Authors notes: I've realised the last chapter was a tad flat and dull except for the latter half. Too much exposition, maybe. Might try to go back and fix it later. But hopefully I've made up for it with this chapter.

-Enjoy

Chapter 9

Pretending to be a Monster.

Raven repeated her brain drain on several other people in the town. They were totally uncooperative so this made things a million times easier and quicker. She made sure only to strike when they were out of sight or when they least expected it. This way she was able to quickly track down those who knew the missing people well and get any additional information from them. She kept doing this until she'd built up a coherent picture of the people who'd vanished.

From what she could tell they were all roughly the same age. Some had bad 'scale-rot' and a couple had an obsession with collecting stones but it wasn't anything that connected all of them. Except one thing, she just realised. They apparently knew each other and went to the same tutor to learn skills, this cultures version of a school in other words. There was also another that they all knew of from that 'class' but that person had gone missing many years previous and she decided it wasn't worth looking into.

After learning all she could she hovered away so she could find the Doctor. Again she projected a perception shield around her so people weren't freaked out by a blue ghost hovering around the place. She went into the forest tracking the Doctors distinctive aura and found him sitting over some rocks buzzing them with the tube thing of his. She landed and told him everything she'd learnt which wasn't much. She expected the Doctor to be disappointed, but he listened to it all as if it was all relevant to his investigations.

Half of her wished to dip into his mind to see how he saw things, his behaviour was so alien even to her.

"You found all that out pretty fast" the Doctor said, checking the pocket watch in his waistcoat. "I only left you fifteen minutes ago."

"I can be very persuasive when I want to be" Raven commented. She didn't mention how she actually got the information. She had a feeling the Doctor would not approve and she didn't want another lecture from him. But he still looked at her with suspicion as if he could read her mind. He couldn't, could he? She felt her mask slip as her eyes went a little wider at that thought showing concern, or fear. No, it was definitely concern. She corrected.

"Well, while you've been making friends..." Raven couldn't tell if that was a quip at her expense or not.

"You've been collecting stones" Raven said making it sound mundane and silly.

"Yes, and interestingly the rolling ones gather no moss." the Doctor said. Raven didn't know if that was witty or not, but it sounded like a silly and pointless comment to make.

"The glow stones have similar properties to the moon up there." the Doctor said pointing up. "It's entirely possible that's where it all came from. It seems to have a kind of phosphorescence, but the energy output is unlike anything humans would have seen on Earth. Its atomic structure according to my Sonic Screwdriver" he held up his tube device "indicates an Alkaline, Earth Metal silicate. 'Earth Metal' meaning a chemical group, not that its from Earth." He explained. "But it's crystalline structure indicates a kind of psionic resonance."

"You mean it reacts with brain waves?" Raven summed up. Why couldn't the Doctor explain things simply, in few words? But irritatingly he was doing that thing again which made him almost impossible to look away from once he got into his swing.

"In a manner of speaking." the Doctor held up a piece of glow rock. "I have a hypothesis. Hold out your hand." Raven did as instructed almost without thinking about it and the Doctor dumped the rock into her open hand. The glow slowly faded until it became a dull, gray rock. Then its surface turned black and it seemed to irradiate darkness.

"That's Fascinating." the Doctor said "It's reacting to your psychic potential."

Raven began to feel dizzy and sick to her stomach. She felt like something was munching at her. Trying to pull on her soul. She dropped the rock, it glowed white again and she came back to her senses.

"Psionic sickness from having your chakras pulled on." the Doctor summed up, "not pleasant. I could feel it tug at my own telepathic abilities."

"Did you know it would do that to me?!" Raven exclaimed a little louder than she wanted.

"I had a hunch" the Doctor said before noticing the tone in her voice. "Relax, you're fine. Don't get emotional over it." Raven really wanted to hit him for that remark.

"It's like the glow stones emit energy, but can absorb it through a number of different methods. From the vibrations of my Sonic Screwdriver, to the psychic potential of a moody teen." But the Doctor continued on before Raven could react to that. He had a habit of doing that. "But do you know what else is interesting?"

"What?" Raven couldn't help herself, she had to ask it.

"I analysed that deep well we were near, and its not made from stone, or at least the inside of it isn't. It's made from rock like this one. Therefore, it isn't a well. Or it was never intended to be one."

"The suspense is killing me" Raven said flatly.

"It's arrangement is more of a storage facility. Dozens of these glow stones arranged in a pattern to store an even larger amount of energy. Like some kind of a battery, or maybe as some kind of harnessing focus." the Doctors face turned dark as he realised something. "The well is dark" he said.

"It's a well, they usually are." Raven replied.

"No, I mean really, really dark." the Doctor said "I shone a light down it and despite it only being fifty feet deep I couldn't see the bottom. Therefore something is down there and the stones are draining away it's psychic potential."

The Doctor rattle all this off to her like some kind of murder mystery. Raven had to admit to herself that she was captivated by the way the Doctor used his voice to tell her all this, altering his voices' pitch and vocalisation, going down at grim realisations and higher at an exciting discovery. It was like his voice was able to push and pull your attention, grabbing it at the start, leading it along, and as he rattled on his voice would get lower and your brain had no choice but to wilfully follow it down to hear the conclusion. It was like watching a Shakespearean performer at a theatre work their magic. It was that command of his voice that kept her mind at attention despite her wanting to ignore it and focus on stuff more important to her.

The Doctor touched his tube device, his Sonic Screwdriver to his lips as he thought.

"Not enough information" he concluded "Not enough to come up with a definite answer to whats going on."

"The disappeared people?" Raven suggested. "Couldn't it just be something mundane?" she sighed. She tried to mimic the same trick the Doctor did, but upon hearing herself she could tell it didn't have nearly the same effect. In fact it sounded more like she was whining.

"Well..." the Doctor said waving his had dismissively "It's a possibility, but usually in my experience a mysterious dark well made out of a psychic absorbing stones, followed by several disappearances are rarely unconnected. Now assuming I'm right, and I usually am, I suspect the key may lie with that child who went missing years ago" he held up his hand to Raven as if he knew what she was about to say "Yes, it might be unconnected, it might be pointless to look deeper into it. But we won't know unless we look."

The Doctor began pacing, and Raven stood there watching him like a sister playing along with a little brothers play time, or that was the view she was telling herself.

"Why don't we just destroy the well and be done with this?" Raven said but the Doctor cut across her. "No! That's a terrible idea. We don't know what the well does, or what it contains. What it's even imprisoning, if it is imprisoning something or someone."

"Like I care." Raven said out loud trying to take control of her own head and dictate to it what to do, what to say and how to behave. It wasn't like her to pay attention to someone so strongly and she was determined for it not to be like her at all.

"Look" the Doctor sighed heavily as if she was grinding on his nerves. Good, she thought. "I don't believe for one moment you're as heartless as you pretend to be. You just think you have to be that way because you believe nobody can ever see you as anything else but a heartless monster. So you don't bother to try to be anything else. I can see it in your eyes, deep down there is a 'Raven' you're suppressing, the one who cares about beings other than herself, and that 'Raven' is desperate to get out, spread her wings, and fly."

Raven let those words hang in the air. "Finished?" she asked as if it all that meant nothing to her.

"There is good in you, Raven, that's why you resist your destiny instead of following it. But if you're not ready to break that cycle and let it flower. If you're not ready to be someone else then I suggest you go back to the TARDIS and continue pretending to be an un-redeemable monster."

"Yes, perhaps I will!" Raven said with more emotion than she intended. What she really wanted to say was I am an un-redeemable MONSTER! But didn't want her emotions to dictate and tell her what to do, despite that she refused to admit it was an emotional response that made just turn away from the Doctor and head back towards the safety of the TARDIS.

Silently flowing through the forest in the air to get back to the TARDIS the emotions inside Raven seethed and grew and a dark glow flowed around her.

Why was the Doctor so invested? Why was he interfering? By the look of it these people were content. Looking at the village they were happy as they were, so why couldn't the Doctor leave them alone? He was like an arrogant child poking or prodding an ants nest to see how the ants reacted. Sure a couple of people have gone missing but there will probably be some mundane explanation surrounding it all and the Doctor was just making a mountain out of an ant hill.

And pretend to be a monster? She isn't pretending. She is a monster! She could feel it in her core. She was cruel, she was nasty, she was unpleasant, she was twisted and creepy. She was a demons daughter and she didn't want to be anything else because she couldn't be anything else! She wanted people to cower at her shadow, to run and hide at her presence, to scatter at her foot falls, she wanted people to fear her so they would go away and leave her alone!

There was a loud crack as power escaped her, fired from the jewel in her forehead and it struck a nearby tree that, up until that point had been stable, and now as she watched, slowly and comically it began falling over and landed with a crash on the floor.

She took a very long and slow deep breath to clear her mind. This was all the Doctors fault!

"Help!" someone cried "Somebody, help!" the cry was ethereal, almost ghostly.

"I shouldn't interfere" Raven said to herself "I want to go back to the TARDIS" she said her thoughts aloud because she seemed to be ignoring her own internal monologue. And she was still ignoring her own monologue because she was floating in the direction of the voice.

She went through the forest towards a large lake of water. Mist seemed to hang in the air giving the place a creepy, yet mystical look to the place. Raven wasn't scared, though. She liked it, she almost felt at home.

"Please, help me!" came the cry again. "I'm drowning."

"I can hear you!" Raven cried out "Where are you?!"

"Can you hear me?!" the voice cried, there was something in the way that it echoed that Raven didn't like. She suddenly had the sense of being led along like bait into a trap. But what could they do against her? She was a powerful sorceress. Whatever trap they have laid she will easily get out of.

That was until some kind of black mass jumped out at her from the water and struck her in the stomach, bringing her to the forest floor.

As she composed herself, a black mass had dropped from the trees. A black mass that seemed to be forming into some kind of creature, bipedal, two arms, two legs, and a head. But the outline wasn't solid and looked almost like how a child might draw a person. Though it was totally black and eye-less Raven got the impression it was looking at her. Looking hungrily at her. It advanced towards her and Raven used her powers to project a dark energy wall between her and it.

And the thing stepped straight through it was if it was air! Ravens mouth fell open. Her force walls never failed! She tried to blast the thing away with stream of dark energy from her finger tips, but the thing stood there and looked like it was absorbing it all!

Raven stood up, grabbed rocks, stones, boulders and fallen trees from all around her with her powers and tossed them at the creature. But the creature either batted them aside or warped his entire form to avoid them.

That's when the creature attacked. It flung out its arms and Raven was caught square in the chest and she was flung back against a tree before rolling onto the floor again.

The creature melted into another black mass and flowed through the forest. It wrapped around her legs, crawled up her hips, over her arms and chest, and finally over her face. She tried every kind of defensive spell she could think of to get this thing off her, but everything she tried didn't seem to faze the creature.

She couldn't breathe! She tried to draw breath but it felt like this creature was trying to work its way into her lungs. She covered her mouth and pinched her nose to deny it entry to her body.

She tried to think, tried to find some way of getting this creature off her. But her lungs began to burn, they desperately wanted to breathe. She was panicking and getting emotional, her powers were flying out of her control, causing loud bangs as trees exploded in dark blasts, the water in the lake boiled, and a dust devil was stirred up. But none of it useful, none of it focused and none of it stopping the creature. In fact it seemed to like the chaos all the more.

Raven was helpless. She had to breathe, she had to take a breath! I'm going to die!

To Be Continued...

Authors notes: As always all reviews, thoughts and criticisms are welcome.

In hindsight perhaps I should've hinted at the monster earlier in the previous chapter, as a kind of creepy, dark presence that was at the edge of perception. Perhaps I'll go back and fix that at a later date.

I've been listening to some of the 8th Doctor, Big Finish audios and I've noticed the way Paul McGann uses his voice as the Doctor does make it difficult to not pay attention to him. So I wrote that into the story.

I've written Raven as a conflicted character, as I think all people seemed to be at some point in their lives where they are full of experiences but don't know how to contextualise them. Part of her mind is telling her she's a bad person and should just do what is expected of a bad person because people will never treat her any differently, but another part of her mind is telling her she should follow her heart and be who she wants to be despite of the treatment she gets whether it be either positive or negative. I know there is a psychological name for what Raven is going through, but I can't for the life of me remember what it's called. Anyone willing to help me out here? I know I'll kick myself when I remember what it's called.