WARNING: This story still contains spoilers about certain characters. If you haven't listened to Gods and Monsters, and you don't want to know what happens to Hex, don't read. Seriously. If you're still here and you don't want to know about Hex's fate, please leave. Go and have a biscuit. Bye-bye!


SYLVESTER McCOY and SOPHIE ALDRED in...
DOCTOR WHO: DIRECTOR OF THE MONSTERS
by BIZARREPINEAPPLE15

EPISODE TWO


Suddenly, there came a noise from behind him, a boot scuffing on ice. The Doctor, Ace and Hex wheeled around to see a fleet of ten Ice Warriors standing there: muscular, reptilian aliens from the planet Mars wearing green scaly armour. They had round, spiky heads protected by armour, and through large eye-slits red eyes shone through. Their leader, an Ice Lord, had a domed helmet and the same penetrating red eyes. Each Ice Warrior, including the leader, had an arm-mounted sonic weapon, a grey tube attached to the arm, and all of these were aimed at the Doctor, Ace and Hex.

"Doctor... what a pleasant occuranccccce... my name is Ice Lord Sadavaar and you will now be eliminated!" rasped the Ice Lord in a hissing, snake-like, asthmatic lisp. All of the sonic weapons fired straight at the Doctor.

The all too familiar electronic wobble of the Ice Warriors' sonic guns rang out in the air, reverberating off the ice walls, echoing in the cavernous chamber. The Doctor and Ace ducked, covering their ears with their hands. Ace knew all about Ice Warriors, all right. She knew the effects of sonic weaponry. Although she'd covered her ears, she still felt a tinnitus-like ringing in them. Hex, being some kind of fabrication or robot, had no natural reflexes, so he didn't duck. Instead, the bullets bounced off him.

"Hmm... well, you can't deny that if you needed one, he'd be a brilliant human shield!" cried Ace as she got to her feet. The Doctor slowly got to his feet as well. The Ice Lord's red eyes widened.

"Your friend..." he rasped. "Our sssonic weaponry had no effect on him. The bulletsss bounccced off him. How did thisss happen?"

The Doctor walked up to Sadavaar. "Strictly between you and me, Sadavaar, I haven't got the foggiest. It appears that this is some kind of android. He materialised in my spaceship, and I haven't really been able to find out that much about him. He's got a tattoo on his shoulder, if that's any interest to you." Ace walked up to the Ice Lord Sadavaar. "Careful Ace," warned the Doctor.

"I will be Professor, don't you worry," said Ace reassuringly.

"The Ice Warriors can be incredibly dangerous."

"I've met them before, you know. Anyway, I think I've got an interesting and incredibly perceptive theory. Sadavaar, you didn't come here, to the ice palace, specifically to track down the Doctor and me, did you? I think you were somewhere else, another planet maybe, and then suddenly you and the Ice Warriors found yourselves here."

"You are correct," lisped Sadavaar in a voice that was barely more than a snake's whisper.

"Doctor, I think we both know why that happened, don't we?"

"Hmm... yes, we do Ace. Lord Sadavaar, me and Ace believe that you and your army of Ice Warriors were snatched from wherever you were before by a being known as Fenric, I don't know if you've heard of him. You don't need to know all the specifics right now, they're not entirely important, but you must know that Fenric is a being with almost complete and utter control over other beings. He controls them as he would chess pieces. I presume you've heard of chess? Well, yes, he can control people and transport them to places around the universe – this being the chessboard – using time storms."

"Yeah, and me and the Professor think that Fenric whipped up a time storm to transport you and your Ice Warrior army here, to wherever here is. Me and the Professor aren't exactly sure where we are, but we think Fenric brought you here to kill us. He doesn't really like us," said Ace.

"We have a habit of disrupting his plans for universal domination," added the Doctor. "Though it does require quite a bit of effort."

"So, in an effort to kill us, he brought you, here. If you follow me-?" finished Ace.

"Accce... that is a ssstrange name. What planet are you from?"

"Well, Sadavaar's not much better!" protested Ace. "I'm from Earth, the Doctor's from Gallifrey."

Sadavaar's red eyes once again widened in shock. Ace couldn't tell from his obscure facial expression whether he felt honoured and proud or disgusted and repulsed to be in the presence of the Doctor. "You are the infamousss Doctor from the fablesss of Marsss? The Doctor from the mythsss and legendssss?"

"I am, Lord Sadavaar. So you should probably place your faith in me. Believe me when I say that if Fenric has had some involvement in this, then we're all in big trouble. I believe that he is playing the Game of Gods against a Time Lord. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of which Time Lord he is playing against. Are you familiar with the Game of Gods, Lord Sadavaar?"

"It isss infamousss throughout the entire universsse, sssso it sssseems," replied Sadavaar.

"Yeah, well, have you heard of Fenric?" asked Ace.

"Fenric... he isss an Elder God. He carriessss an evil curssse. He controlsss an army of vampiresss... He wasss defeated."

"We believed that too. Hex here -" said the Doctor, gesturing to the fake Hex. "- well, the real Hex, this is just an android but of course I've already told you about that – yes, well the real Hex sacrified himself and in turn also destroyed Fenric. Somehow Fenric was revived and he's playing against the Time Lord, commanding entire armies of people. He could control the universe in this way, bit by bit, and I believe that he sees me and Ace – well, me definitely, not too sure about Ace, but she has her uses – as threats. So he tried to get you to eliminate us."

"This is atrocccioussss!" rasped Sadavaar, his voice suddenly filled with reptilian, alien anger. Ace backed away slightly, bumping into the fake Hex, who had been remarkably silent before. The fake Hex gave Ace a slightly smug smile. Ace just gave him a cold, steely look, and turned back to the Doctor and Sadavaar.

"Yes, that's what I thought too," said the Doctor. "It's quite a slur on your people, isn't it? Using you as footsoldiers, effectively, to bring about the demise of yours truly."

"It isss," agreed Sadavaar.

"Well, we need to do something about it. I think we need to find out where Fenric is, unless he brings himself to us. Once we've found out where Fenric is, we go to him," decided Ace.

"And then what?" asked the Doctor. "We have no weapons."

"We've got an army of Ice Warriors with sonic weaponry," pointed out Ace.

"I'd imagine Fenric is impervious to the weaponry," replied the Doctor.

"Oh drat, that was my only plan. Well, maybe we could convince the other player, the Time Lord, to, I don't know, knock over all the pieces or something? Wouldn't that help?"

"Hmm..." pondered the Doctor. "Maybe, indeed maybe. Two Time Lords might, after all, be just about able to crush the forces of an Elder God? It would require a fair amount of luck and effort, but... yes, Ace, you're right! We need to locate Fenric!"


In the empty void that was nothingness, the empty space between reality and impossibility, filled with only blackness, devoid of everything, Fenric and the Time Lord were still playing chess, the Game of Gods, the game which could bring about the end of the universe. The board was large and so many pieces were scattered around it, platoons of soldiers and aliens, planets and moons and stars all jumbled up together on the chessboard, ready to be commanded quite easily by a single being, a single, incredibly powerful being, an Elder God or a Time Lord. Black vs. white, good vs. evil, destruction vs. reparation, all depended on this game of chess, the Game of Gods, where the universe was the prize. Fenric looked on at the events in the ice palace with amusement.

"Ah, you worthless Time Lord. You can hear the puny ramblings of this... ramshackle group, can you not? 'We need to locate Fenric'. Hmm... well, they can always try, but they should know, it's impossible to find us! We are in the void between reality and impossibility. It's impossible to find this place without locating the portal, and we all know that that area is safely guarded by the war zone." Fenric straightened up in his chair, malevolence glinting in his eyes.

"Fenric, I'm awfully afraid that you're babbling again," replied the Time Lord. "I'm almost getting bored. And, in case it escaped your attention, I don't think your plan exactly worked, Fenric, regarding the Ice Warriors! You obtained express permission, authorisation and clearance from the Elder Gods for usage of the Ice Warriors in this Game of Gods, yet your entire plan failed! In case you hadn't noticed, you wanted the Ice Warriors to kill the Doctor, and to the best of my knowledge, the Doctor is still on the board!"

"Oh, you puny, worthless Time Lord, you speck of dust! You think I really intended the Ice Warriors to kill the Doctor now? Oh no, no, no. As you will see, Time Lord, they will kill the Doctor much later in the day, don't you worry!" laughed Fenric.

"Whereas you may think you have triumphed, I notice that you have many less forces on the board. And this Game of Gods is being played for a reason, Fenric. It is your intention to bring about the destruction of the universe so that only the realm of the Elder Gods is left. And to do this, you are extinguishing every planet, one by one. Yet to the best of my knowledge, most of them are still there! It doesn't matter about the Doctor, it matters about the universe. And you're not doing the best job about ending it!" laughed the Time Lord.

"Oh, don't worry Time Lord. Whilst you blindly thrash your pieces around the chessboard, I prefer to use a technique known as strategy. Oh, don't worry, Time Lord, I know exactly what I am doing. In fact, any moment now I'd expect some more of my plan to come together. Oh yes, I know what's going to happen now! I believe it's my turn, is it not?"

"Indeed it is, Fenric."

"Good. Then my black agent, the traitor of the TARDIS, is now going to spark the Doctor's curiosity. Hmm..." Fenric plucked a tiny man-shaped piece off the board and placed it back on the board a short distance from where it had been before. The Time Lord saw no point in this.

"I see no point in this," he said. "What do you think you have achieved? All you have done is moved one person by a hundred metres or so. What good can that do? Is that the sort of move that destroys universes, Fenric?"

"They say you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink," said Fenric calmly.

"And?" asked the Time Lord who was his opponent. "This is all starting to get a bit trivial, I'm afraid. Boring, even. Oh, do get on with it!"

"Well, if we ignore the ending of that common human phrase, we get-?"

"'You can lead a horse to water'. So?"

"The fake version of the Doctor's travelling companion will lead the Doctor to the activation device. It will lead the Doctor... to the Haemovores!"


"Hex! Oh sorry, fake Hex person! Come back!" The fake version of Hex had ran away, out of the cavernous chamber of the ice palace. He'd just been standing there and then sprinted off. Ace turned to the Doctor.

"Doctor, Sadavaar, come on! We can't let him get away!" Everybody, humans, Time Lords and Ice Warriors alike, ran out of the chamber after the fake version of Hex. Sadavaar, whilst still running, raised him arm, poised to take down the fake Hex with his arm-mounted sonic weaponry.

"No, don't shoot!" shouted the Doctor. "I need to find out what he's doing, where he's going, who's making him run!"

"Something to do with Fenric, I expect," said Ace glumly, still running, panting a little now.

"Yes," agreed the Doctor. "Come on!" They sprinted faster, out of the ice palace now. They could see the fake Hex running away, leaving no footsteps in the snow, for he wasn't real. He barely existed. The Doctor, Ace and the Ice Warriors, including Sadavaar, ran even faster, hot on Hex's heels – well, the fake Hex's heels – and in close pursuit. Suddenly Hex stopped.

The Doctor, Ace and the Ice Warriors caught up with him.

"Hex!" protested Ace. "Stop doing that!"

"I am not Hex Schofield," said the fake Hex forcefully.

"Oh, I keep forgetting that," said Ace dumbly. "Doctor, why's he stopped?"

"I needed to show you this," said the fake Hex. "I've only got a short amount of time. The Time Lord... he has wrangled control of me from Fenric, but only briefly. I needed to show you this." The fabrication gestured to the trough in front of him. It was a circular trough made of cold, white, wet snow and ice, just like the one inside the ice palace.

"Hmm... it's interesting, indeed," said the Doctor. "And you're sure that this is fine? Absolutely safe?" questioned the Doctor. The fake Hex nodded. "Well, 'Hex' or whatever you are, why should I trust you? The last time I started fiddling about with one of these troughs an army of Ice Warriors decided to start shooting at me, and they were really annoying." Sadavaar glared at him. "Present company excepted."

"You need to trust me!" said the fake Hex. "Honestly, the Time Lord's got control of me. Fenric's about to regain control any minute, you must believe me! Reach inside it, there's information, a scroll telling you how to find the chessboard, how to find Fenric."

The Doctor walked over to the ice trough and plunged his hand into it, feeling for some sort of scroll. He fished about for a bit, and then realised that there was something there – a button. He'd accidentally pushed it with his finger whilst searching for the scroll.

Suddenly, a beam of blue light erupted out of the trough. The Doctor staggered back. "Why oh why did I trust you, Mr Hex?" he roared. The blue light disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared. "Oh," said the Doctor. "Nothing seems to have-"

Out of thin air, three creatures morphed into reality: three mouldy creatures, humanoid in appearance, about two metres tall, with a head looking like a brain, a blue-purple mouldy, decrepit brain. The figures were dressed in quite basic clothes – odd bits of brown cloth. They roared and growled, and started to advance towards the Doctor... But both he and Ace both recognised these figures, dredged up from a corrupted future. "Haemovores!" cried Ace. The Doctor nodded.


"I need to save them," said the Time Lord. "I need to bring them here."

"That's an illegal move, Time Lord," said Fenric.

"You bluff, Fenric, the only illegal moves in this game are made by you!" cried the Time Lord, moving the Doctor, Ace and Ice Warriors in one, to the centre of the chessboard triumphantly.


The Doctor, Ace, Sadavaar and the ten Ice Warriors all landed in the black void between reality and impossibility. Confronted by Fenric and a Time Lord, all that the party could do was stare. The Doctor broke the silence.

"Fenric," he said coldly.

"Did you ever doubt it?" asked Fenric.

"No, not since your pathetic fabrication of one of my former companions here-" he said, indicating Hex, "told me everything. You rather made a mistake there, Fenric, because Hex is dead."

"Oh, well I'm so sorry Doctor if the game is proving to be unsatisfactory to you, but there's nothing you can do about it!" laughed Fenric. "I am in control."

"Not solely, though," said the Doctor. "Who's your friend?"

"You do not recognise me, Doctor?" asked the Time Lord, staring at the Doctor.

The Doctor gazed at the Time Lord for quite some time, realisation dawning on her careworn features. He broke the silence once more with one single word. "Rassilon."


SYLVESTER McCOY as The Doctor

SOPHIE ALDRED as Ace

PHILIP OLIVIER as Hex Schofield

NICHOLAS BRIGGS as Ice Lord Sadavaar

JOHN STANDING as Fenric

MATTHEW MACFADYEN as Rassilon

RAY TRICKETT as Haemovore

BRIAN ORRELL as Haemovore

MARK HARDY as Haemovore