It was late at night, but it still infuriated Donna and Rose that few people bothered to check who was screaming and those that did weren't willing to help. The women in strange makeup continued to drag them away from Caecilius's house and down streets they had not yet explored. Finally, they reached a temple where several more women wore the same makeup.
"You have got to be kidding me." Donna exclaimed as two more women grabbed hold of her and tied her to an altar in the center of the temple.
"Leave her alone!" Rose yelled. "Take me instead!"
"Are you crazy?" Donna yelled at her friend.
"Trust me Donna. It wouldn't be the first time something like this has happened to me, and I doubt it'll be the last."
Rose's pleas were ignored, and one of the priestesses stood over Donna with a knife.
"Leave her alone!" Rose yelled again, fighting against her captors' grips. More women came to her sides to hold her down, eventually managing to tie her a post. Rose could hear the Doctor's quiet footsteps just outside the temple. He paced a little, trying to figure out what was going on inside. She reached out telepathically, hoping she could show him what she was seeing even without touching him.
The woman holding a knife over Donna's throat spoke up, "The unbelievers will surrender both their blood and her breath."
"I'll surrender you in a minute. Don't you dare." Donna bit back at her, pulling against her restraints.
"You will be silent." The priestess ordered.
"Listen, sister, you might have eyes on the back of your hands, but you'll have eyes in the back of your head by the time I've finished with you. Let me go!" Donna yelled.
The Doctor grabbed Rose's wrists from behind the curtain next to her. She forced herself not to smile. She felt the bands on her hands loosen, and the Doctor's whisper of "Stay" reached her in time.
"This prattling voice will cease forever." The priestess raised the knife.
"Oh, that'll be the day." The Doctor walked into the room casually before the woman could thrust down the knife. Rose chuckled but also rolled her eyes, and the Doctor looked over at her with all the brightness of the sun.
"No man is allowed to enter the Temple of Sibyl." She sneered.
"Well, that's all right." He shrugged his shoulders. "Just us girls. Do you know, I met the Sibyl once. Yeah, hell of a woman. Blimey, she could dance the Tarantella. Nice teeth. Truth be told, I think she had a bit of a thing for me. I said it would never last." He looked apologetically at Rose, and she raised an eyebrow at him, disapprovingly. "She said, I know. Well, she would. You alright there?" He faced Donna while still meandering around the temple.
"Oh, never better." Donna stared up at him now that he had reached the head of the altar.
He pulled out his sonic screwdriver, "I like the toga."
"Thank you. And the ropes?"
"Yeah, not so much." He used the sonic to free her from the restraints.
"What magic is this?" The priestess looked Donna up and down as she sat up.
The Doctor leaned up against the altar as Donna moved farther from it, and he addressed all the priestesses, looking each of them in the eyes, "Let me tell you about the Sibyl, the founder of this religion. She would be ashamed of you. All her wisdom and insight turned sour. Is that how you spread the word, hey? On the blade of a knife?"
"Yes, a knife that now welcomes you." The priestess raised the knife to him but stopped as another voice came from behind a curtain in the back of the temple.
"Show me this man." The voice was weak but commanding. All of the priestesses, except the one with the knife, knelt.
"High Priestess, the stranger would defile us." The knife wielder argued.
"Let me see. This one is different. He carries starlight in his wake."
The Doctor nodded and turned to the voice, "Oh, very perceptive. Where do these words of wisdom come from?"
"The gods whisper to me."
"They've done far more than that. Might I beg audience? Look upon the High Priestess?" His request was granted as two of the priestesses pulled back the curtains revealing the High Priestess. Her entire body was stone.
"Oh, my God. What's happened to you?" Donna placed a hand over her mouth.
"The heavens have blessed me."
"If I might?" The Doctor approached her carefully, holding out a hand to her. His other hand made a "come here" gesture behind his back, and Rose quietly came to stand beside Donna, just a couple steps behind the Doctor. The High Priestess held her hand out to him and allowed him to inspect her stone skin. "Does it hurt?"
"It is necessary."
"Who told you that?" Rose asked gently.
"The voices." She answered quickly.
Donna asked desperately, panicking, "Is that what's going to happen to Evelina? Is this what's going to happen to all of you?"
The woman who had tried to sacrifice her approached her again, revealing a stone wrist. "The blessings are manifold." Her voice was even, bearing no fear or regret, only reverence. Rose had to admire her commitment, even if they were a little crazy.
"They're stone." Donna directed her focus back to the Doctor. Rose looked to each of the lower priestesses who now showed her similar patches of stone where there should be skin.
The Doctor stood and walked back to Donna and Rose. "Exactly. The people of Pompeii are turning to stone before the volcano erupts. But why?"
The High Priestess addresses him again. "This word, this image in your mind. This volcano. What is that?"
The Doctor faced her again, and his voice rose with every word, "More to the point, why don't you know about it? Who are you?"
"High Priestess of the Sibylline." She answered.
"No, no, no, no. I'm talking to the creature inside you. The thing that's seeding itself into a human body, in the dust, in the lungs, taking over the flesh and turning it into, what?" His face turned into a scowl, daring the creature to fight.
"Your knowledge is impossible." The High Priestess answered.
The Doctor shook his head and the crease between his eyebrows faded, offering a more peaceful challenge to the creature inside her. "Oh, but you can read my mind. You know it's not. I demand you tell me who you are."
(The High Priestess speaks with two voices, her own and one deeper, which takes over.)
When the High Priestess spoke again, it was with two voices: her own and one deeper than she should have been capable of, "We are awakening."
"The voice of the gods." The other priestess spoke.
The rest of the priestesses chanted, "Words of wisdom, words of power. Words of wisdom, words of power. Words of wisdom…"
"Name yourself. Planet of origin. Galactic coordinates. Species designation according to the universal ratification of the Shadow Proclamation." The Doctor ordered forcefully, and Rose stood beside him and took his hand.
"We are rising."
"Tell me your name!" His anger rose.
"Pyrovile." The deeper, echo-y, voice yelled. The High Priestess stood.
"Pyrovile. Pyrovile. Pyrovile." The sisters chanted as they rocked on their knees.
"What's a Pyrovile?" Donna stood on the Doctor's other side.
"Well, that's a Pyrovile, growing inside her. She's a halfway stage." He spoke out of the corner of his mouth not looking away from the High Priestess. Rose's grip on his hand tightened.
"The thing at the villa," Rose winced. "Is that what she'll become?"
"That was an adult Pyrovile." The Doctor half answered.
"And the breath of a Pyrovile will incinerate you, Doctor." The High Priestess approached them threateningly.
The Doctor removed a yellow, plastic water pistol from his coat pocket, and Rose clenched her jaw in a desperate attempt not to laugh at the threat. "I warn you, I'm armed." He gestured toward the hypocaust with his head, "Get that grill open."
"What for?" Donna asked as she and Rose moved toward it.
"Just." He sighed heavily. "What are the Pyrovile doing here?"
"We fell from the heavens. We fell so far and so fast, we were rendered into dust."
"Right, creatures of stone shattered on impact. When was that, seventeen years ago?"
"We have slept beneath for thousands of years." The creature answered.
The Doctor nodded more to himself than to the Pyrovile, "Okay, so seventeen years ago woke you up, and now you're using human bodies to reconstitute yourselves. But why the psychic powers?"
"We opened their minds and found such gifts." The creature opened its arms wide.
He tilted his head back and forth, annoyed with the unspecific answers, "Okay, that's fine, so you force yourself inside a human brain, use the latent psychic talent to bond. I get that, I get that, yeah. But seeing the future? That is way beyond psychic. You can see through time. Where does the gift of prophecy come from?"
"Got it." Donna called to him as she and Rose lifted the grate off of the hypocaust.
"Now get down." He ordered.
"What, down there?" Donna knit her eyebrows together and looked down inside.
"Yes, down there. Why can't this lot predict a volcano? Why is it being hidden?" He looked back and forth between his companions and the Pyrovile.
The priestess with the knife threw back her head, "Sisters, I see into his mind. The weapon is harmless."
Rose helped Donna into the hypocaust.
"Yeah, but it's got to sting." The squirted water at the High Priestess, and she screamed in pain. "Get down, Rose!" He ran towards her, and when she saw him finally coming, she slipped down.