Doctor Who Quest: A Deal with Time (Alt! Regen)

[X] Say you'll open the book, you are librarian, if anyone goes against Those Above on this front, it should be you.
[X] Lavinia Mortlake

You then reached out and took the Grimoirum Malebene back from the Doctor. "I'm... I'm still librarian. If anything happens here, it should be my responsibility. I don't want to stand by while someone else takes on the consequences," you said, trying to sound resolute.

The Doctor tilted her head for a second. "Well, that's an admirable approach for sure. But I regret to tell you that gesture will likely be in vain, I suspect your 'Those Above' will inevitably find something else to take issue with me for," she said. "Still, if you're firm in your decision, go on, open it."

Your hands wouldn't stop trembling as you set down your lantern and gripped the grimoire. Taking a breath so deep your stomach felt like a balloon, you pulled open the book in a single motion... and got immediately hit it in the face with a burst of light. Two bursts actually, one of light and the other of shadow, for each odd-numbered page in the book emitted nothing but light, while each even page only gave off shadow.

The mystery of just how anyone was meant to read this was solved when the shadows began to project what looked like letters, if not in any language you knew, onto the light. "That would be the script for the Language of Good and Evil, or so it presumptuously calls itself," the Doctor said, "It's a terribly old script, so standard advice is the cuneiform approach: think what each character looks like, like they're paintings on the most minimalist end. That's mostly what I've been doing for each letter that's new to me."

Since said characters looked mostly like a bunch of wavy lines, your first thought was of snakes, that or rivers and waves. But then those wavy lines became bisected by straight ones, shooting out from what looked like crosses, or swords.
But the shadow play was interrupted when what sounded like all the books in the library started to shake and rattle all on their own. Or at least all the books nearby, for if every single book in the library started shaking, the noise would've been deafening. Then the shadow play resumed, but with all the lines and dots taking the form of eyes, at first clouds of eyes huddled together which soon coalesced into a single, giant eye.

You slammed the grimoire shut again without thinking, as sweat trickled down your forehead. "T-Those Above, they know! That was them - looking right at us," you said between phases of hyperventilating.

The Doctor then inspected the other books around and instantly picked up on each of them being marked with an eye. "Are these eyes meant to be little security cameras for your Those Above? They seem a garish design choice when a mere signature would do for identifiability," she said. She then tested that by taking out some tiny metal stick and emitting a whirring noise with it, and sure enough the eye on the book began to sparkle, crackle, then blank out altogether. "Hmhm, as I thought."

You stared in shock at the Doctor's vandalism. "W-what, how could you?" you tried to ask.

"My, you mean you've never seen a sonic screwdriver?" the Doctor asked, that not having been your point. She then said, "I was about to use it to unscrew every last one of these prying book-eyes, but..." she looked off into the distant darkness of the library, "That could take a whole regeneration-span, so I'll settle for disabling the eyes around here. How's that sound?"

The only thing you could think about was what penance Those Above would put you and the Doctor through for defiance. however, it was then you thought, Maybe I shouldn't be worrying so much? If this Doctor has no fear of Those Above, maybe I shouldn't either... but that could only be because the Doctor's just got here.

But your thoughts were broken by a loud clanging and crashing coming from the corridor outside. The Doctor striding out there while you tremblingly tiptoed over, you could see past the door that the noise was coming from one of the many suits of armour scattered around the castle... but walking entirely on its own. It looked like a hulking slab of black and grey in this light, with a spiked mace pointed right in your direction.

"Hmm, would it be puppeteered by electricity, or perhaps they've brought out psychic powers to animate it? Or there could be someone inside it we simply can't see," the Doctor said, like being threatened by walking suits of armour was somehow nothing out of the ordinary for her. She looked around some more and took special notice of two vases either side of the door, from which those eye-plants were growing out of. "Say, Lavinia dear, what's your bowling score like?"

"Er," you said, forming something of an idea to where the Doctor was going with this, "Any bowling memories I have would've been taken... if I ever had them to begin with."

"Oh yes, that dratted memory sapping. But who knows, that means you could have beginner's luck on your side. Much has 'luck' can even exist in time and space as they are," the Doctor grinned, as she invited you to help her take one of the vases and place it down sideways on the floor. Then, the Doctor giving a count of three, you both heaved and rolled the potted plant down the corridor towards the armour. It raised its mace to try pre-emptively crushing it, but the vase was rolling fast enough that it smashed right into the armour before then, toppling it over with a clang almighty.

The first thing the Doctor did on running over to inspect it was to take out her screwdriver and disarm the armour's mace hand. After that, she tried opening up the armour itself, then confirmed, "No one here, and no electrical receivers either. That would indicate it's psychic powers we're dealing with here, unless some bizarre alternate physics is afoot."

You couldn't bring yourself to step anywhere near as close to that armour as the Doctor, for fear it would only rise again. "So, w-what are we going to- what even can we do now?" you asked instead.

"Well, my first thought was to shove this tin can down the stairs to truly put a stop to it, but I underestimated how much oomph such a feat would require," the Doctor sighed, before she noticed, "Though it does look like one may have an easier time of maneuvering it from within, would you like to give it go?"

[ ] Yes. The protection would certainly help, even if this armour would slow you right down.
[ ] No, but you ought to search around for another disguise.
[ ] No, you don't see how a disguise would work, Those Above probably already know where you are.
[ ] Write-in

"As for our next move," the Doctor then said, "going by what you've told me, I can muster a few other suggestions..."

[ ] Head to the Butler and demand an audience with Those Above directly.
[ ] Explore the castle further, see if any helpful clues come up.
[ ] Ransom Those Above by threatening to smash the lantern and set fire to their Library.
[ ] Rally all the other servants to stand up to Those Above, get the numbers on your side.
[ ] Write-in

In which we speak to the manager (or the closest thing we can get to one):

[X] Yes. The protection would certainly help, even if this armour would slow you right down.
[X] Head to the Butler and demand an audience with Those Above directly.

If you were going to confront no less than the butler, then your first instinct was that some form of protection would be a must. Not that you knew exactly what the butler was capable of doing to anyone who went against him, all you were really aware of is that they tended to be 'disappeared'. That uncertainty was what drove you to clamber up right into that empty armour, for some defence and anonymity.

...And you almost immediately found out the problem with that, as your bookish frame wasn't what you'd call used to moving around in armour. For now the most you could do was take some gradual steps forward in it. "Er, I think might be better if we were to wait for the butler to come to us, since-" you tried to inch the armour further along, "I seem to be a bit... inconvenienced here."

"Nonsense, my dear," the Doctor just had to say, "If there's someone that needs seeing, I'll be the one heading over to them, thank you very much. Anyway, just think of the suit of armour you've donned as like a new pair of shoes, you simply need time to wear them in- Oh, I see," she then muttered once it grew clear to her that you seriously were having that much trouble moving. "Hold still, this'll take but a second," she said as she again used her sonic screwdriver to loosen the suit's joints, "Any better?"

Well, you did find the armour slightly easier to move around in now, but the keyword here was 'slightly'. You couldn't manage more than half your normal walking speed, and still had no idea how you were ever going to get up all those stairs wearing this. Not to mention the thought of what'd happen if this armour came to life again, with you still in it. "Yeah, better," was all you ended up saying.

"Good. Now just where is this butler of ours, hmm?" the Doctor asked.

"I wouldn't know, actually," you said, "Most of the time he comes to us, not us to him. His schedule takes him around the entire castle, and knowing just how big Oterne is, that means he could be leagues away from us right now."

"How typical of staff. Always in your face when you don't need them, nowhere to be found when you're actually looking for them. The nerve," the Doctor said. "But you'd at least think one duty of his would be inspecting the other servants, no?"

"Yeah, guess that's our best lead," you nodded along. "Could we check out this floor first though? Y'know, with what the stairs here are like," and this armour, you added in thought, "That still gives us plenty of places to search for... him."

"Oh, about those stairs, we rather ought to install some levitation pads on your armour, to borrow from the playbook of some nemeses of mine," the Doctor said, not elaborating much more on those 'nemeses', "And of course we can cover this floor first, you do know this castle best of all, I am but its 'guest' you could say." You twitched when she said that, with how it sounded like a 180 from her previous 'take charge' attitude.

Either way, you were off. The castle continued to be its oversized self as you headed further along this one floor, with you heading by a pillar that on its own could've passed for an entire tower, or archways looming above where one of them alone could've supported an entire cathedral.
"You know, this place can't help but remind me of the art of one Giovanni Battista Piranesi," the Doctor remarked as she took the sights in, "A theoretical architect you could call him, and a surprisingly normal, everyday sort of chap too, despite what he's known for."

"Oh, he's a friend of yours then?" you commented and also thought, that means you've still got plenty of outside world memories left in you.

"I'd like to say 'friend', but the truth is we more happened to cross paths. We both had places to go, people to see, you understand," the Doctor said. Her voice then took on a tone akin to how you'd sound telling a spooky story around a campfire, "He said that one night, while he was delirious with fever, he dreamt of a complete distortion of reality. There, everything was too big for anyone to possibly use, paths twisted in on themselves and led nowhere, and where the only 'purpose' such a place had was to be one giant prison.
So I'd say this here Oterne owes him one big royalty check, or I would if I believed in copyright," the Doctor's tone lifted at the end.

It fortunately did not take either of you two as long as you thought to track down the butler, as he was presently occupied with supervising several cleaners all assigned to polish up a single statue. You could see why that'd be the case, as true to the proportions of the rest of Oterne, the statue was tall enough to dominate a whole city skyline rather than be cooped up in a castle. This colossus seemed to be made of white marble, in its current state anyway, with six arms and four centaur-like legs.

"My good man," the Doctor said as she approached the Oterne Butler directly from behind, tapping his shoulder. "I am the Doctor, no doubt you've heard the name, and I'd like to request an audience with the ones you call 'Those Above'. Specifically, I'm here to ask them about the nasty habit they have of kidnapping people and erasing their memories."

The butler slowly turned around. As mirage-like as his face may've been, you could more than feel his glare upon you and the Doctor. "Firstly, even if one such as you had any actual authority to convene with Those Above, you would not even physically be able to," he intoned.

Your instinct was to apologise and back off, but the Doctor naturally would have none of that. "Hmm, when you say 'not even physically be able to', I can only infer that Those Above are now dead. My condolences for your loss then, I'm afraid I had no idea," she said.

"'Dead'?" the butler then fumed, making you take a step back. "Those Above are not 'dead', as you would dare slander them. If anything, They are more truly alive than any of us, for we are but shadows on a wall compared to them."

"Ah, so you've got Plato's works in stock here, I take it? Well, you sure seem to have the man's more authoritarian traits down pat," the Doctor told him.

The butler had to steady himself, as his tone simmered down to a more restrained, "if you wish to meet with those Above, you shall have to do so as any other would. Dedicate your services to Castle Oterne, rid yourself of your false and shackling memories, and in time you shall be gloriously rewarded with the privilege of Ascension."

The Doctor had to chuckle at that, then said, "No can do, I must say. Firstly, I do have an entire universe and timeline to see, so my schedule's rather booked. Secondly, I believe your Those Above psychically sent suits of armour to attack Lavinia and I, so we're not all that tempted to do their chores for them." You nearly froze as the Doctor said your name, before you relaxed on remembering that the butler knew you only as 'the librarian'.
"And thirdly, don't think I can't tell when you're lying," the Doctor said to him, "I'm told you've been in correspondence with Those Above, and you are still here and clearly not 'ascended'. So, what's stopping us then?"

The butler went right back to fuming as he then hissed, "You insult not only Those Above, but now also my devotion to them?!" As he raged, a shimmering aura emanated off him and soon spread to the multi-limbed statue towering above. And just like the armour earlier, the statue soon began to psychically move.

[ ] Run. Even if it means discarding the armour to have a chance at doing so.
[ ] Run. Keep the armour on though, it slows you down but would still be better than nothing if that statue catches up.
[ ] Position yourself carefully, you could trick this moving statue into smashing up the castle for you.
[ ] Push the butler right into the statue's path, give him a taste of his own medicine.
[ ] Write-in