Turlough knew things were bad. He didn't know they were cave-bad, though.
There was fire, fire everywhere. It licked up the sides of the cavern in intricate rills and twisting loops, fierce-red living ivy that sizzled along the fractures and seams in the rock, the orange and burgundy tongues lashing out at the deep shadows that clustered around the stalactites and towering crags.
The cave smoldered with stench of sulfur and smelt of the grave. Turlough had to blink constantly just to keep the soot out of his eyes and it was making it difficult to recite the chant properly. He wasn't sure his pronunciation mattered, not with the hundreds of them in the cavern, muttering over and over again words from worlds that were long since lost to the creatures of this universe, words that called upon life from the very dawn of time…
The robe itched horribly too.
At least there were no choreography for him to perform. He dreaded dancing. There was just endless chanting.
His knees were killing him. The floor was rough-hewn oolitic limestone, sand-paper rough and chafing against his damp skin.
God had saved him, yanked him out of the Observation TARDIS with a force field through an exterior portal and propelled him across galaxies, dodging out of the way as Gallifrey and the assembled fleet was swatted out of existence.
Turlough hadn't even had time to blink; it was over that quickly.
Drawn through space by an invisible force, watching the stars fly past him, Turlough hoped for a moment that God was taking him to the Worldsphere, the mythical home of the uber-sentient computer and the celestial object that housed a trillion People on a world that wrapped round a sun like a fist.
Instead, they'd looped, a parabolic curve, back towards the emptiness that was the Timelord home world, to a distant rock on a nearby solar system that had escaped the casual destruction.
And into this cave.
God had shown him the Worldshpere, in response to his questioning, projecting the image upon a flat force-holo screen in the back of the cave. The massive world was under bombardment, raked by silver talons that tore through space and burrowed into its surface. Gossamer slivers of metal rained down upon the world, twisting with malevolence, as the Cyberhorde descended upon the surface, the vicious metallic worms biting their way towards the juicy center. Where God lived. Where all the People lived.
"We've held them, until now," God had said. "But the crust is only so thick; even my shields cannot contain the entire Sphere…." The yellow globe/avatar had sounded tired as it spoke, bobbing sullenly before the screen.
Turlough knew that it was hopeless. Though the Cyberhorde was infesting the universe, a system at a time; but the Darkness swallowed whole quadrants in a gulp. The last stand before Gallifrey had been defiant. Cinematic. Daring. But futile.
And they'd all known it. But they'd stood together anyway, for lack of anything better to do.
They wouldn't just lie down and die.
Turlough would, if they'd let him, but he'd been shoved into a robe and forced to kneel, for hours now, chanting among these harpies, anxiously expecting the fire to drip down from the roof and incinerate him.
He'd give anything for a pillow and, perhaps, even one of those wretched dinners from the TARDIS food machine, or even, Trion help him, school…
Turlough caught himself nodding off, and raised his head at the dramatic change in the cavern. He stared at the dais that loomed above all of them, carved out of obsidian and quartz, glinting in the dancing firelight. Even as the chanting began to increase in complexity and volume, Turlough saw there was something forming in the air, hovering above the polished rock, stirring and twisting into creation.
His tongue was thick and dry in his mouth, and he fumbled over the alien consonants, his mutterings lost in the echoing crescendo of the Sisterhood. He gave up and bobbed his chin soundlessly, staring at the dais as the language of the HomeWorlders carved a hole in time and space, forcing into being their saviour, the only hope in the universe as was foretold by the Harmony of Karn.
The figure solidified before them, small, wrinkled and insignificant upon the grand igneous pedestal.
Turlough gaped.