Kingdom of the Blind: Finale.

As the ground heaved under their feet, Rose and Jack grabbed for each other, "How big is
this thing Doctor?" Rose shouted over the roar of the moving soil and rock.

"Oh, by now? Probably the size of Greater London." The Doctor shouted back. "No big
deal, she used to be a hundred times bigger."

"That's reassuring. Not." Rose shouted a reply as she lost her footing on a piece of ground
that was suddenly thrust into the air.

All around the intrepid travellers, the local residents, recently freed from their mind control
were terrified and scurrying for what cover remained within running distance. Screams of
panic rose and were joined by death screams as poor unfortunate members of the
populace came into contact with one of the talons of the Vampire Queen. Their life force
was drained from them almost instantly, their bodies turned to little more than a fleshy bag
of bones, their internal organs, drained of blood, became little more than empty sacks,
unable to continue the existance of the poor victims.

As suddenly as it had started, the upheaval stopped, but in the distance, the citadel that
had been built for the Queen, began to tremble, the foundations cracked, the walls turned to
rubble. A glistening form appeared, at first Rose thought it was black, as though coated in
oil, then the smell reached her nose, and she realised, it wasn't bathed in oil. The creature
didn't shimmer in the colour black. It undulated, red, rhythmic, pulsating. The Queen of the
Vampires was coated in blood.

"A Timelord?" The voice rang in Rose's mind. She hadn't heard the words, her ears would
attest to that, but the words just formed in her mind. "I had thought the last of your kind had
died long ago."

"Well, you can't believe everything you hear." The Doctor shouted back.

The creature laughed, not telepathically, an hideous gurgling laugh rang in the air. "That is
well and good Time Lord. I am truly glad that one of you survived. It shall give me the
pleasure of killing you myself." A claw lanced towards the Doctor, Rose screamed out a
warning, but the Doctor didn't move, he stood, and he waited until the claw was almost
upon him. Then the Vampire Queen screamed.

A putrid smell of burning flesh filled the air, Rose almost gagged, but she couldn't, her eyes
would not let her move. She was transfixed by the events unfolding before her. The claw
that had up to a moment ago, belonged to the Vampire Queen, now lay at the Doctor's feet,
unmoving, and remarkably, unnatatched to the Vampire Queen. The flailing tendril to which
it had been attatched sparked and crackled against a field of blue light.

"It's a faith shield." Rose uttered.

"Sure looks that way." Jack replied from a little way behind and below her. Rose turned,
Jack was lying prostrate on a small rocky outcrop about half a meter below Rose's stand
point. Rose lowered her hand to help Jack climb up to join her. Jack gratefully accepted
the offer. "Thanks." He uttered, as he dragged himself up to Rose's higher position.
"Holy..." Was all he could utter when he saw the full scope of the events, the size of the
creature the Doctor now faced, alone, the task seemed insurmountable, but somehow, he
knew the Doctor wouldn't be the one to back down.

"Well, Timelord. You have surprised me. That is rare these days. Perhaps I have been
hidden for too long, I was unprepared for a challenge. That period of uncertainty however,
is over. I shall kill you, then devour this world, and then find another, and another, and
without your thrice cursed race to stand against me, this Universe shall be my larder." The
creature laughed again. That hideous laugh that filled the air with the acrid stench of death
passing from what must at one time have been identifiable lips.

"No." The Doctor's reply was little more than a whisper, but somehow it echoed around the
ruins of the citadel.

"And you, I assume will be the one to prevent it? You? Alone?"

"Yes. I, but not alone, never alone!" Rose could feel the Doctor's smile, even with his back
to her, she knew he was smiling, that disarming smile, that made him look like a fool, but
hid such power, such intelligence and guile and power, and so much pain too.

"But you are alone, the last of the Timelord race. Your race, they died at your own hands
did they not? That is almost poetic to me, the Timelords, brought low by one of their own. If
Rassilon had only known."

Rose noticed the Queen's claws and tendrils stretching, feeling at the edge of the shield
that the Doctor had created, it was as though she was probing, trying to find a weakness to
exploit. Then it struck her. "Doctor, she's trying to.." Rose didn't manage to finish her
sentence, one of the Queens long taloned appendages lashed out, not at Rose, but at the
pillar of rock on which she stood. The impact made the unstable natural construct crumble.
Rose and Jack fell from their perch and tumbled headlong into the chasm that had opened
up during the initial tremors.

"Rose. Nooooo." The Doctor cried out. Reaching out with his hands, as though he could
reach over the distance to grab Rose before she fell. But almost as he turned around, she
vanished from sight.

"How many more must die for your mistakes Timelord? How many? Your entire race died
at your hands, and now, through your folly, your companions have joined them. Such a
waste, don't you think?"

Grief stricken, the Doctor turned back to face Ariella. Tears streaked his face. "You
monster. She did nothing to you."

"I know. But she was in my way. She is no longer. I am the wolf, you are the lamb, she,
your shepardess. The wolf will always win out. Life ends, but I am eternal, do you not
realise yet? I am my own alpha and omega. The Beginning of all things, and the end of all
things. Your time is over, you are mortal, I am not, my time has come again."

The Doctor still stared at the point where Rose and Jack had once stood, shaking slightly,
in anger, fear and grief. "You killed them both."

"No Doctor, you did. Just as you killed the Timelord race. I may have been the instrument
of their destruction, but you. You! Were the catalyst of their fate." The Queen goaded the
Doctor, all the while, probing the defences he had raised to deter and restrain her. "The
once mighty Timelord society, gone in an instant. I would have enjoyed seeing that, truly I
would, but I will live with the sorrow of missing that joyous day, for I shall have the pleasure
of destroying the last of the Timelords, the sole survivor, of the once proud, haughty race. I
will have the final victory over your accursed species, as you die, so shall my kind be
reborn." With that final declaration, the Queen's tendrils attacked the Doctor's mentally
generated shield as one, battering and squeezing the perimeter of the field. "Your faith is
failing you Timelord, soon your barrier shall fall, and you shall soon follow." The Queen's
maniacal and putrid laughter filled the air again. "The scent of your fear and despair is like
the sweet smell of rotting flesh."

"Yeuchhh. Somebody tell me she didn't just say that rotting flesh smelled sweet."

"Nope, I'm afraid she did."

"That's just gross, you know? More than a little sad too."

The Doctor's head spun to the source of the voices, he found Rose and Jack, standing on
another outcropping, further away from the Queen, seemingly a little bruised and battered,
but alive. The Queen screamed in pain as the field surrounding the Doctor regained it's
strength, redoubled it's strength, and continued to grow in power, and she found herself
unable to detatch from it.

"Faith survives Doctor. Hope survives." Rose shouted, "Oh, no wait, that's from Deep
Impact, sorry, I'll think of something profound in a minute OK?"

"You take all the time you need Rose Tyler." The Doctor laughed loud and deep. "She's
right your Majesty. Hope and faith do survive, because life will always find a way to survive,
and those two things are integral to all life. That is what I believe in, the power of life, to
overcome any obstacle, to beat the odds, to, well, just to live. That's why you can't stand
faith. It's the embodiment of life itself, the thing that defines all living things."

The Queen continued to scream as the clawed tendrils she had so tightly wrapped around
the Doctor's shield sizzled and burned, loosing a rank and putrid stench into the air. "Your
race, dies here Ariella. No more shall the Great Vampires plague this Galaxy. You will die
today, as you should have died all of those millenia ago."

"Faith alone cannot kill me Doctor." Ariella gasped, as all of her tendrils dropped from her
body. They detatched and sloughed from her body, like skin from a snake. "I do not need
my appendages to destroy you, I can simply drain the life from this entire world, yours
included, Goodbye Timelord." Ariella's form moved off somewhat from the Doctor, sliding
along the ground making a sickening squelching sound as she moved. All around her form,
what greenery remained turned brown, then black as every last drop of life was drained
from the soil, the plants, and any wildlife that had not been quick enough to escape the
immediate area. The field of Death grew by the second, as Ariella soaked up the life force
of the very world around her.

"You are of course right. Faith alone, cannot destroy you. But it did delay you. Just long
enough for my own plan to reach fruition. Even if you had managed to kill me, you yourself
would die. Right about now." The Doctor waited, his words hanging in the air. "I said, right
about now."

As if spurred on by the admonishing tone in the Doctor's voice, a shadow fell upon the
surrounding area, the Doctor smiled as he saw Ariella recoil from the thing that had cast
the shadow.

"You recognise it then?"

"A bowship? Where did you? How?" Ariella tried in vain to back even further away from
the approaching vessel, it was so vast, so immense, there was no possible escape from it.

"It's not a real Bowship of course. Rassilon had the fleet destroyed after we defeated you
in the last battle. But my Tardis has the full blueprints in it's database. The last timelord,
and the last Tardis, are about to put an end to the last of the Great Vampires."

The Tardis, in the form of a bow ship, turned and aimed at Ariella. If it were possible for the
immense creature to squirm in fear, that is what it would have been doing, instead, it
pulsed rapidly, it's skin undulating in near panic. "Fire." The Doctor's word, again, so
slight, like a whisper, but echoing like a bellow. The Tardis had received the order before
the Doctor's mouth had formed the word, and the giant bolt was let loose, flying straight and
true to the core of the Vampire Queen.

Later, when the Doctor asked Rose and Jack what they had seen in the following seconds,
their versions of events conflicted greatly, Rose saw flashes of light, Jack saw darkness
folding in upon itself. The Doctor knew that both versions were accurate, but he didn't know
why, or how.

Here's what really happened.

Ariella vanished, scant seconds before the bolt struck home. The bolt, itself, to Rose's
estimations at least, the size of the Eiffel tower, struck home into the soil that had once
been below the queen, it stood, quivering in the light wind, and then was gone.
Reabsorbed into the Tardis' material mass, the Doctor explained later. Nobody knew what
had happened, least of all the Doctor. But their confusion was brought to an end abruptly
by the sound from above. All eyes focussed on the bow ship, or at least, what had once
been a bowship. It folded in upon itself, creaking and groaning, and wheezing with the
sound of the Tardis dematerializing. The bowship was very soon replaced with the familiar
form of a Police Telephone Box, hanging in mid air, until it began to fall, at an uncotrolled
rate of speed. It crashed solidly to the ground a few hundred meters from the crew of time
travelers, but the shockwave knocked all but the Doctor off their feet. The Doctor himself
doubled over, as if taxed beyond anything he had known before. Rose leapt to be with him,
from one rocky outcrop to another, with no concern for her own safety, she jumped,
scrambled and climbed her way to the Doctor. Finally she rested her hand on his shoulder,
as though to lend strength to her dearest, most loved friend.

"The Tardis." The Doctor gasped, "She drained herself, she's got almost nothing left, her
power reserves, gone. Need to recharge... " The Doctor began to fall, but he was caught,
by the figure of Jack, who had obviously followed Rose, even though she had not heard his
approach.

Together, Jack and Rose carried the Doctor to the Tardis, all thoughts of the Vampire
Queen, had left them, their primary concern was the Doctor. As they reached the Tardis,
the Doctor suddenly seemed to gain strength from the vessel, as he touched the door, the
colour returned to his features.

"We need to recharge the Tardis. You liked our last trip to Cardiff didn't you Rose?" The
rift will be the perfect spot."

"Oh, I can get my passport at last, I'll call Mickey once we're on our way."

"Cardiff? Isn't that out in the sticks somewhere? I'd hate to have to stay there."

"Don't worry Jack, a day or two leeching energy from the rift, and the Tardis power cells will
be back at full charge, and we can be on our way. That is, if we have enough power left to
get us there at the moment." The Doctor smiled as he staggered his way around the
console, and the rotor began it's rhythmic movements.

Elsewhen.

"My lord. We have brought the intruder to you as requested."

The large figure turned and looked at the Captain of the guard, and the figure he had
dragged to the bridge of the ship. The Captain of the Guards slapped the woman once to
rouse her, she didn't move, he moved to slap her again, but a hand shot out and grabbed
him. "Do that again, and you'll be eating your arm like a popsicle." The blonde head of the
figure snapped up and her eyes took in the surroundings, "Now, I knew that I wouldn't end
up in Kansas, but this is ridiculous. Anybody wanna clue me in as to where I am? Oh, and
a little info about who you guys are would be nice."

The large figure, to whom the Guard had been reporting moved towards the woman, a
smile broke on his genial face. "You have spirit. I like that. You may go Captain." The
guard bowed slightly, his eyes never leaving the woman as he backed away.

"To answer your questions, in the order they were asked. You are aboard the flagship of
the Timelord fleet. I am Rassilon, First, and Current president of the Timelords. We are
about to go to war, with an enemy so immense, so evil, they cannot be allowed to survive."

"Timelord huh? I was just talking to one of your guys. Little guy, kinda smart mouth on him,
calls himself the Doctor. Ring any bells?"

"My people are numerous, it is possible one of them uses that nom de gurre."

"Ok, so we're on a warship? Who are you fighting?"

"The Great Vampires." Rassilon replied, almost spitting the words.

"Oh great. That figures."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you're not going to believe this, but my name is..."