The Doctor stumbled through bramble & nettle for a further hour before he reached the forest's end. Breaking out, he stopped to shield his eyes from the light, having become accustomed to the relative gloom of the tightly packed trees. The light was by no means bright, but it was enough to make him a little disoriented. Finally adjusted, he took in the sight of vast rolling fields & heath-land. As far as he could see, the purple haze of heather, gently rustling in the wind, met his tired gaze. Occasionally, the violet carpet was interspersed with bracken or gorse bushes, the former's triangular fronds waving softly in the breeze, the latter's yellow leaves gleaming in the weak light. Taking a deep breath, the Doctor felt a small surge of energy & pushed into the heath-land.
Aiming for a nearby hill, the Doctor made his way easier than expected, the heather proving navigable. Soon finding himself atop the hill, he pulled out his spyglass, removed the cap, adjusted the lens & examined his surroundings.
"More heath-land by the looks of it." he muttered
Everywhere he looked was more sprawling blankets of violet, but occasionally a home or farmstead met his gaze. In his field of view, the Doctor counted at least 4 homesteads & the nearest seemed a cosy crofter's cottage. He could just make out a middle-aged woman with greying blonde hair, hard at work in a small garden, whilst a much younger woman, seemingly the carbon copy of her mother, only with short black hair instead, carried a pale of water, up from what the Doctor assumed was a nearby stream.
Compressing the spyglass, he replaced it in his pocket & pondered. He was now faced with a dilemma: He needed more information & if this world really was on the brink of extinction, he would have to help the people that still lived.
"Take them to the Tardis? Call for help from the Timelords?" he thought. The idea of asking the Timelord's for help again was bitter pill to swallow. He had made a show, since his exile being ended, of his independence, his renunciation of Timelord society. It felt hypocritical to exalt his freedom whilst begging for help when the going got tough. Taking all & sundry to the Tardis was an easier idea to contemplate, but fraught with it's own difficulties.
"There could be thousands of people still left alive & then there's getting to wherever the Tardis is."
This thought in mind, the Doctor remembered the Tardis Tracker. He had forgotten about it in his flight from the Daleks & now fished it out. The device remained inert in his hands, but faintly, however, the Doctor could make out a small, weak pulse. Spinning around, he gauged the strength or weakness of the pulse before pulling out his compass. Marrying it up to the strongest pulse, he was pleased to find that the Tardis lay in the West, but an exact distance was beyond the device at this stage. Replacing the items in his pocket, the Doctor returned to his cogitations.
"There's the Daleks to consider too..." he muttered ominously, glancing back at the Dargeth Woods. The forest, now covered in a murky gloom, had a menacing air about it & the Doctor could just make out, a mile or more away, a plume of dark smoke rising over the tree tops. On it's own the woods were ominous enough, but the knowledge that the Daleks lurked there & were now likely making their way through it, enhanced it's baleful aura.
If he failed to convince anyone, he was as good as killing them. The Daleks were on his trail & would not give up until either they had the Tardis or were dead. They'd reach the same places he did in their hunt & kill or enslave those they found.
Shaking the thought away, the Doctor walked on, heading straight for the nearest cottage.
"I'll just have to think on the hop." he said, not entirely convincingly
It had been another quiet day for Iona Loran. The monotonous life In the Shadowlands somehow suited her & didn't. On the one hand, the repetitive tasks of fetching water from the stream, helping in the garden & reading the same books weighed on her heavily, but at the same time, she loved the country. When free from her daily chores, Iona loved nothing more than to wander in the fields of the Shadowlands. Her only wish was that there had been some wildlife about. The beautiful desolation, accompanied by the occasional shift into gloomy twilight from the inconsistencies of the Metier machine, had the tendency to give the countryside an eerie, lonely feel.
Sitting out in front of the cottage, Iona read a book on land cultivation for the 50th time, whilst her mother swept the front. The daily chores of gardening & water fetching from the stream always made her tired, but her mother always seemed energised by it. The light had dipped again & the lands beyond, Shadowlands & Dargeth, were shrouded in a gloomy half-light. She was just beginning to doze when she heard her mothers voice.
"Who on Earth is that?"
"We're not on Earth, mother." replied Iona, languidly. She gave a start when she realised what her mother had just said & stood up, looking in the direction her mother pointed.
A man, tall & oddly dressed, was marching across the heath-land. He had a floppy hat perched on his head & a very long scarf, streaming behind him, as he made his way in their direction. Occasionally, he glanced back in the direction he came, as if worried he was being followed.
"Coming out from Dargeth Woods direction." she said. "To look at him, you'd think Death itself was nipping at his heels."
The closer he got, the more dishevelled he appeared. Mud caked various parts of his clothing & his long, brown frock coat was faded from dust & mud. When he was around 30 feet from the cottage, he waved & shouted "Hello there!"
Marching up to them, he displayed a wide, toothy grin whilst shoving his hands into his pockets.
"I hardly know where to begin, you may very well find my story strange & me mad."
Iona's mother, leaning the broom on the wall of the cottage, chuckled.
"Well, start at the start & finish at the end, it's usually the best way. And as for strange, stranger, there's naught on Medway left to befuddle us now."
The man smiled again & launched into his strange story.
The man, the Doctor, had been right, his story was strange. It had stretched credulity in Iona's mind, but she had been fascinated all the same. The Doctor had claimed to be a space traveller & had arrived on Medway thanks to terrible creatures, though he remained somewhat reticent to talk of them.
"Daleks." he said solemnly. "Creatures of evil & my oldest & deadliest foes. Though ""Nemesis"" might be more appropriate for my current situation. They spoke a little of Medway & it's predicament before I managed to escape, but I had hoped you might know a little more."
They had retired to the front room as the Doctor had begun his story. There had been no need to light the fire as the day had been mildly warm, but Iona's mother, Alma, had insisted that she brew some tea for the three of them. Alma sat in her tatty old seat & sipped at her mug as she spoke.
"Well, you know about what happened to the planet. Old Damocles swept us right away, but Professor Carla Metier crafted this device. The machine acts as an artificial sun giving us light, but it only stretches out for around 2000 miles east to west & 600 miles north to south. All lands beyond that are desolate wastelands. Then again, from what I've heard the protected lands are just as bad the further west you go."
The Doctor seemed to ponder this, his face unreadable.
"Is it failing at all?" he asked. "Would you be able to tell?"
Alma stopped sipping her tea &, with a wary look at Iona, place the mug on the nearby table.
"That's why these lands have become known as the Shadowlands." she said. "The light keeps seeming to fail & brighten up again intermittently, but even the light isn't what it used to be. It gives the land a perpetual twilight & gloom now, most of us here believe it's power is fading, but we've no way of telling."
Standing up, the Doctor went to the window & spoke without turning round.
"There's no way of telling how much time we may have left." he muttered. "If I had access to the Tardis I could found out in seconds. You said this was an Earth Colony, didn't anyone contact them for help"
"Oh the government did." she said with a mirthless chuckle. "Damn near killed em to do it, but they did. Turns out Earth was in the middle of an interplanetary war with some race called the...erm..Sontarans or something. It was suggested by some that our messages never got through."
The Doctor grumbled at this & began to pace back & forth, occasionally swiping a hand through his curly mop of hair.
Iona, having sat in silence sipping her tea for most of the discussion, decided to speak up.
"Well...there is Bolet to the west." she said. "There might be something there you could use...to figure out how long the machine will last, that is."
Alma, her head snapping quickly in Iona's, cast a warning glance at her daughter too late. The Doctor, turning around caught this & his expression became grim.
"There's something rotten in the state of Bolet, isn't there?"
Alma, bemused by the unfamiliar reference, cast her gaze to her lap. It was some time before she spoke.
"No-one goes out west anymore." she said quietly. "The lands beyond there are not safe, and Bolet is one of them. A group of around 60 people went out there back during the exodus to the Shadowlands & naught's been heard of them since. Tis a dark & evil place now, not like it once was, a beautiful, lovely city full of spires & old buildings. There was even the university of Pembroke, where all the greatest minds of Medway studied. Now, it just broods on the edge of the Shadowlands. It's the gateway to the Great Bog & whatever lies beyond that."
"I'm afraid your daughter is right, , if that city, particularly Pembroke University, has anything that can help, I need to go there."
"What do you mean help?
The Doctor hesitated for only a moment before he spoke, but when he did, his face was grim.
"I need to find out where my ship went. There may be something I can use in Bolet that will allow me to boost the signal of the tracker. Further more, there may be information or some piece of technology that I can use to find out just how long Medway has left."
Shoving his hands into his pockets, the Doctor turned back to the window. As he did, Iona caught a fleeting glimpse of a worried expression.
"There is one more thing, . I'm afraid I've brought danger to your door or at least I will. As I said before, I'm being pursued by alien monstrosities that will not stop until they have what they want. They're formidable trackers &...they'll be guaranteed to find their way here."
There was a heavy silence as both Alma & Iona absorbed what the Doctor has said. Outside, the wind was picking up, a soft wail passed through an open window somewhere in the cottage & made Iona shiver. It was like the sound of a ghost. Alma was the first to recover.
"How could you do such a foolish thing!?" she spluttered
"I am sorry, it was a difficult choice but one I had to make. You & whoever is left on this paltry strip of land may well have only days left, so I decided I would give you the chance for survival." the Doctor replied solemnly
"What do you mean "a chance"?" asked Iona, her tea mug trembling slightly in her hand
"I mean, that if I can find my Tardis I can get you off this world & to anywhere you please. But only if I can find it & I only if you're willing to take a chance at life, because at the moment if you stay here you'll either perish when that machine fails or you'll die at the hands of the Daleks."
"And the Daleks don't make anyone's passing fast or pleasant." he added grimly