A/N: Another dream of Imaginos this chapter so it's likely to be a little confusing, but I do have something planned in future to explain things a bit more. Perhaps the Baron whose castle the Captain laid siege to might want revenge? And maybe that will mean teaming up with the Doctor?
Chapter Three – Les Invisibles
The Doctor found himself standing at the end of a road, looking ahead to where the castle stood in front of him. In front of the castle gates stood the Captain, with his cane tucked under his arm and still smiling as mysteriously as ever. The Doctor watched him cautiously, but the top-hatted man didn't speak. Suddenly, the Doctor found himself standing alongside the Captain just outside the castle entrance, but he wasn't aware of having ever moved. How had that happened? This couldn't possibly be real.
The Doctor stared at the Captain, trying to work out what was going on. "This is a dream."
"All history is a dream," the Captain replied cryptically, "And you know your history well."
"Better than anybody," the Doctor said, trying to work out what on earth he meant by that.
The Captain just smirked at him before turning to lead the way inside. The Doctor hesitated for a moment, slightly wary of trusting this mysterious man who called himself the Captain, but then decided that since this was all a dream anyway he may as well follow.
They walked across the entrance hall towards a tall wooden door, which the Captain pushed open to allow the Doctor through. "I'm glad you came, Doctor," the Captain said as the Doctor stepped through into what he now saw was a large ballroom. The room was packed with people, some of them dancing and some of them talking, and the Doctor could hear the sound of a band playing a waltz, even though he couldn't see them. He watched the dancers for a few moments and he thought he recognised the steps. The Doctor looked up at the Captain. "I know this dance; it's the Foxtrot of Rassilon."
The Captain grinned at him. "Perhaps you ought to dance then. I know a girl who'll spin for you."
The Doctor considered that for a moment, trying to make sense of the Captain's odd use of language, and then shook his head. Although he was tempted to take part in the Time Lord Waltz, he was more interested in finding out why he was here. "Who are these people?" he asked, gesturing at the dancers around them. Although he hadn't noticed it before, as he looked round at the other people in the room he got the awkward sense that they were watching him. As his gaze fell on each of them it seemed horribly like they had just looked away and would go back to watching him again as soon as his back was turned.
"Astrologers, mostly," the Captain replied, "And a few old sea dogs and rockers I invited. Most of them were guests at the party of 1893. Oh, Doctor, I wish you could have been here for that one." A strange look had come into the Captain's black eyes and he said that final sentence almost wistfully.
The Doctor looked at him in confusion, not even trying to make sense of how all these people could have been at a party over a hundred years ago. Time travel was familiar to him, but this castle and the strange party guests weren't. "Why? What happened in 1893?" he asked.
"I can show you," the Captain replied, leading him towards a door on the opposite side of the room. The Doctor followed, carefully weaving his way in and out of the guests who seemed to be paying no attention to him, but yet he couldn't shake the feeling that he was being watched.
"It's in the North Tower," the Captain said as they reached the door, and the Doctor was about to ask what was in the North Tower when he turned to glance back into the room and froze. All of the other guests were indeed watching him. The dancers had stopped and instead had turned to face him, all eyes in the room resting on the Doctor and seeming to glow with a fiery intensity.
The Doctor took a step back, and then glanced towards the Captain as he heard him say, "It's this way." When he looked back into the room again everyone had gone back to dancing and talking, as if nothing had ever happened.
Feeling unnerved, the Doctor turned to follow the Captain away from the room. They walked through the corridors of the castle and up several flights of stairs, almost as if they were navigating a maze before they finally reached a door at the top of a tower. "Through here," the Captain said, opening the door and stepping inside. The Doctor followed him through and looked round cautiously at the room he now found himself in while the Captain shut the door behind him.
The room appeared to be an observatory of some sort, and as he looked around the Doctor could see various pieces of astronomical equipment and horary charts covering every shelf and table in the room. Looking over to the window where the Captain had now crossed to, the Doctor could see a black telescope mounted on a stand and pointing up towards the sky. The Captain stood beside the telescope and gazed out of the window at the stars. "You see them, Doctor?" he asked as he fixed his eyes on a point high above him, "There, they're pointing towards the north."
The Doctor crossed to the window to join him and looked up. For the first time he thought he understood what the Captain meant. As he stared upwards he could see seven points of light standing out against the velvet blue of the night sky: the constellation of Ursa Major. The Doctor knew his stars. He knew the names of the two on the outer edge of the constellation: Dubhe and Merak, and when the imaginary line between them was extended upwards it did indeed point to Polaris, the North Star. But what was the relevance of it? "Why are you showing me this?" the Doctor asked as he looked out, still suspicious and confused.
He heard the Captain laugh from somewhere in the room behind him while he continued to stare outwards. "I'm not," the Captain said, "Look down."
The Doctor did as he was asked and looked down towards the beach above which the castle was built. At first he couldn't really see anything, but then he thought he could make out the shape of somebody lying on the sand. The man was lying close to the water's edge and was completely still, as if he'd been washed up on the shore.
Turning back to the Captain, the Doctor felt a sudden sense of urgency as he realised what was wrong. "There's somebody down there."
The Captain just nodded quite calmly. "Yes, there is."
Frustrated with the Captain's seeming indifference the Doctor suddenly snapped at him, "Well, he's in trouble. Aren't you going to help him?"
"I am doing," the Captain said, still smiling.
Utterly confused, the Doctor turned to look back down at the man lying on the beach. "But what…who is he?" he asked.
The answer came from frighteningly close by as he heard the Captain speak right beside his ear. "Just imagine he was me," the Captain said, his tone menacing, and before he had chance to react the Doctor felt the Captain grab hold of him from behind and drag him back into the observatory. The Doctor tried to struggle, but the Captain was surprisingly strong and he found himself being pushed up against a wall and his right hand being twisted painfully behind his back. Then he heard something click and the Captain backed away from him, his expression completely blank.
As he tried to move the Doctor realised he'd been handcuffed to something attached to the wall, and as he watched the Captain turn away from him to cross to the other side of the room he started to feel afraid. Just because this was a dream it didn't mean it felt any less real.
Upon the opposite wall the Doctor could see that something had been hung there, but it was draped in a white cloth that concealed exactly what it was. He watched as the Captain walked up beside it and then turned back to look at him. "Would you like me to tell you now exactly why you are here, Doctor?" the Captain said with a smirk.
The Doctor glared at him. "Yes, I'd rather like to know that and why it is you've chained me to the wall," he responded angrily.
The Captain just continued to smirk. "And I should like to tell you," he said, raising a hand to clutch at the cloth draped over whatever was hung on the wall, "But first, I think I'll show you this." He pulled away the cloth and the Doctor found himself staring at his own reflection as a mirror was revealed behind it. It didn't seem to be just a normal mirror though; there was something distinctly odd and wrong about it. The image reflected in it seemed strangely dark, and the Doctor realised that it was made of obsidian, not glass. But he couldn't for the life of him work out what it was for.
With a growing sense of foreboding the Doctor realised that the Captain was smiling. "This is what I found in 1893," the Captain explained, "After years of sailing round Europe and the Americas, losing so many ships and searching through the jungle we finally found it. This mirror, which looks into another world."
The Doctor glanced nervously from the Captain to his own reflection and then back again. "Another world? I can sort of make sense of that. If it's a mirror that exists along a temporal rift then different dimensions can exist either side of its reflection. But if that's the case then why? What's it for?" He wasn't quite able to keep the fear out of his voice, a fact that the Captain seemed to notice. He didn't answer immediately, but instead just stared at the Doctor for a few seconds.
After a few moments of silence he spoke again. "Are you frightened, Doctor?" the Captain asked, almost mockingly.
The Doctor glared back at him, trying to act as confident as possible. "Why would I be? This is only a dream, it's not real."
The Captain smirked at him again as he took a few steps closer to him. "But fright is real, and so am I," he said in a sinister tone, holding the Doctor's gaze for a few moments before turning away again to walk back to the mirror. "You want to know who the man on the beach was?" he asked, looking back at the Doctor who gave a rather nervous nod. "Well," the Captain began to explain, "He was me. Me of a different time, in a different world. You see, Doctor, I drowned. My ship was caught in a storm and my friends left me to die."
He stopped talking after that and the pair of them simply stared at each other for a few seconds, the Doctor desperately trying to work out what was going on. "So, you were a sailor? A sea captain? Alright, I think I understand that, but what happened? How are you still here?"
The Captain still had his sinister smile in place. "I was brought back to life," he said simply.
The Doctor just stared at him, failing to understand any of it. "How? By who?"
"Oh, we'll get to the how in time," the Captain replied, "But as to who by, you've already seen them. They were the first thing you looked at when you went to the window."
The Doctor looked puzzled for a few seconds, and then slowly realisation dawned on him. "The Seven Kings."
"As they're sometimes known by," the Captain responded with a nod, "Or the Invisible Ones. I'm sure a man with as much knowledge and intellectual capacity as you can work it out."
The Doctor remained silent for a few more moments, getting more nervous the more he thought he understood. "The Seven Stars of Ursa Major," he said, talking more to himself than to the Captain as he tried to make sense of things, "Known among some ancient cultures as the Seven Kings, believed by the Aztecs to represent Tezcatlipoca, their god of slaves. But there's more to it than just the beliefs of ancient cultures, isn't there?"
He looked to the Captain for confirmation, but the Captain remained silent, waiting for him to work things out. The Doctor continued. "There's a temporal rift running through the universe that connects those stars with each other and with Earth. Different dimensions – different worlds – all overlap, and if there was something on the other side of the rift, something powerful…" He trailed off as he finally began to comprehend what this meant, and he saw the Captain give a satisfied nod.
"They are Old Gods, Doctor, the kind your people tell fairy tales about."
The Doctor just shook his head in disbelief. "The Time Lords would have known for sure if there was something that powerful lurking behind Ursa Major, you couldn't have kept it hidden. I would have known."
"Oh, but perhaps you did know," the Captain said, giving a sinister sounding chuckle, "Come on, Doctor, think back to your previous incarnations and your past lives, back to Gallifrey and the nursery rhymes they told you there."
The Doctor tried to think, but all he could do was stare at the Captain in utter confusion. The Captain, noticing his bewilderment, gave a sigh, "Oh come on, Doctor, they have over a hundred names and you must know at least one of them. I'm sure you can remember," he said, wandering over to the window again and beginning to sing softly to himself. "Zagreus at the end of days, Zagreus lies all other ways, Zagreus comes when time's a maze, and all of history's weeping."
"Stop it," the Doctor shouted at him as he recognised the rhyme, "Stop it!"
"Why, Doctor?" the Captain said tormentingly as he turned back to face him, "Is this not a nursery rhyme of your people? Or am I singing a song nobody knew? And what about the warnings from your nurseries where the women kept the looms? Frost in the fire and the rocking chair, Frost in the hearth, frost in the ladle, Children's voices in the air, Wind that rocks the empty cradle."
The Doctor was growing more scared than ever. How did the Captain know these rhymes? They were ancient rhymes from Gallifrey, but Gallifrey had been long destroyed and this man couldn't possibly be from there. So how did he know of them?
Seeing the Doctor's look of fear the Captain laughed. "So perhaps you do know of them," he sneered, "They're behind the clock, back there, you know, at the place where the four winds blow."
The Doctor noticed he was speaking in rhyme again, but he was too stunned and scared to comment on it.
"They're the ones who brought me back to life," the Captain stated, his expression more sinister than ever. "They came to me on that shore and brought me back from the dead."
Nervously, the Doctor held his gaze and tried to speak again. "How?"
The reply when it came was simple, but was also somehow the most menacing thing the Captain had said so far. "They used you."
The Doctor swallowed nervously, hoping he was going to wake up soon. "And what does that mean?"
The Captain's menacing smile didn't falter. "Time's a funny thing, isn't it? Things never happen in the right order. Your people have a way of cheating death that they needed for me to cheat it too, and that makes me the lucky one that you'll be regenerating soon."
That didn't sound good, and not because of the awkward half-rhyme. "But I can't regenerate, I'm not a full Time Lord!" the Doctor shouted at him, pulling against the bonds that kept him chained to the wall. He had a feeling something really bad was about to happen and if this actually was a nightmare then he desperately wanted to wake up now.
"I know you're not," the Captain said, moving to stand beside the mirror again, "But the real you is, and he will regenerate. As his duplicate you will reflect everything that happens to him, and where we are now the bridge between worlds is only paper-thin. It's thin enough to allow regeneration energy to spill through, and that's why I have the mirror. I can use it to recapture all the regeneration energy you reflect, and they will use it to bring me back to life."
"But…what…" the Doctor stared at him in a mixture of fear and confusion. "But if you take all the regeneration energy for you, then what happens to me?"
The Captain shrugged, as if he really couldn't care less about the answer. "Then you'll die."
Fear was beginning to grip the Doctor like the iron manacle currently around his wrist: strong and inescapable. What would happen to Rose if he died? He didn't want to leave her again. The fact that this was all supposed to be a dream wasn't making him any less scared. "But you can't do that! I've only got one life, you don't…how do you even know if this is going to work?"
"Because it already has done," the Captain said simply. "I told you, things never happen in the right order. Les Mesteres have already brought me back to life, and now they're using me to ensure that what they did to bring me back to life actually takes place. It's a brilliant paradox really, isn't it?"
The Doctor shook his head violently, trying to wake himself up. He'd long since worked out that this wasn't an ordinary dream, but he was still desperately hoping that somehow he could force himself to wake up. "Then where are they?" he shouted as loudly as possible, "Where are Les Mesteres? What exactly is it that they're doing?"
"They've gone a-drumming," the Captain replied with a smirk, "Paying a visit to another world, one I think you're familiar with."
The Doctor was about to ask what on earth that meant, but the Captain had taken a few steps forward towards one of the tables in the room, and whatever the Doctor had been about to say was silenced as the Captain began to tap out a rhythm on the tabletop with his fingertips.
Ta-ta-ta-ta
He didn't repeat it, just tapped out the pattern of four beats once, but it was enough to scare the Doctor into silence as he realised what it meant.
The Captain smirked at him. "They've gone to find your Master," he said, his voice dripping with menace.
Koschei… "He's not my Master," the Doctor replied, trying to sound calm but his voice still shook slightly.
The Captain laughed. "You're right, he's a monster." He began to tap out the rhythm again and the Doctor looked behind him to see the black mirror had begun to glow faintly yellow. In it he could see his own reflection for a moment, but then that faded and was replaced by another face that was all too familiar to him. The Master.
He could hear a voice inside his head. A grand, powerful voice that speaking to somebody, but he only caught a fragment of the sentence. "The heartbeat of a Time Lord…"
But I'm not a Time Lord, the Doctor thought desperately, I've only got one heart. It isn't me this is happening to, it's him in the other world…
Even as that thought went through his mind he suddenly realised that the Captain wasn't tapping out the full rhythm of drumbeats any more. He was only tapping out two, but the Doctor's heartbeat seemed to be filling in the blanks and its pace was getting faster.
He heard the voice again. "A signal transmitted back through time…"
He knew that voice, but it couldn't be possible.
"A Whitepoint star…"
Rassilon.
He barely had time to comprehend it before the Captain's voice cut across the one in his head. "But the star was only an illusion wasn't it?" He laughed again, almost manically this time."They're trying to return, Doctor!" A drastic change had come over his voice as he said that last sentence. He sounded hoarse and almost inhuman, and when he spoke it was as if there were several - seven - voices all speaking at once.
"But they can't!" the Doctor shouted, completely gripped by panic now as he realised what the Captain meant, "Not without destroying the universe. I trapped them in the Time Lock!"
Again the Captain laughed. Seven voices, all laughing at him. "Yes, you trapped them, just like they trapped us," the Captain snarled, speaking with the voices of Les Mesteres. "They thought of us as too strong, too great a rivals, so they imprisoned us within the rift for millions of years. We were buried in a maze of infinity, deep inside a city hidden in the stars so that our power was prevented from ever reaching Gallifrey. It was Rassilon's secret, he tried to hide that we ever existed. He thought us too dangerous for any but the oldest and highest of Time Lords to know that we were real, and so tried to pretend that we were merely a myth. But even when we were confined and almost forgotten we were not gone, Doctor. Our power could still reach as far as Earth. We appointed our agent here as an actor in history, to bend time to flow to our will. And we had him search for a way to bring us back."
The Doctor had met the Captain's gaze and found he was unable to look away. Those dark eyes with their two green rings...it was almost like they were black holes, sucking him in beyond their emerald event horizon.
Les Mesteres were still laughing. "And then came you. You banished the Time Lords to the Time Lock, confining them to a single point in time and space like they had once done to us. You were the answer and we knew that we could use you. We offered Imaginos a choice: to be free from us and die, or to take your life instead and continue to serve us. He chose to live. A good choice we believe, Doctor, because despite your many similarities, we doubt you would have served us as well as he has."
Imaginos? That must be the Captain's name. That was one thing the Doctor had managed to work out but he didn't really care. He was still fighting against the chain that was binding him to the wall, desperate for a way to get out. Surely it was time for him to wake up now. Please let all this have been just a bad dream and let him wake up.
"And now they are trying to return," the Captain continued in his seven voices, all the while tapping out the beat of four on the table, "But it shall be you who stops them, and here, in the presence of another world the knowledge will come to you: you'll be the one to bring us back."
"But why?" the Doctor yelled at them, unable to understand and even less able to escape, "What happens when you come back?"
The Captain just laughed, and the seven voices seemed to fade away to just one again. "But perhaps you can guess?" he said to the Doctor, sounding just as manic as before even though the Doctor still had no idea what he meant. "You can't see the Invisible Ones but you can hear them drumming!"
The moment he'd said that the next four beats sounded louder than ever, and the Doctor realised they were knocks falling on the door of the observatory. Who was out there? Had someone come to help him?
"Looks like River's found the door to the Mirror!" the Captain shouted.
River…he knew River. He'd only ever met her once but she'd died for him then. Could it be that she'd come to help him now?
The scrap of hope he'd felt was crushed as a different voice broke into his mind.
"He will knock four times…"
That couldn't mean…was it too late?
He found he staring into the Mirror as was unable to look away, even as it began to glow brighter and the images in it continued to change. He saw his reflection again, except that it wasn't his reflection. It may be his face, but it wasn't him.
It was the other him, standing inside the Tardis in the other world, and glowing with the same light that was spilling from the Mirror.
He heard a voice in his head again, but this time it was his own voice.
I don't want to go.
He barely had time to register the silence as the drumming stopped before the world exploded in a sea of yellow light.
A/N: I'm sorry, I know I said I'd try and explain it more, but I probably just alienated most readers more than ever. I used so many song references in this chapter that if I were to go through and explain them one by one the explanation would probably be longer than the chapter itself. I will however point out the connection between the Old Gallifreyan nursery rhyme and the song I Am The One You Warned Me Of. The lyric 'And frost warnings from the women's farm' had always struck me as being one of the weirdest parts of the Imaginos album, but after researching Gallifreyan history a bit more and finding that Time Lords are born from looms and that rhyme was a nursery versery sung to loomlings, I thought that lyric actually made a lot more sense when applied in this context.
Also, the lyric from In The Presence Of Another World – 'Your Master, he's a monster, he will come on a bridge of paper inscribed with a hundred names of God' – is something I've tried to allude to many times in this chapter, with Zagreus being a god from Gallifreyan mythology that I've used as a name for the personification of Les Invisibles.
It's entirely coincidence that the song makes reference to a master and there is a character called The Master in Doctor Who. I just think it's another great way in which the two worlds fit together.
Other songs referenced this chapter: The Girl That Love Made Blind, Magna Of Illusion, The Siege And Investiture Of Baron Von Frankenstein's Castle At Weisseria, I Am The One You Warned Me Of, Imaginos, Del Rio's Song, Blue Oyster Cult, Astronomy, Workshop Of The Telescopes, In The Presence Of Another World, Shooting Shark, Les Invisibles (and possibly some more that I've forgotten I included.)
I think I'm likely to take a break from writing this fic now while I concentrate on writing some other stuff. I very much want to continue writing this, but I only have a vague idea of which direction to take the plot in at the moment, and although I know I want a lot more Eleventh Doctor in it I need to figure out how I'm going to make things work. I'll come back to this once I've planned things out a bit more.
If anyone is still reading it at this point then huge HUGE thanks to you because I know this must have been pretty hard work if you aren't familiar with Imaginos. And if you are familiar with Imaginos, massive thanks to you too because it's so rare I come across anybody who shares my love of both Blue Öyster Cult and Doctor Who. If you liked Imaginos before reading this then I must say you have great taste in music, and if you haven't listened to it before then I really recommend it.
So ladies, fish and gentlemen, whether or not you've been following it so far let's just say that we understand, and so do I, and I'll leave you with that one final allusion until the next update.
Update 9/1/14: So, it's been a while. Over two years, in fact, and I've been looking over my old stories and deciding which ones I'll most likely still continue and which ones I won't. This one, although I didn't tell as much of the story I intended, I think I told enough of to mark it as complete, assuming I decide to leave it as an ambiguous ending. There's an obvious interpretation consistent with the Imaginos myth, where Les Mesteres' plan succeeds, and there's also the possibility that Imaginos' scheming with River and visits to a parallel world bring about a different outcome, which was the original intent of this story although I'm cutting it short. Such is the nature of the random access myth that its true meaning is meant to be ambiguous, and the tale is not meant to be told in a linear fashion. I recognise that not many people will have read this story, fewer still who read it and understood it, and consequently there will be a very small number of people who cared to see an update. However, should you in fact be one of the select few who wished to read another chapter, I apologise that there won't be one, and I hope that I've provided enough for you to imagine the multiple interpretations of the story for yourself, as the original album did. I do wish I could tell this story in full as I originally planned, but I've left it dormant for a very long time and I'm having to prioritise my more recent fics, because I have more WIPs than I can keep up with. Therefore, please consider this the end (of this part of the story, at least) that I hope at least stays true to the nature of Imaginos in being ambiguous and mysterious, if frustratingly cryptic. If you have read this far, then thank you. Thank you so much for being kind enough to invest your time in one of my more obscure and unusual ventures into fanfiction, and I do apologise that I can't offer any more of this particular tale of an adventurer in time and space.