Day 17

There was a cascading melody, and at first, it might have been all there was, a solitary waveform carving out existence, before it distinctly took on the characteristics of audible song traveling through air, echoing through physicality.

The reverberation was a lure that attracted attention, in a form subtler than eyes or observers, but nonetheless a basic invitation to follow after it, in which following, no matter if you meant it with regards to actions, opinions, or simple physical motion, described a passive motion where the determination of the goal happens outside yourself – The song echoed through jewel-paved streets and golden halls, along aqueducts and rows of rounded little trees planted in neat little squares of earth that lined the shining streets, and because of that, he was drawn to follow it as it waned and waxed, swiftly and steadily, almost with a kind of vital relish that seemed alien to him, a course of thought and action pursued by him, but wrapped in the coating of another existence, perhaps the one possessed of the broad, powerful voice full of coloration that seemed to draw him in –

Her song led him cross valleys of mosaic and forests of marble columns, the very own hidden, enclosed biome of a very few select souls, over a criss-cross of city both familiar and unfamiliar to him, before slowing to reach a place that fell in the later category: The aristocrat's park theater house in Xalax, to be exact, the golden opera room.

In its hall, sliding across the fractal patterns engraved in the stage floor were a pair of small feet encased in pearl-studded slippers, following the melody in exuberant celebration, surrounded by another sight he wasn't seeing for the first time: The pink baroque dress.

Except this time, it wasn't resting empty on a chair, but filled opulently like the skin of a ripe fruit, containing a body that was not as elegantly delicate as one might have suspected, but no less regal in its taut display of eternal youth: The Lady was a short woman with strong limbs that were somewhat short in proportion to her firm torso and cello-like waist which just in terms of bone structure only narrowed so far, filling out the dress that had been tailored, or, more likely, replicated precisely to her measurements, so that it fit perfectly without anything stretching or bulging apart from the quite intentional spilling of her breasts from the lace-framed neckline (a state which he noted dispassionately, as one would factually describe a timid, forest-dwelling creature one had caught a rare glimpse of), adorned with a string of pearls that wrapped twice around her neck that tapped against it as she turned in her dance, pulling off a surprisingly wild and dynamic motion reminiscent of a tarantella dance despite her fancy getup, though one would figure that she'd had a long, long time to practice.

Numerous individual little ornaments glittered all around her garment, shaking each time the soles of her feet struck the ground, ring-laden fingers draped with golden bangles moving around in a manner that was playful and whimsical but still distinctly aristocratic and ringing out with both long-practiced skill and the passion of ancient days.

Though he frequently caught sight of her long, silver hair, this vision-montage only included very few, occasional glimpses of her face, usually with her eyes still closed in relish and a thin, poised smile gracing her lips: She had lustrous, sumptuous dark skin of a warm, rufuous chestnut brown that contrasted with her straight silver hair that she wore in a ponytails, with a few bangs hanging into her forehead and two strands hanging down to her chin in narrow strips next to her ear, its elaborateness seeming to underline her noble status.

She had strong yer refined features with the typical purple forehead splotches common in her people and a lavish ornament located right next to the to the right of her face, including an artificial flower of white silk, bits of chiffon and intricate strings of pearls that somehow stayed in place despite her torrential motions, much like her heavy golden earrings; The flawless image that, in any other context, would have been created only through stylization and embellishment, was a day-to-day reality in this Lady's luxurious world – It was likely that she'd never even known the slightest deprivations.

Only when she was finished dancing to her hearts content did she pause, hands still held crossed over her head in the last of her poses, one foot placed sideways relative to the one behind it, until she broke out of formation at the same time that her reflective turquoise eyes opened, somehow seemed to reveal vastly more of the piercing, radiant existence that smiled like she had just told a secret, or proudly finished a quite deliberate performance, though there was no one here to see her, and no one could have been there for a very long time -

Except, perhaps, for the malcontent youth who lounged in a nearby chair, one leg drawn close to his body and rested on the cushion while the other carelessly spread onto the floor, resting on its heel as he observed the spectacle with a rather listless expression.


The scene changed to the seemingly impossible figures of the machine with its platforms and columns, labyrinthine stairways and long engraved obelisks.

On one of the platforms, there was something like a throne of block-like, solid crystal, far more geometric than the lavish baroque structures just above, and seated on it was an image of pomp and opulence that might just as easily be mistaken for a statue, both for its motionless inertia and it's lavish decoration.

At the basic level, his attire consisted of a skin-hugging, violet bodysuit enclosing everything up to his neck, a loose-fitting white toga, and a whole lot of jewel, including the large elliptical brooch and wide golden belt that kept it all in place. He was so heavyly laden with Baubles that he would have the Emperors of Babylon look like destitute paupers in comparison: The Belt was wide as a small plate and composed of three rows of precious stones in ornamental metal casings, golden braces adorned his forearms and ankles, their metal reliefs depicting mythological scenes, large golden rings hung off his ears whereas numerous jewel rings glittered at his fingers and a multitude of chains hung off his neck, both broader, sash-like constructs of golden wire and stone, as well as chains with both heavy amulets and many glittering stones on each segment, topped off by a crown that, as a simple golden ring around his head, seemed almost minimalistic in comparison to it all.

The boy himself, roughly in his late teens by appearance but evidently much older in spirit, seemed to share the lady's modest stature and skin tone, but was somewhat leaner or even androgynous in build, which, to certain human audiences, may have been compounded by his long, dense shiny black hair reaching all the way to his rear where it was sharply cut off in a clear line, with the exception of a few bangs which were instead cut off a little above his eyes, hanging over his crown, though the Xalaxians themselves never differentiated between men's or women's hairstyles. There he was:

A living, breathing Xalaxian, authentic bar whatever had kept him from being dead.

He sat there much like later generations of Fabronians would have envisioned the ancients, projecting an image that was oddly pharaonic, throning there unmoving like a god, presiding over his make believe kingdom of 'no people'.

Of course, one could say that all kingdoms were made up: They were not their land, as they could lose or gain territory. They were not their culture, as culture always changed over time, no matter how much the current incarnation always presented itself as if it had always been there. They were not the government, for it could be overthrown and replaced by another, nor were they tied to ethnicity, as one people could be split among multiple nations and one nation contain many peoples – Which is not to say that a kingdom was invulnerable and immortal: If the powers that be decided that it was to be dissolved, it would be gone in an instant, even if its land, people and riches remained untouched.

Kingdoms, like companies, laws or mathematical functions or gods was one of these things that existed simply because people defined it into existence – that did not mean that they were lies, charades or illusions, indeed, they could trigger vast changes in the physical world through their presence in the heads of men and as such quite real, but they had no physical substance, instead adding another semantic layer to the world, not so much a fact as an interpretation of a fact, an abstraction.

All kingdoms were abstracted, it was just a little more obvious with what remained of the Xalaxian empire – and this might make it particularly nebulous in a pragmatic sense, or, all the more interesting for its pure state as outliers often were though their significance remained negligible – If only two people believed in the Xalaxian Empire, did that make it less real? F so, what minimum number of believers was needed? Their claim would be very different if they lived surrounded by people who did not share their belief, but as the only people down here, their claim to the city was technically uncontested...

It was then that the Doctor saw the Prince shift, turquoise eyes seeming to fixate on his person, appearing to glow particularly in the half-illuminated environment of the machine.

He couldn't even say how this was possible, for he himself was not in the machine cavern and he had no sense of his own presence in this... vision, nor any feeling that it – be it an ordinary dream or perhaps a product of psychic resonance amplified by these crystals – actually contained him, there was only a bird's eye views lacking in any bodily sensations or perception of balance or position in space – and yet, he couldn't shake the impression that the prince was staring him straight in the eye, and not flinching at what he saw.


There was another melody, a whole different kind of music, more instrumental in nature, somewhere between a violin and a concertina I one were forced to express it in earth terms, a circling, rich sound full of stories, many of which were bound to be revealed to him as someone who had been in the machine.

The song itself could have been an ancient city with countless streets and passages, each line o instrument and cultural connotation opening up alleyways.

It was the golden opera hall again, but the lower seats were gone, removed perhaps by some trick in the architecture or some of those untiring robots, without doubt taking little more than a wave from the arms of its inhabitants, both of which now sat where the center of the flower-like fractal patterning of the floor was, where the presence of the chairs would normally have prevented him from spreading themselves out quite so comfortably.

Te Lady sat on the floor, a dress of mother-of-pearl like white and brocade clue flowing around her, spreading a circle around her. Fine works of silver and gold ascended up the artistic garment, serving as a separator between cellophane-like filter materials in the shapes of birds and butterflies that lay over the white areas like latticework, leading up to the gigantic Sapphire shimmering above her chest.

Her companion, meanwhile, was spread on the exquisite carpet her dress provided, head resting on his folded arms that rested on her lap as his long hair flowed down his back.

His own attire was markedly less gaudy, consisting only of a dark green tunic, a matching headband, and the same gold earrings as before.

The lady responded to the youth's presence with an absentminded caress of his cheek, though this was by no means a romantic or tender gesture but more of a playfully-indulgent gesture.

Indeed, their relation promptly revealed itself to be of a completely different number:

"Mother!" he spoke with some annoyance, and it was shocking how normal his voice sounded, like it could have belonged to any young man living a life out there with friends and hopes of reaching maturity. "That troublesome man is still in our city! I can sense him! Don't you think we should do something about him?"

The woman seemed to have a much more patient outlook on this, speaking with the unwavering calm of ages: "There is no need of that. He will be gone soon by the looks of it."

"You said that before!" Her son quipped, displeased, but nor really angry enough to put up a fight, seeming more listless about this than anything else. "He has no business being here, some upstart outsider like that..."

"Upstart?" the woman repeated, mildly amused. "That creature is older than I am."

The Prince perked up, raising his head from its rest to look up at the Lady. "For real?"

"I'd have expected you to be able to tell."

"I did!" the apparent boy defended himself, propping himself up by his arms. "I figured he was older than he looks, but, that much?"

"How he looks isn't terribly relevant. He's a Time Lord. Their life cycle has a few... oddities, and besides, they can easily match a Lendaran Hive Queen in terms of lifespan; He could still be well within his natural range."

"For real?" He asked in disbelief, and for one moment, his face belied a kind of genuine astonishment that immortals didn't often experience. "We haven't heard from any Gallifreyans in a long time. Weren't they wiped out?" Soon, however, he caught himself and his eyes narrowed at the prospect of a nuisance. "You think he's here to meddle with us?"

The lady shook her much-decorated head.

"If that was his intention he's doing avery good job. By now, he must have been aware of our presence, especially given where he's been. Whatever his intentions are, they are part of the world out there, and none of it is any concern of ours. He will pass. Just like everything does, in the end."

"If you say so..."


Rubbing his eyes as he peered slightly through them, refraining from opening them fully in an environment overwhelmed with bright light, the Doctor eventually found himself lying on his stomach at the edge of a corridor, struggling to puzzle together how he had gotten here, and just where exactly he was.

He didn't know how he had managed to get lost in this city after all of this, but he supposed that there must have been further side effects from connecting to the machine without prior training, or perhaps some incompatibility based on his brain being somewhat disparate from a Fabronian one.

At first, he had been fine, if not more than that, but with some delay, some further side effects had set in, nothing heavy and certainly nothing like a heavy physical hangover with aches and general discomfort, but something notably more mental that left him feeling rather scattered and scrambled – even by his standards – and, in a clear difference to his normal state, lacking in much incentive, motivation or capacity for divergent, creative thought.

He'd simply decided to walk it off and make his way back to the TARDIS, but that had not quite worked out, at least not directly. With his capacity for attention and concentration somewhat compromised, he kept forgetting where he was going and, what's more, ambling around without really spotting other interesting destinations as he usually would – Even the insights he had gained before had seemed rather diffuse and indistinct in that state, though he tried to vaguely aim for the surface whenever he could form a clear thought.

When he finally did what he should have done a long time ago and simply gave up, sinking into a disorderly heap without even bothering to find a designated sleeping spot (who's to tell him where to sleep, especially down here?), he admittedly had no idea where he was, indeed, he had theorized that he must have been deep down in the complex, but he wasn't even sure of that – In that state, the corridors looked all the same to him, and he couldn't be sure that he hadn't been walking in circles.

He'd hoped that he'd wake up more refreshed and indeed, he had – his body had done its usual magic and patched itself back together rather thoroughly, but this was rendered quite irrelevant by what it was that woke him up: Soft, warm sunlight coming in from one of the large, rectangular windows that insofar as he thought earlier might as well have lead to some dark atrium.

A lot of what he had been thinking before, while falling asleep or coming out of it, had been rendered very obsolete. He could smell the surface atmosphere, and it was probably indicative of just how far out of it he'd been before that he hadn't noticed it, even in the dark – he ought to be thankful that he didn't mistake them for glass panels and fall out of one.

Corollary: He should probably discard whatever he'd been thinking or dreaming off before anyway, as it was likely to be scrambled beyond all use, or that, at least, was his later retroactive conclusion. In that moment proper he was, quite frankly, wholly distracted in a way that he couldn't blame on the machine anymore: He rushed to the window to take in the air and savor the sunlight on his skin, suddenly aware that he hadn't stood in actual starlight for quite a while, even though he understood that there wasn't any substantial difference – indeed, though it wasn't yet as ruined as it would one day be, this atmosphere wasn't anything to get excited about.

But more importantly: He could see the tower he'd left the TARDIS in!

Now that merited some rejoicement if anything did, he couldn't wait to get back to his old familiar blue box, and he didn't even debate as to where he would be going next, and the secrets of the city below lying under his feet were forgotten once more as he raced toward his familiar blue box, his mind already entranced by the next batch of sights to see, and, o course his cherished time machine was always a welcome sight.

Of course, as far as welcome sights went, he could think of another one he hadn't seen in a while...