DOCTOR WHO:
A GOOD AND BEUITFUL FAIRY
"Ms. Brown, now is not the time for your wits to be anywhere else, run" The Doctor ordered as he and his companion Perugilliam raced through the tartar mines of Monslav, a world plagued by warrior rats of royal blood, with a love of a good hunt in their veins.
Their victims, the other creatures that dared to intrude on their premises, the owls and the otters could only ever squawk, sing, and scream.
The Doctor and Peri had come to explore, but as with all journeys, they would learn a lesson on the way to and from the place they called home, their faithful TARDIS.
That lesson had legs, that lesson had fire, an all consuming passion for the hunt, and this lesson had cornered them.
It could be easily assumed the travellers had an advantage in the reality their pursuers were merely the actual size of commonplace rodents, but on their backs they carried plagues unknown to earthly or even heavenly forms of science, and their fangs were tipped with poisons that would tip over the tallest of mammal.
The Doctor and Peri slowly backed up against a mound of orange-soaked grime, the way out in sight, a large luminous cavern entrance that led to the outside, and to freedom, but they would have to move quickly.
Each slight step they took to the right or left, the warrior rodent would dart to either side, cornering them, playing with its prey, taking advantage of its lead in the hunt by tempting the advance away from itself, knowing his brethren would be upon him and the target in a matter of minutes.
Exhausted, Peri grabbed a shoe from her foot and raised it high above her head.
"Whatever are you doing Peri?"
"Keeping my wits about me, like you said"
"Peri, if you should happen to miss, I assure you the tip of that creature's fangs will strike with the swiftness of a rattlesnake, you won't stand a chance against the toxins they possess"
"I've got to take the chance Doctor"
The rodent stood up on its two legs, poised to strike, when suddenly it twitched it's head ever so slightly, as if his ears had just picked up something most extraordinary.
It was also transfixed somewhat, by the extravagant beauty of its female quarry. In all their time spent on a hunt, his kind had never stopped to properly inspect the aspect of their prey; all that mattered was the raw consumption.
It was doing something else too, something that no other manner of creature could do under their own power, except to squeak, and squawk, and scream.
"You...speak English?" the rodent asked, seemingly surprised.
Peri struck hard, struck deep, the tip of the shoe met the edge of the rat's forehead, where the brain was situated, and soundly pierced it.
The rodent dropped dead, Peri recoiled in horror, not at what it had said in the moments before it's murder, but at the stark reality that she proceeded to batter it's body a total of three more times, almost on pure instinct.
"It asked me if we spoke a language it could understand" Peri said, close to tears, her lip quivering.
"It sought to communicate at a most inopportune time, after it had charged us all with the currency of fear; you repaid it in kind with violence. Why must we always be that way? Why must the bloodlust come before the thirst for knowledge?" The Doctor asked himself.
"Maybe you were right about me when you came out of that regeneration the way you were...maybe I am an evil spirit"
The Doctor could not even take offence at the accusation; his instincts on human nature were often well founded. Even when confounded by the bleakness of misinterpretation.
"Ms. Brown, all sentient life carries with it a dark chalice, every now and again, we take a sip from it, it doesn't mean the lighter taste of all that is holy in the grail is out of reach either"
They took another look at the blood-soaked remains of the warrior rat, the king of this particular hunt, heard the rattling screeches of the remaining party echo across the caverns louder and louder, and hastily made their way to the luminous exit.
"Come along Peri, to the TARDIS, let the rats hide in their hole, forever denied the chance to step out of both the hunt and the dark. To the TARDIS and to a lifetime of second chances"