It's been a while, hasn't it? Sorry for the delay; had a ton of trouble getting the ball rolling with this one. I'll try to be better in the future, but no promises.
"Doctor!"
She'd produced the same shout far too many times in her life. Most of the time, even when she'd thought he wasn't there, he came. He answered. He was right in front of her, and he wasn't answering now.
She was itching to run to him, but held back, for a few reasons. The most obvious was the unevenness of the cave floor. Moving around down here was dangerous, and even though the advantage of sight had been returned to her, she'd have to think carefully before doing anything and move with deliberation. But not only that—when she gave herself two seconds to think about it… the Doctor had known the risks before he'd come down here. He'd done it anyway, and invited a whole slew of people to follow. Whatever had led him to this particular situation, he'd done it of his own accord. There was no signs of struggle; the two layers he'd discarded were placed carefully and deliberately on the ground. This was all part of the plan.
Of course Donna would have loved to get the details of that plan ahead of time, but even the Doctor himself was not accustomed to such a luxury.
Tentatively, she took one step forward, testing the ground beneath her before putting her full weight down. She stood there for several seconds, afraid to move, listening for any noise apart from the labored breathing of her Upper Cirulian companions. But the lizards surrounding them like dedicated sentinels never made a sound.
After a second careful step, though, a sound did come to her, but it wasn't from above. She looked up sharply.
The Doctor was stumbling—a marked improvement from his former complete stillness. His trainers squeaked softly against the stone, and after he found his footing, he looked up, and quickly his eyes locked on her. "Donna!" he cried, a smile spreading over his face.
"Doctor," she exclaimed, and took an unthinking step forward which led to her almost falling on her head. Fortunately she managed to right herself, and by the time she looked up again the Doctor had nearly closed the distance between them.
She started forward as well, and once he was close enough she grabbed him and pulled him into a hug. "You utter madman," she said into his shoulder, "do not ever do that to me again."
"Oh, but where's the fun in that?" he responded, and after allowing the embrace a decent amount of time he pulled away and held her at arm's length, looking behind her. "Donna, you brought down more of them than I dared to hope!"
Her focus was suddenly drawn back to his arms, and she was able to see those dark things up close now… They were, of course, exactly what she'd already known them to be, but that didn't make them any less disgusting now. They were all pulsating slightly as they… fed? No, they couldn't be feeding, that made no sense… The Doctor'd said that only one needed to collect senses, and why would he let them on him to do so willingly?
"And, ah… while I was doing that, what've you been doing?" she asked, nervous.
"Very good question. I," and he sidestepped so as to fully enter the view of the frightened Cirulians, who appeared to have started crowding back, though none seemed to have actually turned around and departed, "have been discussing things with the gatherers."
"What kind of things?" Donna asked, brows knit together.
"Mainly how best to demonstrate their good intentions to their aboveground neighbors," the Doctor replied candidly. "When they brought me down here, I invited all gatherers present to come communicate with me. They could, and still can, sap my senses at any point." He threw his arms wide. "But have they?"
The Upper Cirulians blinked at him. He waited. Donna saw where this was going.
"No," she said, suppressing a good-natured sigh at his need for theatricality.
The Doctor grinned. "Indeed not, Donna. Proving that I can trust them. Let me tell you, I am in an extremely vulnerable state right now." He held up his forearms. "At any moment I could be rendered completely helpless, unable to take in the world around me in any capacity. The potential is there, but my senses are intact. What does this mean?"
Several seconds of silence passed, wherein Donna very suddenly noticed a bead of sweat escape the Doctor's hairline and begin to travel down the side of his face. His fists were clenched, and the forearms he was displaying so prominently were trembling slightly. The Doctor was not quite as comfortable with this vulnerability as he probably appeared from a few yards away, as the Upper Cirulians currently stood. She dearly hoped it was merely a survival instinct he couldn't fight, rather than anything based in logic.
Finally, "They're intelligent," came a soft voice from the middle of the crowd. Donna raised an eyebrow. He'd actually gotten a response out of them.
"Exactly," he cried. "There, already you've learned more about these creatures than you ever did in the years you've lived as a part of your terrified community. Now, these things on my arms are all the sense-gatherers of the colony you see around you. These creatures," and he waved a parasite-covered arm in a gesture that encompassed the lizard-covered walls of the cavern, "are the most abundant members of the colony. Most of them have the job of gathering food—all members of the colony are omnivores, if you were curious, and eat a lot of fungi and cave fish—and a smaller portion, about twenty percent, are guards. And what are they guards of?"
He took off again across the cave floor, and Donna was left wondering how he could possibly be moving so fast without tripping. Either Time Lords were even nimbler than she'd previously believed, or the things on his arms—and ankle, she suddenly remembered—were helping him out. Somehow.
He skidded to a halt at one of the darker corners of the cave, and knelt down, his back to his audience. Donna was puzzled when he didn't rise again immediately, or move, or make a sound. His head was down, and she could see the concentration in his tense shoulders.
"What's he doing?" whispered one of the Cirulians behind her.
"I think… he's talking to them," she responded, realizing it the same moment the words left her mouth.
It was at least a full sixty seconds before he stood up again, and Donna breathed out a silent sigh of relief. She wasn't sure she'd be able to take many more instances of being afraid he'd gone unresponsive again; if she kept reacting with this level of fear, her heart might actually give out before they got off this bloody planet.
Behind the Doctor, splitting into two lines that curved around either side of him, emerged a great number of the same type of creatures that were still staring down the visitors from aboveground. The large grey lizards just kept coming, gathering in an unorganized mass on all sides of the Doctor. When they stopped, their numbers had reached at least two dozen.
And after a long pause, there was yet more movement behind him. Donna craned her neck, expecting more lizards, but no—whatever was coming was bigger.
Soon began to emerge vaguely humanoid creatures, maybe three feet tall—about the size of human children. They were, however, riding on the backs of more of the lizards, flopping about rather uselessly on top of them. Their skin was pale grey, and stretched snugly over their disproportionately large heads. Their eyes were clearly enormous, but currently hidden under their lids. Their hands each bore six long, slender fingers, and Donna glimpsed a thin tail on each of them.
Their steeds didn't come very far from the cave walls, but they put a decent amount of space between themselves and the Doctor. There were five of them in total.
The Doctor displayed his forearms yet again, mouth curving slightly upwards in a dry smile. "I can feel them tensing," he said. "They're prepared. If I make a single threatening move, I will never see or feel or hear again." He gestured widely to the lizards surrounding him and the newcomers. "And I'm certain that, that failing, these beauties—the guards, if you didn't guess—will not hesitate to rip me to shreds."
Donna stared at the creatures hanging from the cave wall not one metre above his head. Their teeth were bared, sharp and yellow and huge. Her heart skipped a few beats.
"There's a reason they protect these creatures so viciously," the Doctor continued, gesturing slowly and nonthreateningly downward towards the child-sized ones. Donna recalled his explanation to Ilseg before—Ilseg. She wondered what he was doing at the moment, whether he knew that so many of his people had come down here. He probably wasn't very happy.
"They are the dreamers, the thinkers, the workers. They're smart, maybe even smarter than you." The Doctor was staring down at them, obviously in awe himself. "What's the only prerogative of most species you've seen? Survival. Nothing more. Right?"
The Upper Cirulians were silent. Donna snuck a glance back at them, and saw a wide variety of emotions—wonder, fear, nervousness, disgust, curiosity.
"Well, these creatures are significantly more complex than that. They see the world as more than a collection of tools and circumstances they can use to get through another day—it's more like a canvas. They're artists, craftsmen, call them what you will—but they need to add to the world like they need to eat and drink. It's their function—it's what keeps them going.
"And that, regrettably," he continued, finally looking up at the group behind Donna, the ones he'd been addressing this whole time, "is where you come in. The gatherers" —and he held up his arms once more— "are sent out to patrol the caves for new senses when it becomes known that the next generation of workers is coming. They are born with only one, one that you yourselves have not. The gatherers must supply them with five more before they can adequately take in the world. Sometimes the search takes years. But when the workers are finally gifted with the ability to see, to hear, to feel… they can use those dreams they've been saving up since they were old enough to think, and start building.
"So you see, these creatures," and he hadn't actually lowered his arms since the last time he'd displayed them, but now he held them up even higher, "these lauep, that you've been so afraid of for so long—they're only the tip of the iceberg. I know they have hurt you, but there's so much more to them than you realize…"
Donna's attention, along with that of most of the Upper Cirulians listening with her, was abruptly snapped away from the Doctor's words as a sudden din rose not far into the tunnel behind them. Shouts, and the sound of many heavy footfalls, and the clack of metal against stone.
She whipped around. The Doctor seemed to have just realized that something was wrong. She called, "Doctor," more out of instinct than anything else. There was a question in the word. Worry. Camaraderie. A shared understanding.
His arms came quickly down, and the huge lizards surrounding him immediately took a warning step in his direction, but they were obviously aware that their greater concern lay across the cavern from them. The few riders among them, however, did not appear particularly concerned.
Donna turned back to see the crowd of Cirulians parting like the Red Sea to let in the new arrivals—a group with no visible end, all wielding weapons, the most common seeming to be one that resembled a primitive sword with a wicked barb at the end of its long hilt.
However, it was also noteworthy that many of them came in moaning, holding their heads, even falling and dropping their weapons. Their eyes seemed unfocused. Their words were incoherent. And their steps appeared unguided by any sensory input. They were soldiers entering war blind—blind and worse. And at their forefront, carrying two extra daggers strapped to his belt, Donna recognized Ilseg.
He was moaning and groaning just as much as the rest of them, clutching his head tightly between his hands, eyes screwed shut. Even after he fell, practically at her feet, his feet worked furiously to move him forward, as if they weren't aware they were not in an opportune position to walk.
Donna stared down at him, just one among the throbbing mass of confused Cirulians, and felt something growing in her mind that she did not want.
The last thing that reached her ears before they were filled with so many sounds she felt her head might split from the cacophony was the Doctor screaming.