A/N: Thank you, thank you, thank you once again for the reviews! Please take this new chapter as an offering of thanks. If things are a bit confusing here, just hold on, because it should become clear soon. Nothing happens without a reason, right?

xxx xxx

The Doctor froze.

He could hear Rose up ahead, screaming. From less than a yard away, the creature snarled at him. Its huge mouth hung open, thick black tongue darting across the long rows of teeth.

Even hunched over, swaying like a pray mantis readying for the assault, the creature towered over him. It was close to eight foot high, and maybe ten foot in length, from foremost points of its protruding teeth, to the twitching end of its naked bone tail.

"You're an ugly damn thing, aren't you?" the Doctor said, under his breath.

The creature dropped to all fours, and roared. The cry started as an almost human scream, then the pitch lifted and became a shriek of grinding metal.

The Doctor stumbled back, hands clamped over his ears. The sound was agonizing, almost physical in its force, like sheets of steel scraping against each other.

"Doctor!"

Rose. She was alive, at least. The Doctor ground his teeth together and forced himself to open his eyes. Without his eyes and hands, he was useless to help anybody, Rose or himself.

"Hold on, Rose!" he shouted.

He scrambled back up the path, with the creature's scream still ringing in his ears. The track twisted sharply to the left, and suddenly the Doctor spotted Rose up ahead. She was sprinting, running for all she was worth, glancing over her shoulder every few yards.

There was nothing behind her.

In the sixty feet that separated Rose and the Doctor, there was nothing but empty snow. The fresh imprints of Rose's boots sunk deeply into the snow, occasionally breaking up the tracks they'd left earlier. Aside from that, there was nothing. No monster foot prints. Nothing.

"Rose, stop! They're not real!" the Doctor shouted.

He had stopped running again, and stood beside the jagged buttress of rock that forced the twist in the path. It wasn't until much, much later that he would realise his mistake.

Rose appeared not to hear him. She rounded the next bend in the path, and disappeared from view. The Doctor sighed.

There was something strange going on on Beta. He wasn't sure what it was, but definitely there were no mons-

A sudden freight train force at his back sent him stumbling. He regained his balance, dangerously close to the edge of the path. Below, black teeth of rock stuck out from the cliff face, eager to snare him if he fell.

His eyes closed against the vertigo, the Doctor reached out, searching for something, anything, to take hold of. His fingers sunk into something warm and soft, and he grabbed hold of it.

A second later, he was shoved roughly forward. He tripped, one knee hitting the fluted rock at the very exterior of the path. Feeling himself starting to slide, he clutched the object in his hand harder, hoping it would support him.

There was a bellow from behind him, and he was shoved again. This time however, the creature he had hold of, because as much as he wanted to deny it he knew that's what it was, went forwards with him.

They fell. The Doctor made one last desperate attempt to catch hold of something, but his hand only groped air. The creature, its free-falling bulk only inches above him, shrieked.

Together, they slammed into one of the jutting spires of rock. The rock jerked loose from the cliff face, and promptly snapped off and sent them tumbling again. Almost spitefully, the creature sunk its needle teeth into the Doctor's shoulder.

The fractured earth rushed towards them. The Doctor was too winded to scream.

A second later, man and beast hit the ground. The Doctor felt his ribs snap, crushed beneath his own weight. Long teeth of rock cut into his belly. He didn't feel the pain, just the darkness washing gently over him. One thought filled his head.

What about Rose?

xxx

"Oh, bloody hell!" Rose cried, dodging the creature's snapping jaws once again.

She was exhausted. Running through snow was hard work. Rose knew that if she slipped, she'd be done for.

These creatures were nothing like the Doctor, after all. They moved through the snow with practiced, if somewhat ungainly, ease. They also moved in total silence. It was only with her frequent glances back that Rose was able to predict when the one chasing her would lunge.

She ducked away again. There was still half a mile between her and the TARDIS, and Rose knew she wouldn't last that long. She would either slip, and be eaten by the creatures, or collapse from exhaustion. It was really just a matter of which came first.

Far behind her, she heard the Doctor. They're not real. Rose checked over her shoulder. The creature was still there, alternating between running on its hind legs and dipping down to all fours.

"Forget that!" she said. Hallucination or not, she wasn't about to stop and shake hands.

Rose took the next corner sharply. The creature was less than two feet behind her. Its cool, foul breath blew across her neck. She glanced behind her, saw it about to lunge-

-and salvation emerged. A network of small caves poke-marked the cliff face immediately ahead of her. The entrances were no more than a foot in diametre, and the lowest was six feet above the path.

Rose didn't care. She jumped up, grabbed a-hold of the lip of the nearest cave, and scrambled up the fragmented rock wall.

Below, the creature clamped its jaws shut on empty air. It skidded to a halt, head cocked to watch Rose, tail swaying steadily.

She gave it the finger, and pulled herself up into the cave. Inside, it was smooth, almost perfectly round, and less than eight foot deep. Rose made her way to the end, and pressed her back against the wall. Looking down the line of her body, she could see the cave entrance, almost entirely filled by the creature's head.

"Get out!" she shrieked, kicking at it.

She caught it hard on mouth. It snorted at her, and withdrew its head. A minute later, it appeared again. Rose sighed, and wormed herself into a more comfortable position.

She was sure it was only a matter of time before the Doctor rescued her.

xxx

This is about where we came in.

Rose's breath came in wheezing gasps, her head felt bloated, and oddly light. She felt weak, and couldn't go more than a few steps without breaking into a fit of rib-wracking coughs.

She didn't have the energy to look up, instead keeping her eyes on her feet, watching as they swung through the air and then crashed back to earth.

"Nearly there." she rasped.

Instantly, her words were lost to the wind. The wind. The wind screamed like a banshee in its kamikaze assault against the cliff face. It drove the snow down in battalions from the sky, tossed it up in swarms from the ground.

Rose's face stung from the biting ice. Her eyes seemed swollen. The snow no longer melted when it settled on her soaking clothes. It froze solid.

But the TARDIS. Wasn't it...surely it had to be close now. Rose tried to lift her head to check. Abruptly, an itch burned in her throat.

"Christ!" Rose gasped, dropping to the ground.

It felt as though all the air had been sucked from her lungs. She gaped, hands to her throat, cold forgotten. Her brain tingled and she coughed, choked, mouth slick with bile.

Flailing like a caught fish on the ground, Rose realised she couldn't breath. She was going to suffocate. Bright points of light burned into her vision.

And then, with the yawning gasp of a drowning man reaching the surface, Rose found she could breath again. She sucked the fiery kiss of oxygen like she could drink it. Deep breaths, she told herself, don't overdo it. The spots of light faded slowly.

"Christ." She sighed, flopping onto her back.

Not so high above her, tangled on the ragged mountain peaks, brown clouds broiled. Snow cascaded down, dancing in violent whirlpools of air current.

For long minutes, Rose watched the clouds, and the snow. She barely noticed the cold, or the that frost cloaked her in white. After a while, her spirits began to rise, and her stamina bubbled back.

She couldn't be far from the TARDIS, after all. She must have walked close to half a mile from the cave.

Rose sat up, keeping her head low. Visibility at ground level was poor. Banks of snow piled at the sides of the path, and the sleet made everything look static-y. On her hands and knees, Rose continued along the track. She mistrusted the air above her, enough to put up with limited visibility.

And, to her immense relief, she found could breath easily once more. Even the coughing fits had disappeared.

Rose had only crawled a few yards when she hit something.

"TARDIS!" she squealed, running her hands up the object.

With her hands at eye level, Rose frowned. She looked up. Three hundred feet above her head, lightning flashed against the mountain's daggered peak. She hadn't run into the TARDIS, after all.

Rose sat back, and looked around.

She was close to the alcove, all right. She was sitting in it.

The TARDIS was gone.

xxx

With one last solid shove, the Doctor pushed the carcass off his back.

The creature slid limply onto the ground. Death hadn't made it any prettier. The Doctor had ripped a considerable patch of its fleshy skin off, and now the creature appeared to be shrink wrapped, laminated.

"No hard feelings," he said cheerfully to the carcass, "You weren't to know my reputation."

He climbed to his feet, and brushed the dirt off his jacket. And nearly screamed.

"Oh, right." He hissed through clenched teeth, and glared at the dead creature, "One point to you, anyway."

Gently, he prodded his ribcage. It felt soft, and less resilient than usual. His suit front was torn in several places, and stained with blood. There was a shard of flint sticking out of the skin just above his naval.

He plucked it out, and tucked it into his jacket pocket. Something to show Rose later.

The Doctor glanced around the ravine. Sheer black walls of rock loomed to his left and right. Behind him, the mountain eased down in its gentle slope, eventually reaching the level of the ravine. Before him, the chasm continued weaving through the mountains, not once flanked by anything less than vertical cliffs.

"I'll just have to go around, then." The Doctor said to himself.

With a shrug, he turned around, and headed back towards the mountain slope. He was hardly hampered by the pain in his ribs, and not worried in the least.

After all, he'd found a banana in his jacket pocket.

Things were looking up.

xxx xxx xxx

Well, here we are again. Hours to write, minutes to read. Hope it was to standard!
Anyway, I've been racking my brains for the last week for a name for the creatures. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd love to hear them. Please! Oh yes, and Rose is suffocating on a rising layer of carbon monoxide. How? Well, if I told you, it wouldn't be a teaser. Not that it was a particularly good one, at any rate.