The Legend of Gallifrey Part 1: The Minds of Ghosts
"...and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine."
The Doctor switched off the intercom, then pressed the dematerialization button, leaving the scanner on as long as possible. This form of his was getting old. He knew very well that next time he would get to see his granddaughter, she wouldn't know him. Indeed, he may not even know himself. That thought brought a tear to his eye. It was okay now to show weakness; he was alone, and he didn't know for how long that would be.
As it turned out, not very long.
Four knocks sounded from the door to the rest of the TARDIS. The Doctor's hearts skipped a beat. Had Susan somehow gotten back on board? It was in her best interests to remain on future Earth with David.
The Doctor wiped the tear from his eye, then made his way slowly towards the door. As he reached out for the handle, another four knocks sounded and his hand stopped. What was the significance of four? The heartbeat of a Time Lord, his people, but the Doctor was the only Time Lord here. He would be able to sense the regeneration energy. It could be Susan, as she was only 34, still too young to be able to regenerate.
His hand grasped the handle and turned it counterclockwise. The click sounded, meaning that the door could now be opened without any more effort. The Doctor took a second to consider the possibilities, then yanked on the door.
It swung open. The bright hallway stretched away from him with doors leading to various rooms, some of which he still had yet to explore. However, it was utterly empty, with no sign of anything that could have knocked four times on the door.
The Doctor stood there, puzzled. Was it some sort of dimensional glitch? Had a wall maybe appeared for a fraction of a second and rubbed against the door? It certainly wasn't impossible, but the Doctor had taken a look at the TARDIS's circuits as soon as he and Susan had left Gallifrey. The dimensional stabilizers were as good as they were ever going to be.
He walked back to the console, doing a scan for life signs. Other than the occasional lower form of life, like a bird or a spider, the Doctor was completely alone. So what had knocked on the door?
The Doctor jumped as another four knocks sounded from further down the hallway. He turned to look, making his way towards the hallway, then he stood in the middle for a second, waiting for it to tell him where it came from again. When he once again heard four knocks coming from a door on his right, he turned towards it, then stopped.
The Doctor and Susan had never gone down this hallway. He had no idea as to whether or not it went to a dining room or a death pit. Time Lords also had a habit of leaving traps throughout TARDISes in need of repair. He and Susan had disabled most of the ones in the parts they'd been down, but there were so many that the Doctor could very well still be disabling them well into his final incarnation. Was he willing to risk his life to find out what was knocking on his door?
Hell, yes.
The Doctor swung the door open, and a waft of flowers and fresh air filled his lungs. In front of him stretched an unusually green field of Earth grass, dotted with flowers and trees. Hills rolled everywhere. The sky was bright blue and very clear, but faint hexagons were visible in the blueness. This place was a bio-dome, an outside inside an inside, obviously tailored to Earth standards. This Earth seemed to be everywhere.
The Doctor could just make out a spot on the other side of a hill where the hexagons met the grass, and a square of white stood there like a fence post. Clearly a door out.
He began walking towards the door, occasionally stopping for a rest. His bones were old and tired, and he began to long for the day when he would be able to acquire a new body. Hopefully, he could avoid being old for a very long time. It was tiresome.
The Doctor laid down to rest at the foot of a tree, placing his cane at his side. He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them the bio-dome had shifted from day to night. He felt more energized, ready to run towards or away from whatever was knocking on his door.
As if on cue, four loud, echo-y knocks sounded from the sky/ceiling. The Doctor wasn't startled, he was beginning to get used to it. He did get startled when a white mist appeared seemingly from nowhere, gathering around him.
He grabbed his cane and used it to stand himself up, facing the mist with a somewhat annoyed look on his face. It gathered in a ball in front of him.
"If you wish to speak with me," he yelled, "then get on with it!"
Maybe to his disappointment, as he was still nervous as to this things intentions, it obliged. The mist ball began to shift, forming what looked vaguely like a face. What seemed to be the lips began to move, and a deep, echoing voice emanated from everywhere at once.
"I AM THE NIGHTMARE SON," it said. "I RAN FROM THE NOTHING THAT ENGULFED MY HOME, BUT IT CONSUMED MY BODY AS WELL. I BARELY MANAGED TO ESCAPE WITH MY MIND, AND I WAS TRAPPED IN THIS PLACE BY THE TIME ENERGY IT RADIATES."
The Doctor didn't know what a Nightmare Son was, but it didn't seem hostile. He could usually tell these sorts of things by listening to someone's voice. It was a good ability to have when trying to identify who was insane and who wasn't.
"What was this nothing?" The Doctor asked.
"I DO NOT KNOW" it said. "I CAN RECREATE MY BODY IF I AM FREE OF THIS PLACE, BUT IT HOLDS ME HERE. YOU MUST RELEASE ME."
The Doctor didn't see any reason to trap it there, so he nodded and watched the mist dissolve, then he began to make his way across to the door.
As he was walking past a tree surrounded by bushes, he brushed up against one, and it beeped. Instinctively, the Doctor swung his cane at it, making a 'clang' against something inside it. It beeped again, and the field dissolved into a black domed room lit brightly by the ceiling. Where the bush was a second ago was a silver box, which the Doctor recognized instantly. He took off towards the door, which was much easier now that the floor was flat.
The box released a long beep, and as the Doctor ran towards the door his footsteps slowed. One foot left the ground, and the other touched the ground two full seconds later. Then four. Then eight. Eventually, the Doctor felt as though he were running through maple syrup. The door slowly inched closer, and the Doctor knew that once he was through, he would be free of the effects of the machine.
If the Doctor was one thing, it was stubborn. Eventually, he managed to make it to the door, where he sped up to normal speed as soon as he was through, causing him to nearly crash into a wall on the other side. The hallway he was in now was perpendicular to the door, and it was made of a darker metal, and was just darker in general. There were pipes visible on the walls, and the whole thing gave off an aura like he was in a submarine.
The Doctor didn't like this hallway. He made a mental note to avoid this area of the TARDIS as much as he could, then he walked to the middle of the hallway and waited.
As he suspected, four knocks came from the down hallway on the left, so the Doctor turned to the left and began to shuffle down the hall. He kept looking in the rooms as he passed, and they showed him a room with something that had glowing balls hanging from it, a room with dancing trees, a room with a jungle in it and something that looked like parrots flying around, a room that looked like a boiler room on a boat, and a room that appeared to be an extra control room, only this one was made of wood.
He stopped in front of a closed door when he heard four knocks resonate through it, and he turned to open it. On the other side were rows and rows of wooden shelves filled with books written in languages from all across the galaxy. Evidently, the TARDIS library.
The Doctor took a step into the room, and he immediately knew he was in trouble as the lights dimmed and turned red. A panel on the wall a few feet to his left slid open, and a hand stuck out. It had red fabric hanging from its arm that the Doctor immediately recognised.
"Cloyster Wraiths!" He shouted, mainly to himself. He began backing towards one of the shelves as seven or eight Wraiths climbed out of the wall, their faces flickering with faces the Doctor didn't recognise. He held up his cane in self-defense as the first Cloyster Wraith escaped the wall and looked towards him, its face momentarily freezing as the angry face of a brown-haired man with a large chin. It screeched, then glided towards him with its arm outstretched.
It was almost upon him, but the Doctor swung his cane at it, knocking it back a few feet. Four more pulled themselves out of the wall, leaving three still struggling. The Doctor spun around and ran, for the second time in ten minutes.
He turned into one of the aisles with the screeching only a few yards behind him. He knew that nobody could outrun the Cloyster Wraiths, at least not for long, but maybe he could outmaneuver them instead. He turned again, and fell face first into water.
Underwater, the red lights were accentuated, making it seem as if the water itself was glowing red. The outlines of the Wraiths were visible, and even though the water obscured the details, the Doctor could just about make out the scared face of a man with short, curly blonde hair on the face of one of them.
The Doctor broke the surface and took a big breath, confirming that the Wraiths were scared of the water. The TARDIS must have known that, and placed the pool in his way to hold them back. She seemed to like him.
All eight Wraiths circled the pool, hissing and screeching, while the Doctor treaded water in the center. The Wraiths were obviously scared of the pool and wouldn't enter for any reason, but what if the pool came to them? The Doctor scooped up a little bit of water in his hand, then flung i at one of the Wraiths. The water splashed against the robes and sizzled, eating through the robes like acid, and the Wraith emitted a disturbingly human-like wail as it melted to nothing. The other Wraiths hissed and retreated towards the wall with the door, and the Doctor climbed out of the pool, then snapped his fingers and air blew on him from nowhere to dry him off.
As soon as he was dry, four knocks resonated from the opposite side of the library, and the Doctor followed the noise into another hallway, this time extending from the door forwards until it was out of sight.
The white mist gathered from nowhere into a ball a few feet in front of him, and the face of the Nightmare Son was in front of the Doctor.
"I THANK YOU FOR WHAT YOU HAVE DONE FOR ME, DOCTOR," it echoed, even louder in an enclosed space. "THE EYE THAT YOU SEEK IS AT THE END OF THIS CORRIDOR, BUT I WARN YOU, THE TIME LORDS HAVE NOT MADE IT EASY FOR TRAVELLERS SUCH AS YOURSELF TO BREAK IN. I HAVE DONE MY BEST TO DISABLE TRAPS, BUT YOU MUST STILL BE WARY."
The Doctor was already feeling very tired from all the running he had to do. In fact, it might be safe to say that he was beginning to downright hate it, but he had to get this Nightmare Son off his ship, so he took a step forward, and collapsed.
He knew he was tired, but something seemed to have dragged him down to the floor as if he had weights tied to his limbs. He lifted his head up to see the face of the Nightmare Son staring down at him. It was impossible to read anything on its smokey face, but when it spoke a second later the Doctor could hear a hint of fear in its voice.
"ANOTHER TRAP IS SPRUNG, DOCTOR, ONE YOU MIGHT NOT SURVIVE. YOU MUST FIND A WAY DOWN THE HALLWAY WITH THREE TIMES THE GRAVITY YOU ARE USED TO. YOUR OLDEST BODY MAY NOT LIVE."
The Doctor didn't entirely get this 'oldest body' thing, but he grabbed his cane and hoisted himself up onto his feet, his legs and cane shaking, and he slowly stumbled down the corridor, but his cane slipped out from under him and he collapsed once again.
This method was obviously not working. With the Nightmare Son watching him, the Doctor felt as if he was being tested.
Tested… that word echoed in his mind like hearing a stone drop in a room entirely silent. He weakly reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a yo-yo, rolling it forward. He watched it roll down the hallway, eventually vanishing from sight. Then he saw what he was missing.
The yo-yo had rolled normally. The gravity increase hadn't affected it, meaning whatever was affecting the Doctor was limited to him. So whatever it was was on his person. He began to pat himself down. As he reached his leg, he felt something.
It was a small, metal device with a red light on top of it. It seemed to have been attached to him when he walked through the door, but he hadn't felt its effects until it had warmed up. He crushed it in his hand, and immediately he felt lighter, as if he had had on a heavy backpack that he had just let fall to the ground.
He stood himself up, looking at the Nightmare Son's smokey outline. It nodded approvingly.
"WELL DONE, DOCTOR. I SEE YOU ARE ALL YOUR REPUTATION WILL SAY YOU ARE. THE EYE OF HARMONY IS AT THE END OF THE HALLWAY. SHUT IT OFF, AND I WILL BE FREE."
At the end of the hallway was a room with a balcony on one end, with a set of stairs leading up to it. In the center of the room was a raised platform with four staffs, one on each corner, and in the center was a metal dome with a line running over it, like a giant metal eyelid.
The mist gathered again beside the Doctor, and the Nightmare Son spoke.
"YOU HAVE DONE WELL, TIME LORD. YOU NEED ONLY REMOVE THE STAFFS FROM THEIR PERCHES, AND IT WILL BE SAFE FOR ME TO FLEE."
The Doctor did as he was instructed. After removing the second staff, the room seemed to darken.
"THE NOTHING," the Nightmare Son said, its face floating back a few feet. "WHEN I LEAVE THIS PLACE, YOU MUST REPLACE THE STAFFS AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE, OR IT WILL CONSUME YOU."
The Doctor did not like the sound of that. He left each staff by their perch, and as he removed the third one, the room shook. Each of the staffs clattered to the floor. Only the fourth staff remained now.
The Doctor gripped the staff, preparing to either save the Nightmare Son or doom his ship. He took a deep breath, then yanked it out, and the lights went out completely. The room shook horribly. The mist scattered and rose through the roof. The Doctor fell to the floor, the fourth staff still in hand.
He stood up and ran to the Eye, the room still shaking. He replaced the fourth staff, and the lights turned back on, dimmer than before. He quickly replaced the second and third, and by the time he had replaced the first, the lights were completely back on, but the room continued to shake.
The faint voice of the Nightmare Son echoed through the walls. "IT IS TOO LATE, TIME LORD! THE NOTHING WILL CLAIM YOU AND YOUR TARDIS, AND THERE IS NOTHING EITHER OF US CAN DO!"
The Doctor fell backwards as the shaking worsened. He held his cane tightly, thinking about how much he wished he could see Susan again. Why did he have to leave her behind? He could have just invited her and David to come with him. But it was too late for all that. He sat there as the room began to crack and blackness entered through them like a submarine springing a leak.
And he and his TARDIS were consumed by the Nothing.