PROLOGUE
The searing pain which had racked through every fibre of the Master's being finally subsided. He felt weak and giddy, and for some reason, he had the feeling that he was floating. With a shock, he realised that he was also paralysed and his whole body felt numb. Try as he might, he could not move a muscle. How had he come to be in such an undignified situation? What had happened to him?
Slowly, he opened his eyes, and there before him....a pitch black void of nothingness. Glancing around, he realised with horror that his body no longer existed, it must have somehow been destroyed, but by what or whom? Who, in the entire universe would be capable of such a deed? Suddenly the Master remembered. He had fallen into the Doctor's Eye of Harmony, the vast power source which enabled his enemy's TARDIS to travel through time and space.
Painfully, the memories of his last encounter with the meddlesome Doctor flooded back to him. The Master had finally been captured by the Daleks and put on trial for an earlier betrayal. They sentenced him to summary extermination and the sentence was quickly carried out. Imprisoned within beams of light, the Master's body was completely disintegrated, but for the renegade Time Lord it wasn't the end.
Just before capture, the Master had ingested a snake-like entity known as a morphant. Morphants were creatures that were capable of sustaining a being's life essence for a limited time, and so the Master lived on, albeit in liquid form. The Doctor, at that time nearing the end of his seventh incarnation, had travelled to the Dalek planet, Skaro and stolen the casket which contained the Master's ashes. He intended to convey the remains of his mortal enemy back to their home planet of Gallifrey.
However, the casket did not just contain ashes, but the Master/Morphant creature as well. Slithering into the TARDIS control console, the Master forced the Doctor to make an emergency landing on Earth. Once there, the Master/Morphant escaped and took possession of a San Francisco Paramedic's body, but it soon started to decay.
The Master needed the Doctor's body to save his own life, and a last pitch battle with the newly regenerated Eighth Doctor ensued. During their confrontation, the Master was toppled into the Doctor's Eye of Harmony and his host body was completely destroyed. Another desperate gamble had failed.
"So, that's how I've come to be in this place" the Master thought to himself, and then something else occured to him, and it presented the possibility of escape from this limbo he found himself trapped in.
"If I am trapped within the Doctor's TARDIS, then I can communicate with it's telepathic circuits!" if the Master had lips he would have smiled at his own ingenuity. "I will be free of this void". And then he would plot an exquisite revenge on the Doctor. Closing his non-existant eyes, the Master reached out with his disembodied consciousness.
"TARDIS!" he commanded. "Find me Siralos!"
The searing pain which had racked through every fibre of the Master's being finally subsided. He felt weak and giddy, and for some reason, he had the feeling that he was floating. With a shock, he realised that he was also paralysed and his whole body felt numb. Try as he might, he could not move a muscle. How had he come to be in such an undignified situation? What had happened to him?
Slowly, he opened his eyes, and there before him....a pitch black void of nothingness. Glancing around, he realised with horror that his body no longer existed, it must have somehow been destroyed, but by what or whom? Who, in the entire universe would be capable of such a deed? Suddenly the Master remembered. He had fallen into the Doctor's Eye of Harmony, the vast power source which enabled his enemy's TARDIS to travel through time and space.
Painfully, the memories of his last encounter with the meddlesome Doctor flooded back to him. The Master had finally been captured by the Daleks and put on trial for an earlier betrayal. They sentenced him to summary extermination and the sentence was quickly carried out. Imprisoned within beams of light, the Master's body was completely disintegrated, but for the renegade Time Lord it wasn't the end.
Just before capture, the Master had ingested a snake-like entity known as a morphant. Morphants were creatures that were capable of sustaining a being's life essence for a limited time, and so the Master lived on, albeit in liquid form. The Doctor, at that time nearing the end of his seventh incarnation, had travelled to the Dalek planet, Skaro and stolen the casket which contained the Master's ashes. He intended to convey the remains of his mortal enemy back to their home planet of Gallifrey.
However, the casket did not just contain ashes, but the Master/Morphant creature as well. Slithering into the TARDIS control console, the Master forced the Doctor to make an emergency landing on Earth. Once there, the Master/Morphant escaped and took possession of a San Francisco Paramedic's body, but it soon started to decay.
The Master needed the Doctor's body to save his own life, and a last pitch battle with the newly regenerated Eighth Doctor ensued. During their confrontation, the Master was toppled into the Doctor's Eye of Harmony and his host body was completely destroyed. Another desperate gamble had failed.
"So, that's how I've come to be in this place" the Master thought to himself, and then something else occured to him, and it presented the possibility of escape from this limbo he found himself trapped in.
"If I am trapped within the Doctor's TARDIS, then I can communicate with it's telepathic circuits!" if the Master had lips he would have smiled at his own ingenuity. "I will be free of this void". And then he would plot an exquisite revenge on the Doctor. Closing his non-existant eyes, the Master reached out with his disembodied consciousness.
"TARDIS!" he commanded. "Find me Siralos!"