Disclaimer: I don't own "Doctor Who", "Twilight", or the "Princesses" series; you know the drill

Feedback: Much appreciated

AN: Hope everyone enjoys this fight; working out how to use Snow's magic in particular was harder than you'd think

The Perils of Lorindar

I was so caught up in staring in horror at what the Doctor had just done to himself that I was struck in the back by a gel-guard's blast before I realised it was there, the attack knocking me to the ground once again. Momentarily dazed, I tried to get back to my feet and continue the fight, but the sudden sight of the Doctor pulling Snow down to him to give her what I could only regard as a passionate kiss left me feeling even more confused.

As she stepped back from the Doctor, Snow raised her hands and began to chant, but I wasn't able to focus on the words as I was forced to turn back to the guards around us. With Talia's blades and my teeth, we were able to inflict some damage on their forces, but I could already tell that it wouldn't be enough; the gel-guards just didn't have anything that we could injure that would put them down for good. Short of tearing them to pieces, I was lost for what I could actually do to stop these things, and unless Talia's blades had the same kind of properties as Danielle's sword-

I was distracted from my grim thoughts when I suddenly felt something rush over me, the sensation causing my new fur to stand on end as I felt like my entire body had acquired a sudden case of pins and needles, and even made the gel-guards pause in what I could only think of as confusion. As I stared around the room in confusion, crude limbs that seemed to be made of light emerged from the glowing tubes in the cave's ceiling, eventually revealing a squat male figure with vague shadows the closest he had to discernible features, even with my strange wolf-vision.

I barely had time to wonder what this figure was before another one emerged from a burning console that had been damaged by an earlier blast, retaining the yellow fire of the blaze and blue flickers around his limbs. Water emerged from the ceiling to manifest as a feminine form with a small waterfall in place of hair, the sound of water rippling clear whenever it moved, before Snow's shadow parted from her to form a dark counterpart of the first figure I'd seen.

"No…" Omega said, shaking his head in horror as the ground beneath us suddenly fractured and a figure made of green stone emerged from the resulting pit, the stone woman moving with an easy grace and her body shining so brightly that I could practically see the room reflected in it. "No… this is impossible!"

"No," Snow said, a strange breeze brushed over my fur as I stood in the middle of the room, the gel-guards actually shuffling backwards as the princess glared at our foe. "This is my greatest weapon."

I didn't have time to wonder what she meant by that before the breeze suddenly became so strong that it literally blew Omega off his feet, the wind catching his robes and knocking him off-balance. As he staggered backwards, caught in the unexpected updraft, the fiery figure raised one hand and an intense burst of flame struck the being that had once been the founder of the Doctor's civilisation, singing the robes and burning his skin. The wolf in me instinctively backed off from the flames, leaving me wishing that I could still hold my nose when the scent reached my nostrils; I wasn't sure if it was the wolf's dislike of cooked food or my own instincts, but that scent was making me feel ill…

The shadowy figure suddenly swarmed over Omega, leaving parts of him in darkness before drawing back to reveal tattered clothing with black blood coming from his mottled skin; it was as though the shadows were trying to eat him somehow. Roaring in rage, Omega hurled some kind of energy-burst from his hand that threw the shadow-creature back, but I suddenly realised that a tunnel was being dug in the ceiling above us.

I barely had time to wonder what was going on before a powerful blast of water from underneath him practically hurled Omega up through the tunnel, the power of the blast putting me in mind of Niagara Falls in reverse. As the remaining gel-guards turned towards us, the Doctor raised his right hand and drew some kind of glowing sigil in the air with the blue stone on his ring, resulting in some kind of blue barrier appearing between us and our enemies.

"You can create wards?" Snow asked, looking at the Doctor in surprise as the gel-guards began to hammer against the barrier.

"Natural energies… easier to tap… like this…" the Doctor gasped, reaching out with his ringless hand towards Snow while adjusting his other arm so that it was pressing against the blade in his chest for some reason. "Still… little help?"

Looking confused but accepting, Snow took the Doctor's hand as he reached out with his ring once again, waving his hand in a circular pattern as he muttered under his breath. For a moment, the Doctor and Snow seemed to glow a brilliant gold, and then the five of us were standing on a grassy field with a large hole in the ground and Omega standing up nearby, dripping wet and glaring over at us.

"Did we just… teleport upwards?" Talia asked, looking over at Snow in shock.

"Apparently," the magic-user confirmed, studying the Doctor with an impressed smile.

"I didn't know fairy rings were that simple," Danielle said, looking at the Doctor in surprise.

"They aren't," the Doctor clarified with a slight smile, wincing at the sensation of the dagger still buried in his chest. "Wasn't a fairy ring… I adapted… techniques… I've encountered… to do that… basic upwards… relocation spell…"

I wondered if I should ask the Doctor to explain that later, but I decided not to bother; I barely understood him when he was talking about science half the time, and if I had to listen to him trying to explain how he'd brought science and magic together to do anything I'd probably never get my head around it. As more gel-guards emerged and the Doctor's barrier vanished, I decided to focus on what I could control right now and leapt back into action, Danielle and Talia close behind me. For a moment the battle was back on, but it didn't take long for me to confirm that there were very few of these things left even with my limited wolf-vision; Omega must not have enough power to make any more of the creatures, particularly when he seemed to be under attack by the same strange figures that had appeared back in his lab. Without Omega to control the creatures, and with Talia's blades proving just as effective as Danielle's sword and my teeth, it didn't take long for the three of us to tear our way through Omega's assembled forces, my new wolf-mind seizing the opportunity and charging towards at Omega himself as he was knocked over by the latest assault, leaving him lying exposed before us…

"ENOUGH!" Omega roared, lashing out with a sweeping motion that sent all three of us flying backwards. I was able to twist around in time to land on my feet- evidently it wasn't only cats who did that- but when I looked up, it became clear that I wasn't needed; the fire creature was launching a new blast towards him, and the earth creature was firing small rocks at him in a manner that reminded me of machine-guns from movies; I even thought I felt the wind was picking up around us, as though it was trying to help the earth creature mount its attack.

As Omega staggered under the assault, Talia leapt back to her feet and hurled a dagger at him in virtually the same motion, but it only left a gash on his arm without causing any serious harm; Danielle was clearly uncomfortable at the thought of trying to attack Omega with her sword amid the rest of this chaos, and we had no other weapons able to damage Omega at this distance. For a moment, I thought that our foe was about to give up, but Omega ended that hope when he suddenly stood up and swept out his arm at us, knocking the spirits back just like he'd sent us flying; they regained their balance fairly quickly, but I didn't need to know anything about magic to see that he was coping with the assault far better than he had been before.

"Do you think this will stop me?" our enemy asked, laughing at us as he lashed out with another hand, sending the earth creature's rocks flying back towards us; a sudden burst of wind was the only thing that stopped them striking us. "I can take anything you can deliver-!"

"Not any more," the Doctor said suddenly, reaching out to clasp Snow's hand as he waved his ringed hand at Omega, causing Omega to blur for a moment before a new barrier was established between us and the insane Time Lord.

"Is that the best-?" Omega began, laughing scathingly at us as he thrust one hand towards our small group, only to stare in horror as nothing happened. "What…?"

"Teleported you a few millimetres away… while transferring your magic into this little barrier," the Doctor explained, smiling as he waved his hand at Omega, indicating the blue thing around us. "You were so busy… blocking offensive attacks… you missed something so subtle…"

"You drained his magic by teleporting him?" Talia said, looking at the Doctor in surprise.

"Once did something similar… to save a sick friend," the Doctor explained, smiling over at the former Sleeping Beauty. "She was sick… teleported her away… left the infected blood behind…"

"NO!" Omega roared, charging towards the barrier and slamming his fists against it, energy crackling around his hands as he stared at my friend in outrage. "You cannot take my power-!"

"Just did," the Doctor said, waving at Omega with a casual smirk. "I do that a lot, remember?"

"And we're not exactly slouches at this kind of thing either, 'Omega'," Snow added, smiling as she looked at the man in the mask. "I know the scribes made us seem a bit pathetic, but-"

"Shut up!" Omega roared at Snow before he re-focused his attention on my friend. "You cannot stop me, Doctor; you can only delay me! Once I have disposed of you and regained my power, I will return to our universe and rebuild-!"

"You won't… do… any… of that," the Doctor said, waving me over and leaning on me as he got to his feet, still trembling from the knife in his chest but staring resolutely at our foe as his hand rested on my back while I growled at our foe. "Our time is over, Omega; the universe doesn't need you any more."

"And it 'needs' you?" Omega spat, slamming a palm against the barrier as he looked contemptuously at my friend. "The sheer ego of it-!"

"Maybe I'm not perfect, but I… have never tried to force anyone… to do what I want… at the cost of others," the Doctor said, his manner so firm that only the tremor I felt on my back gave away how weak my friend felt right now. "You would demand obedience… and the universe needs freedom…"

"Don't know about the rest of you, but I'll take freedom any day of the week," Snow said, glaring solemnly at the twisted Time Lord in front of us before she reached up to take hold of her glass choker, holding it over her heart as she began to glow. "Mirror, mirror, at my breast-"

"NO!" Omega yelled, stretching out a desperate hand towards us.

"Grant this being eternal rest," Snow finished, her gaze fixed on the being before us.

As soon as Snow had finished speaking, Omega was consumed by a burst of white light that seemed to come from Snow, briefly looking like some kind of face before the light became so intense that I had to shut my eyes against it. After the light had faded, I opened my eyes again, but shuddered at the sight of Omega's robes lying on the ground where he had been, now empty of the living being that had been wearing them mere moments ago, the small pile becoming clearer as the barrier that the Doctor had erected earlier vanished, its purpose now served.

It was the first time since arriving here that I really appreciated how powerful and dangerous magic could be; even the alien weapons I'd encountered so far couldn't destroy someone that… completely.

My thoughts were distracted by a strange golden glow that suddenly came from Snow, but when I turned to look at her directly, I was surprised to see that nothing had actually happened to her; she was just standing there, seemingly unharmed, looking at the rest of us in a nonchalant manner before she crouched down to where the Doctor had fallen to the ground once again, now clutching at his injured side. Before anyone else could say anything, Snow had yanked the dagger in the Doctor's side out of his chest, pulling out a small bottle of something and pouring it over the wound, the vicious-looking wound glowing a soft blue where the bottle's contents made contact with it before it seemed to shrink right in front of our eyes.

"Healing potion," Snow explained, smiling over at the other two princesses as she used a damp cloth to wipe away the last of the blood around the Doctor's wound. "It's normally only good for smaller scrapes, but the Doctor assured me before he stabbed himself that his ability to heal is better than ours is; the potion just makes it easier."

"OK…" Talia said, nodding uncertainly at Snow before she turned back to me. "You should probably get that cloak off now; if you feel around under your neck, you'll find… well, you can get it off that way."

Reaching down with my teeth and claws, I found what felt like some kind of join around my neck and tore the wolfskin off, my body and shape returning to normal as the cloak left my body with only a brief twinge as I returned to my human form. For a moment, I could only gasp in shock as I felt my fingers and toes return, taking in air on my hands and knees as I processed my restored sense of touch, before I stood up and looked across the room at the three princesses and my friend, the Doctor lying on the ground as Snow finished rubbing the potion into his still-healing wound.

"What was…" I said, lost for words as I picked up the fallen cloak, trying to process what had just happened to me as I looked between the cloak and the woman who'd given it to me. "I mean… Red Riding Hood was the wolf?"

"As meeting us should have told you, the tales are never what everyone believes," Talia explained grimly, taking up the story as the glow around the Doctor's wound began to fade as the last of the injury repaired itself. "Even we didn't know the truth at first, but we learned later that the wolf was actually Roudette's grandmother, seeking to protect her village from a fairy hunt that often passed through the area; most of the locals just tried to stay out of the way and avoid provoking the hunt unless they had t. Roudette defied the path set out for her by her family to help her grandmother, and inherited her grandmother's wolfskin cloak after she was killed by one of the Hunt; she combined it with her village's traditional red cloak and added runic charms to it that would deflect any attempts to use magic against her directly."

"We helped her stop the hunt last year when it came to Talia's old kingdom, and… well, to put it simply, Roudette died during the fight and Talia essentially inherited her cloak," Danielle explained. "After all, I'm not really that comfortable fighting and Snow's strengths lie in her magic; letting Talia have it for emergencies made sense."

"I'm sorry for dropping you into it like that, but based on what your friend told us about his life, it seemed like a good call," Talia explained. "You've got nerve, but you didn't strike me as a fighter; letting you use the cloak seemed like a good way to give us some help and technically take a weaker player off the board."

"Ah," I said, studying the cloak out of a lack of anything else I could say, before I remembered what I'd seen earlier and looked back at the Doctor. "And if we're talking about unexpected things, why the Hell did you stab yourself?"

"To give Snow energy to summon the dwarves," the Doctor replied, wincing as he got back to his feet and began to do up his shirt once again, his chest now unmarred by the wound inflicted by the knife.

"What?" Talia said.

"Those were the dwarves?" I said, incredulously indicating the battle-torn fields around us, unable to believe that the creatures I would always remember as singing 'Heigh-Ho' had been capable of something like this. "I thought they were just miners?"

"The bards simplified things," Snow explained. "You have to admit, 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarves' roles off the tongue a lot easier than 'Snow White and the Seven Anthromorphic Personifications', doesn't it?"

"Anthro-what?"

"Basically, what the stories refer to as the dwarves for simplicity's sake are actually seven elemental spirits; my mother learned about them, but I was the one who summoned them for our final fight," Snow explained. "Each personifies one of the seven natural forces of the world- Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Light, Shadow and Magic- but in order to summon them, I normally have to sacrifice seven years of my life as payment; that's why my mother never summoned them herself, and why I look like this when I'm only in my early twenties."

"Oh," I said, suddenly bemused at this unexpected news; after seeing so many cases where strange powers made people look younger, it was strange and disturbing to be faced with a situation where similar powers made people older. "So… I saw five of them… was that wind I felt the Air 'dwarf'?"

"Precisely; she's hard to see most of the time, so don't worry that you missed her," Snow confirmed. "And before you ask, the seventh spirit was magic itself; she's too volatile to have her own form, so she remained in me most of the time."

"Ah," I said, suddenly remembering that brief glimpse of another face I'd seen imposed over Snow's own as she banished Omega.

"And you helped her avoid losing more of her life by… stabbing yourself?" Talia said, drawing my thoughts back to the present as she looked sceptically at the Doctor.

"Precisely," the Doctor said, looking between us with a smile, wincing slightly as he rubbed at the location of his wound under his shirt. "You see, while I have and need two hearts to operate normally- tried going without one once and it was uncomfortable at best; I was so slow compared to what I could have been- I learned the hard way a few lives back that being stabbed in one heart isn't necessarily fatal; however, that kind of injury will… basically, if I'm injured like that, my body will automatically release… certain energies that normally allow me to heal from such damage through that 'recreation' process I mentioned earlier. I wasn't injured enough to actually need to change, but my body still released enough of that energy to keep me alive as I began to heal, and then your potions finished the job without any unpleasant side-effects."

"And… why did you have to do that?" Talia asked.

"It was the only way I could help Snow perform that ritual," the Doctor explained, looking over at Snow with a reassuring smile before he turned back to the rest of us. "I can transfer my life energy if I have to, but it normally relies on me dealing with something that's already capable of absorbing that energy in the first place. By injuring myself and triggering my body's ability to heal, I was able to boost my usual energy transference abilities so that I could give Snow the equivalent of seven years of my life, which she was then able to use for that ritual she just performed, allowing her to summon the dwarves without aging herself."

"Oh," I said, nodding in uncertain understanding. "So… you gave Snow the energy that was the equivalent of seven years of your life… she used that energy to summon the dwarves instead of her own life energy… and now that potion's healing the damage?"

"Precisely," the Doctor confirmed, grinning at me in approval. "After all, seven lost years for me isn't even a blip on the radar; I can think of a few instances in my past that were more than interesting enough to make up for losing that…"

"Talking of your past," Talia said, looking pointedly at the Doctor, "what you and Omega said about you being responsible for the deaths of entire species…?"

"Like I said to Omega, the occasion he was thinking of was an accident; I was trying to stop a group of telepathic pirates and was unaware that the area where they were hiding was also inhabited by a race of beings who existed as pure thought," the Doctor explained, his expression solemn as he looked back at the dark-skinned warrior princess while doing up his shirt, his self-inflicted wound now just a small scar. "Every other time it's happened… most of the time I only destroyed them because I was facing the last of a particularly violent and war-like race which had officially been destroyed already; all I had to do was defeat the last one to stop them killing even more people when they decided to revert to type."

"Most of-?" Talia began.

"The exception was when he was dealing with a race of utter monsters," I interjected, wanting to spare my friend from discussing the Time War any more than he had to (I was just relieved that Omega hadn't brought it up himself, and none of the princesses had asked for more details after the Doctor mentioned that Gallifrey was gone; they probably assumed that it was just a kingdom that had fallen rather than everyone there being killed). "They were prepared to destroy everything if he did nothing, he had no other choice but to kill every last one of them to stop their plans, and he would have done anything to avoid it getting to that point, but…"

Lost for any better way to describe what had happened on that dark day, I shrugged helplessly. "He couldn't find another way."

The three princesses simply looked at the Doctor in silent contemplation for a moment, before Danielle smiled at him.

"You helped us save people you've never met from someone who basically founded your civilisation," she said at last, nodding at the Doctor in approval. "Whatever you've done before… I believe that you didn't do it lightly."

"Hey, we've all done things that we're not proud of in the aftermath; all we can do is decide whether it was worth doing them at the time," Snow said, looking at the Doctor in a particularly pointed manner. "What matters is, if you had the chance to do those things over again, would you do it differently and why or why not?"

"I wouldn't," the Doctor said firmly. "Countless people would have died if I had done nothing."

"I'll go with that," Snow said, smiling at him in approval before she looked over at Talia. "That's two of us, Talia; how about you?"

After looking appraisingly at the Doctor for a moment, Talia smiled slightly at him.

"I'm not sure if I believe you, but I certainly wouldn't want to take Omega's word for anything," she said, indicating the burned patch of ground where our foe had been standing earlier. "If you and Bella both insist that you didn't have a choice… well, I'm hardly going to point fingers after some of the things I've done."

"Thank you," the Doctor said, nodding gratefully at her before looking over at the other two princesses. "So, with that all sorted, shall we get back to the palace?"

Only the grim shadow in his eyes told me that he still regretted what he had done to Omega, but I also knew that my friend would be all right; whatever Omega had once been to the Time Lords, right now, he had been an enemy, and the Doctor had acknowledged that there was only one way to stop him hurting more innocent people.

He'd made the right decision; whatever else would happen after this, I would be sure to remind him of that.