A/N:

Summary: Brax suits up and gets dirty... Rose communes with a thousand time ships

Notes: Reaaaaallly not sure how you guys will receive this chapter.

I mean, I hope you will like it and all... but it's a bit gross at a couple of points. Yeah, so be warned on that.

Remember, action and stuff isn't my forte, but I'm doing my best. :)

~~oooOOOooo~~

Braxiatel stalked with purpose along the path that he'd taken with Rose earlier. It was much darker than it had been when the two of them walked, but he was still able to see his way well enough thanks to the night vision field across the visor of his helmet. It had been centuries since he'd worn this getup, and so it took a little bit of adjustment for him to look past the myriad of information that the scanner of the helmet provided. The contour of the terrain ahead of him was particularly annoying, but in a moment he had himself able to ignore the pale blue lines and focus on what he was actually able to see for himself.

He got to the clearing and took a quick look around. He saw the twin ropes wrapped around two trees and tilted himself slightly to look along it's length toward the edge of the pit. "Perfect," he purred to himself as he kicked up a leg to flick up a rope from the ground. He caught it with his gloved hand and flicked it hard, whipping the full length of it like an angry snake. He looped it around his hips, hooked a tight rope descender to the length of rope attached to his chest, then hooped the loops around his hips to a carabiner on his belt. He didn't have a proper harness, but what he did have on hand was effective enough to make the fast trek down the cliff face without falling to his death.

He tested the strength of the tree trunk and Rose's knot with a firm tug and walked over toward the pit. He turned his back to it and leaned back hard on the rope to give it his full weight. There was a fast slide of rope through the descender and carabiner, but it caught quickly. Confident he wouldn't fall to his death, he kicked off the wall and let himself slide in a controlled free-fall toward the ground. It took only three kicks against the wall for him to finally reach bottom, and he did so quite heavily. The mud and sludge curled up around the tread of his boots and he curled a lip with disgust at the suction of it on the thick rubber treads. As he unclipped himself from the rope, he lightly stepped his feet free of the mud.

"Do we have eyes and ears on?" he asked into his mic as he roughly flicked the rope away from him and walked into a small clearing at the edge of what appeared to be a thick forest. He didn't really listen to the responses from the capsule, just knew that there was chatter in the affirmative.

While he did despise mud and the dirty sucking slop of it, the filthy terrain did offer him a decent show of just which direction the ladies had travelled. He dropped into a crouch and scanned over the footprints in the mud. It started as a circular, triple trodden mound of grey mud, but as he widened his search area, he did see where steps of indecision had changed toward a more purposeful stride.

"This way, then," he murmured to himself with a lift out of his crouch. "Would one of you please ask Leela what the best method is of taking out these zombies?"

"Can do," the Doctor replied. "Although I thought you already knew. Haven't you handled these before."

"No, actually," he admitted with a cautious walk forward. His hand reached back to draw one of his firearms from its holster and he held it low at his side. His voice shifted to one of facetious apology. "Did I in any way make you believe that I did, Thete? Sorry about that. Would you have changed your mind about letting me out here if you had known I'd not actually met one face to face before now?"

There was a displeased grunt through the comms line. "Leela says you have to sever the spinal cord from the brain stem. Decapitation either external or internal work." the Doctor answered flatly. "Typical neutralisation methods don't work…"

"Obviously," he huffed. "Can't exactly kill something that's already dead, now, can you? But remove its ability to move, yes. That makes sense. Remove it's head."

"Are you even capable of doing that?" the Doctor asked with strain in his voice.

"I guess we'll find out, won't we?" he remarked within a long whisper as rustling ahead of him caught his attention. "You might want to turn your head and look away," he advised coolly as he looked down to adjust a setting on his staser. He lifted it high to look down along the sight in wait for whatever was rustling the trees around him to finally appear. "This might get messy."

"I've been watching Leela and Soliarn's feeds for the past hour," the Doctor answered.

"Right," he drawled. "Of course you have."

A staggering, drooling creature slowly dragged itself out of the brush. It paused with a sway at the space between two trees and slowly shifted a creaking neck to look toward Braxiatel. Its lips turned up into a sneering smile and Braxiatel let out a long and apologetic sigh. "Lord Rentestil. I am so sorry." He closed his eyes as he squeezed the trigger of his staser, not wanting to see the death of an old student at his hand.

The staser fired a ribbon-like line of energy across the space between them. It shot into the throat of the creature and exploded with light and a spray of black ooze through the back of its neck. The creature spat out a mouthful of black, decaying blood, then tilted, swayed, and collapsed to the ground.

While he, himself, hadn't seen the light and the spray of blood, those back at the capsule had. He ignored the gasps and groans of disgust over the comms, and strode forward. He paused over the body of the former Time Lord and looked down with a sigh and a shake in his head. "He had such potential," he sighed with a step over the corpse and puddle of blood to move on. "He would have had a long and successful career in council."

"Are you capable of continuing?" Romana asked him gently as she heard a softly spoken prayer in her husband's voice for the fallen man. "You are bound to encounter more Lords and Ladies you were acquainted with on Gallifrey."

"They are no longer the Lords and Ladies I knew," he answered softly. "They are long gone now. These…" He sighed. "These are mindless creatures that wear their faces to taunt us."

He looked to his side and held up his staser to fire at another creature who staggered out of the brush. The laser shot brightly across the distance between them. Light and sludge exploded enough to completely remove the back of its neck. Its chin and head flopped bonelessly forward onto its chest and it collapsed into a heap on the ground.

He stepped over the fallen creature with a wince on his face at the stench and mess of it. "That's really quite disgusting," Braxiatel muttered before reciting yet another prayer under his breath. He paused and looked up and then down, surveying the scene and getting his bearings as best he could inside thick blue fog. He exhaled at the press of voices trying to get inside his mind and forced himself to concentrate on locking them all out.

Rustling in the woods either side of him took away that focus and he exhaled a long and angered breath. "Looks like I need backup," he muttered to himself. He lifted his hands to curl his thumb and finger in between his lips. He expelled a sharp burst of air over the top of them to send out a shrill whistle across the landscape. He paused to inhale and sent out another whistle as the woods around him spat out zombie after zombie until he was surrounded completely.

~~ooooOOOOoooo~~

On her knees in the thick grey mud that bordered what had to be the single most horrific thing that she'd ever seen in her life, Rose Tyler swayed in place. She felt a tightness inside her chest and a flare of sorrow and anger inside her mind.

Leela – although relatively short in stature – towered high above her. There was a look of utter disdain and disgust across her features as she looked across an endless sea of travel capsules. "What is this?" she queried after a moment. Her head flicked down to Rose, who was still in a devastated and penitent kneel in the mud. "The number of these ships. Do they match with the number of dead Time Lords on this planet?"

"God," Rose managed out weakly. "This is horrible. There's hundreds of them."

"Doctor. Romana," Leela said darkly down the line. "Is this how many of your people are here walking like the dead?"

"We don't know," the Doctor responded quietly. "There has to be at least that many, but we suspect there are many more who arrived here as passengers rather than pilots."

"This is just cruel," Leela growled. "This can not be how your people respect the fallen members of your tribes." She panted a couple of sharp breaths. "Abandoned. Left to rot."

"It's not," Romana assured her with as much anger in her tone as Leela's disgusted voice. "You know that, Leela. You know this is not how we treat our fallen – Time Lord or capsule. Even at the height of the pandemic, our infected people were kept on Gallifrey and treated with kindness."

"They were not treated with kindness," Leela corrected sharply. Her voice then softened slightly. "But, they were kept on Gallifrey."

"These people were sent away," Rose noted softly. "With their capsules to die alone." She slowly lifted to a stand and wiped her hands slowly on her thighs to rid her palms of mud. Her head was angles to one side as she analysed the tall cabinet-like structure of one ship that seemed to still hols some life within her. "But were they already infected with this illness before they came here, or were they sent here to catch it?"

"Rose," the Doctor ordered down the line. "Stay where you are, please. Brax is on his way."

"Yeah," she answered distractedly. "Okay."

A shrill whistle sounded off in the distance, which captured the attention of Leela and Rose. They both looked upward and then behind them into the woods.

"Would that be Braxiatel?" Leela asked. At her hip, Soliarn lifted his head and puffed out a series of short howls. He stood from where he sat on the ground and marched his feet in the mud with urgency.

"Go!" Rose ordered him sharply. "God knows what trouble he's gotten himself into."

"He is of the same blood as the Doctor," Leela said with a small smile as she watched Soliarn launch into the woods leaving them with only the sound of hard heavy thumping of his bounds and the cracking of twigs and branches under his feet. "It is very likely he has found himself in much trouble."

"Sol's having way too much fun," Rose said with a sigh. "I guess three and a bit years stuck in London with no chance to hunt was a bit boring for him."

"He is a wild beast," Leela agreed. "It is here that he is in his element. It's where he should be."

"I know," Rose said with a sigh of regret. "As soon as I can get him back to Gallifrey, I will. He and Tia, they need their wilderness back."

"And so do you."

Rose shook her head. "The Doctor will never return to Gallifrey on a permanent basis," she said with a sigh as she stepped from her place and slowly made her way toward one of the capsules. "If he did, he'd only be miserable."

"He was not before, Rose," Leela offered. "He was content and very happy."

Rose gave her a smile and a light laugh that held no humour at all in it. "Oh, he had his moments, Leela, trust me." Her smile fell and she looked forward. "But he's a different man this time around. I don't know he has it in him to settle down like that again."

Leela hummed. "Have trust in him," she offered. "The Doctor's spirit is very like mine – wild and free – and if I - the one they call the savage – can settle with my mate, then I am sure he will feel honoured to settle with you wherever you choose to be."

Rose nodded at Leela's words, but she had ceased to really listen to her. She ignored the chatter from the capsule, of the Doctor's demands for her to stay put, and of his frustrated ranting that for once, can she please listen to him.

She ran her fingertips over the outer shell of the closest capsule. With such an elaborate and intricate cabinetry design it was clear to her that its Chameleon Circuit had locked on the form it had taken during its last materialisation. There wasn't a cabinet or capsule on the entire planet of Gallifrey that looked like this.

"Hello darling," she said gently as she pressed her hand forward to swipe her palm over its surface. "What happened to you?"

The humming underneath her hand may as well have been the final wheezing breaths of the ship for the way it seemed to draw in and draw out with such pained effort. Rose calmed and lengthened her own breathing to match that of the ship. She walked closer to the hull and pressed her other hand against the wood. "Why are you so sad?" she whispered as she pressed her forehead against it. "Tell me what happened to all of you."

"Rose!" The Doctor called out over the comms. "Don't let them inside your head. Please."

Before she could respond to him or even try to pull away an ethereal sensation enveloped her. It was as though a pair of arms had snapped tightly around her back and hips, and she fell against the machine. The song inside her mind elevated and heightened each one of her already raw and aching senses. She let out a long and soulful cry that sounded out the anguish felt by the ship herself.

Images of the ship's terrified and panicked pilot filled her mind at that moment. He struggled to control his ship and pull her free from a temporal lasso that held onto the ship to pull her violently out of the time vortex and onto the planet's surface. The atmosphere around them was thick and soupy and filled with terror and sorrow. Together they fought hard, ignoring the orders through their own communication that they were flying outside their designated flight path and to return immediately or face discipline back on Gallifrey.

The landing was a violent crash of sparks and explosions within the console room. The pilot was thrown by a amber tendril of energy that shot from the central rotor column to throw him hard against a tall white support strut that stood tall at the corner of the console platform. Thick orange-red blood exploded from the pilot's mouth in a violent heave that sprayed over the console counter to drip thick droplets off its edge.

A crackled, static-filled hologram sizzled dimly to life from a small beam on the console to hover over the young Time Lord. The barely visible seal of Rassilon spun lazily in the air in a slow sweeping motion that seemed to whoop and whoop with each turn. The face of Rassilon appeared, his words began mid-sentence, mid-message, and his image, cloaked in the brilliant scarlet robes of the Prydonian chapter embellished with yellow embroidery, and topped with the headdress and proud cowl of the time Lord Council. His image crackled and flickered, his words cut and static, as he spoke of the gracious sacrifices required from all time Lords to rebuild their once magnificent society and elevate the Time Lords to their former glory.

It ended with haunted words and the Supreme President of Gallifrey's image staring straight toward the unconscious Time Lord in a heap of the ground.

"We thank you for your sacrifice, Son of Time…"

The chest of the young pilot lifted awkwardly off the ground, and with a cry of sheer agony, his mouth stretched open wide to release a thick and opaque tendril of energy that swirled a complete circuit of the console room before rushing out through the open doors. It was a bright flash, followed by another, and then another, a howling face inside a bubble along the winding tendril – one bubble for each of the young Lord's remaining regenerations. It was a blistering, flaming, violent cacophony of light and sound that filed the console room. Within only a few short moments silence fell again as the light escaped the capsule and the battered body of a young man exhausted of life and of regenerations slumped back lifelessly to the ground…

…Only to slowly shift and then move once more with a moan and a groan and a stagger as he hauled himself up to a broken stand. His broken limbs hung limply at his side, his shoulder dislocated and drooping, his head lolling to one side. With a drag of a broken leg, the dead man slowly lumbered toward the doorway leaving only the sounds of his moans and his scraping, dragging limbs in his wake.

Rose gasped and gagged against the capsule's wooden hull. Inside her mind the weeping, anguished pains of the capsules that still held life sang the painful song of the last words spoken across their command deck.

Thank you for your sacrifice, Daughter of Time. Son of Time. Sacrifice. Son. Daughter. Time. Those words repeated over and over inside her mind, swirling and swimming into the devastated and grief-stricken song of the Time Ships left behind.

Rose panted out with confusion and desperation as image after image from each one of the surviving ships and the last moments with their Time Lords and Ladies on the command deck filled her mind. She spun in place and shoved her back against the capsule that had originally called to her. she couldn't hear the panicked voice calling to her through her earpiece, nor could she see the worried form of Leela swaying in front of her with confusion as to what was happening to her friend.

Her eyes could only see the rapid slideshow of images being shared by all of the ships. She could only hear the words of Rassilon, and the song of despair being sung by those in mourning.

"My heart," she cried out finally. "It hurts, Doctor. It's breaking."

There was a rapid squelching sound of thick treads running across mud that finally found a way though the cacophony of voices in her mind. A familiar presence moved quickly in front of her, and she felt the hard touch of fingers against her temples. Her hands shot out to clutch tightly at a pair of very familiar strong arms and she fought to find her line toward safety.

"Concentrate on me," Braxiatel's voice ordered out in a hiss through his teeth. "You know where I hide inside your mind. Find me. Ignore everything else and focus only on me."

She clutched onto the familiar presence inside her mind and focused everything she had left in her on that tiny crimson spark. Slowly, his face started to materialise through the fading slideshow of horrors. His face was shielded behind a filter of deep purple, and it took her a good few seconds to realise that the filter wasn't a trick of her own eyes, but an actual visor over his face. His face was tightened into a deep wince of concentration and effort that bared his teeth. The sweat on his brow and the contortion of effort in his cheeks and face flicked a switch inside of her, and suddenly the song, the images, and the pain of grief rocketed outside of her mind.

She let out a gasp and collapsed against his chest. Her breaths were ragged and short and her tiny frame shuddered against his. Braxiatel released her temples with a snap of his hands. He held her under her arm and across her back with one arm, the other he pressed against the wall of the broken capsule. He held them in balance despite awkward positioning and waited for Rose's breathing to settle back to something more acceptable; not speaking at all until she lifted her head from the softest part of his shoulder to look across the graveyard that surrounded them. Her mouth was still as gaped as it was when he found her, and her breaths escaped her as huffs within whimpers.

"Are you okay?" He asked her after a moment.

"No," she answered with a huff. She struggled against him to pull herself back up to a stand under her own steam and pressed her back up against the capsule. "What the hell was that? What happened?"

"Time Capsules misbehaving," he answered with a growl. He lifted his head and looked at the array of broken ships that surrounded them. "All of you, just back off. You hear me? Rose might have an enticing mind for you to want to bind yourself to, but you can't. She already has a symbiotic link to another ship – and I shouldn't have to remind any you how feisty a female type-40 can get if you try and sneak in and steal her bond-mate."

"No, no," Rose assured him with a lift of her hands in request for calm. "They weren't trying to sneak-bond on me. They were telling me what happened." She scratched at her head and winced lightly. "At least that's what I think, anyway."

"Don't put it past any of them," he warned. "They've all lost their pilots, and they're desperate for connection. An open mind like yours – too tempting not to try." His head quickly dipped off to one side as though listening to voices in his ear. He nodded quickly. "Yeah. Right. I think it fell out. Give me a moment." He looked around the floor at her feet.

"What're you looking for?"

"Your earpiece," he answered her.

"You mean this one?" she pointed to the thick and cumbersome device in her ear. "I think it broke."

He huffed. "Archaic, so I'm not surprised." He looked toward Leela, who was standing behind two wide-eyed and very silent wolves and drew in a breath. "Looks like Rose is offline to the peanut gallery back at the capsule – lucky girl – so anything you need to say will have to be filtered through Leela and me. Do be warned that we have a five-word limit on each message, and we'll relay nothing of a romantic nature from fretting mates if you don't mind. So, Thete, give it a rest."

He held his hand to Rose to aid in helping her safely step off the bottom lip of the capsule she was pressed up against. "Come on. Best we get you away from here."

"No," she said with a shake in her head.

"Why not?" he asked. "Are you injured?" He looked her over. "Do I need to carry you?"

She shook her head. "No. Aside from a roaring headache of biblical proportions, I'm okay." She looked around her. "But I can't. I can't leave them here. Not alone."

"Rose…"

"No," she averred with her hands finding a tight fold across her chest. "They don't deserve to stay here and rot away like this. Would you like it to know that your capsule was left in a state like this; alone and in pain? Would you, Doctor? Romana?" She winced and rubbed at her brow. "My head…"

He took one of her hands in his and started to firmly rub his thumb into the junction between her thumb and finger. His eyes travelled around the dark and extremely dreary area. "How about I make you this vow, Rose. We won't leave them like this," he offered. "Well. At this moment we have to, but I assure you, Rose. It is my promise to you that Thete and I will return with pilots. We will return and we will make sure that every single one of these beautiful ladies find themselves a compatible new pilot and are taken from here."

"Promise me that."

"My word on Gallifrey and my own glorious ship," he answered with a smile. "I will allow Leela to do what she pleases to me with her blade if I go back on that word."

"So many options," Leela huffed with a smile. "Are you very sure that you wish to make that vow to her, Braxiatel."

"Not really," he answered. "With what little trust I have in myself to keep a promise, but I'm quite certain the very real threat of castration means that I won't go back on this one." He looked to Rose. "Well? Deal?"

Rose bit at her lip and looked down to where her hand was held within his. He was still rubbing at her hand and she tilted her head to watch the movement of his thumb. "What're you doing?"

"Getting rid of your headache," he answered.

"By rubbing my thumb?"

"Does your head still hurt?"

She looked up and actually thought about that. "Ehm. No."

"Then yes, by rubbing your thumb." He dropped her hand and took a few steps backward from the ship. He let his eyes trail over the full structure from top to bottom. "What did this one tell you about what happened?"

"Your Rassilon," she answered darkly. "He's up to something here. None of what's happenin' here is an accident."

"How do you mean?" Leela asked curiously.

"The voices," she said with a light wince in one eye. "Over and over again, each one of them. It was Rassilon thanking the sons and daughters of time for their sacrifice." She walked a circle in the mud, taking her time to look over each one of the capsules within her sightline. "And not a willing sacrifice, let me tell you. Those Time Lords and Ladies, they were terrified."

"Sacrifice of what?" Leela queried.

"Their lives," she answered in an almost haunted tone of voice. "Every single one of their remaining regenerations taken from them." She covered her mouth with both hands and shuddered with remembrance of the horror she was shown, and of the pain and fear expressed by the ship. "The capsule couldn't fight against whatever force was pulling it down. Its pilot couldn't fight it, either. The crash …" She gulped. "It was enough to kill the pilot or at least put them into regeneration."

"And?" Braxiatel asked with a light croak in his tone. His mind, as vivid as it was on a normal day, couldn't quite bring itself to properly envision just what Rose had been shown.

She looked at him with an agonised expression and shook her head. "I – I can't," she answered him. "It's horrible."

"I understand, but..."

"There is no but," Leela huffed angrily. "Rose does not wish to look back and remember, and you will not force her to." She lifted a sharp finger and widened her eyes in warning when his chin dropped to part his lips and argue. "You will not argue with me, Braxiatel. Can you not see that she is distressed?"

"Well yes, I can."

"Then you will wait until she is ready to remember." She looked upward at a crackling sound of heat an energy above them. There was an orange pinprick in the sky over their heads that was expanding as they watched. "Braxiatel?" she queried with worry in her tone. "What is that?"

He and Rose lifted their heads to look upward and the both of them narrowed their eyes with question as they tried to figure out just what was twinkling in the sky. It's location certainly didn't indicate a distant sun having a particularly fat and fabulous day. There was a warning over the comms, but Braxiatel didn't need it as realisation quickly and horrifically dawned. He expelled one of his favourite Gallifreyan curse words and grabbed both Leela and Rose's hands. "We've got incoming!" he warned sharply to get them moving into a run beside him. "We've got to take cover. I don't know what the shockwave from an impact at that speed is going to be like."

His hands were still tightly around both Leela's and Rose's hands as he leapt them all over a tall boulder that sat at the edge of the graveyard. He only released their hands when they touched ground so that he could wrap them both in his arms to hold them tightly against the boulder and shield them with his body. At the sides of the ladies, the two wolves took up the protective shielding duty that Braxiatel couldn't reach.

Rose and Leela were completely shielded on one side by the thick fur and body of a Gallifreyan wolf, and on the other by a protective Gallifreyan man. There wasn't a single part of them exposed to the open air at all. Despite the whistling sounds of winds racing up along a fast tumbling ship, the crackling of flames, and the whining howling wheezing cry of the Relative Dimensional Stabilizer of the ship, both Rose and Leela felt incredibly safe and secure.

Braxiatel counted out along a quiet whisper against both their ears a quiet countdown to final impact. His grip around them tightened with each number, until with three, two, and one spoken with a hiss through his teeth as he prepared for impact. He pulled both their heads in against his chest and lifted his on his knees to ensure that they were protected from anything that the shockwave that raced across the top of the boulder could bring.

The rumble in the ground at his feet and knees, and the blast of superheated air over his shoulders drove him backward with its force. He growled in his fight against it, and at the started yelps of the girls that tore into his ears.

As quickly as it came on them, the din of the crash landing was over. The ground no longer shook, but the tall trees still swayed and rustled with the aftereffects of the shockwave. The crackle of fire and the final wheeze of the ship were all that remained, and slowly Braxiatel lifted high on his knees to look over the boulder. "Stay down," he ordered gently as he drew himself up to a stand. "Let me make sure it's safe…"

Rose was having none of being told to wait. "There's an injured Time Lord in there," she gasped out with a struggle underneath the rump of Soliarn. "We need to make sure he's okay!"

"There's no surviving that," Braxiatel said gravely. He flicked his fingers on the hand he still held low in invitation for the two women to rise up. "Not even the capsule could have survived that."

Rose and Leela drew themselves to their full height and gasped with horror at the new addition to the capsule graveyard. It must have been a proud machine when in flight, with a brilliant gold and silver hull not unlike Braxiatel's ship with recessed markings denoting the pilot a man or woman with high standing in society. But now, it was defeated and angled to one side, charred and dented with a large diagonal tear that ran the entire length of the doors from one corner to the other.

"Lady Trimmiadiammir," Braxiatel breathed out with low spoken shock and horror. "Not you, too."

"You know her?" Leela asked.

"She was one of my students at the Academy," he answered. "In Romana's graduating class. From one of the ruling houses on Gallifrey. A brilliant strategist, and a kind hearted woman."

The torn doors of the capsule burst open with a hiss of steam and a wheeze of struggling electronics. They watched as a round-headed python of brilliant light burst free of the capsule and howled across the air over their heads. One bubble with a howling face, and then another along the swirling amber limb. Another howling face within an amber bubble moved overhead.

"Are you seeing this?" Braxiatel asked the team waiting in the capsule moreso the ladies he stood with.

"That's what the capsule showed me," Rose said with a whimper. "Every remaining regeneration torn from the Time Lord's body. Every single one of the ships; the same thing."

"But where is it going?" Leela asked with eerie calm.

"Only one way to find out," Braxiatel answered her with a light wag in his brow. "Come on, you two. Let's follow it and find out."

He took off in the lead with both women running hot on his heels. The edges of the unintentional V-formation were completed by the two wolves, who bounded a tight zig-zag movement off rocks and fallen tree trucks. They rushed past howling and limping zombified Time Lords and Ladies without so much as a second glance. Their eyes were lifted high on the tail of the regenerative snake leading them toward what could only be something incredibly dangerous… Or completely heart wrenching and horrific.

Finally, they broke though a tree line and into a wide and obviously man-made alcove of cement and steel. Braxiatel held his arms out wide either side of him to stop Rose and Leela from running by him as he skidded along the grasses to a halt. He didn't want either of them toppling into the swirling tornado of horror that greeted them at the base of the small ledge that would take them to ground level.

Their faces, lit orange by the swirling amber tornado in front of them, lifted with a perfectly synchronized upward tilt of horror. Even with a full crane and extension of their necks, there was no end to the swirling column of light. Howling voices, and howling winds drowned out the sounds of anything else, and Rose found she had to yell if she wanted to be heard. She held back the whipping flip of her hair with one hand and caught Braxiatel's attention with the slap of the other against his arm.

"Brax!" she yelled out. "Brax, what is that?"

"That," he answered back with a yell of his own to be heard. Faces moved around the swirling funnel, each of them frozen in an agonised scream. "They…They're the unlived remaining regenerations of thousands of Time Lords and Ladies." His breath drew in hard and he winced as he fought off the mounting pressure inside his mind as each and every one of the regenerations within the funnel sought out a place inside his mind. "Thousands of them."

~~ooooOOOOooo~~