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The Perils of Lorindar

"Omega?" Danielle and I repeated simultaneously, looking at the Doctor in confusion.

"Time to explain that later," the Doctor said, his gaze still fixed on the creature even as he spoke. "Right now, I suggest a tactical withdrawal; we can discuss my history with this thing-"

Further explanation on the Doctor's part was cut short as the creature's orange claw glowed briefly and then something burst from the claw to strike the ground near us, causing an explosion that sent the horses reeling in panic. As the carriage was sent rolling backwards, I grabbed onto the nearest edge to try and steady myself, the Doctor getting to his feet with hands on either side of the carriage while Danielle seemed to concentrate for a moment. Before I had time to ask what we were going to do next, the horses spun around and ran as fast as they could away from the creature.

Looking back through the rear window, I saw that the guard-thing was following us, but it was moving at a slow rate, its bulky body only able to walk by shifting its lower parts in a manner that vaguely resembled feet. I almost relaxed- something moving at that pace couldn't be much of a threat- but then another blast struck the side of our carriage and the sudden shift as the cart fell made it clear that a wheel had been damaged. The Doctor grabbed me before I could fall out, and Danielle clearly had enough practise to retain her balance, but I was already fairly sure that we wouldn't be going any further in this cart without a new wheel.

As the three of us scrambled to get out of the cart, I saw Snow and Talia getting out of their cart and moving into position to try and confront the creature, their horses whinnying anxiously but otherwise apparently willing to stay put. As Talia assumed a combat stance, Snow muttered some words that I couldn't hear from my position, and suddenly the creature was surrounded by small things that gleamed in the sunlight and seemed to have flown away from Snow's neck. I only realised that they must be the mirrors that she had been wearing on her necklace when the mirrors created what I could only think of as a cage of light, which briefly surrounded the creature before emitting a brilliant glow that forced me to close my eyes against its brilliance.

When I felt the light in front of me fade, I opened my eyes once again, but wasn't entirely surprised to find that the creature was still there as well as our allies; things were rarely that simple when I was with the Doctor. Talia hurled a knife at the creature, but it just deflected the blade with its claw- it might walk slowly, but that claw was very quick- before it turned to 'face' Talia directly, the claw charging up once more before Danielle leapt forward, drawing the glass sword she'd been carrying since I first saw her as she lashed out.

As Danielle struck the creature with her glass sword, I wasn't sure if I should stare in shock or wince in sympathetic agony as the blade neatly sliced the creature before us in half, the top half coming apart like it was some kind of rotten vegetable. The creature let out a kind of warbling sound like nothing I had ever heard before- it didn't sound unpleasant; it was just weird- before both halves vanished, leaving only blackened grass that looked like something had been set on fire and burnt itself to nothing.

"Well," the Doctor said, breaking the stunned silence that had settled over us. "That was… efficient."

"Efficient?" Snow repeated, looking at Danielle's sword with a new sense of respect. "Try amazing; I never knew the sword could do that."

"Impressive bit of work, to say the least," the Doctor said, smiling as he looked at the blade in Danielle's hands before looking inquiringly at Danielle herself. "Is there anything it won't cut?"

"Me," Danielle replied, looking at the sword with an affectionate smile. "This was my mother's last gift to me, presented when I was under attack by a demon; it broke in half once when… an enemy… tried to use it against me, but otherwise we've yet to find anything that it can't penetrate."

"Really?" I said, looking at the sword with renewed respect.

I'd seen a lot in my time with the Doctor, but the idea that something made of glass could do that kind of damage…

"OK, nice as it was that we managed to stop that thing that quickly, you do realise that this doesn't make sense, right?" Talia said, staring critically at the burn-mark that was all that remained of our attacker. "We're still a day or so from Fairytown; even if the person behind the disappearances dispatched this thing, why would anyone post guards this far in advance?"

"Because he knew I was here," the Doctor said, smile fading as he looked grimly at the guard's remains. "He wants me to be worried."

"He knew?" Snow repeated, looking at the Doctor in confusion. "Hold on, how do you know who's behind this?"

"The guards are very distinctive," the Doctor explained, looking apologetically at the rest of our small group. "Princess Danielle, Princess Talia, Princess… Snow, I apologise for my earlier ignorance; the foe we face is Omega, one of the wisest and oldest of my people, and unfortunately also utterly, utterly insane."

"Your people?" Talia repeated, looking sharply at the Doctor. "He's like you?"

"Not exactly," the Doctor said, looking awkwardly at Talia. "Not only is Omega far older than me, but it could be argued that he's not exactly the same species as me any more; he's undergone significant changes since he was… well, trapped in another dimension, to put it bluntly."

"Another… dimension?" Talia said, initial anger forgotten in her confusion. "How… what do you mean?"

"Think of it as the equivalent of those fairy realms I've read about where time flows differently compared to how it flows here- one hour here equals a day there, that kind of thing- except that it's a few steps above that; the concept is very complicated and isn't immediately relevant, so long as you understand that he's stuck somewhere that isn't the world you know and can only be accessed under specific complicated circumstances," the Doctor explained, smiling briefly at Talia before he turned to address us all once again. "Anyway, to answer your questions, Omega was one of the three great founders of my race, many lifetimes ago, with the other two being Rassilon and the Other."

"The who?" Snow asked.

"The Other," the Doctor said again.

"The Other what?" I asked.

"No idea; he's never been referred to as anything else," the Doctor said, smiling apologetically at me before he continued. "As I was saying, Omega was the founder responsible for creating the power source that would give my people most of their abilities- Rassilon and the Other mainly drew up plans for the society itself and the rules that would define it, but Omega inspired most of the resources that we would use after harnessing that power- but in the process of trapping that power source, Omega… essentially, he fell through a portal and became trapped in a world of anti-matter."

"Anti… matter?" Snow asked, looking at the Doctor in confusion (I didn't blame her; I was vaguely familiar with the term, but all I knew for certain was that anti-matter would make things explode if it was released in our world). "What's that?"

"Well…" the Doctor said, waving one hand in an uncertain manner before he continued speaking, "in a nutshell, 'matter' is a generic term used to describe what everything around us is made of; are you with me so far?"

"Yes…" Snow said, nodding hesitantly at the Doctor.

"Good," the Doctor said, smiling at her before he continued. "Now, anti-matter is essentially the opposite of matter; I can't really explain how at this time, but its fundamental structure is so different from everything around us that, should they ever be in a position to co-exist, anti-matter could trigger a devastating explosion in our world. After Omega was trapped in the world of anti-matter, he was converted into an anti-matter state as he passed through the singularity at the heart of the portal, allowing him to learn how to shape the formerly featureless anti-matter world he found on the other side of it using nothing more than the force of his will."

"He… shaped a world from nothing?" Danielle asked, looking apprehensively at the Doctor. "By himself?"

"It was only possible due to the unique nature of his world and the amount of time he spent practising his control there; when I first ended up in that world it took everything I had just to create a door in the prison cell he'd trapped me in," the Doctor said, before he continued his explanation. "The creature that attacked us is one of Omega's guards, created from the raw stuff of matter, at a point when it is neither matter or anti-matter, allowing them to exist with ease in his world or our own to carry out his will."

"But… if he's created his own world, what is he doing here?" Talia asked.

"A prison where you can have anything you imagine is still fundamentally a prison," the Doctor answered grimly. "Unfortunately for Omega, since the world he'd created relied on him to maintain it, he couldn't ever leave; since everything around him only existed because Omega willed it to exist, he couldn't leave without abandoning control or the world would keep him trapped, but once he abandoned control he obviously also lost control of any potential means of departure he might have created and had to start all over."

"Catch-22 situation, huh?" I said with a smile.

"Catch what?" Talia asked.

"It's a phrase back home," I explained. "It basically refers to a situation where the most obvious way to get out of danger is impossible due to the circumstances the person finds themselves in; in this case, Omega can't escape without abandoning control, but once he abandons control he can't escape."

"Ah," Talia said, nodding thoughtfully for a moment before she smiled in understanding. "Interesting figure of speech."

"What about this 'Omega' person you were talking about?" Snow asked. "If he was stuck in this other world, how do you know about him?"

"Well, I grew up hearing stories of his accomplishments, but I learned that he still existed when he sent some of his guards to attack me during a period of my life where I was confined to a specific location and easier to trap than others of my people might have been," the Doctor explained. "Having transported me into his world, he attempted to escape by forcing me to take his place, but in the process I learned that the conditions in his world had already destroyed his body."

"His body was gone?" Snow asked. "So… he was a ghost?"

"Not quite, but essentially accurate," the Doctor replied. "He only existed any more because his will insisted that he exist, even without an actual body to sustain it, but even his power couldn't allow him to recreate his body so that it would exist outside his world."

"So… he existed because he wanted to exist?" I asked, looking at the Doctor in surprise. "That's…"

"Philosophically complicated, to say the least," the Doctor agreed, smiling at me before he continued. "Anyway, I was able to stop him on that occasion by tricking him into exposing his world to a sample of matter, which apparently destroyed him while returning me to my ship, but he eventually managed to reconstruct himself and make contact with someone in our world once again, using a unique form of energy from a rift in reality to temporarily shield his anti-matter form while he made contact with our world."

"Oh," I said, deciding that I would have to ask for more detail as the three princesses simply stared at the Doctor in silence. "So… what happened then?"

"Well," the Doctor began, "in a nutshell, he tried to create a new body for himself by using samples taken from me to turn himself into a copy of me, but his new form was inherently unstable. I was able to temporarily disperse him before he could trigger his own destruction, and while he was able to pull himself back together later, the transformation had damaged his mind so that he spent some time thinking he was me and investigating murders that he was committing before I showed up to stop him."

"And… what happened after that?" Talia asked.

"The last I saw of him, he was falling back into the anti-matter universe as his body fell apart once again," the Doctor explained. "He'd reached a point where he wanted to return to the world where he had full control and safety, so he probably returned to his original situation, but I never really checked; considering the way things turned out, I just… wanted to believe it was over, you know?"

As he awkwardly trailed off, the Doctor could only shrug awkwardly at the four of us, but I could understand his reasoning; it couldn't be easy to have to confront a figure from his planet's legends, even if he recognised the necessity of it.

"But… if he was trapped in this… anti-matter world… what is he doing in Lorindar?" Danielle asked. "And why would he be involved in the disappearances?"

"Well, I can only speculate as to how he got here or why he's doing this- like I said, the last time I met him he seemed to be content to stay in the anti-matter universe- but what he's after seems fairly straightforward," the Doctor explained. "He failed to escape using other methods in the past, so now he must be intending to use magic. "

"'Use' magic?" Snow repeated. "What do you mean?"

"Well, according to those books you gave me, fairies are naturally made of magic, correct?" the Doctor asked, Snow nodding in confirmation before the Doctor continued. "If Omega's here, his role in the disappearances makes sense; he must be trying to find some way to harness this world's magic to use for himself; his current power is great, but it's still not exactly magic, after all."

"Oh," I said, guessing what the Doctor was talking about and suddenly feeling very uncomfortable at the implications. "So… you think that he's capturing fairies so that he can… take their magic for himself to make a new body?"

"It's the most likely scenario, anyway," the Doctor said, looking over at the guard for a moment before he sighed. "Even if he thinks he knows what he's doing, magic introduces too many unknown variables; we have to find him before something goes wrong."

"And then what?" Talia asked.

"We'll… work that out when we get there," the Doctor said, even as something in his manner suggested that this situation wasn't going to be as simple as that.

Whatever Omega had done in the past, he was still the founder of one of the Doctor's civilisation, and therefore he was also a living Time Lord.

Even if it turned out that what Omega was trying to do was dangerous… would the Doctor be able to bring himself to stop Omega's plan if it would bring another Time Lord back?