The Name of a King

by RobertSaysThis

Emperors, the Colosseum, and streets lined with columns and marble! It's 73 BC, and none of those things have yet come to Ancient Rome. But the Doctor's friends don't care about that: they're just happy to be on a holiday. (This is the sixth in a series of stories about a different Thirteenth Doctor, who has the same face but who lives in a darker world.)

3. Chapter 3

It was foolish to pick the famous years, Lady Destange knew. True, the goriest battles and the deadliest plagues would produce great quantities of blood, but the quality always left something to be desired. It wouldn't do for a grape of her breeding to sup the same blood as common folk: people like her were deserving of higher things. When little blood was spilt, and what fell came dark with dread— that was the only drink worthy of the name.

But she'd been swallowed herself, as quick as a Stalingrad '41. Her tiny ship of manbone had been devoured by a something, and as she bounced around in its stomach she'd been sure that she'd met her end. And when she'd thought that she'd wept until red stained the creature's insides, until one day there was a crash as her captor smashed into a world.

It had been passing here. Her destination, where the finest fruit in the universe grew ripe with blood. Before it had spread out across the galaxy to a million different varieties; when it was angry and raw and violent with deepened red. She fed into the minds of the fruit of that world now, to taunt them and confuse them and play her little tricks.

And to drink, of course. She'd bring them here to drink.