Author's Note:
Hi all – thanks for your kind messages regarding my infernal writer's block – am pleased to report I think I have come out the other side, woo hoo!
As always, big thanks to my reviewers for the last chapter: Aietradaea, soro1010, xxTeam-Masterxx, Omniac and Strange and Sad Angel! Hope you all have an amazing weekend.
CHAPTER 14
The infusion of Huon particles was complete, the catalysis of power at its absolute zenith. As had been prophesied, it was time.
The three who remain must stand as one in the Portal of Eternity, lest the Universe and all within it fall into shadow forever more...
The task should have been impossible. Since the High Council of Time Lords had been destroyed and Gallifrey itself reduced to dust, inter-dimensional travel had become unattainable, the barriers between the parallel worlds virtually unbreachable. But the Huon particles were beyond ancient, older than Time itself, uncoerced by the constraints of reality. Reaching into the sprawling universe encompassed by their amalgamated consciousness, the Time Lords adeptly wielded the primordial energy to rip open the dimensional wall, dragging wide a conduit into The Void within their own bodies.
Within the nimbus of golden power, Jack and Amy saw their figures begin to glow with a rippling white light, undulating like water, until all their physical characteristics were completely obscured and they appeared only as three vaguely humanoid outlines composed entirely of dimensional energy.
"They've opened the gateway to The Void," Jack said thankfully. "It's nearly over now."
"The Portal of Eternity, just like the prophecy said," Amy murmured, her eyes wide. "But listen...what's that awful noise?"
A screeching wail had begun to ululate throughout the flight deck, growing louder and more ear-piercingly stridulent every second. Jack and Amy were forced to cover their ears against the sound, as a maelstrom of wind seemed materialise from nowhere and hurl its way around the room.
"The Time Winds are blowing through the Portal from The Void," Jack yelled. "No wonder The Eternals call it 'The Howling'!"
The Eternals were cringing in gibbering terror, trying to back away from the three radiant figures facing them. But there was to be no escape. Thin, roiling strands of a smoke-like substance appeared in the air surrounding them, coiling around their evanescent limbs like a spreading vine, drawing them inescapably back towards the Time Lords.
"What's happening to them?" Amy shouted.
"It's Void Stuff," Jack responded at equal volume. "A type of background radiation that clings to anything that's been in The Void. Once a full breach is opened into The Void, it will pull anything back in that has Void Stuff clinging to it!"
"Sentence has been passed. Now judgement will fall..." came the eerie three-tone voice. "Fear...we embrace you."
"NO!" Deimos shrieked in abject anguish. "I beg you, nooooo!"
But the shimmering figure that had once been the Master stepped forward, the rippling white light engulfing the screaming Eternal, absorbing him inexorably into The Void.
"Pain...we embrace you."
Without hesitation, Tejana's halo of light encircled Odyne and the Lady of Pain followed Deimos back into hell.
"YOU WILL PAY FOR THIS, TIME LORDS!" Thanatos roared. "WE WILL RETURN AND THEN THERE WILL BE NOWHERE SAFE FOR YOU! I SWEAR, YOU WILL PAY!"
"Death, we embrace you," came the unrelenting, emotionless reply.
Advancing, the luminescent Doctor enveloped the only remaining Eternal, banishing him irreversibly through the dimensional teleport to join his companions.
"Get ready, Jack," Amy warned, her voice laden with tension.
Jack needed no warning – he was already poised, waiting, his hand on the lever.
The white dimensional energy flared in one last pulse of illumination and then the Time Lords slammed shut the Portal of Eternity, barring the way into The Void forever more. Haunting silence fell abruptly across the room as the caterwauling Time Winds died away. The intense, pearly light evaporated, the three humanoid figures becoming evident once more.
But even as the humans watched, the lurking blackness edging the golden aureole of Huon particles began to expand, reaching further and further inward like malignant amorphous tentacles.
Fire swept into Tejana as if every drop of her blood was made from oil and her flesh from the driest of kindling. It erupted in her hearts, blazed in her lungs, cindered all her vitals. The cataclysm howled through her body, the very marrow of her bones burning and running like volcanic magma.
Somewhere far away, through the sea of flames raging through the mind-meld, she thought she could hear the Doctor, urging them to hold on, urging them to fight back the surge of power. Tejana tried to focus on his voice, tried to cling to the last element of sanity within the inferno, but it was too late. She was swept away into the swelling torrent of Huon energy. It was too strong, too intoxicating, for any of the three Time Lord minds to contain or control. Their last mental barriers faltered and were finally overwhelmed, incinerated by the awesome conflagration.
Ecstasy blazed through the psychic link, a triumphal rapture, no longer contained by the restraining willpower, their combined thoughts flowing together in a mindless song of exultation and insanity.
They were invincible, all-powerful, unassailable – a god in three parts, mighty and omnipotent.
They were the Time Lords Victorious.
The Laws of Time were theirs. Now, the Universe could be re-ordered. At their command, Time could be rewritten. Reality itself would conform to their will.
The Time War would be erased, all of the suffering and pain it had caused never to have existed. All the races which had been devastated, all the planets which had been destroyed, all the people who had died, they could all be restored, the Universe set to rights once more.
Gallifrey, the Shining World of the Seven Systems, would once more take her rightful place in the heavens. Under their hand, a new Time Lord Empire would be established, a golden age lasting one hundred trillion years. They would be the masters of Creation, as was only fitting.
With the ultimate power flowing through them, they could reduce entire planets to dust, extinguish the stars, create and destroy as they chose...
None would be permitted to stand against them. All would obey. All who threatened the new order with chaos would be annihilated. All who had opposed the Time Lords, or those they protected, would perish - Cybermen, Sontarans, the 456, the Zygons, the Silurians, the Sycorax and countless others...
But most of all, the Daleks. Every last stinking Dalek would be wiped from the sky. Every last Dalek would be made to scream a hundred times for every scream they had forced from their victims. Every last Dalek would be exterminated, until the entire race was wiped from the collective memory of the Universe. There would be no mercy, no pity, no compunction.
They had overcome the Eternals, but this was just the beginning...
"The Eternals are gone, Jack," Amy said urgently, her eyes glued to the scanner screen. "Reverse the particles, now!"
Behind her, she heard Jack swear savagely. Whirling around, she saw him wrestling with the lever he was supposed to pull.
"What's the matter?" she demanded, a sick feeling in her stomach as she read the consternation in his face.
"Damn...thing...won't...budge!" Jack gritted out, pulling with all his might.
"What? No, that's not possible!"
Running around the console, she joined him, throwing all her weight behind his on to the lever. Together, they fought to drag the handle down, but it would not be moved.
"Oh no," she breathed. "This can't be happening! What are we going to do?"
"Keep pulling," Jack ordered tersely, moving rapidly to another bank of instruments.
"But..."
"Just keep pulling!" he repeated sharply, starting to flick some switches. "I think this is my fault."
Still forcing her whole weight down on the unresponsive lever, Amy shot him an incredulous glance. "What do you mean, your fault? What did you do?"
"I didn't do anything. The TARDIS doesn't like me much, that's all."
"She doesn't like you?"
"Because I'm immortal, a fixed point in time. She's a time machine. We're basically incompatible."
"Oh, brilliant!" Amy exclaimed sarcastically. "Of all the times for you to finally find the one female in the Universe you're incompatible with, you choose today!"
Jack shot her a glare as he raced further around the console, frantically pressing a series of buttons.
"For her to have me on board...it's like you would feel having a stone sitting in your stomach, very uncomfortable. So what with the Doctor gone and the Huon energy draining out of her, she's reacting by going into emergency shut down."
"So what are you doing now?"
"Trying to find the re-set switch. It's got to be here somewhere. I'm just not familiar with the new TARDIS lay-out!" he snapped. "Keep pulling!"
They could sense danger, ripples of peril brushing against the edges of their power. Something threatened them, something intended them harm. This could not be permitted.
Humans! The two humans in the TARDIS, seeking to reverse the influx, trying to rescind the Huon Particles.
Pathetic, degenerate, insignificant, meddling little apes...
They had to be stopped.
They had to be DESTROYED.
Amy looked up at the view screen again and all the blood drained out of her face.
"Oh...my...God!" she breathed in a strangled voice.
Still in perfect synchronisation, the three Time Lords were slowly turning to face the TARDIS. Amy would never forget the horror of that moment as long as she lived. The three figures, two of them once so familiar and loved, had changed beyond all recognition. The golden nimbus of power surrounding them had become polluted by adumbral swirls of darkness, coruscating around them in a frayed and denatured vortex, their faces cast in shadow. But most appalling of all were their eyes. Once so human-looking, they now glowed with a sick emerald green fire which radiated virulent malice.
Amy had come across a multitude of strange things in her travels with the Doctor. Many of them had been frightening or even downright terrifying. But until this moment, she realised that she had never known what fear really was.
All at once, she understood a fundamental, basic truth that many other races across the galaxies had known for millennia. The most dangerous creatures in Creation were not the Daleks, not the Weeping Angels, not the Eternals nor any of the other monstrous would-be contenders.
The most dangerous creatures in Creation were the Time Lords themselves.
The sense of hideous menace emanating from them was so strong that it was almost tangible. Amy had no doubt that if she and Jack could not deploy the recalcitrant lever, she was going to die horribly.
"Jack!" she screamed. "You'd better do something! You'd better do something NOW!"
Outside, moving in total unison, the three Time Lords took a single step towards the TARDIS.