There were gashes in the light, and each of them were mouths. They blared out awful sound through the cramped cavern, which sounded nothing like screaming and yet was exactly that. One of the mouths dropped doorlike before Angles and Chris, its blackness picked out by the tainted and swirling light.
"Come through, small man and smaller child," said the mouth that was also a door, somehow completely static as it formed its words. "Come to wherever I lead, away from this sweet, doomed world." Angles grinned and rushed towards the mouth, as fast as he could over the bones that covered the distance between them.
"Look at the bones," said Chris from the madman's chest. "There's lots, from adults and from children. I don't know what they taught you at your school. But you shouldn't run into a hungry creature's mouth."
"I'll take that chance!" said Angles. "We're dead here anyway; we're all dead! I'm saving you," he said, "and if I were you I'd be damn well grateful, not moaning away like some old woman. This is what a real dream looks like! A real chance for a future, not a silly vision from kids who believe in a man made out of sweets–"
Suddenly, space and time twisted in a direction that wasn't there. Where one cavern had been, there were now two instead. With a crash three figures fell sideways through the air, knocking Angles and Chris to the ground.
"Okay," said the Doctor, "it turned out gravity worked the way you thought it did, Lip. Chris!" she said, noticing the child wriggling out from the adult on the floor. "I told you to stay on the surface away from any possible danger, and you've come to the most dangerous place on the planet instead. Got to be honest; I didn't think my bad influence would set in quite that fast–"
"The Kandyman!" said Chris in horror. "The Kandyman is here! Doctor, he's behind you!"
"What?" said the Doctor. "Oh, I suppose he is. But it's okay. I thought he was a monster, but it turned out he was a person instead. People make that mistake all the time, even me."
"Oh," said Chris. "I thought Angles was a person, but now I think he might be a monster."
"Well, that's a much more depressing mistake," said the Doctor as Angles struggled from the floor. "Or at least, a differently depressing one."
"He was going to take me into that thing's mouth!" said Chris.
"Less of the was," said Angles, now upright again. "We'll be off on our merry way," he snarled, "once this slag's taken out of the picture–"
He lunged at the Doctor, who crooked her elbow in a very particular way. Nonchalantly she caught Angles as his body swung towards her, and watched as he clattered to the ground.
"Slag," she said. "Not been called that before. That's what's exciting, these days. I get so many new insults." She leaned over Angles. "And so many people underestimating me, when they really, really shouldn't." She smiled, and pointed away from the screaming mouths. "Exit's that way. You can still get out, if that's what you want."
Angles laughed a low, crazy laugh.
"Up there? To be ruled by children? Not bloody likely! Tell you what, perhaps it's a good thing I don't have your kid in my grasp anymore. She'd only be wherever I ended up, moaning on about something or other. No, I'll just go myself, whatever the voice might say."
He looked into the void of the nearest mouth, his laugh horrible enough to be clear over the awful sound.
"I'm coming, you hear?" he screamed into the darkness. "Wherever you are! I'm coming! And I'll be damn ecstatic when I'm there, however it turns out to be!"
He ran straight into the gaping mouth— or, at least, he tried to. But he got no further than its very edge before his flesh flashed away into nothing. His skeleton smashed off the edge of the mouth, coming apart to join the bones that were strewn through the cavern.
"Yuck," said two of the mouths. "That had a most unpleasant flavour."
"He needed a child!" gasped Chris. "That's what he said the voice told him. That it had to be both, an adult and a child. But he didn't listen, and now he's a pile of bones."
"Excellent deduction!" said the Doctor. "But also completely wrong. Number of bones in here, I think everyone who came down met with the same fate as your kidnapper. Old Threegobs here only said he needed a child for, ah." She sighed. "For the taste."
"Such an exquisite contrast!" sighed the three mouths in the void. "The naivety of the adult, and the weariness of the child. Both of them longing to escape, and both of them escaping into me…"
"He's like the adults here, isn't he?" said Lip. "Up there in the city, chomping away at the sweets. He can't think of a way to be happy, so he just eats and eats until everything goes away. No matter who it harms."
"They ate sweets, up in the city?" said the Kandyman softly. "So did we, where I was from. To pretend to be happy, or perhaps so we could be happy for a change. It was always so hard to tell the difference. But sweets are all that's left here, aren't they? It's eaten everything but sugar and bones."
"Who'd eat bones?" said the mouths in the void. "That's disgusting! Almost as bad as eating…"
"...Sugar," said the Doctor, her jaw firm. "Funny, isn't it? Planet of sugar and colony of sugar robots, both joined together by you. But it isn't funny! It's very serious indeed. Because you've eaten through everything that isn't sugar, haven't you? Chomping your way through time and space. And I'd bet my socks it's because the kind of thing you are just can't handle its sugar at all."
"What?" said the mouths in a worried sounding way. "No, that's not it at all! I just like to avoid sugar, in case I bulge out too much in the fifth dimension–"
"–come on, Void," said the Doctor, picking up some melted Kandy circuitry. "Eat your sweets."
"But the child said that you're a Doctor!" cried the mouths. "What sort of Doctor tells someone to eat their sweets?!"
"A qualified psychiatrist," said the Doctor grimly, shoving the circuitry into the nearest mouth. The Void howled, and its colours flickered even more sad and beige. The cavern rumbled as time and space twisted round in unusual ways.
"Everyone!" said the Doctor. "Walls! Bits of robot! Actual confectionery! Get anything made of sugar into one of these mouths! This thing's squeezing space like a toothpaste tube; now it's angry it could crush us in a tick."
"I don't know what a toothpaste tube is," said Lip as he cracked a stalagmite from the cavern wall.
"Well, that explains a lot about the teeth here on Ipsico 9," said the Doctor, who'd been trying to be diplomatic. She thrust more robot parts into one mouth as Lip threw bits of the cavern into another, while Chris fed a whole Kandy leg into the third as it gagged and wheezed. The light grew duller and dimmer, and the terrible sound flared to a higher pitch. But space continued to twist around them like a tightening noose.
"Doctor," said the Kandyman.
"No," said the Doctor. "Don't even think it."
"What we're doing isn't enough. Just bits and pieces of sugar, all being thrown in. But if a large amount of sugar were to throw himself in–"
"You're not a large amount of sugar!" shouted the Doctor. "I mean, you are. But you're a person as well, and that's more important. You don't have to sacrifice yourself–"
"–Don't I?" said the Kandyman.
"There'll be a way," said the Doctor. "However surprising, however obscure. There always is, that's what I've tended to find."
"A way to survive," said the Kandyman, uncertainly. "but a way to do good, as well? Maybe that's always been true, for you…"
The light was a colour that shouldn't be seen, and the sound was a noise that should never be heard. All three mouths wore different expressions, but all were somehow ones of triumph. The sugar was damaging the thing in the void; wounding it. But perhaps it wouldn't be enough.
"You said you knew what survival was like," said the Kandyman. "To be reduced to nothing, but to still go on. But you've done so much good, haven't you? Someone down in the factory, they'd heard all about the Doctor. That they were someone who made children happy, and not by threatening to kill them if they weren't. That they'd done it by inspiring them, or saving them with words or deeds. And that seemed like something a candy man should be able to do."
He looked up at the gaping void.
"You do good all the time, Doctor," said the Kandyman. "You're a hero, and you don't always realise when other people aren't. But for me, one chance to be a hero— it's more than I hoped I get. I've spent so long being a monster." He smiled sadly. "And not even a very good one."
He started to run towards the mouth that touched the floor, his legs cracking where the Doctor had fixed together. His face wasn't expressive enough for Chris to know if that caused him pain. But somehow she still knew it did, as he raced towards the void.
"Kandyman!" yelled the Doctor. "Kandyman, please–"
"They were right about one thing, my colony," said the Kandyman. "Happiness will prevail. It's just a question of what you're willing to do, in order to make it happen. Goodbye, Doctor. And thank you."
He thrust himself head first into the mouth, almost jumping towards his end. Like the sweets before him, suddenly he was gone, no trace remaining of the robot who was there just seconds before. But the mouths were retching and roaring in unison, and the horrible sound was turning into a roar. Suddenly there was a brilliant flash, and all three people in the cavern flinched backwards. And then the mouths and sound were gone, and the colours of the portal lay still.