Chapter 3: Pride of the Lyall
Terna didn't know what to expect when she crossed the threshold into the mysterious labyrinth that was the TARDIS. The halls were long, dimly lit, and eerily quiet.
She tried not to allow herself to be discouraged by the twisted maze that lay out before her.
Taking a minute breath, she willed herself forward, walking in a purposeful straight line. The first order of business was getting new clothes.
The Time Lord known as the Doctor had stated that she could be remain trapped within the TARDIS for quite some time, but Terna was intent on proving him wrong in this theory. However, something to wear would be useful no matter how long she stayed.
Now, the question was: were would she get clothes?
Terna paused in the center of the hallway. Glancing around, she saw that hall branched out into several different directions with many doors and other side entrances lining the walls, like tributaries from a river they unfolded out from the center source and stretched off in numerous directions. Terna's heart fluttered nervously in spite of herself.
How was she supposed to navigate this place? There didn't seem to be any sort of rhyme or reason to it.
The logical solution would be to turn right around and go back to the bridge of the ship to inquire after the Doctor about the layout of the TARDIS. However, Terna's pride was like a thick wall pressed to her back, pushing her only forward.
So, she pressed on.
Striding with poised determination, she wound her way through the complex stream of identical hallways towards an unknown destination. At first, Terna only moved in a straight line, intent on remaining that way so as not to get lost. This got her nowhere fast; however, as all of the halls had doors on either side of them that seemed to lead off to other places.
Finally, the hall ended and a large white door rose up to meet the Lyall. She stopped momentarily before swiftly turning the handle. She strode over the threshold without any further hesitation.
Her foot touched down on nothing; Terna's heart stood still behind her ribs, and she let out a strangled cry as she toppled face first over a drop that branched out directly from the door.
She hurtled towards the ground, arms and legs flailing wildly about her as the coat leapt up from her body and unfolded in the air like the wings of a bird.
Terna closed her eyes and shrieked as her body smacked into a placid, freezing surface. Water ballooned out around her, and she sunk down into its depths.
Terna reacted instinctively: flailing through the frozen waters until she managed to claw her way back to the surface. She threw her head back with a gasp, water gurgling up in her throat and heaved herself, choking violently, over the rim of the water bed.
It took Terna a few moments to get her bearings before she hoisted her again naked and now dripping wet body from the water. It felt like there were a million icicles crawling along her new skin; they clung to her body and made it a shivering mess.
Terna cursed her own frailness as her knees buckled when she attempted to walk, and she fell on all fours, retching and still fighting for air.
Once she'd gotten her breathing under control, the Lyall flopped down onto her side, facing the body of water that she'd abruptly tripped into. Her eyes widened.
"It's a bloody swimming pool!" she cried, sitting bolt upright and staring at the Olympic-sized pool. It ran the whole length of the otherwise empty and spacious room, complete with a water slide and rows of plastic lawn chairs for lounging.
"What is with this place?" Terna wondered aloud as she scrambled to her feet, sore, soaked, and newly put out. She snatched the coat from its crumbled heap a short distance away and, tossing it over her shoulders, trooped towards the nearest exit behind the water slide.
Her bare feet slapped against the polished floor as she walked; it made a dejected echo throughout the large room. The chlorine water quickly soaked through the overcoat, turning it into something like a moist, stiff, and foul-smelling carpet. Terna would be grateful when she was able to discard it. If she ever found a wardrobe.
()()()
Terna was understandably cautious as she opened the door that lead out of the swimming pool room and even more cautious as she stepped over the threshold.
The room beyond was initially dark, but, as Terna entered the room, there was a faint mechanical buzz, and the lights abruptly sprang to life.
Terna's mouth parted in spite of herself. The room was shaped like a dome with a kind of painted mosaic on the ceiling like the Sistine Chapel. The walls were tall, and covered entirely from head to toe in books.
Shelves upon shelves upon shelves were lined neatly around the circular room with books stacked across each row. There were books of all colors, shapes, and sizes. Some seemed to be yards in length, others smaller than a pocket dictionary. There were books bound in leather, cloth, even skins. Some were just rolls of parchment or scrolls. Some weren't made of paper at all, but rather transparent orbs with multicolored smoke and bizarre lettering in some kind of alien language bobbing around inside it like soap residue in a bubble.
Terna gazed all about her as she walked towards the center of the library, constantly spinning circles so as to view it from all angles. She'd never seen anything like it. In the middle of the polished floor there was a desk about the size and width of three refrigerators laid out on their sides, although squat and low to the ground so that the top only came to the Lyall's waist. A strange assortment of objects was littered not too neatly across the desk's surface.
Terna walked up to the desk, curiosity getting the better of her. The objects turned out to be pieces of clocks. Most were broken; with shattered clogs or bent screws, but some clocks weren't broken at all, so they seemed more like dissected animals: taken apart to see how they worked from the inside.
The clock fragments were spread out like puzzle pieces across folded and peeling pages of blueprints all scribbled across in a frantic script. Some written in languages Terna recognized, others she'd never seen before.
Slowly, Terna reached out and picked up the nearest cog that seemed to belong to a half-finished clock that had no hands but instead a series of little comets that zipped around the face behind the glass, knocking against the numbers like a bunch of mini-ping pong balls. She held the clog aloft and a flicker of colored light flashed momentarily.
Terna's eyes narrowed as she reached into the pocket of her overcoat and her hand closed around the handle of the antique magnifying glass she'd swiped from the console of the TARDIS. Holding it in front of the object, it was abruptly magnified several times over and Terna could see a curious purple light swirling around inside the little hole in the center of the clog.
Terna set the clog down and eyed the magnifying glass curiously. It seemed to be an utterly arbitrary and insignificant object, but the first thing Lyall learned when they were taught how to harness their unique energy force: Psychic Anima was how to transfer it into everyday objects and manipulate them to their will. Terna didn't know how this body transfer would affect her previously advanced skills. It seemed she would have to start back at square one.
Standing there in the middle of the library, Terna's grip tightened on the polished handle of the glass. She squeezed her eyes shut and sharpened her mind's eyes, searching through the shell of skin for traces of Psychic Anima.
Terna gasped, the glass nearly falling from her hands as her eyes snapped back open. There was nothing there! No Psychic Anima anywhere inside the miserable skin she was now forced to wear like an ugly work uniform.
There was only Force Anima and that was no good. Force Anima was what kept a Lyall alive, their life force. She couldn't tap into that and use it for manipulation or combat; she'd damage herself and drain her power until she was snuffed out like birthday candle.
"Useless!" Terna cried, flinging her arm out and swiping all of the clocks bits off the table in one fluid motion. They clattered to the floor with a series of crashes and bangs as well as the clinks of shattering glass.
The magnifying glass still clutched tightly in her grasp, Terna sprinted towards the opposite end of the library and the door that lead out. She threw it open and jumped the threshold without a moment's pause, not even caring if she fell into another swimming pool. The door banged shut on its own behind her, knocking Terna into the room with a little more force than she would have liked.
She fell forward slightly and staggered into a row of suspended wool and leather dangling from a rack. Terna got a face-full of moldy, underused garments.
Wait…clothes! Terna jerked her head up and staggered to her feet. She took a step back; her jaw once again going slack as she gazed up at the room that unfolded around her.
It was another high-ceiling space and shaped like a beehive with several floors that all curled around the rounded walls and stood looking out on the main space, and it was filled with nothing but clothes.
Clothes hung from various racks in rows upon rows, all layered on top of one another. There were dresses, pants, shoes, costumes of all types, shapes and sizes. The garments were made up of plants, plastics, animal skins, and some Terna couldn't even imagine what they could be made of. A side door opened up into a long hall-like closet filled with more accessories than Terna ever had in her chambers on her home world. She'd never seen so many hats and earrings!
"I found the wardrobe," she declared, shamelessly discarding the soggy, ruined coat and stumbled in amongst the jungle of clothing.
Terna roamed the racks of garments for several minutes; they stood erect, silent like soldiers staring down on her. She couldn't even begin to decide what she wanted to wear. She'd always had brought to her the very best of attire to wear, but never had she had so many choices!
Towards the center of the room, Terna paused for a moment when she spotted a full-length mirror nestled between a multicolored suit and a pin-striped suit with a tan overcoat. She surveyed her bare form imprinted on the glass.
It was a humanoid type, like her true form. So at least she wasn't some kind of bi-pedal lizard. The body was slight and willowy, although also aged and frail-looking. The bones protruded out at her hips and chest, her skin was lined with a series of wrinkles that gathered in folds at certain indents in her body; they gathered to add distinction to her facial features.
Thereby, perhaps giving her the look of a human female in her early to mid-sixties.
Otherwise, her face was chiseled, sharp, and angular in the jaw with sunken-in cheeks, a smooth brow, and a large nose. Wavy, salt n' pepper hair bloomed from her crown and swept down around her shoulders like a flurry of ash.
Terna fisted a handful of it and held it in front of her eyes; a new hairstyle was definitely in order. However, it was the eyes that were the most striking; Terna was alarmed to see that they were in fact the same eyes she'd possessed in her true form. Walking closer to the mirror and leaning forward so that her pointed nose was practically touching the glass, Terna could see the thin wisps of blue light swirling around inside her hollow irises like a pair of glass orbs. Force Anima, and it was a brilliant shade of blue. To be frank, it was multiple shades of blue: all different pigments from azure to sapphire, to sky and navy. It was a blue rainbow.
"Lucent, still Lucent," Terna chuckled to herself, pleased with the familiarity.
There were two types of Lyall in the universe: Lucent and Opaque. Lucent were at odds with their yellow-eyed cousins as they were on complete opposite ends of the morality spectrum. When the universe was first formed, and the Lyall were born from the energy used to create it, the Lucent Lyall sought to create the perfect universe by using their energies to shape more and more races to fill it. Meanwhile, the Opaque sought to create this universal perfection by continuously taking them away until only they remained as they saw only the Lyall fit to remain in the universe. However, that was gone now.
Terna froze as she stared at her reflection. The memories came rushing back as she gazed into her own, deep blue eyes. That's right. There would no longer be the struggle as old as time itself between Lucent and Opaque Lyall for neither was left. There was only her: Terna; the last of them both; the only Lyall left in the entire universe.
The reality of this revelation flooded Terna's insides; she suddenly felt very exposed and cold all over, and she doubted it was from her lack of clothing. Terna began to tremble violently as a horrible pain that burned like dry ice welled up in the pit of her stomach. She clutched at her chest and made a kind of choking sound.
Her parents: her mother the High Queen, her father the Inventor King. Her sisters who ruled beside her, her brothers who charged the Royal Guard to protect them. Her tutors, her playmates, her servants and handmaidens, her subjects, her planet, her people were gone; they were all gone.
Rangi….Even Rangi was gone. And he said he would never leave…No matter what happened. But he was gone…they were all gone now.
They'd departed from the universe they'd help shape all those millennia ago and left her to drift throughout space alone, like the last autumn leaf left to slowly wither and die on a bare branch.
Terna wrapped her arms around herself as though holding her body tightly would somehow make the emptiness less distinct; as though she could somehow give herself comfort. She couldn't. She couldn't stand the loneliness pressing in around her. Terna sank to her knees in front of the mirror and started sobbing.
A/N: I wasn't entirely sure what to do with Terna's brief exploration of the TARDIS. This chapter sort of wrote itself, but I think it turned out alright. I hope you agree. In terms of the perspective, it rotates between chapters from first person perspective of Terna, then the Doctor, then third person in that order. Otherwise, I hope you enjoyed this, especially all the foreshadowing wardrobe references :) Read and review!
