Chapter One

Cumbria, 1212 A.D.

The sound of men screaming filled the cold winter air, exhaling their final breath as their bodies fell to the last place their living matter would touch before their souls descended into the next world. Within the holy walls of the sacred monastery, a trembling man cloaked in brown robes stood in the middle of a stone-walled room staring at the bolted wooden door in front of him. The unfamiliar sound of a weapon he could never even imagine was heard from far behind it as it slaughtered the men he had known and befriended his entire life. The assailant's footsteps drew closer to his location. The men whose voices he knew by heart were pleading for their lives as their executioner showed no mercy in its wake.

In his shaking hands, he clung to a parchment of great importance to its bestower, one that he had never dared to read. The footsteps drew closer until they met the other side of the door and stopped. The screams of his brothers had ceased leaving him alone in anticipated silence of what was to come. He held his breath and prayed to his God that whatever demon was behind that door would not find him. The latch stirred under the pressure of its holder, yet did not yield at its attempts to open it. When all was most quiet and still, the man let out a sigh of relief as the being appeared to have given up on its quest to enter.

Suddenly the door burst open in a wave of horror unknown to any living man. Its shattered contents flung themselves throughout the room in all directions. Upon the settling dust, the robed man found himself face to face with the most unlikely of spirits. As the female proceeded towards him, the frightened holy man fell to his knees in terror.

"Please," he begged for his life, holding out his message to her as an act of good faith that he would be spared from the madness he had found himself in.

The creature approached him, her dark laced heels grinding into the crevices of the stone flooring. Her robes, unknown to his world, swayed in motion with each of her footsteps. The beast lowered itself to him. Her eyes pierced his soul with the visions of true hell itself. Her hand reached out and snatched the parchment with her clawed fingers to free it from his petrified grasp. Returning to her natural stance, she pried the letter open with her sharp talons and removed its contents from within.

"Y-You... you're one of... them... aren't you," the monk stuttered in his fluent tongue and pointed towards a spot on the wall where the portrait of a familiar figure was painted.

The creature took notice of the unusual mural bearing half a decade's worth of dust upon its mantel. The bust of a girl she knew very well inscribed with a passage only one other person in the known universe could have written, "Run you clever boy, and remember." Oh, Doctor, she thought, you hopeless romantic. The demon brought her attention back to the fallen man. She glanced at the rosary draped around his neck and nearly laughed at its irony. Drawing her weapon from her blouse, she aimed it at the expendable casualty in front of her.

"May God forgive you," the mortal man uttered his last words to his destroyer as her instrument of extermination ended his lifespan. No God of his would be able to save him now.

A satisfied Missy opened the letter in front of her and read through its contents with great anticipation. Upon examining its instructions, she frowned at its anti-climactic wording, "Open the door." She raised a curious brow and thought to herself, Door? What door? Just then an unusual banging was heard originating from the monastery's grand entrance that resonated throughout the once silent stone halls. Someone... or something... was knocking.

Bang, bang, bang!

Missy spun on her heel and headed towards the sound following it back through her destructive path. As she stepped over the bodies and limbs of the men she had put out of their misery, the knocking continued to call to her.

Bang, bang, bang!

The noise grew louder as she drew closer to the source's location. Working her way through the wake of devastation she had left the sanctuary in, she couldn't help but think to herself that had the Doctor not abandoned her back on Skaro forcing her to escape to this deplorable place, the lives of these pathetic humans could have been spared from her wrath.

Bang, bang, bang!

As she entered the large cathedral-like room, she discovered the doors to which the sound had been coming from. She cautiously approached them, feeling a sense of exhilaration over the unknown and potentially dangerous endless possibilities of what could be on the other side. As she reached the doors, the banging ceased leaving her in silence once more. Reaching for the handle, she hesitated for only a moment and thought to herself that whatever was out there could never be quite as frightening as she. Turning the handle, she opened the door to the outside world.

To her surprise, there was no one there. A part of her feared that it was all in her head. That the knocking had somehow come to replace the incessant drums that had once plagued her mind her entire life and had finally stopped towards the end of her last body. Had it not been for the strangely foreign noise coming from below her gaze, she would have simply closed the door and retreated back behind the walls of the monastery. Peering down towards her feet, she discovered an unusual kind of woven capsule covered with quilted linens.

"Ooo... a present?! How delightfully thoughtful. And it isn't even my birthday," she exclaimed aloud to no one in particular. Stepping outside, she looked around for any sign of another living being who may have left the "gift" to her. Yet found nothing but the familiar sight of a dozen corpses lying in the last position she had left them in. As she scanned the landscape for possible caravans or transport of any kind, an unexpected startling whimper exhaled from inside the wicker pod. Missy's attention was turned towards the sound, standing perplexed at the strange object in front of her. She knelt down and hesitantly peeled back the cloth concealing its secrets within. A small gasp escaped her lips, finding herself utterly shocked at what she saw before her.