Hello, faithful readers! Sorry for the delay on this chapter, Spring Break threw me off a bit schedule-wise. I hope to finish up the Nth Doctor's second adventure by the end of the weekend, so stay tuned! As always, make sure to review the story and tell me what I'm doing right/wrong, favorite the story if you like it, and subscribe if you'd like to receive more. Allons-Y!
"Ah, so you have discovered the deception," a voice sounded from behind the trio. Truman hazarded a glance backwards and saw the pharaoh Khafra standing on a raised precipice, his face contorted with a sneering grin. "Finally someone has found out that I've been, what is that phrase, pulling the wool over your eyes?"
"Not from around here, eh?" the Doctor asked, his eyes racing from mummy to mummy trying to hold them off.
"Oh, they are distracting aren't they?" the pharaoh noted, and with a wave of his hand the mummies receded into the cavernous tomb. "To answer your question, no I am not. I was a stranger to these lands, just as you are now. However, I soon learned these people and their culture, a culture that could be easily exploited."
"You used their mythology as a weapon against them," Windsor spat, having recovered from the attack.
"Precisely," the pharaoh replied coolly. "Their reverence of these 'gods' made it easy to pose as one of the chosen. Being stranded here became a blessing in a few short months."
He descended from the platform, his ornate gown trailing behind him. The Doctor cautioned his companions to stay behind him in case of trouble.
"You see, Doctor, I am a prisoner here. I was a general once, a general so powerful that they deemed me corrupt and accused me of conspiring against the government. They were right, of course, but it didn't matter once I was chained to this primitive place. However, I soon found the advantages of being here. As you may know, this desert is the resting place of the greatest army ever to live, as well as the prime place to harness the power of the Orion belt. If one were to harness that army, well, he could conquer anything he thought worthy, including that traitorous planet of mine."
"But it didn't work like you planned it, am I right," the Doctor smirked, his head bobbing in a rather know-it-all fashion.
"Regrettably no," the pharaoh admitted dryly. "The idiot slaves misread my blueprints and put the pyramids off kilter just enough to throw the resurrection process off, resulting in mindless corpses instead of battle ready warriors."
"How did you get them to go along with this?" Truman asked.
"Elegance in its simplicity," the pharaoh bragged. "There is an ancient power that lies dormant in the underground caverns of the Sphinx, which is why I built it in the first place. Around that ancient power was a cloth, a cloth that allowed me to blind the people of Egypt to my true motive with the help of a totem that represented Giza. You've experienced the cloth yourself."
"So you used a little voodoo magic then?" the Doctor grinned. "Sounds like you're a witch doctor."
"That title is beneath me!" the pharaoh roared, his voice echoing loudly across the chamber overwhelmingly. "I am a master of all!"
"I've met a Master before," the Doctor said. "And you don't even hold a candle to him."
"What I am wondering," Windsor asked, ignoring the two's exchange, "Is how you plan on leaving this planet? Space travel won't be possible for centuries."
"You are a dimwitted one, aren't you?" Khafra sneered. "Remember that ancient power lying dormant in the recesses of this monument? It is my ticket out of here. However, as I built the Sphinx, I had the artifact moved higher into the monument to allow it to do THIS." He raised his hands high into the dank cavern air, shouted words in a lost language, and the entire structure began to rumble.
"Doctor, what's happening?" Truman yelled over the commotion. The trio was barely able to keep their footing as the floor quaked beneath them. With the constitution of a Weeble-Wobble, the Doctor guided his companions towards the exit, looking in vain for a way he could follow the fleeing pharaoh. Seeing no alternative but to escape, he shoved them outside.
The ground righted itself as they hit the hot desert sand, but still quaked from tremors. Windsor looked up to see the Great Sphinx of Giza standing upright as if it was alive. The sky grew black around it as the sun was blotted out.
"Um, why is the man cat statue alive?" he asked, grabbing his two partners' attention.
"He must have used the power source he found here as a way of animating the Sphinx," the Doctor exclaimed, his voice dripping with admiration. "Oh, he's good."
"Doctor!" Truman yelled. "The Sphinx is headed towards the city! The people will be crushed in its wake!"
"Quite right, Truman, we should deal with that first," the Doctor agreed as he promptly turned away from the town and the Sphinx and started towards the pyramids.
"Wrong way, Doctor!" Truman shouted over the roar of the Sphinx, which had finally passed over them and was on its way to the unsuspecting people.
"I don't think so!" beamed the Doctor, offering no explanation. Truman threw his hat to the ground in frustration, looked fearfully at the town, and reluctantly flailed his arms as he chased after the Doctor.
As they reached the pyramids, the Doctor soniced open the doorway and charged inside. Truman entered next.
"I think I'll wait outside, thank you very much," Windsor yelled in after them. "Too many mummies for one day, I think."
"Ok have fun!" the Doctor replied. "Just don't wander off!"
"Doctor, why is Khafra attacking the city of Giza? What has he to gain?" Truman questioned as he followed the Doctor through the catacombs of the Great Pyramid of Giza.
"Well Plan A failed," the Doctor stated simply. "He's figuring if he can't have an army of the dead, nobody can. Think about it Truman. His first plan, his primary plan was a disaster. What makes you think the second plan is genius?"
He stopped, and Truman saw that they were standing in front of a large mechanism. Various lenses jutted out from the structure like tumors, giving the chamber an anachronistic feel.
"Ah, he's set up an optical biconvex concentrator to try and compensate for the error in the construction. He's good!" praised the Doctor as he circled the machinery in wonder.
"How does it work, Doctor?" Truman asked, earning him an approving smile from the Doctor.
"The light from the Orion belt filters in through that hole," the Doctor lectured, pointing at the hole in the ceiling. "It reflects off these lenses onto this." He picked up a large glass globe which had rested in a concave cradle in the center of the room. "Surprisingly light! Anyways, this must be a conductor of some sort, channeling power into that power source he said was in the Sphinx."
He twirled the globe on his finger as if it were a basketball until a tremor caused the Doctor to lose his balance and drop the globe, which then proceeded to shatter into a million pieces.
"Is that a bad thing that that globe just broke?"
"Depends on your definition of 'bad'," the Doctor replied, looking worriedly at the shards around them. "It has set the equilibrium of the structure terribly off balance, but it has also ceased to project the power into the Great Sphinx, so that disaster has been averted. However, it seems to have had a large surplus of power within it since it is the main conductor, and may cause a minor explosion of the other power sources."
"So you're telling me that the pyramids and the Great Sphinx of Giza are going to blow up because of us?" yelled Truman incredulously. "THAT WASN'T IN THE HISTORY BOOKS!"
"Time can be rewritten Truman," the Doctor said nervously. "Let's hope for our sakes this isn't one of those times."