Chapter 11

Spawn Cycle

The Doctor looked at his hands. They were covered in the same goo that covered Ravens body, transferred when he'd pulled her off the street.

"A bit old to be playing in the swamp, aren't you." the Doctor mocked and giggled like a kid. He looked at her up and down at the state of her clothes. Raven ignored that remark. She was angry. She wasn't having a good day and the last thing she needed was the Doctor lecturing her on something.

As her temper subsided she wanted to speak and tell him about the creature she'd encountered. Her mouth opened, but as she cast her mind back she remembered the feeling of death she had felt as that villager had died.

"What's wrong?" the Doctor asked genuinely concerned.

"Nothing's wrong." Raven said trying to control herself. The Doctors gray eyes looked at her as if staring into her soul. A knowing look came over the Doctors face and he looked at her sadly.

"You've just seen death haven't you?" he asked. Raven wanted to deny it but she just couldn't. "I'm sorry." The Doctor moved to hug her but she stepped away from him, giving him a look which said, Don't you dare. She didn't like hugs. They felt 'mushy'.

"Raven, I'm sorry, I really am. I should have warned you, you might encounter that." the Doctor said apologetically. Raven just turned away so the Doctor couldn't read her emotions, like he seems to be able to do, "I assume one of your powers is that of an empath. You're probably a powerful one, and you must've felt it much deeper than usual."

"I'm fine!" Raven insisted, she clenched her fists trying to make the feeling go away. "Do you... do you encounter death often?"

The Doctor sighed deeply. "All the time." he looked sad, "It's one of the failings of my career. I can never save everyone." He sounded really sad and Raven truly felt sorry for him. But he was still irritating.

"You should get cleaned up" the Doctor said, "There are wash facilities upstairs. But I should warn you, they are rather, um... primitive."

Raven didn't care, she just wanted to clean herself up. Before the Doctor had even finished his sentence she was half way up the stairs. She opened the door and looked at the facilities.

"You have got to be kidding me." she said.

The washing facilities were just a large basin filled with cold water. Soap wasn't a thing so she filled the basin from a large tank in the corner. She stripped down and washed herself off. Thankfully most of the sticky goo was on the surface of her clothes, not her skin so she didn't nearly have much of it to wash off.

She stepped out of the basin and dried herself using some furry looking cloth. She felt much better and her mind had settled, so she decided to test her powers. She tried to form a big black ball in front of her fingers. It appeared but still seemed to flicker in and out of existence as if something was still sapping her.

She closed her eyes and attempted to block out all distractions. She pretended this was just another room in the TARDIS and she was surrounded by emptiness and darkness. She said her chimes and the sphere of dark energy came back, it was still flickering but it lasted longer.

There was a knock at the door. "Are you okay in there?"

"I'm fine!" Raven insisted as she tried to concentrate but it was like some demon refused to allow her to let go of her feelings. A demon? Or a bogeyman? Suddenly it came to her, and she had nothing to lose. Closing her eyes she began to sing under her breath.

"Zagreus sits inside your head,

Zagreus lives among the dead,

Zagreus sees you in your bed,

and eats you when you're sleeping."

She personified her emotions as Zagreus. A fictional demon trying to pull at her strings, and she would not allow it to control her!

"Zagreus at the end of days,

Zagreus lies all other ways,

Zagreus comes when times a maze,

and all of history is weeping."

It was the fault of Zagreus. Zagreus was her emotional turmoil, it was Zagreus. She was in control of herself.

"Zagreus taking time a part,

Zagreus fears the hero heart,

Zagreus seeks the final part,

the reward that he is reaping."

She was in control of herself!

"Zagreus sings when all is lost,

Zagreus takes all those he's crossed,

Zagreus wins and all it costs,

the heroes hearts he's keeping."

I am in control of myself! A thought that thundered in her mind, and everything blocking her was pushed aside as easily as cobwebs.

Her eyes opened and they were shining balls of light. Her power was back. "Azarath metrion zinthos!" she said, building her voice into a crescendo on the word 'zinthos' and suddenly a blast of energy erupted from her core. All the dampness and remaining goo was forced off from her skin and hair, and deep ripples were sent through the psychic ether.

"Raven!" Came the Doctors voice. Being a telepath he probably felt that pulse in his head. "The telepaths of Mettula Orionsis just shrieked for you to turn it down!"

Raven smiled. She was back.

Now that she had her powers back she used them to blast off all the goo from her clothes the same way she'd done to the Doctor's earlier and slipped them back on. Now coming down the stairs she felt complete again. She didn't like being without her powers she decided. She'd learnt to control her emotions so much throughout her life that feeling them freely without the consequence of her powers going haywire made her feel uncomfortable.

Now at peace she took in where she and the Doctor where hiding.

It looked like an abandoned house. It was primitive. Spears were set to one side. Cooking and food prep utensils on another. A slab of wood had blood on it, presumably where they prepared their meat. There were very basic chairs and there was a fire place looking object with a pot over where a fire would go.

The Doctor was sat crossed legged in front of this fire place. He had a Glow Stone in his hand and the Doctor just stared at it as if he was in a trance. Raven went up to him and waved her hand in front of his eyes.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"I'm trying to tell if these stones have any form of latent telepathy" the Doctor said, his eyes not moving from the stone.

"Right," the Doctor announced and he quickly got up and rounded on her. "Now, tell me all about that creature."

"What creature?" Raven asked.

"You were running from villagers." the Doctor counted off his fingers "You weren't using your powers to escape. You were clearly distressed."

"I was not." Raven insisted in a low voice.

"You were covered in a saliva like slime, you had clearly seen death. We've theorised that the 'well device' was to contain something, and possibly that something has gotten out. Therefore, I deduce you encountered it and had a really bad time of it. So please, tell me about the creature."

The Doctor could be very irritating when he was right, Raven thought.

After Raven had told the Doctor everything she knew about the creature he seemed to be pondering what to do next.

"We should probably move" Raven said, charging her powers to teleport them, "the owners of this dwelling will be back shortly."

"I don't think so." The Doctor said, "This place was owned by one of the villagers who went missing. I came here looking for clues."

"So you broke in?" Raven asked letting her powers settle.

"Breaking had nothing to do with it." the Doctor said and held up his Sonic Screwdriver "The ultimate lock pick."

"And you didn't use it to open your cell door earlier, because?" Raven questioned.

"Design flaw" the Doctor said, "the Sonic Screwdriver only works on electronic or tumbler based locks, and the cell door was bolted from the other side."

The Doctor was looking at his Glow Stone again.

"So, this creature appears to like to feed off of peoples life force. Draining them dry. I wonder where it came from." he said touching his Sonic Screwdriver to his lips again as he thought. "Clearly these villagers didn't build the well, so it was made before them by a much more advanced civilisation. Presumably to contain this dark creature that, for the time present we shall just call a Shayde. Presumably the settlers here didn't know what they had stumbled upon, assumed it was a well, and cracked it open, and since they thought the well was dry they didn't bother replacing the lid. Leaving the containment system broken."

"That's when it escaped." Raven said, she was aware she was joining in but only because she had a beef to settle with this 'Shayde' creature.

"No. It would still be surrounded by Glow Stones at the base." the Doctor said as he paced "I think what happened is something new got introduced to the containment system. Say... a young villager, who was pushed or dared to go into the well by his fellows. That action could've provided enough disruption for our Shayde friend to break its bonds and eventually escape after it had digested the child's life force; and presumably, when it finally emerged it was weak and it waited, possibly for years, to gather strength; and it had adopted some of the child's rage and anger towards his fellows. That's why he went for his 'school chums' first, they were the source of his anguish and the Shayde imprinted on it."

The Doctor had a way of making a scary kind of sense of the situation. Scary to others, not herself, obviously.

"But now its vendetta is complete." the Doctor said.

"So it's over. We can leave." Raven stated.

"No, we can't leave it to roam this planet forever, gobbling up any stray people it comes across like they were jelly babies. No, we need to stop it." the Doctor said.

"Why?" she asked.

"Don't give me that attitude again, please, Raven. It's not part of this ecosystem. It could cause havoc with this planets future development." the Doctor turned on Raven "that life you felt drain away. It could just be one of thousands, maybe millions if we can't stop this thing." Raven didn't want to think of it. She'd just gotten her powers back, she didn't want them vanishing again.

Suddenly the Doctors face slowly morphed into a mask of concern.

"Oh no." he said "I forgot about the presence still in the well."

"So, what? The child who fell in is still alive?" Raven asked.

"I only wish that could be the case" the Doctor said, he was getting paler and that caused Raven to get colder. She got the feeling if the Doctor was scared, so should she.

"The reason it was sealed in the well." the Doctor said "Was not just to contain it, but it's spawn cycle."

"You mean?" Raven asked, she couldn't help it. She could feel herself getting sucked into the Doctors game.

"Yes. What you fought was likely an infant Shayde." he said. "There are probably others, and still more to come."

"I really hate kids" Raven said.

To Be Continued...

Authors notes: There always has to be something the Doctor doesn't realise that makes the situation a million times worse. lol

I've just discovered that the FanFictionNet mobile app has built in software to read the story. Which last night helped me to correct a lot of spelling and grammar errors I failed to notice in this story and others. So in the coming few hours I'll be editing this chapter specifically to take into account any problems I find. So please, bear with me.