The Doctor's screwdriver seemed to assist with draining the energy of the faceless creatures, but did little else. Vastra found that when she sliced off a limb, it would quickly grow back. Likewise with the monster's head. Yet if she stabbed it directly in the heart, if such a creature had a heart, the move would effectively slay the beast. The creatures seemed to be aware of this vulnerability and continued to parry blows to their chest with their multiple limbs.
As the Time Lord and the Silurian struggled with the monsters, the Master flipped switches on the electric chair sending an immense about of voltage through Jenny. Her body wriggled and jerked against the restraints.
Vastra had slaughtered two of the creatures, and was now focusing on the last one. She saw in her peripheral vision that Jenny was trapped in the chair and writhing in pain. She urgently attacked the beast before her.
Eventually the Master cruelly left the machine in the on position. Sparks from the machine flew elsewhere unpredictably. The wooden floor was set ablaze. Soon the entire room was smoking. Lightning kept coming out of the chair.
Vastra finally managed to slay the last of the creatures. Yet smoke made the room dark and blurred. She felt an arm on her shoulder.
"Run!" the Doctor told her.
Vastra resisted, "Jenny!" she called out with worry. She could no longer see the girl in the haze.
"Run!" the Time Lord repeated more urgently.
She opened the door. As she did so, more oxygen got into the room invigorating the fire even more.
They ran through the hallways shouting at the patients of the asylum to leave the building as well. "Everyone out!" yelled the doctor, "Fire!"
There was a mob by the door trying to leave, yet the door was locked. "Let me through!" exclaimed the Doctor, with his sonic screwdriver in his hand. He quickly put the tool to the knob, releasing the lock. He opened the door and ensured Vastra and the others left the building. The patients stood approximately a hundred meters from the building. The Silurian and the Doctor guided them even further away. Then they turned to watch as the entire building went up in flame. The legion of lunatics chanted "Blazing in electric embers an anomaly remembers! When the Child of Time is broken. The Old Sleeper is awoken!"
Vastra's concern for the girl was overwhelming. It was challenging for the hardened Silurian warrior and stoic Victorian woman to contain her composure. The Doctor's put his hand supportively on the veiled woman's shoulder.
"Something's wrong" said the Doctor.
Vastra faced him with a distressed expression beneath her veil, as if to express your daughter is in there, everything is wrong!
"No, I mean, it's gonna blow!" he warned excitedly.
Shortly after he said it, the building exploded. The great blast seemed unnatural. All that could be seen was the blackened rubble and a dark haze of smoke.
"Oh Goddess!" exclaimed Vastra.
~.~.~.~.~
Jenny knew her former incarnation as the blond soldier, but who was she before the machines on Messaline gave her the mind and body of a fully educated adult? Why had Time created such an anomaly? Why would a being such as herself be allowed into existence.
Jenny's dreams were her memories of before.
No body, just a presence. Swimming among the stars.
Time needed her. Time needed to be saved. Time couldn't risk being rewritten by the beast in the chasm; the slumbering idiot elder god.
Time and TARDIS had a moment; a chance to create an avatar!
Jenny remembered. She did have a purpose. She was to be a savior.
A voice was calling her name. "Jenny, Jenny," the message repeated over again.
"I'm here," she responded
"Where?"
Jenny looked around. She was not on any world. She recognized the location from her nightmares. She hovered over the great chasm; the void that simultaneously held chaos and nothing.
"The center of all things," Jenny told the presence in her mind.
"Can you return to your body?"
Jenny considered for a moment, "I will try."
~.~.~.~.~
"She lives," Vastra told the Doctor, she sighed heavily with relief. "I felt her…consciousness, though she may be trapped".
The Doctor found himself releasing tension as well and allowing a smile to briefly return to his lips.
The smoke had cleared a bit. The Time Lord and the Silurian walked toward the the destroyed asylum. The Master was nowhere to be seen.
The electric chair sat in the center of the rubble. Both the Doctor and the veiled lady gasped when they saw the body still upon it.
Jenny was burned, thoroughly. She sat in her charred thrown amongst the wreckage. The leather restraints had been destroyed in the fire. All of her hair had been singed off. Her clothes were taken by the flames as well. She was entirely naked, and every inch of her skin was blistered and red. She reeked of burnt flesh. The scent was overpowering and nauseating. There were deep cuts where sharp debris had landed directly on her. When her eyes opened, they no longer held her brown irises. They were completely black.
"The Beast in the Chasm awakens!" a low and unearthly voice stated. "The eyes in the darkness open!" Jenny warned.
Vastra understood, Jenny hadn't fully returned to her body. She was using it as a bridge between her two different realities. The couplet repeated in her mind "When the Child of Time is broken, the Old Sleeper is awoken". Did it mean her broken mind? Broken body? Or splitting the mind from her body?
"Can you stop it?" asked the Doctor. He was speaking to Jenny regarding the demon-sultan's awakening, of course, but for a moment the lizard woman thought he meant to stop the breaking of the Child of Time.
There was a pause, as the girl's ethereal consciousness was thinking.
"I need help," she responded, still in the low voice, yet sounding more innocent.
"What do you need?" asked Vastra. She took the girl's inflamed hand in her own gloved one, hoping that Jenny's awareness would be able to feel the support and comfort she was trying to offer.
The burned face turned toward the veiled lizard woman, "Tell me the story."
The green lady was perplexed, "What story?"
"The Silurian creation myth," Jenny requested.
Vastra had rarely shared the legends of her people, but had told her valued maid and loyal friend a limited number. While she was confused about the request, she would certainly not deny it. "Long ago," Vastra recited the ancient story out loud, "When the Goddess was young she lived alone in the vastness of space. She was isolated in the dark. Then she laid some eggs. She kept them warm with her body until the era that they hatched into stars. The stars swam together shaping the first galaxy. She admired their brightness and color. So delighted was the Goddess at the creation of her children, the stars, that she continued laying and hatching eggs until an abundance of galaxies were formed."
Jenny closed her darkened eyes as she listened. Vastra continued the tale. "The Goddess found herself wandering the cosmos, appreciating each of her litters; the beautiful designs they made as the stars played with their siblings. Yet she found she was still alone. Why should she be the only one to love the stars? So she visited her children, and some of her grandchildren, the planets and moons. On some of them she left a piece of herself. From these pieces, life was formed on numerous worlds, in many places, all across time and space. And in each life form there remains a spark of the divine".
Something resembling a smile was briefly expressed on the inflamed face. Then the low voice whispered, "I cannot sustain this connection. You must bring my body to me."
Vastra was certain she could feel it as the presence of Jenny left. She scowled at the Doctor, silently demanding that he assist. The Doctor took out his TARDIS key and waved it a couple times. The blue box appeared before them. Vastra lifted the wounded and naked body and carried her into the TARDIS.
"To the center of all things!" commanded the Doctor, pressing some buttons on the central consul. Soon they were traveling through the Vortex of Time toward the Great Chasm.