Tomorrow's Beginning/Going Home

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The Cardinal did his best to suppress the shiver down his back and the fact that the muscles in his face wished to contort into an utter fit of disgust. He attempted to look away but even hearing the gnawing and gulping and lumping gnashing of teeth on flesh made him half nauseated. However, he mustered his courage and walked forward kneeling as close as he dare to the figure hunched over on the floor.

"Umm…my lord?" the Cardinal started.

"What do you want? Can't you see that I am busy?" the figure growled, sharp blue eyes flashed at the Cardinal, and a blood smeared face contorted in aggravation.

"It's just…well…the general is reporting that the bombardment has stopped." The Cardinal said, unconsciously taking a step backward.

"Fine then…" The hunched figure said as he reached down and ripped a piece of flesh from the body in front of him with his bare hands.

"There is a problem though…" The Cardinal hazarded. "It seems that the timescape of the new reality we're in is vastly smaller than the universe's. The bubble we're in will collapse on itself without intervention very soon."

"Then intervene!" The hunched figure growled, lifting the hunk of meat to his mouth and ripping it in twain with his teeth. "Surely you can manage that!?"

"Yes, my lord, of course, my lord, I'll have the engineers start cannibal….err, reconstituting temporal fields in lower orbit for the purpose of self preservation." The Cardinal said quietly. The hunched figure glared at him with those blue eyes his pale hair seemed to flair against his face.

"You aren't moving, Cardinal…." The figure sneered taking another bite of the flesh in his grip.

The Cardinal blinked and then realized the situation and stood up, backing away from the man and bowing slightly. "Will my lord be needing anything else?"

"Something to wash this musty, dusty flesh down with would be nice." The figure replied with a flare of his hands dismissively. "When I finish this I shall want some privacy. A change is coming to Gallifrey. We shall be born anew, like a phoenix the Time Lords re-born, but first I will need to change my clothes, what I am wearing now is most inappropriate."

"Yes, my lord, I can have someone come down with a choice of…"

"NO! Just, go, get this bubble universe stable…" growled the man as his hands started digging into the eviscerated body in front of him. The black sweater he was wearing was torn and burnt and covered in blood.

The Cardinal fled the throne room of the High President of Gallifrey, closing the doors heavily behind him. He scurried downwards into the vast bits below the Panopticon where massive temporal engines churned and twisted reality into pure power to drive the mechanisms and shields of Gallifrey's infrastructure. He quickly assembled a team of engineers and quickly the Time Lords of Gallifrey worked to do what they do best, twist time to favor their survival.

The timescape of this new reality was tiny, barely a half a day of time left to unspool before everything froze in place, locked in a forever of unmoving waiting. However there were ways of changing that, of tricking time itself. One of them was by stretching the time fields to their breaking point; another was to burn up time somewhere else to create more time in a localized position. Both of the choices were dangerous in such confined quarters both of them had nasty side effects but when only a few hours are left before you're entire civilization is locked in a forever of rubble you didn't mind the choices.

The engineers of Gallifrey were ingenious in their technical skill, though their knowledge of those skills was hindered by myth and legend and indolence. Plus, the Time Lords were insufferably conservative and as such any drastic action was often backstabbed over and argued about for centuries, which tended to not lead to an incredibly progressive response to any dire emergency. Fortunately, when a Cardinal of the High Council stamps his staff at a bunch of engineers in the pits they tended to jump to action without question; it was one of the perks of the position. After several minutes of direction and threat the engines of Gallifrey's great power were turned to spooling time like grand thin threads from the lower orbit of the planet and stretched into years and decades at the planet's surface. Yes a few sky trenches had been destroyed in the process, and possibly some unlucky survivors within, but most of those trenches had been destroyed during the Dalek's final assault during the last day anyways and so little was said about it by anyone, not that the High Council or anyone in the know said anything anyways to the general public.

Artificial heating of the planet had begun as Gallifrey's twin suns were now in a different universe. The occasional surviving rogue Dalek would rampage through one of the major cities but the vast majority of them were being cleared away destroyed and fed to the time field generators, their history and personal futures being consumed for the purpose of extending the Time Lords' lives, a fitting end for the monsters, if ever the Cardinal had thought of one. It was in these heady days of early rebuilding that he'd come to realize the changes at the top. Rassilon was gone, completely. The immortal one was consumed at the end of the war…and replaced. Although, one could argue the replacement may not have been much better.

The Cardinal walked forward towards the grand chambers of the High President. He had spent months holed up in the chambers, disallowing anyone to come to him. The council though was impatient for reports and orders and proclamations there were rumors of votes of no confidence. He came to the door and slowly lifted his clutched hand to knock.

"I said I wanted no visitors…." Growled the voice angrily.

"I am sorry, my lord, but…the others grow impatient." The Cardinal replied, unclenching his hand and moving it towards the door handle.

"The others can wait." The voice said, it was different from before, deeper, more graveled.

"No…they can't." The Cardinal said, taking a deep breath and pushing himself into the room. He looked towards the throne and sitting there in dark red robes was a man, older looking than before. His hair was a faded red color; his face sported a beard of the same hue, his eyes were still sharp blue. The Cardinal continued forward. "I can see why you wanted privacy, you have regenerated."

"Half a dozen times." The man said with a growl as he stared at the floor. "The dusty old fool never knew he had it so good…an unlimited supply of change and rebirth and he chose to look like a subpar James Bond. Meh, they called me mad."

"I never did, you can check the records." The Cardinal said, trying his best not to sound as weaselly as he felt saying it.

The man simply gave him a knowing cut of a look, and returned to staring at the floor, his chin braced against his two hands, folded in front of him, with his arms balanced on the armrests of the throne.

"The council is asking for direction from the Lord President." The Cardinal said, quietly.

"He was always a coward, you know." The man said quietly, almost angrily. He looked up at the Cardinal.

"The Lord President?" The Cardinal looked quizzically at the man.

"No…our triumphant saint." The man said with a sneer. "He attempted to tell me that he'd destroyed you all on the last day. Blew you up, I always secretly knew he couldn't do it, he never could have done it. It's not him, even war torn and burned out…The Doctor never could swallow the guilt of destroying his home…his people." The man glared at the Cardinal. "He's not like me, not suited to this kind of thing…not capable of making the choices that need to be made in the darkest hours."

"No, my lord, I suspect in the end you are right." The Cardinal said half-heartedly, not entirely sure where this conversation was going.

"You, why are you here again?" the man on the throne asked testily.

"The council, they wish to obtain some direction from the presidency…" The Cardinal said, straightening up slightly.

"The President is dead." The man said quietly, looking at the blood stained carpet in front of the throne. "Consumed by war…."

"Ah yes, but you are sitting on the throne." The Cardinal said walking closer to the man. He circled around the throne. "Rassilon's blood runs through your veins…now. I could easily guide you into the position with nary a question asked. You could be President of Gallifrey, leader of the High Council of Time Lords."

"Leader of a group of old dusty fools, trapped in a miniscule bubble universe infinitely on the cusp of collapse." The man sat up and looked at the Cardinal. "You will instruct the engineers to work towards getting us out of here."

"But we are completely cut off…completely…"

"He is still alive…find him. He will lead us into the light of the waking world." The man said quietly.

"This universe is sealed unto itself." The Cardinal flustered.

"No, it isn't." The man said with a smile. He lifted his hand and a holographic screen flickered into existence in the air. "I may be new, but I wasn't born yesterday. I've been monitoring everything from this room since the day we arrived in this intractable hell. Not long ago these energy signatures appeared on the skin of this universe. I suspect they are intersection points between this bubble reality and the rest of the multiverse." The man stood up and walked towards the image. "Your council wants direction?"

"Yes, my lord, the council grows restless without new direction." The Cardinal stated, nodding.

"We will transmit signals through these portals, a signal that only the Doctor can respond to, we will add a truth field on the backend of the signals to make sure that no one else can answer for him, and that he cannot answer falsely as he is wont to do." The man said with a sneer. "The Doctor will bring us back; he can't stop himself, his heroic nature, his guilt, his need for penance. He will beg to bring us back to the waking universe. Tell the council that this is our new direction, tell them we are heading home….tell them that this has come from their New Lord and Master! Now, leave my sight before I decide I need a new Cardinal!"

The Cardinal gulped and nodded and ran for the door. He could hear the man laughing a maniacal laughter, laughter of madness and malevolent glee, the laughter of a tyrant become mad with power yet fully realized, the laughter of machinations falling into place, everything according to plan.