CHAPTER 59

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THE TREASURE OF HATHOR DEMETER

With our new guests Sil and his assassins onboard my TARDIS holding us all at gunpoint, I took us all to the hidden location of my treasure which could be found on the planet Undecimus. It was halfway across the planet from my 'tomb' which is why River and Donald's companion Lydia and her father never found it on their dig there.

I was hoping that no one would ever find it. Despite what Sil thinks, the treasure isn't money. It's something else entirely. Something that no one would want. No one in their right mind anyway.

As I materialized the TARDIS, I led them toward the mountain that I remembered the treasure was buried in as Robin asked, "What is your connection to this Hathor Demeter?"

"Well, like I told our slimy friend here, I'm her. I once ruled this planet, and they worshipped me as a goddess. Those were the good old days," I said with a fond smile.

"That doesn't really sound like you though. You've never been about having a huge ego and wanting people to look up to you," Robin said.

"I know but it just kind of happened that way. I came to this planet a couple of hundred years after we overthrew Rassilon. Or was it thousands of years after? I have a hard time remembering dates sometimes. I had started traveling the universe because I became bored with Gallifrey. I found that the people here were in terrible shape because they were being kept in a constant state of fear by their leader who took all of the wealth of this planet for himself while he worked them to death on a constant basis. He was a terrible man named Alator. I wasn't going to stand for Alator's kind of leadership so I did what I do best," I said.

"Act crazy?" Allison joked.

"No, I overthrew him. That's what I do. I get rid of tyrants and other petty little thugs that think that they're higher up on the food chain than they really are," I said as I made a point of looking at Sil.

"We will see who will be gotten rid of once this day is done. Keep leading us to the treasure," Sil said without displaying the slightest bit of fear of me.

That was his third mistake today. His first two were to look for the treasure in the first place and to threaten my family.

"So what happened next?" Allison asked.

"After I overthrew Alator, I realized that the planet was in a horrible mess thanks to him. I couldn't just leave them that way so I stuck around and helped them to fix it. Once I had them back on their feet again, I faked my own death and left. I mean I liked the people and all, but I didn't want to spend the rest of eternity here. It's a good thing that I did too. This place is basically nothing but a wasteland now," I said.

"What is the treasure? Did you leave a lot of loot behind when you left?" Allison asked.

"Loot? What are you a gangster now?" I joked.

"Don't avoid the question, Mum," Ron said.

"I'm not avoiding the question. Why would I avoid the question?" I said.

"Now you're avoiding the question and being extremely annoying," Holly said.

I knew she'd fit in. She's become just as willing to stand up to me as the rest of my family. That didn't mean that I was going to tell her anything though.

"I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm never annoying," I said.

"You don't want us to know what it is, do you?" Isabella said.

"Bingo. She obviously doesn't want us to find out. At least not some of us anyway," Ivy said.

Ivy knows me so well. She should. We had been both friends and enemies for a very long time now. Well, I was never really her enemy not even when she was a vampire because I knew that it wasn't really her doing all of those things.

Allison finally got the hint as she said, "Ah, I get you. I'll clam up now."

"Clam up? Have you been watching old gangster movies on television again?" I asked with amusement.

"So what if I have?" Allison said with a grin.

I shook my head at her. I loved that girl with all of my hearts, but sometimes she drove me crazy. She just loved movies, and she would get into a different genre of movie every few months and become obsessed with it. Sometimes it was action movies, sometimes Kung Fu movies, and now apparently gangster movies. I wondered idly what it would be next.

I hoped it wouldn't be monster movies. Rose is obsessed with those. She watches them all of the time. You'd think that she'd get enough of that kind of thing in real life.

I finally reached the hidden entrance in the mountain that led to the opening of the hidden treasure chamber. I really didn't want to open it so I hesitated for a moment.

"Open the hidden entrance. Open it now!" Sil ordered.

"This is your last chance, Sil. Once I open this door, you won't like what you'll find on the other side of it. Don't make me do this," I said.

Sil signaled his men, and they pointed their guns at my family. I sighed. I knew this would happen, but I had to try.

"Do it now or they die!" Sil threatened.

"Don't blame me for what happens next. I tried to warn you," I said as I opened the door.

As soon as I opened the door, I could hear malicious laughter coming from inside. So he was still alive after all. Wonderful.

"Sekhmet, you're still alive. I look forward to killing you slowly," the voice said.

"I've missed you too," I shouted into the opening.

"What is this?" Sil said as he began to finally show fear for the first time.

"Oh, didn't I tell you? That's Alator, the former ruler of this planet. He wasn't a native you see. He was an immortal godlike being who enslaved these people for who knows how long," I explained.

"I was the absolute ruler of this planet for thousands of years before you came, interloper," Alator said.

"Thank you. You know I never was sure," I said.

"Where is the treasure? The legends said that there was a treasure here," Sil protested.

"Then the legends were wrong, weren't they? You see whoever was translating those old records must have mistranslated the word for demon into meaning treasure. The two words were very similar to one another. I remember asking why they would ever think of Alator as a treasure when they quickly gave the correct meaning of the writing in the tomb to me. It was a warning to later generations that would enter my tomb never to open this door. Obviously, whoever found that warning thought it meant never to tell anyone where the 'treasure' was hidden," I said.

"Close the door," Sil ordered.

"I can't," I said.

"Why not?" Sil asked nervously.

"It has to be closed from the inside. Someone has to go inside with Alator and close it. That means that they'll be trapped in there forever with him," I said.

"Why did they design the tomb like that?" Allison asked.

"They had to in order to trick him inside of it. Alator is an energy vampire. Someone very brave volunteered to be his last meal a long time ago and come inside of there with him to close the trap on him. The only way to open it again is the switch on the outside. It had worked for thousands of years until today," I said.

"Why did you open it if you knew this?" Robin asked.

"I didn't want Sil to kill any of you," I said.

"You'd rather have the creepy guy on the inside do it then instead?" Ron asked in disbelief.

"He won't attack you as long as I'm here. He's afraid of me. I almost killed him before," I said.

"Don't flatter yourself," Alator said.

"Oh, you're not afraid of me, huh? Is that why you won't come out then?" I asked.

"Go inside and close the door if you want the others to live," Sil ordered me.

"No, she'll be trapped in there for eternity!" Allison protested.

"Better her than us," Sil said.

"I've got a better idea. Why don't you go in there?" Allison said.

"Go in there now, Sekhmet, or your family will die," Sil threatened.

"You know maybe I will," I said.

"What?" Robin asked.

"Trust me," I said as I winked at him.

I went inside and closed the door behind me. I had no intentions of being trapped in there forever though.

"So you have finally come to face your doom after all of these millennia," Alator said.

"No, I've finally come back to do something that I wish that I could have done back then. Poor Aishwana wouldn't have had to have died if I had been as strong then as I am now. I'm going to do this in her name," I said as I began to glow with power.

I went further inside of the chamber to find Alator shriveled up to a quarter of the size that he was back when I last saw him. He had been starved into a shadow of his former self over the millennia. This wouldn't be so hard after all. I hoped.

"So you've come to die, have you?" Alator asked.

"Awfully full of yourself, aren't you? Say good bye, Alator," I said confidently as I walked toward him.

Alator suddenly reached up and touched my shoulder as I drew close to him, and he started to drain my lifeforce away as he slowly regained strength. I saw him begin to start growing again as he drained my energy.

"You want energy, Alator? Take this!" I said.

I started to give him all of the regenerative energy of an entire life cycle in one enormous burst of energy, and he started to scream. I was just getting started though. I began to pour more and more of my energy into him even as he continued to scream.

"No! No! Stop this!" He begged.

"Is that what she said too when you killed her? What mercy did you give to my daughter?" I asked in fury.

I can finally tell you the full story now. I fell in love with a native when I lived here, and we had a beautiful daughter named Aishwana. In the language of the people here, her name meant 'daughter of the stars'. It fit her so perfectly.

When I first overthrew Alator, I put him in this very chamber that we were in now but he eventually escaped because he was too powerful. He slowly wore away at the door for twenty years until he freed himself. Once he did, he started to attack the people of this world once more.

I stopped him and put him back inside of the rebuilt chamber hoping to at least trap him there for another twenty years until I could come up with a more permanent way of stopping him. What I didn't know was that Aishwana had been the one behind rebuilding the door. She had designed it to be able to drain Alator's energy every time that he touched it. She knew that someone was going to have to go inside and activate it from the inside though, and she knew it would have to be the person who created the device. She ran inside just as I came out and sacrificed herself so that the rest of her people might live.

I was not going to let her sacrifice be in vain. I wasn't about to let Alator back out to start killing all over again.

"Release me!" Alator screamed.

"Never," I said as I poured the energy of several life cycles combined into his body.

He went up in a massive explosion as his body was literally dissolved by the energy that I had poured into him. His last scream was a massive wail that spoke of the terror that he felt as he had faced me.

I then came back to the closed door and melted it to slag with a small display of my power. Sil and the others still stood there, and I could tell that they were terrified of me now.

They should have been.

As I came out of the chamber, they all ran away in fear. I grinned to myself as they took off. Mission accomplished.

"Why didn't you just do that in the first place?" Ron asked.

"I didn't want to take the chance that they might kill one of you while I was taking them down. It was better to have them run because they were scared of me instead," I explained.

"What was the real reason that you wanted to go in there? It wasn't just to scare them, was it?" Robin asked.

"No. I'll tell you all about it later. Right now, I just want to go back to the TARDIS and get out of here. There are too many bad memories here for me," I said sadly.

"I'm sorry, Mum," Allison said.

"About what?" I asked as I feigned ignorance.

"We all heard what you said about him having killed your daughter," Allison explained.

"I didn't know that you heard that," I said.

"Who was she?" Allison asked.

"You would have loved her. She was a lot like you actually. She was very sweet and kind. She was also extremely intelligent. I was so proud of her," I said as I tried not to break down.

"That's why you left here, wasn't it?" Robin asked.

"I couldn't stand to be here any longer after she died. I never returned to this planet again until today. I thought that it was time that I finally came back and destroyed her killer. That was for you, Aishwana," I said softly.

"I'm so sorry, Lily," Robin said.

"I'm okay. I'm used to outliving everyone," I lied.

The truth is that you never get used to it. Ever. It always hurts every single time. Always. Each time it's just as painful as the last. Maybe this time though I've found some people who will stick around for a while. I hope so.

It would be nice to not be alone for a while.

When I created the Dark Tower to trap Rassilon, I put a warning into it to keep others from trying to get Rassilon's Ring. I was the one who set up the ring as a trap to capture any Time Lord leader who wanted immortality including my once good friend Borusa. The poor man seemed to go mad for some reason towards the end of his life cycle according to the Doctor. I put the warning into the tomb because I wanted to tell those idiots not to seek immortality. It seems like so many of them didn't listen to it though.

They should have because I know the truth about immortality better than anyone. Immortality is a curse not a blessing.

Next: Lily goes back to Oxford in 1890 as she tries to keep her new teaching assistant Strax in line. Will she succeed in preventing him from teaching her students things like how to kill a Rutan in a hundred different ways? Read about the hilarious results in the next chapter.