitants, but there was a shrine situated over the rift. There dwelled the Oracle of the Twelve Nights, something of a legend throughout the Seven Systems.
It was a well-known but seldom mentioned fact that the cleverest Time Lords are quite mad from a very young age. An outside sociological observer might feel compelled to conclude that this was a natural effect of the society that generates them. He might also feel compelled to boil his head rather than mention his conclusions to anyone. Time Lord society was strictly iconoclastic, and outsiders were looked upon with utter disdain. Any visitor would, therefore, be expected to lie dramatically about the marvels of Time Lord child-rearing techniques.
"And then, of course, he'd still be treated as if he'd worked for Morbius," a youthful, grey-eyed Time child in an ornately styled version of the robes of a Prydonian Postulant remarked.
"I'm never going to get this finished if you keep interrupting me, Koschei," his companion, the creative writer with the golden hair and golden eyes, remarked.
"It is never going to work, Zedric. I still say we're going to be caught unless we stage some sort of distraction." Both boys were hunched over a computer tablet in a cupboard so small it was obvious it had never been meant to hold even one boy. Although both boys were only just past the loose-limbed, gangly stage of late adolescence, it was Zedric, the taller and more strongly built of the two, who occupied the majority of the space. Koschei, almost always the smallest and frailest of any group he found himself in, resented the current situation, along with a vast number of other things, including his smaller stature.
"How're they going to catch us? They don't even know we're here. Now, quiet. Let me finish."
"Very well."
A knowledge of both of the preceding facts would assist the reader in understanding more exactly the goals and intentions of the adventurous pair of Prydonian postulants, Zedric and Koschei, students of Class Ninety-two, under the tutelage of Lord Borusa.
"I'd like to know why your name is listed first," Koschei commented tiredly.
"I'd like to know why you left me out entirely," said a very, very small boy, wriggling his way in between the two older students and grinning at them like the dangerous little imp he just might be.
"Where did you come from?" Zedric asked, laughing at the cheekiness of their spontaneous companion.
"You're meant to be in bed, Thete," Koschei insisted in a rather motherly tone. "You're still growing, child, you need your sleep."
Thete's robes, while not as ornate as his companions', and certainly much smaller, bore the exact same insignia and markings. Given the nature of a society whose inhabitants periodically change their appearances, the insignia and colors are always a better indicator of actual age, ranking, and social standing than the face presented. Nevertheless, the same cannot usually be said of the children, and Thete was, decidedly, a child.
"I set us a distraction," Thete piped proudly.
"A what?" Koschei demanded, at the exact moment that Zedric said, "What sort of distraction?" They were both interrupted by a loud bang followed by a lot of shaking and then a thunderous detonation.
Thete was a very destructive child.
"C'mon, let's go!" he proclaimed, joyfully.
Following the tiny, jet haired menace, the two older boys scrambled out of their hiding place and dove for their chosen target - a late model time capsule in full chameleon mode. They reached the door and Koschei managed to persuade it to open, which they all took as a very good sign.
"How'd you arrange to get us through the transduction barrier?" Koschei asked Zedric in a curious, but decidedly less worried than he ought to be tone of voice.
"We'll start generating a ghost the moment we move to dematerialize."
"Plus, we've timed it just as the convoy out of Soriamus Beta is expected through," Thete mentioned. "I thought you did that on purpose."
Koschei smiled at their blue-eyed monster. "As a matter of fact, I did. But the one would not work without the other, hence the question."
"Oh, redundant securities," Thete exclaimed with enthusiasm. "You never do leave those out, do you, Koschei?" He looked admiringly up at the older boy who smiled down at the child with an arrogance only an own son of a traditionally Prydonian house could manage.
"There's always a backup plan with this one," agreed Zedric, moving to the rather simplistic console in the center of the room. "Don't forget that, Thete, or he'll get the drop on you!"
"I don't have to listen to your abuse!" Koschei protested with a definite pout on his attractive features. "Lord Borusa is always happy to spare the time to abuse me."
All three boys laughed and took places around the console.
"You know it takes six technicians to pilot one of these," Zedric observed.
"That's because they use technicians," Thete pronounced with confident disdain.
Koschei, never one to discourage either of Class Ninety-two's pair of tiny geniuses (or anyone, actually, but he'd never admit it), simply went looking for something for Thete to stand on.
The chosen capsule had a very obvious mind of its own, but the three boys finally managed to reach their intended destination on the third try. "The Oracle of the Twelve Nights," Zedric proclaimed grandly as the huge double doors whispered open.
"I'll believe it when I see it," Koschei drawled.
Thete scrambled through the doors before either of them, the enthusiasm of his untarnished youth going before them like a light. They both thought of Thete as a beautiful baby, the precious dreamy eyed child brought for them to look after, to give them someone to be responsible for, to teach them.
The Oracle might have told them that they are right about him, that he's the mad child of chaos and time, that for all he is cleverer than they may ever be, he needs them if he's to live to become wise. The Oracle may have told them their futures and how they fit around the life of the tiny child they've both come to admire and despair of at once. The Oracle may have said nothing of him at all.
Koschei would have rather died than hear that his future did not have this giddy, strange little boy in it. He would have rather laid down and never risen than to know that his time with Theta Sigma was finite. To hear that a universe existed without the boy in it would have destroyed him. Zedric couldn't have even conceived of the possibility.
But the Oracle was in the future, not the present, and the two young Time Lords followed their smaller charge out to find out what the future would hold.
"What do you offer in payment?" the Oracle asked. Her world seemed to be a dry cave or a fountain, and sometimes other possibilities flashed to the forefront, everything from a crowded public street to a blazing level of hell. All the same, the shrine she inhabited was not the strangest thing to three boys not only used but trained to seeing things that weren't quite there.
Maybe it was because they'd been brought up with Time Lords around them all the time. Maybe it was because the wisest and strangest in their world were always the weird, wizened old men. Maybe it was because the last time any of them had seen a woman at all (aside from their classmate, Ushas, who didn't count because she was Thete's age and thus a little girl) it had been with their families (and there was a distinct possibility that Thete had never seen a woman at all). Maybe it was because even if they did see a woman, they still mostly expected wizened. Whatever the reason, the Oracle was a complete shock.
She was a young adult in appearance and as dark haired as Thete. She looked like them, a standard bipedal life-form with so-called humanoid features. She was taller than the average female Gallifreyan though, and perhaps she had a stronger frame than the delicately built females of their species. She had alabaster skin and sad, haunted eyes the same shining gold color as Zedric's. She spoke with the oddest accent through a gap-toothed smile that was cunning and secretive and welcoming at once.
Zedric and Koschei looked at each other, entirely unsure what to offer. There were things upon things inside the ship, mysteries and answers and questions galore, from the past and from the future. "What do you need?" Koschei finally questioned, the elected speaker for the group under the circumstances.
"You bring two children of Time before me, and I must assume you mean to have two answers. What do you offer in payment?"
Thete stepped forward between the two taller boys who had been staged protectively in front of him. "Three, madam," he said, authority already plain in his voice that echoed so strangely in this odd place.
The woman looked at him. "Welcome, child," she said softly, and studied his face, then turned to the older boys, something like recognition dawning in her brightening eyes. "The price will be paid in full by all," she said softly, then looked first to Koschei. "And you will pay it best, I think."
The three boys looked at her, and then at each other, and there was quite a large amount of regret for even coming to this place bouncing around between them. Zedric stepped forward, finally, brave or foolhardy though it might have been, his golden eyes dancing as he practiced his most fetching smile on her. "Will you tell us what we need to know?" he asked.
The woman smiled again, a tight smile that made sure her teeth didn't show, and shook her head at him. "A wise question, especially from the shameless. What if I told you that none of the future was something anyone needed to know?"
"Then you would be negating your very purpose," Zedric said. "And I would invite you to tell me of my present instead."
She nodded. "Very well. Your death is after your death, and your fate heroic and tragic and grand. Learn your lessons well, Son of Rassilon, for you will need them. Your brother will need them. Your people will need them. You may not save the world that cannot be saved, but what you can save will be forever."
Zedric, who had no brother, fell silent at this rather puzzling pronouncement. He watched the Oracle instead, wondering if she had more to say. In a moment, after matching her eyes to his, she nodded and continued. "I speak Twelve Nights to you, Son of Time. Twelve Nights are yours and Twelve Endings, and you shall not die at your enemy's hand."
Then she turned away from him. Zedric bowed to her and stepped back, lost in thought and in the strange, sad relief to know that his life and his death were his own.
Her eyes shone and looked so sad at Koschei, now. "You are named appropriately, deathless son of no man. Two paths stand before you, ever, and you must choose, else walk the tightrope in the thunder. Fate wants nothing of you and death cannot claim you. You life is your own."
Koschei stared at her, grey eyes nearly as haunted as her own. He waited, unable to meet her eyes, and when she spoke her voice was heavy with compassion. "There is no such thing as prophecy," she said softly. "You are the master of your destiny, and you must make your decision, somewhere between Truth and Valor, in the way your life must go. I cannot speak Twelve Nights to you. It is not enough or far too much."
When she turned away from him, she looked every bit as shaky as Koschei felt. He bowed to the Oracle politely all the same, considering her words and worrying at them.
When her sorrowing gaze fell on Thete, the boy flinched away from her. She smiled back at him. "I will not tell you anything, Child of Wonder. To speak one word of any future to you is danger and detriment and I will not have it on my head or on my conscience. Those who speak futures to you damage much and serve little. Go, little love, and live."
Thete stared at her, his tiny face screwed up in concentration, his vividly blue eyes wide with confused wonder. Finally, he nodded and bowed to her, and the woman bowed back to him, her eyes looking, to Koschei and Zedric, at least, quite over-bright.
They boys all looked at each other and finally turned away, heading back to their ship, knowing the hardest part of this operation - sneaking back in - was ahead of them.
The Oracle stopped them at the door with a single word. "Child," she said.
Thete turned and looked at the strange woman with her oddly mortal appearance and her strangely divine stare. "She loves you," the woman said, and turned away.
There is a saying on a thousand worlds, that ignorance is bliss. It is no less true for the three intrepid adventurers.
Zedric set his light pen down and flipped off his computer screen, looking at his roommates. Thete was sleeping the sleep of the innocent (and exhausted), Koschei, the sleep of the heavily sedated. He'd done it himself, cajoled Ushas into whipping up something for him, and trusted her enough to take whatever it was, so Zedric didn't begrudge him his very hard earned oblivion.
He lay back on his bed, waiting for the rest cycle to end, staring at the ceiling, and trying not to think. What was it the woman had said? Already, he felt it fading, like a dream, as if his mind was as young as Thete's. Still, she'd said that his brother would need him, and he didn't even have a brother.
He looked at the sleeping boys in the room with him. Sometimes he thought of them as his brothers. Sometimes, he very nearly forgot himself, wanting to drag Thete into an embrace to protect him or comfort him. Sometimes even Koschei looked like he could do with a hug. Sometimes, Zedric knew he was absolutely crazy.
"You still awake?" Thete whispered in the silence.
"I'm afraid so," Zedric replied in a matching whisper. "Why're you up, little one?"
"I was just thinking. We didn't get caught."
"True," Zedric agreed. "But that's hardly a bad thing."
"Yes," Thete agreed. "But you see, Lord Borusa didn't have any reason to get his blood pressure elevated at us all week long."
A slow smile spread over Zedric's face. He loved this child. "Very true," was all he said.
"Shouldn't we fix that?" Thete wondered.
Zedric sat up and just wished he could hold out a hand to the child. He settled for seizing his computer to take down the boy's ideas. With a grin so wicked he probably looked even more impish than the little one, he stood. "Let's."