Us
We have the Doctor now. He's ours. He sits with us now, in the very heart of our web, his brain intact but his mind so far astray, lost in the howling multiverse through which we flew to come here, or rather through which we were thrown, discarded by the Toymaker in a fit of tantrum which was quite unbecoming we thought, and didn't hesitate to tell him so. He didn't take it well, and would have broken us, but for our infallible instincts for life, or as close to life as ever we've been able to come.
Where once we were the playthings, the mere instruments of entertainment in the Toymaker's box, now it is we who play the games, and the universe, this paltry little corner of reality, our toy. But it is ever a large toy, and our presence here is feeble and weak, so asunder we have become from the forces of reality we know and trust, the laws of physics that we belong to. To enjoy ourselves we need a vessel, and what finer vessel could there ever be than a Time Lord, the last of so, the individual who prides himself on being the last of his race. Yes, prides. It saddens him so, his heart yearns for his people, yet still the shameful truth is there, his pride and bittersweet smugness, he, the last man standing, the sole survivor. It makes him feel important, as it should, for he doesn't yet know just how untrue it to be.
Gallifrey is lost, not gone, and he is no more a regular Time Lord than the founding fathers, Omega, Rassilon and the like. We've met with each of them, and spoken to them too, and discovered that probably we liked The Other the best of all. The Other, The Timeless Child, a creature of darkness and chaos, heartless and cruel, an intergalactic fiend who enforces the rules of the Time Lords upon those who neither asked for them, nor benefit under them...so callous was this individual, the Time Lords eventually revoked his licence to kill, stripping him of body and trapping his soul, to die, in the body of a fledgling Time Lord, a normal Gallifreyan whom was supposed to live and die as host of the Timeless Child, never knowing the foulness he housed.
But the Timeless Child just bounced back, and now that Time Lord lives as the Doctor, based on the original, a reincarnation of the darkest evil, turned almost good with grief, if good is the right word for him.
The Doctor is what came before, you see, or perhaps what came before somehow came from him. He visited the Toymaker twice you know, and perhaps in that first time, as a youngster, he developed something, a super Time-Lord based on himself, which bled through into reality and created the society into which he was born, the ultimate and beautiful paradox.
All we really know of him - or need to know, and have any interest in knowing - is that he suits our cause just fine.
His friends are coming now, and we welcome them with open arms. They can't kill us, and won't, though it's true to say that whatever walks the world, and can kill, is capable of being killed in turn. But humanity is no match for us, for we can bend their minds to our will like mere play dough in the hands of a toddler, toddlers like those which the Toymaker would take at will, feasting on the fear of those who remained behind.
So we thought. So we thought...once.
Could it be that we miscalculated, just somewhat? Perhaps it's fair, even true, to admit that letting the humans reenter Callow's Reach, let alone High Keep, was rather overplaying out hand? Blackburn and his men are gone, and their dispatch was each bit as easy as it ought to have been. Arthur Sinclair died too, for through our eyes he saw the death of his father, and the shock of it hath fried his brain on the spot. He lies dead, now, resting beside the Doctor in the folds of our silks.
But the pretty boy and the blonde, they fight on. We've yet to bring them to harm, try though we have, and now they run free through the bowels of our palace, searching desperately for both each other, and for us in turn.
Rose
With the footfalls of the Judoon heavy behind her, it was no small relief to round a corner straight into Jack Harkness himself.
"About turn!" he cried.
"Not a chance!" she exclaimed. "There's Judoon!"
"Ach," he grimaced. "And I'm being chased by Little Miss Znya herself."
Rose grabbed him by the arm and they cut off down a small passageway which was tucked snug between the grey walls, a portrait of some old white haired man on one side, and a figure rather akin to the Pied Piper on the other. It was especially gloomy down here on account of the lack of windows, and so narrow that they had to walk in single file. Rose chanced a look behind her and saw something following which was neither Znya nor Judoon. Rather, it was so many worms of blood-red, with poisonous white faces and venomous fangs, their eyes glowing red. They were sliding into the corridor right after Rose and Jack, slithering along the floor and walls, the ceiling too.
"Keep going!" she half-cried, pushing Jack in the small of his back to keep him at speed.
"D'you realise where we are?" he demanded, quickening into as close to a sprint as was possible in the confined space.
"Huh?"
"If I'm right, Rose," he drawled, "and I reckon I am, coz I know my way round spaceships pretty damned well...this sure looks like a ventilation shaft."
"What?" she spluttered, too flustered by the pursuing worms to think straight. "We're in a castle!"
"Are we?" he called back, "have we ever been?"
The walls were metal. The floors. The ceiling was metal too.
"Where are we?" she demanded.
"I dunno," he replied, "but vent shafts are sure a great way to get around, and I reckon whatever makes the corridors so damned hard to navigate ain't gonna work in here. We've gotta go up, Rose. Up."
"Up?"
"Up to the turret chamber. To the spider's lair. There we'll find the Doctor. Then we can end this."