Early update, since I won't be able to get wifi until Sunday. Enjoy!
The Daleks are coming. The star dragon rumbled. Its eye was large enough by far to hold the reflection of the TARDIS like a mirror. "What are Daleks?" Alex asked quietly. They sounded bad. And the Doctor looked- angry, maybe. Or scared. She didn't respond, too busy in a silent conversation with the star dragon.
If something scared a woman who talked to dragons and traveled through time, Alex didn't want to see it. He was about to ask the Doctor about it when the star dragon, which had somehow sensed his question, turned its crushing presence towards him. Small one, you bear the mark of our kind.
Alex thought back as hard as he could, There was one of you inside me. It hurt, but I don't think it meant to. It was just- so big.
Yes. I can hear you, the star dragon thought. A ripple that might have been a smile spread across its vast face, but quickly vanished as it continued. Daleks are the enemy of all life. Their only purpose is to kill, and they are coming here now.
That sounded- really. Incredibly. Bad. Especially since the star dragon that was in Alex had said something about the glowing things inside their chests, and the power to destroy a planet. "So- what are we going to do?" Natalie asked the Doctor, worried. Her hands crept up onto Alex's shoulders and squeezed.
"I don't know yet," the Doctor said quietly.
BEAUTY LIKE THE NIGHT
(by gakorogirl)
"All right then," the Doctor said. "Why isn't there ever, you know, a few days to save creation? Why is it always an hour, or twenty minutes, or thirty minutes?"
Can you do anything? The star dragon wanted to know. The blazing light radiating from its core dimmed slightly. The Doctor wondered if it was intentional or an unconscious reaction. "I'll think of something," she thought to it. "I promised." The star dragon broadcasted a general feeling of uncertainty. "And I am just that good."
I hope.
Appeased, the star dragon swam into the distance. As the light faded, the Doctor could see the glittering expanse of the night sky again. Running her hands through her hair- it was going to take a little while to get used to long hair again- she said, "The Daleks will be in spaceships- but the dragons won't have much energy to fight back, they've spent most of their energy on the shields that are gone now. Any ideas?"
"Is this what you do all the time?" Natalie asked, still staring at the stars outside the TARDIS door and holding tightly to Alex. "Travel around and protect things?"
"Pretty much." The Doctor answered. "I do other stuff sometimes- go visit places, see new things. You wouldn't think there'd be too many new things left in the universe, but I always manage to find something."
The Daleks are coming, Doctor.
"Okay, here's the plan. I'm going to try and stall the Daleks."
"And?" Natalie asked.
"That's the plan. I haven't finished yet. But it's going to be brilliant." Turning and broadcasting her thoughts towards the star dragon, she told it, "Tell them the Doctor is here."
Are you sure?
"Yes."
"There's a beeping thing," Alex said, looking at the TARDIS console. There was a small, flashing green light making a very persistent beep. The Doctor turned to the console with a few quick steps and flipped a switch. Immediately, the crackling voice of a Dalek filled the control room.
"GIVE IN, DOCTOR. THIS IS NOT YOUR FIGHT. THE STAR DRAGONS WILL BE EXTERMINATED." The metallic voice made Alex cringe and begin to raise his hands to his ears. "That was a Dalek?" he asked nervously. "Are they robots?"
"You'd better watch out, Dalek," the Doctor said. "As long as there's danger, as long as your kind is here, it is my fight. And I've already been told your plan- put the star cores into some kind of machine, fire it at anything in your way? Or maybe, a black hole, you'd just have to have a way to move it." Turning to Alex, she mumbled, "Sort of."
"THE DOCTOR WILL LEAVE," the Dalek screeched more aggressively. The invasion fleet has stopped, Doctor, one of the star dragons reported. They are waiting.
"The Doctor will not," she snapped. "And if you want to get those star cores you're going to have to go through me first."
"THE POWER OF THE DALEKS WILL NOT BE DENIED! THE STAR DRAGONS WILL BE EXTERMINATED! WE WILL CAPTURE THE STAR CORES!" Sighing, the Doctor leaned forwards. "If you're going to talk so much, why don't you tell me what you're planning to do with those cores? Black hole, or planetary death ray? Did I guess it?" Quietly, Natalie muttered, "This doesn't seem like much of a plan." She had backed as far away from the door as possible, attempting to pull Alex with her.
"THE DOCTOR IS WRONG!" the Dalek proclaimed triumphantly. "THE DOCTOR IS WRONG- THE DALEKS WILL NOT USE THE STAR CORES. WE WILL GIVE THEM TO ANOTHER POWER, ONE THAT HAS PROMISED US THE EXTERMINATION OF THE UNIVERSE!"
The dalek fleet is beginning to move again, the same star dragon warned. They will be here shortly.
"Okay, okay, I'm working on a plan. Get the whole dragon pod to circle around the TARDIS." The Doctor rubbed her forehead- it was easier to think to the star dragons than to other, less receptive lifeforms, but it was beginning to give her a headache.
Turning back to speak to the Dalek again, she asked, "What power? Surely not something stronger than the Daleks?"
"THE CAMAZOTZ IS MERELY A TOOL OF THE DALEKS. THE DALEKS ARE SUPREME!"
The Doctor snapped her fingers. "Camazotz, where have I heard that before? Camazotz, Camazotz. By the way, you are a stupid Dalek, aren't you? You just told me your entire plan."
"THE DOCTOR WILL BE EXTERMINATED!"
Alex was waving his hands in the corner of her eye. "What is it, Alex? And Dalek, just shut up for a minute?"
Alex said, "Camazotz is what the planet's called in A Wrinkle in Time. And then I looked it up, 'cause I thought I'd seen it mentioned somewhere else, too. It's a bat-god thing. From the Aztecs or something."
"That's not- ideal." A giant bat monster. That the Daleks were working for. Last time the Daleks had been controlled by something else-
"I have a plan. The plan is finished." The Doctor said, cutting off the communications with the Dalek fleet. Projecting her thoughts to the star dragon she had been conversing with earlier, she asked it, "How large are your largest dragons?"
Our oldest, the pod-mother, is twice the size of myself. At a guess, I would say that she is the size of the planet Earth, perhaps slightly larger.
"Right then, is she nearby?"
All of us have gathered around your time travel cube. Look outside and you will see us. Stepping around the TARDIS console, the Doctor glanced out the door. It looked as if the night sky were moving, seething with countless coils of dragon. Their cores were dim with fear, and from what she could see of their massive heads, streams of plasma were roiling across their indigo and black hides.
"Here's the plan- the lot of you can bend spacetime with your collective mass. I'm going to use the TARDIS to punch a hole into the vortex, and your mass will hold open the rift long enough to evacuate. I'll take you somewhere safe, and we'll do the same thing to get out of the vortex. The pod-mother needs to go last, to make sure the rift is warped open wide enough for everyone to get through." Her head was definitely buzzing now.
Out loud, she said, "Natalie, Alex, hang on to something. Actually no, Natalie, with your free hand can you grab that lever next to you? Good work, now just hold it still and when I say now pull down on it. All the way down."
Closing the TARDIS doors, the Doctor ran for the console and began frantically spinning wheels and tugging levers. She'd have to make a messy break if the dragons were going to be able to break through into the vortex.
Doctor, the Dalek Fleet is here.
"All right, all of you stick together," the Doctor thought back, dematerializing the TARDIS and launching it into the Time Vortex. Everything rattled, and Alex was thrown to the floor. Lunging across the shaking TARDIS, the Doctor grabbed him and set him back on his feet. "Hold onto that rail!" she shouted as she ran back to the console and began adjusting three levers at once.
We are in the vortex. The star dragon thought to her. I am not sure how much longer we can maintain interior stability in this environment.
"All right, just hang on!" the Doctor called. Spacetime coordinates were scrolling past next to her. "Natalie, pull the lever!"
"Got it!"
Behind the spinning TARDIS, thirty massive star dragons swam through the fabric of time, their sides heaving as they tried to maintain their cores in the unfamiliar environment. Are you ready, Doctor? The mouthpiece dragon asked.
"Here we go!"
The TARDIS punched a ragged hole into the stars, and the dragons followed, shouldering their massive heads and coils back into reality. The last star dragon, the pod mother, slithered through, and the rift slid shut.
Three years in the future, and several light-years away. Hopefully that would be enough to protect the star dragons from the Dalek fleet, since any longer would result in some of the pod being lost in the vortex.
"Everyone still there?" The Doctor thought as she punched the TARDIS back into material space. The mainframe shuddered and jolted, and the Doctor listened for the cloister bell. "No bell? Brilliant."
We are all alive, although shaken. When are we?
"Three years- oh wait, four, sorry- from when you left, and here we are in nebula NGC6886." the Doctor replied, adding to herself, "And I really am just that good."
Reengaging the slight extension of the oxygen bubble, the Doctor opened the door and looked out at the sky. "Alex, Natalie, come here. Look how amazing it is." The dragons were beginning to swim off into the sky, their star cores burning brilliantly. The sky itself was even more beautiful than it had been in the old pod territory- sparkling with young blue stars from the formation of the nebula.
"That's brilliant," Alex gasped. "But what happened to the Daleks?"
"They'll fly off somewhere else, I expect, and I'll have to go and stop them again. The real question is, what is the Camazotz?"
Doctor, said the star dragon. The Doctor had recognized that she had only communicated with two star dragons since arriving in the pod, and this was the first she had spoken to, as well as the one who had guided the others through the vortex. You have a new face, and it is a different one from those you have used before. But I knew you as soon as I felt your energy, as old as starlight, and twice as bright, and a thousand times as alone.
You are a starlight woman, child of Gallifrey. Thank you for your aid.
"It's what I do," the Doctor replied, smiling. She allowed Natalie and Alex a few more minutes to stare out at the shining expanse of stars before she snapped her fingers and the TARDIS doors swung shut.
"I expect I'll drop you off back home now," she said. "Natalie, Alex, a pleasure."
"I have to get back anyway, I'm making snacks for a party tomorrow," Natalie said with a note of uncertainty in her voice. Alex looked much less convinced. "Will you come by and visit?"
"Of course I will." smiled the Doctor. She dialed in the coordinates for the Timeuses' time, and raced around the console to stabilize the levers on the other side. "Alex, don't touch that door. You could be blinded by the power of the Time Vortex."
"Really? Why didn't it happen to the star dragons, then?"
"Because-" the Doctor said, flipping a series of switches on the side of the console, "They're used to the vastness of untempered space. Time isn't too much different- like how you couldn't look straight at their cores. I knew a human who was exposed for too long to the vortex and he died right afterwards." Alex stepped away quickly from the door.
"And we are here! Looks like it's just a few hours after you left, too."
"Be sure to visit!" Alex called as he and his mother left the TARDIS. "Maybe tomorrow?"
"Maybe," the Doctor said. "It might be a while longer, though, I'm not very good with time." It could be a long while longer. "I'll come as soon as I can, though."
So as you can hopefully tell (if I did my job as a writer properly,) the title of this week's episode is based off of the poem She Walks in Beauty. I sort of wanted to put in "-like the night" since, you know, like the night and the storm in the heart of the sun.
And also if I did my job right you are wondering about the Camazotz. Well, I was going to introduce the concept of what it is this episode, but it interfered with the starlight speech so you'll have to wait another week.
Yay! Now I only have two more episodes planned out so you'd better hurry up and review! ;)
thank you for reading!