Chapter 21:

Standing Roughly Five Feet from the Gates of Hell

The word "Massive" was first used in the 15th century, having being basterdized from the the French word "mascif", itself an alteration of the Latin word "massa". In all iterations, the word denotes a certain scale of size and/or grandeur. Indeed, one might call the Nightmare Child massive, as in "a massive mote in the eye of any loving god". But as Artemis Fowl stumbled his still weakened frame into the Gate Room of the Nightmare Child, it struck him how the word "massive" was rendered utterly useless in the presence of the Gates of Elysium. "A whole new adjective needs to be created to describe what I'm seeing" he thought.

The Doctor had explained on the way to the Gates that "Davros couldn't possibly hope to hold the Gates inside this bloody fish thing of his, so he's using Time Lord dimension technology (that he probably stole off of me, I might add). This whole ship's like the TARDIS: bigger on the inside."

It struck Holly, Butler, and Artemis as completely stupid that this giant ship-beast could be bigger on the inside, but they rounded a corner to be greeted by an ajar door way leading to the Gate Chamber.

The Chamber was easily the size of Ireland in its entirety; it was simply a giant grey room of nothing, stretching far beyond the line of human or fairy sight. Of course, the people could only move about fifteen metres into the room, for the rest of the massive room was taken up by an almost-as-massive green block, covered in intricate symbols (the only remaining piece of the Eternal's incomprehensible language). Upon first laying eyes on the block, Butler's skin went white for the first time since he was five, and he swore like a drunken sailor.

"I know, right?" yelled Juliet, bouncing echoes through the chamber. The rest of their motly group had converged near them, close to the front face of the Gates. Butler grabbed Artemis by the shoulders and hefted him and Holly onto his large back, and sprinted towards the group, leaving the Doctor to play catch up.

Luskar, No.1 and Trouble approach Holly as she disembarked the manservant. "Anything follow you back?" Trouble asked, hand on his Neutrino. Holly shook her head.

"Nothing. We left a bunch of knocked out guards on the way here, so we've got time before an alarm goes off."

Luskar nodded, and motioned for the Doctor to join his past selves. "They say they got a plan; figured you might understand what they're saying better than us."

No.1 rolled his eyes at the Doctor. "Peasants" he groaned. "They have such a hard time with the basics". The Doctor nodded in agreement.

The Doctor (Doctor 11), scooted over to himselves; "Apparently you all have a plan?"

Doctor 10 nodded. "Several, actually. I say that if you get the demon boy to send us back, we can all get our TARDISes, then, if we open the Vortex Engines, we can blow the Gates back some time where Davros can't find it-"

"AND risk blowing a hole in the fabric of reality" intoned Doctor 5. "Must I remind you about Belgium?"

Doctor 10 scrunched his face. "No, but I really don't see any-"

"I say we find the Dimension Capsid, and shrink this place down" injected Doctor 1. "The Horde can't do any damage if it can't get out of the Gate entrance."

Doctor 6 let out an audible "PSSSH". "Why bother shrinking it? Why not just invert the Capsid and crunch the thing into oblivion? It'd be better, speaking for the long term."

"Do you even comprehend the concept of the Gates?" grunted Doctor 9. "Try and 'crunch' something like that and you've got an energy explosion the size of-"

"-Belgium?" Doctor 5 provided.

"-that'll tear Earth to pieces" 9 finished.

"I'm in the boat to agree with rainbow coat" said Doctor 4. "If we could just find a way to-"

"Do what?" said Doctor 3. "Cause a Vortex disturbing explosion? Because that's what you're suggesting. I hope you reliaze that.

Doctor 2 threw his hat in the ring. "Better than leaving the Horde to destroy everything", which Doctor 1 followed with an infallible "Quite!".

Doctor 8 stepped into the ring. "That makes no sense. The Eternals may have built this thing, but the Time Lords are the ones who utilised it to trap the Horde. Wouldn't it make sense then, that it would work for us? Why do we need to destroy it?"

Doctor 11 stepped up. "The bio-metrics would still work, yeah, but you need at least fifteen Time Lords working in unision, minds all connected to the Matrix, and that's excluding the power of the Time Vortex you need to be pumping into the Gates to make it work. Last I checked, we had one TARDIS, no Matrix, and eleven Time Lords, who technically only make up one Time Lord, so that's cheating."

"My, my. Someone's been studying, hasn't he?"

Doctor 11 shrugged. "Not much to do when you're on your own."

Mulch threw his hands up in the air, for what seemed like the third time that night. "So that's it then? Earth is done, yeah? Well then, you fellows mind if we get a ride to the nearest planet when we're done here? I know they've got mines on other planets..."

Holly, not able to muster the energy to tell Mulch to shut up, simply swatted the back of his head. "What Mulch means is, is there really nothing that you all can think of that doesn't involve Earth blowing up?"

"Yeah" Foaly added, twiddling his thumbs, "no explosions would be nice."

All the Doctors looked at himself on the right, then the left, then right across, and then back to the young fairy woman all shaking their heads. "Best scenario", said Doctor 11, "is that maybe we can blow up the Child before Davros can turn on the Gates..." he fell silent after that. It just occured to him that this is what helplessness felt like. But then-

"Why can't we work the Gates?"

All eyes turned to Artemis Fowl, who was sitting in the Lotus Position down on the flor, hands on temples. In the discourse between the Doctor's, Artemis had been largely forgotten, left to his own while the others listened to the options presented. So he listened too, but with an advantage; the knowledge bequeathed to him from the Nightmare Child. And so he listened, and calculated, and thought.

"You say that we need at least fifteen of your people. We have the eleven of you, which is a start. And from what I gathered from my time in that harness, we could easily pull off control with less, given that the power is 100% yet."

"We still need the Time Vortex" argued Doctor 7.

"And the Matrix, which, might I add, was destroyed when Galifrey went up in flames" added Doctor 9.

Doctor 1 looked astonished. "Up in flames?"

Artemis ignored him. "We have both of those things" he said, motioning with his hands to No.1.

The little demon pointed to himself. "Me?"

Artemis nodded. "We already know that you can connect their minds with your magic-"

"Magic?" Doctor 10 said, incredulous.

Artemis ignored him as well. "-which means you can serve as the Matrix, with your power keeping you stable. If we then pour your magic into the TARDIS engine, then we've got a makeshift Vortex."

"But even with the boy, we're still two people short for a conduit" Doctor 3 argued.

Artemis shook his head. "Not at all. With No.1 acting as the focal point, all we'd really need to supplement are two people who know how to work magic."

What Artemis was saying finally dawned on Foaly. "That's suicide", he blurted. "You have no idea what'll happen to someone if they try to connect with that thing if it isn't predisposed to-"

"That's why I'm the next person."

The Butlers both choked on the stale air at the same time. So in-sync were they at the ludicrousity of Artemis' plan, they began speaking at the same time. "You can't be serious..."

"I am" Artemis said, rather forcefully. "I just spent the last couple hours doing nothing but running calculations for this 'thing'. If anything, by default I'm the most qualified person to be probing into its workings."

Holly couldn't argue with that logic. Of course, that still left one person needed for the magic number fifteen. She looked at Artemis, but didn't say anything, knowing exactly what he was thinking. "Some time, I'm going to lock myself in my apartment and practice saying no to these stupid plans". And with that, she stepped up beside her friend. "And me makes fifteen."

Trouble stamped (actually stamped) his foot. "NOT happening, Short. The three of us make up what's left of the LEP squad for this whole thing. No way am I sacrificing one of my best for something that he", the elf pointed to Artemis, "is pulling out of his ass."

"Something pulled out of his ass that I'm not even sure is going to work" Foaly added.

Mulch swatted at the centaur. "They wanna save the world, and you say no? What the hell, Foaly. And here I was starting to think you might actually be cool..."

The Doctor (number 11), decided to ignore the banter and turned to Artemis. "That might actually work. Considering it's the best option right now, I say we take a chance." He turned to his former selves. "Now gents, which one of us wants to make the run back to the TARDIS to bring it here?"

Doctor 10 pulled his TARDIS key out of his pocket, and pressed it. Immediately, the groaning of the engines filled the ears of everyone present.

"Right. Forgot about that" said 11, looking rather sheepish. With the TARDIS now fully formed, he ran to the doors and flew them open, running around the console collecting thingamabobs and doohickys galore. "Hopefully, this is the part where everything starts going good" he yelled. "Ancient warship, army of Daleks, genocidal wheelchair man, horde of voracious space monsters? No way this could get any worse."

Mulch swore under his breath. Years of watching human television taught him that when someone said 'it couldn't get worst', the universe seemed to make sure that things immediately got worse.

And yes, things were about to get worse.