The shockwave erupted from behind Rose's back, frying the ray gun in Blorph'g's hand just an infinitesimally small second before he had pressed the trigger. It also fried the shimmer device, destroying the illusion of the handsome Illanti male, and forcing him to revert back into his old cactus-y appearance.

Gritting his teeth, Blorph'g pressed the trigger again and again, refusing to believe he'd been disarmed. Rose quickly extricated herself from her ties, making him bounce back in surprise. Panicking, he checked something on his gun – only to gasp at his own green skin. 'My shimmer... What did you do?' he dropped the gun and started frantically pressing buttons on the shimmer. 'You wretched monster, what did you do?'

'A blasted good job, I'd say,' the Doctor shouted.

'All compliments to Torchwood,' Rose said, while attacking the Doctor's ties with her multipurpose tool.

With a wail of anger, Blorph'g pulled a knife. 'Watch out!' shouted the Doctor, but Rose had already drawn her hairdryer and aimed it at the stunned alien. 'That's a bluff,' he spat. 'You destroyed everything with your energy blast! Everything!'

'Yeah? Why'd I carry a gun that's not EMP-proof if I was using EMPs? Hm?'

'Look at you go,' the Doctor commented. 'Next to you I'm such a sidekick.'

'Oh, yes you are.' With one hand, she finished cutting his ties, then clutched the hairdryer with both hands, keeping Blorph'g in check. 'Right, mister evil cactus, hands in the air or I'll give you a desert wind you won't feel comfortable in.'

But Blorph'g didn't seem to need much intimidating anymore. He stood frozen like a statue in the gently swinging cage, jaw dropped, an expression on his face as if he'd just crashed a brand new Rolls Royce Phantom. He wasn't staring at her fake gun though, but at some point far off in the distance. 'Oh no...' he breathed.

'What is it?' the Doctor asked.

He pulled a scuffed, square-shaped device from a pocket in his slacks and frantically punched a small, red button on it. 'Guardian One! Guardian One, come in! Can you hear me?'


Far below them, the Zurx mining automatron had finished recharging his power cells with the help of the quintet of combustion engines. He was now fully operational again, and ready to fulfil his orders – except something was wrong. The connection to his king had gone dark.

The sulphur mines on Zurx were controlled by powerful families of rat-like creatures, each of which had grown quite wary of their underpaid subordinate's penchant for betrayal and bribery. The Zurxian aristocracy developed powerful automatrons in response, their purpose being not only to work the mines efficiently, but also to protect their masters – and not step out of an assassin's way for the right price and a bottle of liquor.

Their devotion was pure code, their conviction inexhaustible. If the link to his designated king remained dark for just a little longer, Guardian One would have to act.


'That's a remote,' the Doctor concluded. 'Yeah, I'm afraid the EMP fried that too. Your little drone isn't following you anymore.'

'No,' the green man said, his voice suddenly shaking and frightened. 'It can't be. It can't be!'

'It can,' the Doctor said coldly. 'Now the only question is: what am I supposed to do with you?'

'You destroyed everything,' Blorph'g fumed. 'Thirty years I've worked toward this moment, and you…'

'The fate of all mischievous creatures,' a loud voice boomed, piercing the breeze that dragged around them, 'is, and shall forever be, failure.'

The soft sound of a dozen flapping wings found its way to their ears, and soon, a contingent of five Royal Guards was hovering around the cage, led by Brandomyr. Finally, King Miramys himself made his ascent, gracefully landing on the ledge of the balcony where the unfortunate guard had stood. He held his staff in hand, the anamoeta-crystal missing from its top. His eyes were piercing as ever as he glared at Blorph'g's back. Blorph'g was still standing uneasily inside the swinging cage, staring at his broken remote. 'Brandomyr overheard everything,' the king said quietly. 'I must say, I am in your debt, Doctor.'

'Don't mention it,' the Doctor smiled happily. 'In fact, you'll need me for a bit more hands-on action, since your Dragon's Bane has been sabotaged. Don't worry, this time we're on the same side. It would be pretty irresponsible of me to leave the Dale's only dragon-repellent out of commission.'

The king glowered at him. 'If you try anything, anything at all, Doctor...' He finished by glancing at Rose.

'Really?' she was asking. 'We captured your enemy number one, doesn't that count for anything?'

'Your friend is next in line for that title,' the king replied. 'But only for a short while. This wretched creature has shattered the crystal. So, the three of you will repair my machine and make it work without it. Only then, once I have what I need, will I send the two of you on your merry way. Maybe.'

The Doctor's gaze turned as dark as the endless universe itself. 'What you need? What you want, more like. You don't need to control Felgorn.'

'Correct, I believe,' said the king with a wicked smile. 'Once you have introduced me to the ways of your metal refuge, I won't need Felgorn anymore.'

'You will never have my – why are you smiling?' He turned toward Blorph'g, who had stopped swaying in his own world of regret and shattered dreams. Now he looked more like a broke chum who'd just won the lottery, eyes shining with urgency. 'Oi!' the Doctor said. 'What is it?'

'You do have a spaceship,' he murmured.

'Little late for that,' the Doctor said.

But Blorph'g shook his head. 'No. I'd say the timing is just right.'

'What's that supposed to mean?'

In that moment, a familiar voice shouted a familiar name. 'Mary!' Virgil's voice boomed from far below.

They all looked at a cage further down, where the girl was shouting back at her lover: 'Virgil! They're going to execute me!'

'You said she was free to go!' Rose exclaimed.

'What are you hiding?' the Doctor demanded from the grinning Blorph'g, trying to ignore the growing commotion around him.

'Father!' Virgil shouted angrily as he ascended, 'What is the meaning of this?!'

King Miramys gave a sigh and turned to one of his guards. 'I told you to lock him in his room!'

'I-I did, your highness,' the guard stammered.

'Why are you executing her?!' Rose shouted angrily. King Miramys' face remained cold as stone. 'Because my son has lost his way.'

'Everybody shut up!' the Doctor shouted.

One of the Royal Guards had begun calling him out for insulting the king, but he quickly fell silent when King Miramys raised his hand. They were all looking at Blorph'g now, and he was wearing a triumphant smile.


Time had run out, and Guardian One activated himself. 'Orders are being executed. The king is being rescued.' He opened up his shoulder plates, revealing his devastating array of laser-weapons, and proceeded to activate them.


For a moment there was an eerie silence, nothing but the breeze pulling at the softly creaking metal cage. False alarm, the Doctor hoped. But then he heard a sound coming from inside the Sanctuary below them, like the cracking and blistering of burning wood, except it was quickly growing louder, until it sounded like a raging forest fire trying to break through.

'Here it comes,' Blorph'g said, his grin widening.

A shrill shrieking sound filled every corner of the sewers, as a concentrated stream of superheating energy began liquefying the stone ceiling. Within a few moments it ate its way through the ground of the Sanctuary, as well as its ceiling, and finally pierced the cage with Blorph'g, Rose, and the Doctor.

Everyone jumped in shock as a thick, red beam of searing light, suddenly appeared inside the cage, crackling furiously. Metal creaked, then the cage started to plummet. The laser beam had vaporised the joint that had carried it.

Blorph'g, who had stood closest to the door, had whirled around in time to leap out for the ledge of the balcony. Rose and the Doctor, however, had nowhere to go. They were suddenly trapped in a metal prison that was plunging eleven deadly metres toward the ground.

The Doctor knew that, starting at zero velocity, the cage would reach the ground in just one-point-seven-four seconds, hitting hard after reaching sixty-one kilometres per hour. The impact would crush their mortal bodies and bury them in a heap of broken metal, right next to the Sanctuary, killing the lofty peacocks' appetites. The Doctor also knew that one-point-seven-four seconds wasn't much time to come up with a proper plan to ensure their continued existence, let alone execute any such plan.

The fact that he managed both those things in the given time satisfied him greatly.

The plan was simple: The grappling gun was still attached to the bars of the cage, anchoring it to the roof of the tower. As the cage's tether was vaporised and their deadly plunge commenced, the grappling gun suddenly rattled in place as it began to release more and more whizzing carbon fibre thread. The Doctor leapt for it, and locked its mechanism, causing the thread to snap taut, suspending the cage once more.

The wedged-in grappling gun, however, was anchoring the cage at one of its corners, causing it to immediately turn over itself and swing to the side. Rose and the Doctor were thrown against the bars, collecting bruises and scrapes all over their arms and knees. Below them, the castle ground was replaced by the roof of the Sanctuary, the rim of its freshly burned hole catching flames.

The cage's swinging motion hit the peak of its momentum, and the carbon fibre thread finally gave in, snapping loudly. The cage continued to careen through the air, smashing onto another cage that hung lower. Their combined weight caused its tether to snap, and both cages smashed through the roof of the Sanctuary in a hailstorm of splintering wood and shattered tiles. The Doctor and Rose were thrown against metal bars for a third time as their cage dropped ontop of the other, and finally came to a standstill inside the Sanctuary.

Rose moaned loudly. Her body was one giant bruise, and she wondered if her Mum would think her an alien if she came back all black and purple.

The Doctor also felt his body protest like never before, but he managed to half-grin despite himself. Don't need a sonic, me, he thought. My miracles are handmade.


Virgil stared at the scene in disbelief. Yet again he found himself utterly unprepared to deal with the events unfolding around him. There was so much he couldn't comprehend... the red column of fire that had pierced the space in front of him, the tumbling cages crashing through the roof. He had gasped in horror when he'd heard the blonde girl's scream, and he had darted to the jagged edge and peered down at the mangled remains of the cages – only to sigh in utter relief. They looked bruised and battered but they were moving, and most importantly: they didn't scream their lungs out.

Virgil's guilt spawned a new purpose for the angel; betraying them had been wrong, appeasing his father had proved to be a vain effort. The Doctor had been right: his father was not who he'd thought he was. What sort of man would execute a young girl to force his son back in line?

The same man who would use a dragon to extort donations from the humans. You were right, Doctor. I am an idiot.

Something else happened down there; a clunky figure was digging up from the ground of the Sanctuary, using massive, metallic hands. It smashed the smooth stone floor to bits, along with ornate tables and chairs, before it emerged fully.

It walked on two legs and seemed to have two arms and a head, but otherwise it had little likeness to human or angel. It seemed more like a thing some artisan may have built out of metal, except it moved with purpose, as if it were alive.

Then it spoke with a voice as if possessed by a demon.

'Where is the king? Where is the king?'

Mary shouted his name and he jerked round to a cage that was still swinging. She looked terrified, clutching the metal rods. He remembered the fiery lance; whatever had produced it might produce another one.

As he ascended to her cage, she pointed him toward the tower, where a strange figure clung to the ledge of one of the balconies, kicking and struggling to keep himself from plunging to his death. 'He can open the door to the cage! He has a magic tool, I've seen it!'

Virgil didn't hesitate. He surged toward the man and pushed him from below, helping him mount the ledge. When he joined him on the balcony, Virgil was faced with another surprise: The man was green, with pointy extrusions for hair and a very unhappy face. 'Get me down there!' the strange man commanded with the voice of Qu'alandari, the first advisor to his father.

'I need to open the cage! Give me your magic tool!'

'If you get me down there!'

Virgil glanced through the breach in the roof at the possessed statue, its demonic voice still demanding to see the king. Virgil frowned. 'Is that wise?'

'You want your lock open or not?'


'Rose?' the Doctor croaked, his bruised arms and limbs stifled by the crash. The back of his head was nothing but pulsing pain, which seemed to explode as he tried to sit up on the wooden bars.

'I'm all hunky dor-' she began, before being cut off by her own gasp of pain. 'I'm alive,' she corrected herself. 'But my bones feel like they've been shuffled round.'

'I can't tell if I got a broken rib or a new mole,' the Doctor murmured, face contorted as he tried to feel for a spot between his shoulders.

They were interrupted by the thundering voice of Rose's old pal, Guardian One. 'Where is the king? Where is the king?'

'What do we do about him?' asked Rose.

'Mole. Thank god.'

'Where is the king? Where is the king?'

'Right,' the Doctor said, pushing himself up on his elbows, so he could observe the great hall of the Sanctuary. There stood the deadly Zurx automatron, in front of the hole it had carved out with its laser beam and excavator-claws.

'Big, shooty robot next to a rocket filled with highly explosive fuel. How did this turn into a western?'

'Doctor, look!' Rose pointed at Blorph'g, who was being carried downwards by Virgil, for some reason. The angel placed him just behind the angry robot, next to the freshly carved hole in the floor. Blorph'g handed him something in return, before he went down the hole. The Doctor suddenly remembered something: 'He knows the pass code to deactivate the automatron!'

'On it,' Rose said, grunting as she forced herself to slide toward the edge of the wooden cage.

'No, don't! Let me go after him!' the Doctor insisted, trying to ignore the pain, trying to move quicker than her. 'He's dangerous, Rose! I know him!'

'EMP's spent,' she said curtly. 'There's no other way to take it out. You stall it, I'll get you the pass code.' She slipped off the edge, landing two cages down on four limbs like a cat.

'Rose!' he shouted over the din of the robot's voice, but she wouldn't listen. The doctor watched as she circled round Guardian One and dropped into the hole to go after the fugitive.

'I've become the companion,' he realised. 'Did Lara Croft even have a companion?'

'Where is the king? Where is the king?'

'Right,' he panted, still stiff from the pain. He glanced at the raucous robot. 'Companion to-do list, item one: Stall the shooty thing. Easy.'

With a heavy feeling in his guts, he rolled himself off the cage, trying his best to deliver the same smooth landing as Rose. He ended up blundering into the crushed debris of fancy wooden tables.

Meanwhile, not far across the hall, the big robot kept shouting, 'Where is the king? Where is the king?'

'What is your quarrel with me, foul beast?' King Miramys thundered back. The Doctor watched through jagged splinters how the majestic angel descended to the floor, fearlessly confronting the menacing figure.

'Where is the king? Where is the king?'

'I am the king! And you have attacked my kin inside our very sanctuary. I will not let your insults go unpunished!'

'Get away, you fool!' cried the Doctor while he struggled to his feet. 'You don't control it anymore! And playing the grand leader is just a brilliant way to die!'

A cone of red light streaked from the black glass that was his face as Guardian One scanned king Miramys. 'You are not the king!' it ranted. 'Where is King Phyllhax?'

'Interesting, the Doctor said as he staggered toward the robot. 'And also sad. Mostly sad, actually. This is not a Nexus World, but a sadness-world. A world of lost souls.'

'Speak sense!'

'Your king is not here, I'm afraid.'

'His signal ceased seventy-two seconds ago. I demand an explanation!'

'And an explanation you shall have, even a proper one!' shouted the Doctor. 'Someone was pulling your leg! Tricked you into thinking that someone else was your king.'

Guardian One fell silent. Good, the Doctor thought. Maybe he could reason with it, keep it from shooting up the place, at least as long as it took Rose to get the pass code from Blorph'g.

Next to him, Brandomyr had joined King Miramys, urging him to seek a safer location. The king shot a devastating scowl at the Doctor, but obliged in the end, flapping his wings to reach the first floor balcony, which led to his chamber. It wasn't nearly far enough, but the Doctor had bigger problems to worry about.

The other Royal Guards had taken up positions around the robot, their halberds raised defensively. The Doctor gritted his teeth, almost cursing them.

'Where is King Phyllhax?'

'Your king is on Zurx. Unlike you.'

'Nonsense. I am still on Zurx.'

'You're on Pikoola.'

'Nonsense,' Guardian One repeated, but then he fell silent for a moment. 'Processing data. Please wait.'

The Doctor folded his arms. 'No rush there, big fella,' he said, giving a smile to the tense Royal Guards standing around him with their halberds drawn. 'No problem can't be solved with talking,' he said, more to them than to the robot.

While Guardian One was processing its data, a total of ten Royal Guards streamed into the sanctuary through various entrances. Silently, and with their halberds raised, they approached and surrounded the robot, giving each other instructions via glances and gestures, and taking up positions behind him.

'Result,' Guardian One shouted. 'This is not Zurx. Guardian One has been displaced.'

'Was about time someone told you, eh?'

'This is unacceptable! Orders cannot be executed. Take me back. Take me back. Take me back.'

'I will try my best to get you back to King Phyllhax, but I need your help in order to do that.'

'Speak.'

The Doctor raised his hands, seeking eye contact with the Illantis, who were coming closer and closer to their target. 'You have to stand down, okay? Stand down!' He hoped the Illantis understood he was really talking to them, but they kept sneaking closer, their weapons ready to strike.

'Do not attack! Even if you're ten against one! Just stand down, be calm, and let me work! Do you hear me?'

'I hear you,' Guardian One replied. The Royal Guards had listened as well, because they stopped and exchanged confused glances with each other.

'It might take a while, but I'm certain I can sort this all out, if you just stand down and let me work!'

'How long will it take?'

The Doctor shrugged. 'Could be just a day, really. I don't know yet.'

'Unacceptable!' Guardian One shouted. 'Bring me back this instant!'

'I can't, not this instant! I need time! And the more you act up, the longer it will take!'

'Improbable. Your species is unknown. Probability of deception is high.' With that, he stepped into an aggressive stance, revealing the deadly array of laserguns in his shoulder pads. 'Take me back to King Phyllhax!'

'No, wait!' the Doctor shouted at the Illanti who raised his halberd behind the robot. He didn't listen. None of them did. Halberds swung through the air in horizontal curves, slicing straight through gaps in armour plates, crashing against elbow joints. They had no effect on Guardian One, other than making the bulky robot jerk around with sudden movement. He tried turning around, but two more halberds stabbed at his back, sending him stumbling a few steps.

'Deception! Guardian One defends itself!'

'Don't!' the Doctor screamed. 'They're no threat to you!'

Another halberd crashed down on Guardian One's head, bouncing off its metal plating.

Then it opened fire.