"No!" cried out the Doctor as he fought against the grip of the hands pulling him into the quicksand. "Kill me and you'll never gain my remaining regenerations!"
The cold chuckle of the Valeyard resounded around him. "But you've already signed them away."
"To J.J. Chambers, not to you," pointed out the Doctor.
"The sake of this charade, I am J.J. Chambers," derided the Valeyard. "I thought you understood. You are in a world entirely of my making!"
"Then I deny your world!" shouted the Doctor defiantly as he was pulled deeper and deeper into the sand.
Suddenly, another voice, a real voice, called out from one of the nearest dunes.
"Doctor! Hang on!"
Astonished, the Doctor turned his head to see a panicking Sabalom Glitz charging hastily down the dune towards him.
"Don't give in! I'm coming!" shouted Glitz as he hurried over. Reaching the edge of the quicksand, he grabbed hold of the Doctor's nearest outstretched hand and began to pull the Time Lord out, taking care not to get grabbed himself by the undead hands in the process. The hands had a strong grip, but with a tremendous heave, Glitz was able to pull the Doctor free of their grasp and out of the quicksand.
"Thank you, Glitz," breathed the Doctor, "though it would have been nice if you got here a bit sooner."
"Yeah, well when I went through after you, I found myself on the other side of that dune there," explained Glitz as he tried to brush some of the boggy sand off his hands. "Cor, I didn't realise illusions could be so messy."
But no sooner did he say this, than all the muck on his hands and the Doctor's clothes suddenly vanished, leaving no trace of the Doctor's quicksand ordeal.
"Eh? I don't get it. Where did all that mud go?" exclaimed Glitz.
"Oh, it was just another of the Valeyard's illusions," clarified the Doctor wearily. "Albeit a realistic and deadly one. Remember, we're not dealing with reality here."
As if on cue, the Valeyard suddenly appeared out of thin air, a few feet away from them, his robes fluttering in the howling wind.
"Why waste your breath on that simple minded oaf?" sneered the Valeyard, before he suddenly vanished again and just as quickly reappeared next to a startled Glitz. "You cannot speak as though reality is a one-dimensional concept."
Again, the Valeyard vanished, re-materialising right next to the Doctor, who looked quite unfazed by his opponent's vanishing trick.
"Fortunately, there is a reality that you and I can both agree on. The ultimate reality," continued the Valeyard.
"Death?" replied the Doctor calmly.
The Valeyard nodded. "'The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns.'"
"'Puzzles the will'. Hamlet, act three, scene one," added the Doctor, completing the quotation.
With a disdainful look, the Valeyard vanished again and reappeared on the other side of the Doctor. "I really must curb these urges. I've no wish to be contaminated by your whims and idiosyncrasies," the evil Time Lord muttered in annoyance.
"Quite so," said the Doctor. "But what I don't comprehend..."
But the Valeyard suddenly disappeared before he got a chance to complete his sentence.
"He's over here, Doc," said Glitz in amusement as he pointed to the Valeyard's new position. "Slippery customer, your other persona."
The Doctor turned again to face the Valeyard. "What I don't comprehend is why you want me dead. No. No, let me rephrase that. It would satisfy my curiosity to know why you should go to such extraordinary lengths to kill me."
"To ensure my survival," said the Valeyard simply.
For a moment, the Doctor looked puzzled by this, but then his face cleared as realisation sank in.
"Oh, of course. The Master suggested that you were or will be splintered away from me during my final regeneration. If that's true, then that means you have no regenerations of your own, do you? You have only one life remaining to you, so you need to take another Time Lord's regenerations for your own. And to ensure a successful transfer of regenerative energy, you need to siphon off that energy from a Time Lord whose genetic code matches your own. In simpler terms, you can only get it from me!"
"Exactly, Doctor," confirmed the Valeyard as he vanished again and kept appearing and re-appearing on various parts of the sand dunes around them. "How else can I obtain my freedom, operate as a complete entity, unfettered by your side of my existence? Only by ridding myself of you and your misplaced morality, your constant crusading, your..."
"Idiotic honesty?" suggested Glitz helpfully.
The Valeyard re-materialised next to the conman and shot him a contemptuous look. "Oaf! Microbe!"
Glitz gave a hurt expression. "Pardon me for trying to help. I'm neutral in this set-up, you know."
Ignoring the petty crook, the Valeyard turned to face the Doctor again. "Only by releasing myself from the misguided maxims that you nurture can I be free."
Glitz gulped as the Valeyard vanished again. "Sounds to me like Armageddon's beckoning you, Doc."
The Valeyard materialised again right behind the Doctor, a vicious expression plastered all over his face. "With you destroyed and no longer able to constrain me, and with unlimited access to the Matrix, there will be nothing beyond my reach."
With a final sneer, the Valeyard faded into thin air and this time, he did not re-appear, leaving behind an aura of doom about the surroundings...