Old Sins

888

It unfurled itself into reality above Castle Cagliostro. The grandiosity and splendor, the terrific nature of it horrified those that saw it. The Doctor looked back to see Alexis standing dumbfounded by the thing that was now towering above them, slowly walking backwards until her back hit the masonry of the castle battlements. The sky above darkened, with the light seeming to stream into the creature that was now fully apparent.

It, at first, seemed humanoid. Its skin blazed ivory white. Its limbs however were too long, too slender, almost skeletal. The head, though it was much more likened to a skull, had large sky-scratching, needle-like protuberances akin to horns or the spines of a crown, of the same ivory white cadence to the rest of the creature. A pair of blue eyes burned with cobalt fire from the pits of its sunken sockets, fanged teeth clenched against lipless mandibles and maxilla. What at first appeared to be shifting white robes morphed and changed into impossible incandescent wings, both made of and exuding perfect light, each shard of feathered rainbow caste from an eye that seemed to blink from the wings' feathers.

"Impossible…" the Doctor whispered as he looked up at the creature. His square jaw then set, as he thought. This was what had been chasing Alexis now for the last almost month. Its shadow, its impressions chased her in her dreams, tried to make contact, tried to capture her.

"Thank you-" The creature spoke, its voice graveled but thunderous, a wind as if from a cyclone roared as it spoke. "You have made my passage into this realm now possible..." It turned its head, or at least that was sensation though it felt like some grander thing had occurred as if the universe had pivoted around it, and its burning eyes bore down upon Alexis. "And you shall provide me with the feast."

"What, what are you talking about?" Alexis finally said, snapping out of her stupor as she looked up.

"You're a paradox!" The Doctor said glaring up at the creature.

"What does that even mean?" Alexis started.

"No parents, no history, no records, just a name, and a presence." The Doctor said looking back at Alexis.

"I was orphaned as a baby-"

"No". The Doctor replied shaking his head. He reached into his black leather jacket and pulled out a small bluish, pen-light like device and it whirred as he swept it over her. "You're covered in exotic particles, and Artron radiation. The TARDIS knew it, that's why it kept homing in on you; I can feel it, myself, in my bones." The Doctor turned, frowning and glowering up at the creature towering above the castle they were standing upon. "Did you do this!?"

"Twas not I; the child is the final shard of that great war." The creature said with an almost indignant tone. "I have only waited for its maturation, and now I have come for the feast…"

The Doctor's hand clenched, he flashed his blue eyes back towards Alexis. "You'll be safe I'll protect you."

"What about you, Doctor?" Alexis asked, looking at him but he didn't respond as he started walking the battlements and up a small set of stairs up a parapet towards the creature that was towering above them.

"Ukufa, we're going to have a talk." The Doctor shouted up to the creature against the howling gale of its existence. "You are a Chronovore…you are bound by rules! I demand parlay."

"You know me!?" The creature growled, glaring down at the Doctor.

"I'm the Doctor, of the House Lungbarrow, Lord of Time. Let's just say it's my place to know about certain things, and you definitely are one of the things I certainly know about." The Doctor said, glaring upwards.

"I was born before this universe formed, in the dark spaces, in the great chaos of the Six-fold-realm. I have walked the vaults of eternity, and seen the rampage of all that is, all that wasn't and all that shall never be. I have pruned the multiverse since before it splintered, I have consumed an eternity of timelines…" the creature's cobalt flames seemed to focus on the Doctor. "I am more than just a thing…"

"Nah you're just a thing, eating and gorging and wandering through the cosmos. Just like me, you're an old killer; you've never made anything, you don't really live, you just eat and hide in the dark spaces-" The Doctor clenched his hand tight around his sonic screwdriver. "You may have survived the Last Great Time War, when the rest of your cousins and brethren fled, but I ended the Last Great Time War…I killed it, and everything involved with it, stone dead…."

"Are you dictating to me your meager résumé to me, Time Lord? Are you attempting to aggrandize yourself before me, Lord of Time, to curry some faint awe from me? Tell me, lord of a duchy so small, what is the point of this?" The creature snarled, the weight of its voice pulsing the very masonry of the castle battlements.

"The point? Life. That's the point. You and me, our time has passed, the universe belongs to them!" The Doctor said, pointing back towards Alexis. He took a deep breath and looked directly in the Chronovore's eyes. "I am not trying to dictate or aggrandize, nah, nothing like that. You're not worth it, and I'm not that great. We're just ancient sins against the universe that don't belong in it anymore! It's time for us to go. We're shadows of a bygone age, and we should simply go."

"Who in this reality can make me go? You? With your tiny screwdriver in your hand?" The creature snarled; the pallor of its ivory firmament darkening as if reflecting the shade of its mood.

"Maybe not," The Doctor said flicking his wrist; the screwdriver whirred to life and he pulled a second a device from his other pocket, "but it's worth a try…what have I got to lose, my life?"

The Doctor then ran up the last rising edge of the battlement and leapt from its rampart to it. A blazing light erupted and the two of them the Doctor and the creature seemed engulfed in it before disappearing into a swirling flash of orange and blue.

"DOCTOR!" Alexis shouted loudly as the skies lightened the sun emerged from the shadows and cloudless serenity ominously hung around the echoing shout. But no response came, and after many minutes and hours Alexis finally had to accept the worst and left the battlements and returned home to live her life.

It was months later. Alexis was walking in the streets of Monaco. When in the distance she saw him, in his black leather jacket. His hair was shorn close to his scalp, walking with a young, blonde teenager in a pink hoodie. Alexis moved to call out but the two of them disappeared into the crowded streets. She shook her head, believing it was just wishful thinking on her part and she turned and started to continue to where she was going when she heard it, that unforgettable sound. The sound of hope….