Professor Longbottom was guiding us up to the Headmistress' office when one of the other professors saw us. "Neville! What on earth are you doing?"
"They're imposters, Calvin; they told the Headmistress that they were educational inspectors." The man couldn't believe it.
"Do you need help?" he asked, eyeing Aryn.
"No; I'm quite all right, thanks. Can you find someone to cover me for my next class?"
"Yeah, sure, Neville; let me know what sentence these three get. Sad that it's good-looking women, though." He shook his head and bade the professor good-bye. Right as we rounded a corner, something hit us. All of us. I fell hard to the ground, and was able to reach out and brace myself. I blinked. Wait—I blinked? I moved my hands, felt my face. I was free! But—how? This didn't make sense. I looked around; I could see Aryn and Kaal. The professor who'd been escorting us was also there, looking a bit dazed.
"Where are we?" he demanded after coming around.
"I don't know," I shot back. I honestly didn't know. At all. But those Sontarans… we had to stop them from whatever their plan was. Taking over a magic school would provide them with the slaves and labor they would need to conquer this planet, which I assumed was called "earth" due to the conversation I'd heard from the other fellow. So we got the right planet, I think. I'd have to double check that with the TARDIS records. "What year is it?" I asked him. We could at least get that out of the way.
"Why does it matter? Why are you three even here?"
"I need to know what year it is! That's why we're here!"
"Everyone knows that it's 2013; where have you been?" the man challenged. I sighed. Why did people think they knew everything?
"I don't rightly know when I was," I snapped. "I was busy trying to survive, if you don't mind!"
The man looked at us with complete confusion. "Surviving? That's what you call impersonating official Ministry personnel?"
"I don't have time for this," I muttered, getting up from the cold stone floor.
"Well, you better make some time, because I have a lot of questions that— "
"I can't answer right now!" I burst. I glared at the man and started looking around for clues. What had triggered this? What was going on? How was I able to move around?
"Uh, Chancellor; you might want to turn around," Kaal said. He didn't sound very happy. I turned and came face-to-face with our worst enemy. The long-time rivals of me and my fellow Time Lords.
"What are you doing here?" I demanded of the creature. Its eye stalk whirred and clicked, taking in the four of us. "What are you doing here?!" I yelled at the creature. "There is no way in all of Gallifrey that you should be here!" I screamed at the being.
Its robotic voice rang out against the stone walls. "I exist to serve the Dalek Empire. I am only interested in destroying you, Time Lady. You were the one who took down my ship." Its gunstick and manipulator arm were out, ready to electrocute and destroy any and all who stood in the way of me. I stepped out in front of the group, my anger blazing at this thing. These creatures had taken away my husband, my brothers and sisters—so many of my people.
"You remember me, then?" I said, grinning malevolently. "Then you know what happened to the ten ships prior to yours, and the ten ships after. Why should I care if you live or die, Dalek?"
"Because I have the means to return your husband to you." My throat caught.
"What? That's not possible. He died in the war! Your people, your empire—they killed him. All 13 incarnations of him. I had to watch him regenerate time after time, knowing he didn't have the means to stop them. But you didn't care," I seethed, walking up to the sleek metal body that encased the Kaled within. I pulled out my sonic and placed it on the eyestalk. "There is no way I can have my husband back, you bastard!" I pressed the button on my sonic, and the eyestalk went crazy. Its gunstick started to fire. "DUCK!" I cried, doing the same. I got behind it, and started for the doorway. "C'mon; we need to leave or that thing will destroy us." Aryn and Kaal followed wordlessly. The professor—damn that man! "Your wand will not do anything!" I cried, motioning him to follow.
"Then I'll die a hero," the man said, his eyes blazing with an intensity I'd only seen in one other man. The man who had given his life for me.
"Stop being a fool!" I yelled, pressing my sonic to the Dalek's eyestalk again. It messed him up to the point that the professor could get his way back towards us. I could tell he really wanted to stop the thing, but I doubted that any sort of magic would be able to penetrate that metal. Before I left, I needed to know. "How many Daleks are here?" I asked. It wouldn't do us any good if there were more than two.
"Enough to exterminate you!" the Dalek screeched, turning to attack me.
"Fat chance!" I exclaimed, planting my sonic on his eyestalk one last time before leaving the room. Its vision was pretty much gone at this point, relying only on sound now for following us. That helped us a little bit. I came running after the professor and caught Aryn and Kaal in one of the classrooms. "What is it?" I asked, breathing a little more heavily than I should have been. I had entered, but couldn't see what they were seeing. "What's wrong?" I asked, looking in their direction.
My heart leapt into my throat. It was me. Well, not exactly. It was a piece of myself. My old body. My very old, very dying body. The thing bore its eyes—my eyes—into all of ours. Neville wasn't sure what was going on.
"What's going on?" I asked slowly, hoping it would answer me.
The woman smiled at the four of us, as if she knew something we didn't. "Your greatest enemy is here, Chancellor. And I'm not talking about the Daleks; no, you're much more complicated than that. You grieve for your husband, yet have seemed to take a fancy to a human from earth." I swallowed. It was talking about Neville, the professor we'd just met. A fancy? I wasn't—I hadn't—my eyes flickered in unease. I was attracted, sure, but the man didn't know what I thought. And he never would.
"Stop spouting lies." I drew my sonic, unable to take my eyes off her.
"Lies? I'm only revealing the truth." The woman cocked her head to the side, a twitch tugging at her lips. She looked positively evil. Was this how I appeared in the war? Was that why people ran from me? I swallowed hard, my eyes never leaving her face.
"What is going on? Why is this happening? The Sontarans—"
"—are none of your concern." The woman took a few steps towards us.
"Stay back," I warned, again stepping in front of Aryn, Neville and Kaal.
"I wish only to let you know that this isn't going to stop until you figure out what's causing it. The Daleks will find you, and they will kill you." She stared at me, vengeance in her gaze. "You never gave them your name, did you?" she said, a wicked smile appearing on her face. My hearts thudded in fear.
"Why are you doing this? Why is this happening?"
"I'm the darkest part of you, Chancellor," she snarled. "Every dark thing you've been, every evil you've accomplished, all rolled into one." She gestured at her hair, her body and clothes. "This is you, dear Chancellor. All that you despise, but all that you long for again." I stared into the reflection of myself. My brown hair and brown eyes. It was insane. All of the darkness in me, everything I hated….every evil I'd done to survive. I swallowed; this was perhaps worse than fighting the Dalek ships, the Nightmare Child, the armies of the Meanwhiles and Neverweres. She was the embodiment of all of it. Spent and exhausted, Lord President Rassilon had made me one of the Chancellors. And then the decision to use my good friend, the Master, caused me no end of grief. That, too, was buried in her. In me.
Kaal spoke first. "What do you mean the darkest part of the Chancellor?"
The woman smiled. "Why don't you all go to sleep?" she said, lowering her hand. My eyes drooped. What was happening? I couldn't fall asleep! I needed to—
I woke up, back in my TARDIS and at the controls. What just happened? "Aryn, Kaal!" I called out, hoping to hear their voices.
"Chancellor?" Aryn said, emerging from the back of the TARDIS. Kaal was right behind her, along with the professor. He wasn't sure what to think at that moment.
"What is this place?" he asked, his eyes roaming all over, trying to take the sight in. They landed on the time rotor. "What is that?"
"Long story, Professor; not the time to really explain. Why are we back here?" I quietly asked myself. We had just been in a castle—Hogwarts, if I remember correctly. And since when had we gotten back to the TARDIS?
"Perhaps because we found out what we needed to know. We could have walked here and gotten in to go to sleep."
"But—that other place. The castle. We were pretending to be Education Inspectors. And then we got cornered." I bit my lip. Think! What was going on?
"Yeah, by you, nonetheless. That thing called you a Time Lady; what's a Time Lady?" the professor asked. He was beginning to annoy me.
"Again, nothing to be concerned about, Professor."
"You might as well drop it; I'm not your professor. My name is Neville."
"Well, Neville, drop it. It is of no concern to you or them, so leave it alone," I clipped off rather harshly. Think! What sort of thing could have caused this?
"Well, is this reality or was the other one reality?" Kaal questioned, hoping for an answer.
"I don't know, Kaal; I'm trying to think!" My mind spun through all the knowledge that I had, whirring and puzzling through a thousand scenarios that this could be. I was startled from my thinking by her again. The woman. "What do you want?" I asked in a low voice, debating on whether to kill her or not. The thought turned me. I was seriously considering this. I didn't know what else to do.
"I want you to see where you are." She smiled and pointed out the window in the front door. "There; do you see?" I dashed to the door. I stared, my hand covering my mouth.
"No; no, this can't be!" I cried. I turned to look at the woman. "Gallifrey is gone! It can't—what's happening?"
The woman looked at me with a calm and spiteful grin. "Oh, but Chancellor—I'm afraid it isn't. You have 20 minutes before Gallifrey destroys the Earth and takes its place. It's up to you to figure out which of these is real and which is a dream."
My eyes stung with tears. "But why? Why are you doing this?" I said, my voice catching. I had broken away from my planet for a reason. I couldn't bear to see or be who I once was. It was too horrible.
The woman narrowed her eyes at me. "It's your choice; Gallifrey or Earth. Which are you willing to protect? Oh, and don't forget about the other situation. I think it's time for you to sleep," she said, all of us collapsing in a heap on the floor of my TARDIS.
I struggled to wake myself. How in Rassilon's name—? The others were waking as well. "We've got to figure out which is which," I told them, pushing myself up from the stone floor.
"This is really starting to piss me off," Aryn said, her voice starting to get an edge to it. Neville sat there, his face screwed up as he was concentrating. On what, I'm not sure.
"Neville, what's wrong?" He looked up at me.
"This is all revolving around you. What makes you so special? What do I even call you? Your name isn't Smith."
"It's the Chancellor," Aryn told him. "That's what we call her; she won't give us her real name, like it's some big secret or something."
I busied myself with checking on my sonic. I needed to make sure the settings all worked. I should have done it on the ride here, but I was enjoying myself too much. I also wasn't in the mood for talking about myself. It was too hard. Too much. The woman appeared again. "Ah, I see you're all here again; maybe you can find a way to defeat the Daleks. Or is this the dream, and the other the reality?"
"What are you, besides a manifestation of myself? You have to be doing this for a purpose."
The woman pursed her lips. A sly smile crossed her face. "You can call me…. The Mind Weaver. Isn't that what the pirate commander called you? Good luck fighting," she said as she shimmered out of sight. I threw my sonic across the room in frustration, anger starting to boil my blood. The Daleks were still out there, and I was angry. Perhaps it was time to prepare for war again.