It was a strange woman called The Doctor who found me, saying she was a time traveller who'd lived for centuries. I was trapped in an endless castle, then she showed me what true endlessness really looked like.
I can go with her anywhere in time and space now... except back home.
Those who take from Time, from mere travellers to wielders of paradox, must give back to Time, else Time will take from them.
For us runaways from grand but stagnant Gallifrey, we cannot help but be reminded of this debt of ours, having abandoned the smothering security of Time Lord hegemony. I know my own debt well, to advance the march of science and break the chronophysical boundaries that Gallifrey insists on blinding itself to. To make Time truly go forward, not just appear to.
My 'friend' and fellow rogue The Doctor sees themselves as indebted to Time more than anyone else. It is they who have gone out of their way to give back to not just time and space, but all the peoples within, more than any Time Lord ever has. Flowery as that sounds, it's less commendable knowing what a low bar that is to clear, or that psychology has proven that those with messiah delusions have a habit of devaluing the people around them, making everything about themselves.
In return Time has taken The Doctor's lives one after the other; my findings indicate that they have already reached their tenth incarnation in less than a thousand years, so careless for our race it would be funny were it not so sad. Some of The Doctor's prior selves have given me no end of grief, the failing college student, the loudmouth fashion disaster, the scheming little clown. But right now, I'm left recovering from the blow their previous incarnation dealt me.
The Ninth Doctor. A grumpy old man who couldn't decide whether to dress up as Sherlock Holmes or Dracula. A man who'd been forced to let the third of our old school group, The Master, right into his own TARDIS as a fellow traveller, per the command of the Time Lords. Well, what remains of the Time Lords. This ill-thought partnership had of course only led to their deaths, with The Master launching another of his bull-headed escape plans, this one having him bite his own bullet by calling on me.
The Doctor and I at least both know of our debt to time, but that idiot Master, who's somehow wasted even more of their lives than The Doctor, insists they're above such sentimentalities. A Deal with Time means you accept a force greater than you, which The Master has always rejected like a screaming child. That would mean facing that they're not the one in control.
Oh don't worry, I got The Master out of the Doctor's TARDIS, and out of the android casing The Doctor had stuffed him into. Of course, that's now left The Master indebted to me, where I'm free to stuff what remains of his feeble soul into any casing my experiments require. Doomed to a life as but another of my test subjects, but he knew what he was getting into by requesting my aid, didn't he?
I too should have known what I was getting into. I had planned to launch a surprise infiltration on the Doctor's TARDIS in the timestream, but that only led to TARDIS vs TARDIS combat, which results have shown never ends well. I can't help but be amused that I've taken a second of The Doctor's lives, but just as I made fun of them for wasting their own lives… I can feel my life now fading too.
Already I can sense every atom in my body rearranging itself, just looking at my hand I can see its shape shift in and out. To think I once experimented to see how long a Time Lord could hold off their regeneration, now I've found myself the test subject… and right out the gate I'm failing.
But to think The Doctor and I must both pass this threshold at the same time. They and The Master would find that poetic, wouldn't they?
Author's Note: This was originally a Quest, thus choices voted on in the Quest will remain intact, but the posts themselves have been rewritten and updated, e.g., the first person POV and expanded intro. In case it isn't clear, the Prologue Narrator isn't the same person as our regular Narrator. This is also set after the webisode Scream of the Shalka (only the basics carry over though), thus is separate from nuWho
It was a strange woman called The Doctor who found me, saying she was a time traveller who'd lived for centuries. I was trapped in an endless castle, then she showed me what true endlessness really looked like. I can go with her anywhere in time and space now... except back home. But to think...
I have no idea how far these cold grey hallways stretch on for. Nor does a servant like me have the right to know, of course. I am only one of many this great Castle has taken in to be one of its servants, for it is the highest privilege to serve those above.
I mean, I am told that anyway. Never once have I ever seen those above, our gracious lords who rule this world of chambers and corridors. Again, I am but a servant, I have no right to. But I know they exist, we are all given orders from those above by the castle butler, the only servant who does have any right to speak with them.
I am most grateful for Oterne for me giving food and shelter, as all its servants are. In return, I have had the honour of being assigned Librarian. Except, am I even that good a Librarian? I can only make sense of a scant number of the books in Oterne's vast collection. I'm not even allowed to open some of them, I only know enough to properly sort and dust them, really. But I must be a good librarian, for ones so all-knowing as those above would never have made me one if I wasn't… right?
I can't even count all the other servants, there must be as many of them as corridors. There are maids and under-butlers as such a big castle had no shortage of things to clean, from the halls to furniture to suits of armour. No shortage of things to cook either, even though we never see who eats the meals.
We also have a few gardeners. Despite there not being a sliver of sunlight in the Castle, by the authority of those above, plants still grow here regardless. Just not the usual sort, the ones I've seen look like a mass of thorns more than anything else.
Of course, I should say these are the 'usual sort'. That's what we're supposed to think…
And of course, guards. We are told there were many who would dare threaten the Castle. Never what those threats are like, just that they exist, but I suppose that's for the guards to worry about, not me.
I, I don't mean to put myself on a pedestal, I fear I may have already doubted the word of those above too much. I can't tell anyone, but there's one thing that separates me from the other servants, one thing I'm afraid makes me a defect according to what all us servants are told. I still remember where I come from, if less and less every day, so I am improving! Every other servant here, to my knowledge, has been much more dutiful than me, as ordered they recall nothing of their lives before the Castle. Well, maybe they can remember their lives, but I'm just the librarian, it's not my place to speculate.
I'm from a place called England. I can narrow down the time and place even further, though only vaguely. I can't remember the year, but I think the current decade was the 1960s, wasn't it? Ah, not that a concept like 'current decade' has any meaning within Oterne. I also think I'm from the North, I can just recall names like 'Manchester' and 'Liverpool', which I only remember are Northern names. I also remember an inkling, an emotion, which along with memories also go against the word of those above. A feeling that the world I knew wasn't how the world truly was, that what I thought was normal was but an illusion. Wait, could that thought be why I was chosen by Oterne?
I can't help myself; we're told we're not to remember, but I can already see the 'North of England' flowing back into my mind. The moorlands, winding alleys, abandoned factories I walked past, and of course the books I read. This- this is everything I'm told I need to forget; I won't be accepted if I still have memories. Calm down, it's okay, it's not like I can remember that much, what little is still in my mind is on the flickering and fragile side, so I must be forgetting.
Flickering and fragile, just like the words written in so many of the library's books. Maybe if I simply focus on the flickering of those words, not on what they might say, I can train myself to forget. As I'm told to…
"Librarian," I hear the butler call to me, his voice snapping my sinful dwelling on memories like a twig. The butler of Oterne doesn't look much different from your basic image of a butler, at first anyway, with his immaculately tailored monochrome suit and glinting monocle. Just like me, with the Castle choosing me as librarian, I too complete the appropriate image with my sweater, glasses, and braids. Yet you can tell the butler is truly a superior servant to me, for he bears mark of one in close communion with those above Oterne. His face and hair, the rest of his body being covered, wavers in and out like a mirage, blurred like the dream-dappled paintings kept in the Oterne Gallery. The odd thing is, from what I can make of his features beyond the blurring, he doesn't look that much older than me. This shows he's already given far more to Oterne than I above, and that I'm working nowhere near hard enough to appease those above.
"Those above request the book 'Grimoirum Malebene', you have been granted two hours to retrieve it," he orders.
"The Grimoirum Malebene..." I'm left murmuring. How can I not know that title, it's no less than one of the books the other servants and I are forbidden from reading. But if it's what those above want, it's not my place to question, so I say, "Ah, yes sir, right away sir." The butler then nods at me and walks off, no further incident.
I'm then off in a spiral down one of Oterne's many stairs, and like all the castle's stairs it's steep enough that I cannot help but fear I shall trip all the way down every time I take them. They must be a trial for servants like me to show our worth, I guess that's the idea.
On the way I passed by a gardener, he's a brown-haired boy smudged from dirt, sweat, and whatever else gardening in this castle involves. He's carrying a glass-like pot of, er, plants with eyeballs instead of leaves, well that's how I'd describe them anyway, the butler or head gardener could offer up a much more in-depth description. Part of me wants to say Hi to him, say Hi to someone so I can just, you know, talk with them, and not because I've been ordered to. But all that comes out of my mouth is quivering and mumbling, I don't know why, but I can't bring myself to truly say anything. He's already left, one parting glance was all he gave me.
I kept walking and was at the library again before long. Oterne's library of course, not really mine. The place is almost all darkness, its gnarled shelves heading on up and up into the void, perhaps where only those above may tread. It's a relief they've given me a lantern now so I can navigate the pitchest of the black here, the open candle I had to make do with before only got me worrying I'd end up burning myself or the books. Not that this lantern doesn't make me tremble just a little, from how it looks I'm left thinking it might set off an even bigger fire if it broke. I'm delaying, I know, for now all I can do is take this lantern and go looking for that grimoire. Wait, this lantern's illuminating a spot on my hand that, come to think of it, does looks a little smudged if not blurred... Does this mean I am pleasing those above?
It's another a long climb up and down the library ladder, and I couldn't help but paralyse every time I hear it creaking. It's nothing really, for sure enough I soon touch back on the floor with the Grimoire requested of me in my other hand. One thing all the Castle's nigh infinite tomes have in common is that each are marked with an eye symbol. I never had to do so myself, they were like that when I got here, so I've always took them a signature of sorts for those above. I doubt the butler will come down here for the book though, that wouldn't be one of his duties, so that still leaves me quite the trek all the way up to where us servants make offerings to those above. Only offerings, we're just told whether they accept them, we never see.
My eyes widen, more so than they have to in this darkness. Somebody really has come down here to the library, but of course not the butler, or… anyone I recognise, really.
"Greetings my dear, may I call you that? I'm The Doctor, and do forgive the impoliteness of me turning up in my past incarnation's wardrobe," a woman greets me, a woman who certainly knows how to make a first impression. This stranger's hair is long and midnight black, her skin is as pale and ashy as a corpse, and her eyes a crimson red. Her, ahem, 'past incarnation's wardrobe' consists of a long black Victorian trench coat lined with green.
Startling as she is, I slowly relax as it becomes obvious to me who she can only be. "You're The Doctor? Oh, I get it now, you must've been summoned in servitude as a doctor by Those Above Oterne," I say, before I reflect, "At least, that's been the case for me and the others who've been brought here. I'm the Librarian, that's what everyone calls me now."
"'Servitude'? Hmph! I think not," The Doctor says, and then she suddenly reaches out to place her hand on one side of my chest. Before I can ask her why, if I'm melting there or something, she seriously adds, "No second heart, so either you've had some impressive masking done, or you're a human and not a Time Lady. And might I say, dear girl, it is most improper for one who is not a rogue Time Lady to go around addressing themselves like a rogue Time Lady would. Why it makes a mockery of our kind!"
"I-I'm not trying to be a 'rogue Time Lady'!" I let out, then wince and cover my mouth. How can I? I've got no idea of what a 'Time Lady' was, let alone a rogue one. "I've been losing, I mean, abandoning my memories, everyone here has. I just call myself Librarian because... it's the only thing I can be called. It's the role I've been assigned," my voice falls to a mumble.
"Oh, my apologies. I've committed the grievous sin of leaping to conclusions," this Doctor says, her tone then softening.
"Wait, if you say you're not a servant, then that means," I start saying as it dawns on me, this Doctor must be one of those above, who else can she be?! But I stop myself from exclaiming that just in time, for if I am truly in the presence of those above, then I know as every servant knows there'll be dire consequences if I say that out loud. I take a deep breath and instead say, "You'd still have all your memories from outside. Please um," I pause to look around, check that nobody's listening in. I don't think they are, though it's hard to see past my lantern's light. I know I'm wrong for asking this, but I can't help myself, "What can you tell us about how the outside world's been going? Are people looking for us, have there been news reports about disappearances?"
"All my memories? Dear child, perish the thought. When you're pushing a thousand years old like I am, one can't be expected to remember every single second. Would have to nip back to the TARDIS and fetch my diary," the Doctor tells me.
"Really? I-I wouldn't have thought, you don't look nearly a thousand years old," I say, then bite my tongue for fear I've insulted her.
"Why thank you, I'm… flattered," The Doctor says, "Ahem, as for any disappearance reports, I'd have to know what time period you were from to say so, if alas that memory hasn't been taken from you to."
Wait, did she just - "You're- you're saying you're not just a thousand years old, but a time traveller too?" I ask and clutch my head. Us servants never once doubt the supernatural powers of Castle Oterne, it had plenty of paranormal to go around from its endless architecture to its grimoires to its eyeball plants. But this- this is really out there. She must be one of those above, what other explanation is there? And yet… she's not acting at all like I expected those above to do so.
"Pushing a thousand years old, you'll find I said, and that's time and space traveller," The Doctor grins as she lectures me, before she thinks, "Hmm, that may be a redundancy what with relativity. And it's more I was, and will be again, a space-time traveller... once I get my TARDIS working again. Something about this Castle has caused the poor dear to freeze up, ah, a TARDIS is like a time machine and spaceship in one, to oversimplify. Hence my investigation of this place."
"That's not surprising. Nobody ever leaves Oterne, we're only ever summoned or 'ascend'. That's something the butler's mentioned, what all us servants are supposed to strive for," I say to her.
"Why I've never heard such nonsense!" the Doctor says, and now I can't imagine anyone else here as unfiltered as her. She then changes topic, "Ahem, anyway, we've been putting off the matter of your name. Unlike my kind, it simply wouldn't do for you to call yourself by your occupation, it's rather dehumanising when it's humans doing it. And yet your given name has been denied us... Alright. nothing for it then, you shall simply have to make up a name for yourself in the meantime!"
"M-make up a name?" I ask, stumbling back. It never occurred to me that I could just do that, or rather was allowed to, for it doesn't sound like anything those above would approve of. Still, I can't help but wrack my brain for a potential name, till I say, "Uh, okay, I think I've got something... Lavinia Mortlake, that's me, I guess." I'm not sure why I came up with that name, but I suppose it does sound like a main character in an old book, something from a Regency Romance to a girls' Detective novel that I would've read. That I remember reading…
"Good choice, you wouldn't be the first I knew to take that as an alias," The Doctor smiles at me, before she starts eyeing the Grimoire, much as I tried to obscure it from her. "Anyway, I've let you know about my diary, so perhaps I ought to take a little look at your book. The 'Grimoirum Malebene', huh, a joke title if I've ever heard one," she says.
Wait, no, she can't!
"Don't touch it!" I shriek out on instinct as I yank the grimoire back, "Only those above are allowed to read this book, no one else is, not even me."
"A librarian not allowed to read from her own library? My, 'Those Above' have truly been filling your head with poppycock. Well, if this book hasn't been dunked in radiation, one of the few reasons I can think of to forbid a book, perhaps we should in fact open it. I'll do the honours, that way Those Above will have to take issue with me for it, not you," The Doctor says, then goes and proclaims, "Poyekhali!"
At first, all I can think to do is to stop her from opening that book. But then a thought, of which those above would most certainly not approve of, comes to my mind. I could let her open the book, she did say she'll take responsibility for doing so… but that just means those above will come after her instead.
In the end it occurs to me that, no, if I'm librarian, anything that happens here should be my fault. If anyone's forced to face those above over this, I can't let it be someone who just wandered in.
I can't believe I'm doing this. I reach out and take 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," I say, trying to sound resolute as I can.
The Doctor tilts her head for a second. "Well, that's an admirable approach for sure. But I must warn 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 says. "Still, if you're firm in your decision, go on, open it."
My hands won't stop trembling, but I manage to set down the lantern before I firmly grip the grimoire. I then take a breath so deep my stomach starts to feel like a balloon, before I realise I'm stalling. Wanting to get this over, I pull open the book in a single motion... and like I'm being punished already, I'm immediately struck it in the face with a burst of light. Two bursts in fact, one of light and the other of shadow. I then find out each odd-numbered page in the book emits nothing but light, while each even page gives off only shadow. Could this be why those above don't want me to read this, because there's no way I can?
But the mystery of just how someone like me could read gets solved when the shadows start to project what look like letters, if not in any language I know, onto the light. "That would be the script for the Language of Good and Evil, or so it presumptuously calls itself," the Doctor says, "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."
Language of Good and Evil? But those above say those concepts are- Okay, The doctor says not to worry, just focus on the shapes. Since these characters look mostly like a bunch of wavy lines, I'm instantly reminded of snakes, though they could also be rivers and waves. Wait, now those wavy lines are getting bisected by straight ones, shooting out from what look like crosses, or swords. That makes sense, knightly imagery like that against snakes representing evil- Am-am I remembering more? Is this what the book's doing to me?
The shadow play then gets interrupted by an awful noise. I turn around and see it's coming from all the books in the library now shaking and rattling all on their own. All the books in the library I've been ordered to- Come on, I have to calm down, it must only be all the books nearby, I mean if every single book in this library started shaking, the noise would've deafened me. Then the shadow play I thought interrupted resumes, but with all the lines and dots taking the form of eyes. Clouds of eyes at first, if all in bunches, but they soon start coalescing into a single, giant eye. T-they know…
I slam the grimoire shut again without time to even think, feeling the sweat trickling down my forehead. "T-Those above, they know! That was them - looking right at us," I say to her between phases of hyperventilating, for what else could it be?
The Doctor, who in contrast doesn't seem rattled at all, goes to inspect the other books around, and already she can see that each of them are 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 says. She then tests that by taking out a tiny metal stick which emits a whirring noise, and under tits blue light she makes the eye on the book begin to sparkle, crackle, then blank out altogether. "Hmhm, as I thought."
I'm left staring in shock at just what The Doctor has done, how she's treated a symbol of those above. "W-what, how could you?" I try to ask her.
"My, you mean you've never seen a sonic screwdriver?" she asks me back, that not exactly being my point. The Doctor then says, "I was about to use it to unscrew every last one of these prying book-eyes, but..." she looks 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?"
All that's on my mind right now is what penance The Doctor and I will be put through by those above for daring to defy them. However, m-maybe I should see things another way, that I don't need to be worrying so much, maybe? If The 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 then another loud, thought-shattering noise comes, a sudden clanging and crashing from the corridor outside. Sure enough, the Doctor's already striding out there while the best someone like me can do is tremble as I tiptoe over. Okay, seeing past the library door, I see that noise had to have come from one of the many suits of armour we have around the Castle. Armour that's now walking entirely on its own. While it looks like a mass of black and grey in this light, even still I can see it has a spiked mace pointed right at me!
Part of me wishes The Doctor would panic along with me, make me feel less alone, but she just says, "Hmm, would this construct be puppeteered by electricity, or perhaps they've brought out psychic powers to animate it? Or we go by Occam's Razor, there could be someone inside it we simply can't see." She talks like being threatened by walking suits of armour is somehow nothing out of the ordinary for her. I then see her casually look around till she takes special notice of two vases either side of the door, from which some of the eye-plants are growing out of. "Say, Lavinia dear, what's your bowling score like?"
"Er," I only say at first. I was about to say how out of nowhere a question that was, but I think I'm getting something of an idea of where The Doctor is going with this. "Any bowling memories I have would've been taken... if I ever had them to begin with," I tell her on default.
"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 a conjoined timestream and cosmos like ours," The Doctor grins, with her inviting me to help her take one of the vases and place it down sideways on the floor. The Doctor then gives a count of three, then gestures at me to heave and roll the potted plant down the corridor towards the armour. More vandalism of Oterne I think, but well, what choice do I have at this point?
The armour raises its mace to try and pre-emptively crush it, but the vase is rolling fast enough that it can smash right into the armour before then, toppling it over with a clang almighty. Yet another loud noise, maybe those above are already punishing me by trying to wreck my eardrums?
The first thing the Doctor does on running over to inspect the armour is to take out that screwdriver of hers, using it to loosen the armour's mace hand from which she removes the weapon. "A ball on a stick, one of the first ways of wounding each other you humans came up with. Rather ungainly, but somewhat quaint compared to what weapons you've thought up since," she muses, the implication she isn't human despite her looks being no surprise to me by this point. After that, she then unscrews and opens the armour itself before confirming, "No one hitching a ride inside, and no electrical receivers either. That would indicate psychic powers are what we're dealing with here, unless some bizarre alternate physics is afoot."
I can't bring myself to step anywhere near as close to that armour as the Doctor, I don't know how she can. All I can think is it'll soon rise and attack again. "So, w-what are we going to- what even can we do now?" I ask instead.
"Well, my natural impulse is to shove this tin can down the stairs to truly show it what's what, but I may be underestimating how much oomph such a feat would require," the Doctor sighs, before she says what I've been dreading, "Hmm, it does look like one may have an easier time of manoeuvring it from within. I can handle myself fine, so would you like to give it go, Lavinia dear?"
I want to say no, that having a disguise won't work as those above could probably see right through it, given what else is in their power. Or if I'm going to don a disguise it'd be better to find another, one I don't have to worry it'll come alive on me while I'm still inside. But then I think, it's not just about having a disguise, but having something that'll protect me, if I really do end up… a traitor to those above.
"Okay, I'll get in," I find myself saying, "I suppose if this armour does animate itself again, it hopefully won't do much to me since I'll be on inside. Hopefully." With that, I clambered right up into the empty armour… and immediately realised a problem I hadn't thought of. My bookish frame is unsurprisingly not at all suited to armour, no pun intended, especially not armour as bulky as this. I try taking some gradual steps forwards, and I do manage… barely. "Guess I'll just have to turtle up if something happens, there's no way I can run in this."
"No running? Now let's be reasonable. I know, how about you 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," The Doctor mutters once it grows clear to her that I seriously am having that much trouble moving. "Hold still, this'll take but a second," she says as she again uses her sonic screwdriver to loosen the suit's joints, "Any better?"
Well, the armour is slightly easier to move around in now, but the keyword here is 'slightly'. I don't think I can manage more than half my normal walking speed, and still have no idea how I'm ever going to get up all those stairs with this on me. Not that any of these thoughts come across, at least not consciously, as "Yeah, better," is all I end up saying.
"Good, I told you you'd get the hang of it. Now, as for our next move," the Doctor then says, "going by what you've told me, I can muster a few other suggestions. There's exploring this castle for more clues, the sensible classic. Or with there being other servants, we can wake the sleeping dragon and rally them all together, I'd like to see just what your Those Above could do against all of us united!" She seems positively giddy about this, which just fills me with awful thoughts about what those above will inevitably do to her. Or not with thoughts, for their powers are beyond thinking. And then The Doctor honestly goes and says, "Ooh, how about this? We'll take that lantern of yours, and threaten to smash it and burn down the whole library if our demands are not met! Hmm, no, bit extreme do you think? Would be a waste of all that literature."
A-A bit extreme?! I do clench up, and not just due to the armour's rigidity. "If you do wish to speak with t-those above, the only way I'd know how to do it is to speak with the butler, he's the only one allowed to speak with them. I don't think sneaking around will work, t-they know we're here, and the other servants have been here longer than me, I'd have no idea how to convince them to-" I mean to end that sentence with 'rebel', but I can't bring myself to say the word.
"Alright, if telling him what's what is the only way forward. Now just where is this butler friend of ours, hmm?" the Doctor asks.
I don't respond to her at first, since if we really will be confronting the butler, that leaves me worrying how he'll retaliate. I don't even know what the butler can do to anyone who goes against him, the most I'm aware of is that any upstarts tend to be 'disappeared'. Guess that uncertainty's why I'm in this armour.
"I wouldn't know, sorry," I'm left to admit, "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 says. "But you'd at least think one duty of his would be inspecting the other servants, no?"
"Yeah, guess that's our best lead," I nod along with her. "Could we check out this floor first though? Y'know, with what the stairs here are like," and this armour, "Er, I think might be better if we were to wait for the butler to come to us, since-" I try to inch the armour further along as if it proves my point. "I'm a bit... inconvenienced. Still not quite used to having to move like this."
"Nonsense, my dear," the Doctor just has to say, "If there's someone that needs seeing, I'll be the one heading over to them, thank you very much."
I nod, like I already knew she'd say that. "That still gives us plenty of places to search for... him. Um, can we start with this floor first? It's already large enough, and it saves us the issue of, y'know, those stairs."
"You do remind me. If our stairs insist on haranguing us like this, then we ought to install some levitation pads on your armour, to borrow from the playbook of some nemeses of mine," the Doctor says, not elaborating much more on those 'nemeses', I guess for good reason, "in the meantime, of course we can cover this floor first, you do know this castle best of all, I am but its 'guest' you could say." Her saying that makes me twitch. Her 'take charge' attitude was making me a little nervous, but that sounds too much like a 180 coming from her.
The Castle continues to be its gargantuan self as we head further along this one floor trying to track down the butler. Among other landmarks, we head past a pillar that on its own could passed for an entire tower, and archways looming above where one of them alone could've supported an entire cathedral. Towers, cathedrals, so I am remembering more and more of what the outside world looked like.
"You know, this place can't help but remind me of the art of one Giovanni Battista Piranesi," The Doctor remarks as she takes the sights in, "18th century. A 'theoretical architect' I suppose would describe him best. He was surprisingly normal, everyday sort of chap too, despite what he's known for."
"Oh, he's a friend of yours then?" was what I take away from that, along with this meaning still has plenty of outside world memories not drained away yet.
"It would be lovely 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 says. Her voice then takes on a tone akin to how someone'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 breakdown of reality. There, everything was too big for any human to possibly use, paths twisted in on themselves and led nowhere, and 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," her tone lifts again at the end.
"Maybe he was a made a servant here?" I wonder out loud, "though if he was taken from two centuries ago, he would've long lost his name and memories by now, ascended even."
"I doubt that. He died of an illness, hmm, much like the one that made him hallucinate his prisons, now I think of it. Either way, no sudden disappearance, unless we're to get all conspiratorial and assume your Those Above faked his death," The Doctor says, and now I feel embarrassed for bringing that up. I'm even more ashamed when she further schools with me, "Also, word of caution, Lavinia dear. Pocket dimensions like these, which we can take it Oterne is given its outrageous proportions, tend to do time differently than our everyday universe. A thousand years on Earth could be a day here, or the other way around, Narnia logic you know."
"Wait, you're saying there could be people from centuries, millennia even, as servants here, and I never knew?" I ask.
"Why not? You are talking with a time traveller, after all," The Doctor says. I only shrink further into my armour for not haven't worked that out sooner, but The Doctor then smiles at me and says, "No need to be ashamed, young lady. You may not have guessed right, but that you tried to think things out at all is commendable. Not asking questions is just what your Those Above want, I take it."
It occurs to me the butler never would've tried to cheer me up if I made a mistake, and the other servants would've just quietly looked the other way. In fact, "Um, thank you, Doctor, that… may be the only real compliment anyone's ever given me here," I tell her. The butler going 'That was sufficient' has probably been the closest thing.
"Is it? Well, then let's find this butler and see to getting you out of here," The Doctor says, "I'm sure you shall receive many more compliments from people once we're back on Earth and out of wherever this is." I admit my instinct was to say no, I can't imagine that many people at all complimenting me, but I try to smile back at The Doctor instead. "Wait, I said not asking questions is what your Those Above want, didn't I?" she then swerves to say. After I nod, she adds, "Then questions would be immoral in their eyes, along with memories and even one's own judgment, the nerve."
"Those above do have their own definitions of what's right and wrong, yeah. They're usually quite strict with us servants, or at least the butler is through them," I just say, but then I'm hit with a 'Eureka' moment, you could call it. "Wait, so why would they want to restrict access to the Grimoirum Malebene, the book of good and evil? Wouldn't they want us to learn from it?"
"Much as I can make out what that book's shadow play even says, my best guess is that the morality the book grants knowledge of fails to coincide with how Those Above would rather you see it," The Doctor states, but then scratches her chin, "But then why would they keep the book around, why not just burn it? They still must be getting some use out of it."
"As a trial or test?" is the only answer I can think of to a question as complex as that, "That's how they tell us to think of our servitude. Maybe the book's a temptation we're meant to resist?"
"A rather Sunday School response," The Doctor smirks at me, "but why would they ask you to deliver it back to them then?"
"To imprison anyone who speaks against them within it, that's why!" a voice yells at us, my armour clanging as I flinch. We look all over for who it could be, The Doctor having an easier time with more freedom of movement, but soon see it belongs to… one of the valets, someone I'd thought had long been 'disappeared'. His hair has already turned grey, his eyes bloodshot, and his shaking hand is clutching a knife. "That's what they almost did to me, tried to rip out my eyes, throw away the rest of my body, and meld my mind down into one of this castle's objects. What do you think you're wearing right now, little miss?"
I pause and feel my armour. No, he's not saying- "This armour's made of melted-down minds?!" I gasp.
"Patience, Lavinia," The Doctor says to me, before turning to the dishevelled former valet, "I'm not ruling out what you're saying, dear chap. But I will need more evidence that Those Above are indeed melting dissidents down into objects, not just one's word for it. Empiricism and whatnot."
"So you don't trust me either!" the valet shrieks out, even swinging his knife for a second, though all The Doctor said was she needed more proof. "I thought I could trust you, I thought someone finally had the sense to question Those Above…"
"And we do! Given your state, I don't doubt for a minute something is seriously awry in Oterne," The Doctor tries to tell him, to no avail as the twitching valet scurries off back into the darkness just as quickly as he arrived.
I'm too ashamed to say that I'm kinda glad he's gone, but The Doctor, despite having just had a knife brandished at her, instead says, "Poor chap. Says a lot about this castle's size if he's been able to hide out in it for so long, unless it amuses Those Above to let him scurry around. I've met people like that."
All I feel we can do right now is keep going on our original quest to find the butler. We then pass through a checker-floored art gallery, one of many in Oterne, where I can almost feel all the portraits' and statues' eyes on me like I've already been infected with the valet's paranoia. Or not, as I remember all the eyes in the library. The portraits aren't of anyone I recognise, no surprise by this point, but I am able to make out in this dim light that there's a vast range of outfits among them. I think back to Oterne taking in people from history, could this be how far back they've done so?
It fortunately doesn't take either of us as we long as we thought it would to track down the current butler from here. Right now, he's occupied with supervising several cleaners as they all polish up a single statue, where the gallery opens from a corridor and into a wider room. I can see why he'd need the extra manpower, as compared to the other statues here yet true to the proportions of the rest of Oterne, this one statue is tall enough to dominate a whole city skyline rather than be cooped up in a castle. This colossus looks like it's made of white marble, perhaps faded from its original colour, with six arms and four centaur-like legs. A colossus I've never seen till now, this… not being my sector after all.
"My good man," The Doctor says as she approaches the Butler, my superior directly from behind and taps 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, erasing their memories and, allegedly, melting minds down into artifacts."
The butler slowly turns around, making me more relieved than ever to be hidden by this armour. Mirage-like as his face may be, I can more than feel his glare upon me 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. Secondly, I won't dignify 'melting minds down' with any response," he intones.
My trained instinct is to apologise and back off, even if saying anything would give away that it's me in here, but The Doctor naturally will have none of that. "You are aware that's still a response, right? And 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 says.
"'Dead'?" the butler then fumes, making me just want to run. "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 says to him.
The butler has to steady himself, as his tone simmers 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 has to chuckle at that, "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." W-wait, did she just say my name? Oh wait, I can relax, I've only now taking to calling myself 'Lavinia Mortlake', the butler knows me only as 'the librarian'.
"And thirdly, don't think I can't tell when you're lying," the Doctor says 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 goes right back to fuming and then hisses, "You insult not only Those Above, but now also my devotion to them?!" In his rage, a shimmering aura starts emanating off him and soon spreads to the multi-limbed statue towering above. And just like the armour earlier, the statue soon begins to psychically move. Is this how the butler's been disciplining dissidents, or does this mean something's gone terribly wrong?
At first all I can think to do is just run, but that'll mean getting rid of my armour else I'll barely be able to run at all. Should I just try running with it on then, better than no protection at all? I even think to push the butler right into the statue's path to get it to stop, but… can I do that? Can I just kill someone, him of all people?
But if I don't think of anything soon, I'll be attacked and flattened anyway. Wait, I've got it! The Doctor tried to think tactically as that armour was upon us, so I have to just that. Maybe… if I position myself carefully, I can trick this moving statue into smashing up the castle for you, force the butler to call it off. Then I'll have to find that position close by, as my top speed in this armour is still not fast at all. Guess it's some comfort then that a giant statue that has only now become animated is not all that adept at moving either, I would've been squished already if it was.
The cleaners the butler has up on the statue however have to move even faster, as they race to scramble down before the statue tosses them right off. The Doctor rushes right into catch anyone who lands before they hit the cold floor, weaving in and out of the statue's steps to do so. I catch a glimpse of The Doctor's expression, hoping to see her usual confidence… but no, even she looks mortified as she tries to daringly rescue the cleaners.
I keep on moving backwards, still afraid to get out of this armour yet afraid to keep it on, else I lose defence or mobility, and I don't even want to think right now that I'm wearing melted-down minds. However, I now notice that I'm backing up closer and closer to that lone pillar you and the Doctor had walked past before, which looks like it forms the nexus around which this art gallery is built. M-my plan's really working! If I get that giant walking statue to smash into this pillar tower it'll either make a new path or, if it topples the other way, finish itself off by having the pillar collapse on it.
And it does work, er, sort of. Kind of. The giant statue then crashes right into the pillar as I planned... but before I have any time whatsoever to dodge. I-I'm no tactician, I really didn't think this through! The force from the statue makes my armour collapse in on itself before I have any time to get out. Less and less do I have any room to move or even breathe till I'm about to scream in fear of my life, or would if my neck wasn't being ever more crushed. Is this how it feels, if Those Above really do grind dissidents' minds down into objects?
This post both serves as a Cast of Characters page, and to give readers an impression of how I'll be writing this 'fan-season', and what parts of the franchise they shouldn't need to worry about.
The Doctor
A recently regenerated new incarnation of The Doctor, she is a self-described 'lady anarchist'. Has an insistence on etiquette that makes her sound like a grandmother (which she technically is) despite her looking young, yet this makes her no less eager to challenge authority. Her tastes lean to the gothic and macabre, with animals like bats, spiders, raven, black cats, and snakes, yet she's friendly and exuberant all the same.
While still seeing herself as a scientist, she has a strong mystical side to her in a way similar to say Arthur C. Clarke. This can be seen in the way she talks about time, as if it were a mystical entity or presence in its own right, to which those who time travel should pay their respects to in return, else time 'take back'.
An alien time and space traveller, they were a failing college student at the Time Lord Academy on the planet Gallifrey, their academy designation being Theta Sigma. Back then they were also part of a student group along with the more successful KoscheiOakdown and Ushas Miasimiagoria, later known as The Master and The Rani respectively.
All three would become rogue Time Lords, The Master taking Time Lord society's sense of supremacy and going expansionist with it rather than seclusionist, The Rani in anger at the stagnation of Time Lord science, and The Doctor for unclear reasons, but sheer stubbornness likely among them. Unlike The Master and The Rani though, The Doctor grew more and more empathetic as they met people beyond Gallifrey, their reason for adventuring changing to also include using Time Lord knowledge for good, not hoarding it as the Time Lords did.
Other than of course past Doctors, the main inspirations for her personality include Yuuko Ichihara from xxxHolic (her even inspiring the title 'A Deal with Time'), Morticia Addams, and Phryne Fisher (Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries).
She is the Tenth incarnation of The Doctor in this fanfic's own timeline. Her prior incarnations in this fanfic are officially Hartnell > Troughton > Pertwee > Tom Baker > Davison > Colin Baker > McCoy > McGann > Grant (as seen in Scream of the Shalka), as this fic doesn't make use of 'hidden' Doctors.
Lavinia Mortlake
The first Companion to be featured in A Deal with Time and (apart from the prologue) its narrator; she is a shy bookish girl with self-confidence issues, but still with an intellectual desire to learn more about the universe after having been trapped in Castle Oterne. She is from around Manchester in the 1960s, but by the time The Doctor met her, she had already been 'chosen' (i.e., kidnapped) by the extradimensional Castle of Oterne to be its librarian. It seems Oterne chose her specifically as, in stark contrast to how 60s youths are pictured, her timid nature would make her unlikely to rebel against or even question Those Above. At least, before The Doctor also got pulled into Oterne...
'Lavinia Mortlake' is also not her real name, with her memory of her actual name wiped out by the psychic nature of Oterne. She and others simply called her by her role 'the librarian', until The Doctor pointed out that title could get her confused for a rogue Time Lady. She settled on calling herself 'Lavinia Mortlake' as a placeholder name, with the sound of it reminding her of the heroines in books she could still remember reading, till her memory's restored.
Another rogue Time Lord along with The Doctor and The Master, the three having been friends back at the Academy, if long ago now. Her real name as far as is known is Ushas of the House of Miasimia Goria, she has dedicated herself towards experimentation and the advance of science at all costs, morality being irrelevant in comparison. If she ever does make a moral decision, it's because it'd conveniently coincide with her scientific interests, rather than it being the 'right thing to do'.
This ties into why she left Gallifrey (or says she left Gallifrey, as other accounts say she was exiled for attempted murder of the President), certainly not because Time Lords were beacons of morality, but because their desire for progress had stagnated due to believing they'd already achieved the pinnacle of science.
Naturally conflicting with her former friend The Doctor, The Rani has already taken two of their lives, their Sixth and their Ninth, even if one of her own lives was lost against the latter when both crashlanded in the Castle of Oterne.
The current incarnation of The Rani, her exact number unknown but at least her Third, comes off as 'all business', cold and emotionless, or at least highly emotionally restrained, in nature compared to her past selves, perhaps the natural result of her insistence on science nullifying morality overriding everything. The Doctor has even compared her to a Cyberman, which The Rani tries to reject as she sees the Cybermen as a dead end.
The previous incarnation of The Doctor before their crash-landing in Oterne Castle, he was a brooding and antisocial aristocratic sort whose usual urge for adventure, though still there deep down, had been repressed. He in turn had regenerated from his Eighth incarnation after he had leapt into the Time Vortex to defeat the Cybermen.
Eventually the Ninth Doctor retired back to his home planet of Gallifrey, feeling his adventuring days were over, and even fell in love with Seioubo, the Lord President's daughter. But his love Seioubo was then killed in an attack on Gallifrey by an all-powerful enemy, an attack that forced all other Time Lords (save any still rogue) to enter Hibernation inside the vast Gallifreyan computer network called The Matrix.
The Doctor, blamed by the Time Lords for the President's daughter's death, was as punishment forced to go on missions across time and space for them, a conflict with the alien Shalka Confederacy being one notable instance of this. Interestingly, their archenemy The Master was forced to work with them, also as punishment from the Time Lords, with his spirit being trapped in a robotic shell aboard the TARDIS.
Both Doctor and Master believed they could 'redeem' another, with the Doctor trying to redirect The Master's abilities in service of good, and The Master trying to steer The Doctor away from taking any further young female 'Companions'. Both failed, with this incarnation of The Doctor meeting his end as The Master made one last escape attempt from the TARDIS, swallowing his pride to call on The Rani's aid.
The Master
The Doctor's former friend from back on Gallifrey, some will say he since 'turned evil' however it can be argued that The Master never changed, rather it was The Doctor who turned good. Already back on Gallifrey a young Master, then known as Koschei of House Oakdown, was pondering and proclaiming about how, if the Time Lords were the most advanced and capable species in existence, then why weren't they the ones in charge of the universe? Being a charismatic and top-of-the-class student (as opposed to the frequently flunking Doctor) his rhetoric attracted a following of fellow students called The Deca, The Doctor and Rani of course being two of them.
The Master's academy scheming came to a head where he organised a 'student rebellion' to overthrow the Time Lord Presidency and instill an expansionist monarchy in its place. While the rebellion failed, The Master was able to escape consequences due to having controlled it from behind the scenes (and also partly from reluctantly allowing House Oakdown to bail him out). After graduation he would have a brief stint as a maths teacher before joining, and then getting kicked out of, Gallifrey's Celestial Intervention Agency as it was the closest thing to an expansionist force the secluded Time Lords had.
After The Doctor fled Gallifrey and gradually formed a sense of morality from growing closer to humans, they eventually met with The Master again, who unlike them had not changed in nature or ambitions since leaving Gallifrey. The Master would later run out of regenerations and become reduced to possessing other people to survive, till he got himself trapped within the circuitry of the TARDIS in a failed attempt to steal The Doctor's remaining lives. It took no less than the Time Lords to pull The Master out of there, whereafter he was trapped in an android casing and forced to assist the then-Ninth Doctor as part of their sentence. This eventually led to The Master calling upon The Rani in desperation to help him escape, starting the events that led to both The Doctor and Rani having to regenerate and The Master being trapped by The Rani in his current form.
(Obviously, more to come)
The true star of the show isn't The Doctor themselves, entertaining as they are, but rather their universe they inhabit. What's important are about the places The Doctor goes and the people they meet.
The Doctor's past, beyond basic details, remains a mystery because the audience doesn't need to know it. If their past is delved into, it's best to suggest it is 'a past' for them, not officially 'the past'.
This fanfic does not view the series has having any one canon or definitive continuity. Instead, the idea is to treat DW like a 'mythos', like we do with Greek mythology or Arthurian legend, where core elements carry over yet each storyteller has their own version. Here, the events and characters of Classic Who and the Wilderness Years books and audios carry over but only in broad strokes, not to the letter, and this fic is its own thing separate from nuWho.
No 'Mystery Boxes', withholding information when it doesn't benefit the story. While the idea is to keep people coming back, mystery boxes are a contrived and dubiously effective way to do that. This is not to say that they'll be no mysteries at all, Those Above being an obvious case, just that any multi-story Arc won't dangle any answer like a carrot on a stick. Instead, multi-story arcs ought to be more reliant on character growth (or in some less happy cases, degrowth) for their progression, e.g., the humanisation of the First Doctor or gradual maturity of Jo and Ace in Classic Who.
No Big, 'Epic' Finales, given the series for the most part hasn't done 'epic' particularly well. If their emotional weight is strong enough, small-scale finales work just fine if not better.
The sonic screwdriver is useful as a way of getting around minor inconveniences to keep the plot going forward, but shouldn't really be anything more than that. It's an advanced screwdriver, but a screwdriver is still all it is. If you're going to treat it like a gun, then that might as well be giving The Doctor a gun.
Generally, I'd say the best way to maintain the mystery of Gallifrey is to simply not go there, especially since, being the place The Doctor wanted to flee more than anywhere, it shouldn't really be anywhere the audience would also want to go to. However, as this here's a non-visual medium, I acknowledge the usual issues with portraying Gallifrey such as lacking a suitable budget to pull a planet like it off don't apply here.
It is possible I may end up slipping from the tenets I propose here, but these are in general what I prefer and will be trying to stick to
I'm barely spared when fortune only now smiles on me, the crushing of my armour finally stopping. I just, only just, have about enough room to still breathe, yet have no room to move at all.
But I can't hear, or feel when it comes to vibrations, that statue moving around anymore. I do get my answer to what's happening soon when I hear the butler cry out at the wreckage of the pillar, him screaming at apparently the statue like it can listen, "S-stop this! Those Above entrust me with their voices, but you've gone and t-tricked into destroying their realm!"
The Doctor then comes over to me and is able to get my armour, as much as it can even be called armour anymore, open again, then with a heave pulls me out. "Lavinia, tell me, was this 'trick the statue into wrecking the tower' business your plan all along?" she asks.
I initially have no idea what to tell her. "Er, not really 'all along', but yeah, I did think it could work," I end up saying, "And it looks like it has. I guess I was inspired when you near instantly thought to roll the vase into the armour, I-I thought I could come up with a plan like that."
"Now that was some quick thinking, Lavinia. However," The Doctor's smile turns to a sigh, "If you must try such stunts in the future, your personal future I should specify, try to have a tad more caution, if not leave things to the professionals. I don't mean to be a downer, but you were almost crushed to death, I shouldn't need to remind you."
I become so flushed that I can't even speak, instead I can only nod rapidly at what the Doctor tells me. Okay, I... won't do that again. I know that's not what The Doctor strictly told me to do, but well, better safe than sorry.
"Anyway, you might want to see this," The Doctor says, as she then points to the butler's face... which is becoming less blurred, less like a mirage, less like the butler I know. The Doctor then walks over to him and asks, "Tell me, do Those Above also ask you to abandon your emotions along with your memories?" She could've asked me that, I'd say yes, but yeah, it would sound more official coming from the butler.
"What reason do you have to know?!" the butler snarls, "Are you scheming to have me demoted even further, is that it?"
"I'll take that as a yes," the Doctor says. "For if so, I may need to revise my assessment of these psychic powers animating everything. I at first thought they were your 'Those Above', and then something to do with melted minds, but what if..."
"The true psychic powers are the suppressed emotional energy of this castle's servants?" a voice suddenly finishes for her, and certainly not the former valet this time. It's a cold and deep female voice belonging to another newcomer to the castle, a suited woman in a rust-coloured trenchcoat whose face is as stern as ice.
"I was about to say that, yes," the Doctor says, having to stomach such upstaging.
"It is that science and knowledge do progress, not who progresses them, Doctor," this woman says, her voice now sounding almost computer-like. "And if you are about to ask how I know you are indeed the Doctor, you still being in your past incarnation's outfit gave it away."
"Really? As if he was the only one in all the cosmos to wear a greenish-black Victorian longcoat?" the Doctor chuckles at her.
"That, along with ridiculous hijinks like crashing down a whole tower. Very Doctor-ish," this woman says.
"Doctor, is this someone you know?" I'm left asking, as I try to huddle away from this woman without being noticed.
The Doctor has to think that question over, before she says, "She does act like she is, but I can't put a pin on exactly who. Well, suppose I could hazard a few guesses."
"Are you trying to diminish me?" this woman asks, before she then sets her stare right at me. "And what would be your name, girl? I never saw you with the past Doctor, so I estimate you two have only now become acquainted."
I've got no idea what to tell this stranger, how she'd react, or if she'll use what I say against me. On one hand, Oterne doesn't have a hold over her, not yet anyway, and she's someone who actually knows The Doctor. On the other hand, from their tones it doesn't sound like the two like each other that much… if at all.
"She would be Lavinia Mortlake. Her and I have found ourselves in the same situation, suddenly swallowed up by this most discourteous of extradimensional castles," The Doctor steps in and says for me. "And that is all you are entitled to know about to her."
"There is nothing a true scientist is not entitled to know," this woman says, shooting the Doctor a cold look. She then brushes past her and says right to my face, "'Lavinia' then, if you've only just met the Doctor, how can you be sure you can trust him- her? Do you want to see your loved ones die? Do you want to die, or find yourself stranded, brainwashed, or traumatised?" Wait, no, what's she talking about? The Doctor may be strange, b-but none of that sounds like her.
"Stop it!" the Doctor seethes, as I hear her voice now grow as cold as this woman's. I hope she'd just laugh it off, but no.
"I am simply informing Lavinia of the well-documented risks of associating with you, that is all," this woman says, "For those, you have none but yourself to blame."
"Doctor, no, none of that's true, it can't be!" I finally burst out.
All I want is The Doctor to say something, anything, to reassure me, but that's not what I get. Instead she sighs out, "Lavinia, all of that is true. Now, I would say this woman is without a doubt cherry-picking her examples, you could come out of this Castle with me and none of that would ever happen to you... but there's always the risk, yes."
She then glares straight at this woman and says back to her, "Yet how hypocritical for The Rani of all people to criticise me."
"Not hypocritical at all, I have never once made pretensions to gallivanting heroism like you have," this 'Rani' says, "And how could you tell?"
The Doctor shrugs and says, "I doubt The Master could so quickly spring back from having been confined to android casing. Given your comments on science, that left only one answer."
"Rani? Master?" I ask, completely lost by now.
"Old college 'friends'," the Doctor answers, "Though unlike most old college friends, I'd have been more than happy if we hadn't kept in contact."
The Rani first mutters, "Saying I could be the Master, I cannot think of a greater insult," before she has to look at me again, "The point is, you now know what I say about the Doctor does not come from nowhere. Also unlike the Doctor, who's been yet another abductee of Oterne, I came here in my TARDIS willingly."
The Doctor laughs at the Rani on hearing that. "My, how pitiable of you. That's like boasting about breaking into prison to not even bust anyone out," she smirks.
I can see The Rani gritting her teeth at that remark. Still, she calmly tells me, "Lavinia, unlike The Doctor who sees Those Above as just another foe, or the butler and other servants who grovel beneath them, I and I alone see Those Above, Oterne, and these remaining psychic energies as a scientific project. Something we can study, predict, dissect, control for, nothing so 'Above' in the end." Her words just make me think she'll get killed trying that, but then again, it's not like I know what The Rani's capable of.
"Something to provoke, irritate, think you know everything about, and bring down upon us too, no doubt," the Doctor cuts her off, almost like she's saying what I left unsaid.
"As if you are never guilty of those very things yourself," The Rani says back to her, then asks me, "If all you wish is to escape, then why don't you come back to my TARDIS, Lavinia? Unlike the Doctor with her crashed police box, I can have you back home right here and now."
While I stay silent, not knowing what to say to that, The Rani then walks over to the butler, who'd been trying and failing to sneak away, as she says, "I shall certainly use this man's help, determine precisely how Oterne's 'miragification' works, possibly even open up a channel to Those Above."
"If by that you mean have him be your new guinea pig," The Doctor glares at her, before she looks back at me and asks, "Lavinia, I promise my own TARDIS will soon be back up and running fine, the old girl's been through worse than this. And what assurance if any has The Rani given you that she will drop you home? With most of your memories gone, what's stopping her from dropping you anywhere and telling you it's your home, if not worse?"
I clutched my head as felt my breaths growing more rapid. I was tempted to just let The Rani have the butler, as all I'd ever gotten in return for working under him was him trying to kill me with that statue. B-but I can't have The Doctor leave me, even if I really can go home with The Rani, it has to be with The Doctor in tow… even if really I don't know much about either of them. I still know The Doctor better than The Rani though, enough to at least trust her. And aren't both The Doctor and The Rani going against Those Above? Why are they even squabbling with each other, w-why can't they just work together, at least for now?
It took some time, but I finally decided, well, relented more like. I may have started wanting to have the Rani just take the butler away, do whatever she wanted with him, but… I couldn't bring myself to say that. "Doctor, y-you're right. The butler's still a person, we should just jail him if anything, not let him be e-experimented on…" I tell her.
"You still trust the heart-tugging word of a stranger over what can be proved through science and analysis?" The Rani looks down at me, though she's even more a stranger to me than The Doctor is. The Doctor about to make a stand against her, The Rani sighs and says, "Alright, let your moralism get the better of you, it will not intrude on finding an actual answer to the nature of Oterne on my watch."
A mechanical third limb then shoots out from beneath her coat, its iron hand plucking and hoisting the frightened butler. At the same time, I almost cry out when she grabs me by one of my pigtails with her left flesh hand, then suddenly shoves something that looks like The Doctor's screwdriver all the way down my throat with her right. I already feel like I'm gonna suffocate with it this far into my throat, but The Rani turns out to have something even worse in my mind. With the click of a button, it isn't sound that comes out of this screwdriver, but steam, searing, shredding steam. My whole world goes blindingly white, as my lungs feel like they're on fire, or being stabbed again and again from within. The Rani then just lets me fall on the floor like a ragdoll.
"Lavinia!" The Doctor yells out as she runs over to pick me up. I try to respond, but I just can't. My throat hurts more than it ever has, and when I try to open it to speak, the burning all the way down only pains me more. I don't want to think this, but I almost wish The Rani had just killed me, at least then it'd be over, with none of this pain. "Lavinia, I, I want to say you'll be alright, I want to, but a steam screwdriver down the throat like that… I can't risk lying to you like that," The Doctor says like she could agree with me, then mutters, "Tsk, burning a young lady from the inside just to distract me, the nerve."
My sight is returning, better than nothing, but I can't see The Rani anywhere, she's already carried the butler away. I try gesturing around, unable to ask The Doctor just where The Rani could've gone. That is, if we even want to follow her at this point, I'm really thinking it may be better if we just leave her be? Better for my lungs, yeah.
"You're asking where The Rani is now? Likely heading back to her TARDIS, given her go-to urge to experiment," The Doctor keeps up with me, then says, "Issue with her TARDIS is its chameleon circuit still functions, ergo she can have it look like anything. We could've passed it several times already and never known." Wait, proper TARDISes can change shape along with go anywhere in time and space? Just how powerful are The Doctor's people, are they greater than those above… if they're not one and the same?
I try thinking back to anything that may have looked out of place on the way here, but nothing much springs to mind. I do work out that The Rani couldn't have walked over from the other side of that fallen pillar, she showed up here way too soon after it was knocked over. We're soon left retracing our steps all the way through the gallery, until I notice that one of the portraits, of a 19th century inventor or industrialist-looking figure, doesn't feel like its eyes are following me the same way as with all the other portraits. I walk back past the other portraits to check, and hmhm, this one's eyes really are staying still. But wait, The Doctor said they could change form, but a TARDIS can really shrink itself down to a painting?
The Doctor seems to think so. "How clever, she even swapped out the original portrait she copied to make her TARDIS not look out of place. Okay, stand right back, Lavinia. If The Rani tries to come at you again, she'll have to bally well go through me," she says, another reminder that nobody's ever stood up that way for me before. At first The Doctor tries to take down the portrait by loosening it with her sonic screwdriver… but then nothing happens. She stops for a moment, but she then inspects some dust and rubble along the floor and concludes, "Of course, the portrait alone isn't her TARDIS, it's this whole castle wall. Clever clever…" she snarls.
That castle wall then, for some reason, opens right up. Inside, I see a room that looks nothing like the rest of Oterne, save for its dark colours like black, grey, even a splash of crimson. Of course, that see-through circular tube jutting out of a hexagonal panel in its centre is proof this isn't a natural part of Oterne, that sort of design isn't anywhere else in the Castle. The Doctor takes a step back, like she's picking up that this is some sort of trap, but then we hear The Rani's voice. "Enter, Doctor. Now really, you would honestly think I'd have opened my own TARDIS doors if you still had a chance of saving that butler you insist on sticking up for?"
"Stay back," The Doctor tells me, "And above all else, keep your jaws clenched." Not that she needs to tell me, but I do appreciate her looking out for me all the same. The Doctor takes a gradual step into The Rani's TARDIS, only to gasp when she sees in front of her… a blue police box, exactly how The Rani described The Doctor's own TARDIS, but all chained up. The Doctor starting to seethe, she keeps trying to unlock the chains again and again with her sonic screwdriver, but to no avail.
"And it also didn't occur to you I would have my equipment sonic-proofed, knowing just who my enemy is? No wonder you flunked at the Academy," The Rani says as she strides on over. "But perhaps we could make a transaction? I'll relinquish your TARDIS from my safekeeping, if in turn you help me study and analyse that butler of yours. I've dissected him already, and his is not the regenerating kind, so you might as well. What else can you do with him now?"
I didn't want to take a single step into The Rani's TARDIS, but hearing her say that the butler of Oterne is dead, I find myself having to look. And… she's not lying. There, the butler who gave me my orders, said my work was but 'sufficient', and was the only one who could communicate with Those Above, now lies dead and dissected on an upturned slab, his bones and organs right in front of me.
The instant I can bring myself to move, I try to run back the way I came only for The Rani's TARDIS doors to slam right in front of me. As I keep trying in vain to pull the doors open, I hear The Rani saying, "Did you think I'd so carelessly let you leave, now you're in my laboratory?" Her voice feels like she's speaking right in my ear even if she's on the other side of this room.
The Doctor is at least quick to grab her arm before The Rani can walk towards me again. "Rani, stay away from her. Hasn't shoving your screwdriver down her throat been more than enough for the poor dear?" she says, looking her right in the face.
"Calm yourself, I have no intention of doing so again," The Rani says, as I see that spare mechanical limb ready to grab The Doctor in turn, "on the condition that you and she do not try to obstruct me in my research again. Now tell me, what stands out to you about this butler?"
"Oh, other than that you murdered him like a brute?" The Doctor says glaring at her. My only hope is The Doctor will soon finish her off, but then she actually looks down at the remains of the butler and her tone changes. "Those are, oh my, distinctly not human organs, nor even a Time Lord's," she remarks.
I slowly turn around to see, more clearly this time, what the butler is inside. Just a peek, for however much of a discovery this may or may not be, a peek is as much I could take to see someone I know ripped open like this, as little as they ever cared for me. And sure enough, I don't see any hearts, lungs, or even blood, but what looks like a tangled web of fleshy roots and a series of jutting spikes, what I called 'bones' before. His skin then starts changing as I look, despite him being a corpse, with little red horns sprouting out all over his face.
"Is this what happens to the dead of Oterne, or is this mass of roots and horns what this butler originally looked like? Before he was taken here, only now reverting after death," The Rani says, and that second observation of hers does strike a chord in me. I've seen people slowly changing in Oterne, blurring and becoming more mirage-like, and I think I heard The Rani use the term 'miragification', so she'd be aware. But wait, if people really are changed by Oterne to become more human-looking too, then… am I? No, I can't be some alien, I remember Earth, I remember Manchester even! The Rani's next observation at least helps distract me from those thoughts when she says, "Is changing them to look more Gallifreyan another part of this 'ascension process'?"
As it still hurts me to speak, I instead gesture to one side of my torso. I recall The Doctor saying her people have two hearts, and I very much don't. The Doctor is to my relief quick to pick this up, as she tells The Rani, "My, immediately jumping to Gallifreyan, how Time Lord of you. You would rule out that Those Above would ever think of changing their servants to be human, or any other species in the Time Lords' image? After all, Lavinia here still has but a single heart."
The Rani folds her arms and snorts. "Gallifreyan is the only logical conclusion, for why would extradimensional entities want to change people to be any lesser species on the path to 'ascension'?" she asks.
"In Buddhism, it is said that a human birth is the most fortunate, despite them lacking the power of the gods, due to their potential for growth" The Doctor says, tying that back with, "Those Above could not want change people into Time Lords due to how many of us are stuck in our ways, a cultural dead end. You and I know that better than anyone, Rani."
The Rani doesn't respond that, with her glaring at the mention of Buddhism. She ahems then goes on to say, "As for this girl lacking a second heart, that is easily explained by her not having gone far enough along in the process". I flinch as she then eyes me and adds, "In fact, I might know just who Those Above are, however I shall need to examine this girl's biodata for proof."
N-No! I can't let her anywhere near me, I have no idea what 'biodata' even is, but I know she'll do something terrible to it! I dash to the side, having no choice but to run further into this TARDIS if I can't get outside. But… I don't run for very long, for in only the next room I come across jar after jar of the dead, rows of dissected corpses of all sorts of creatures.
"Good, now you've seen yet more evidence of what happens to those who don't comply with me," comes The Rani's voice behind me, and if the sight of all those corpses didn't freeze me up, that sure finished the job.
"Rani, cease this!" The Doctor says like an order as she again steps in between me and The Rani. She then tells her in a softer but no less confrontational tone, "It's a Mark of Indenture you're looking for, isn't it? You've leapt to the conclusion that our Those Above are Celestis, trying to make the evidence fit your hypothesis. How 'scientific' of you," she smirks. "Look, I've seen what happens when you get your hands on dear Lavinia. I'll play along with this Celesti idea of yours for now, but if anyone's going to be prying into her biodata, it'll be me. Of course, I can't be doing that without my TARDIS, now can I?"
The Rani remains unflinching, as she glares and says, "Do you take me for a fool? I know just how outdated the equipment in your TARDIS is, so I'd highly doubt any reading they'd turn in."
"You say 'outdated', I say 'consistently proven to work'," The Doctor retaliates. Personally, I don't think I'd bother trying to reason with The Rani at this point, but I guess The Doctor doesn't really have any other choice.
Just as I feared, it doesn't look like The Rani will say yes… until she actually does. "Alright, if that's the only way we shall make any progress around here, so be it. And it's not like you'll be able to get far in your TARDIS," she then says, "If my far more advanced module hasn't been able to materialise back outside Oterne, what chance does yours have?"
Even as The Rani confirms what I feared, The Doctor remains undaunted. "So, your offer to take Lavinia home was a scheming lie all along. Rude as your initial deception was, at least now you've gained the courtesy to admit that, there's a good girl," she says, The Rani twitching at that last part.
True to her word, The Rani then undoes the chains around the police box The Doctor's TARDIS is in the form of.
Walking inside, the main room of The Doctor's TARDIS in a way reminds me of The Doctor herself; it looks as dark and ancient as Oterne, with only candles for light, exposed gears, a looming spiral staircase dominating everything, and there's even cobwebs in the corner. Yet like the Doctor, and utterly unlike The Rani's TARDIS, I don't feel instinctively threatened here, the opposite even. This dark old place still feels like a 'home', even if I can't quite pinpoint why.
"Everything alright, old girl? That Rani didn't go around tampering with you, did she?" The Doctor asks, er, her TARDIS itself as she walks around its main console, a see-through pump above a metal hexagon as with The Rani's. I don't ask, and not just because I'm in no condition to speak, but it sounds like I can hear a whirring from within in response to The Doctor's words.
Anyway, a little while later The Doctor comes back to me with a glass of water and some tablets. My assumption is they're some strange, alien chemicals, but The Doctor tells me, "Just painkillers, my girl. We need to do something about that horrid throat scarring you were put through, but I'm afraid this is the best I can do for relief as is. Shame I can't hear your first reaction to my TARDIS though, if Oterne and The Rani hadn't given away extradimensional spaces to you already."
Even if they're not much, I still gulp down the pills in a second. I'm not sure how better I feel, but I still manage to croak out, "Doctor… thank you. Er, what is…?"
"Easy my dear, still sounds like you're in no place to go straining your throat. Take it you were about to ask what this 'biodata' thing is, weren't you?" she says. I just nod, and The Doctor sighs. "That is the question, isn't it? I don't think I myself grasped the concept until my umpteenth course at the Academy. The most I can simplify biodata is it's your 'temporal DNA', how your own timeline is woven into your genetics. Which I precisely why we can't have The Rani touching yours, can't risk her splicing and Frankenstein-ing who you temporally are."
Honestly, that description starts making me fidget at the thought of even The Doctor looking at my 'biodata', if those sorts of things can happen, to the point where I feel so much of a tingle that it makes me clench my arm. "Ah, that'll be your biodata scan taking effect," The Doctor tells me, "Of course, since this is time we're talking about, it happens slightly before you actually take the test." That gives me the awful thought of what'd happen if you felt the biodata 'clench' and then didn't go through with it, but I don't voice that. Regardless of how much I can speak, it… really isn't something I want to think anything more about.
"Now, are you okay to go through with this reading?" she asks, and I do nod but mostly on instinct, to get this over with. "Alright then. Poyekhali!"
The Doctor motions for me to place my hand on the console. Not to do anything else, just put it there. Accessing one of its computer screens, The Doctor then begins chanting, singing even, something in a language entirely foreign to me. As she does, golden wireframe spheres start to appear, at first on the screen but then they start spinning around the whole TARDIS. These spheres sort of remind me of a clockface, especially with two needle-like 'hands' each circling around inside them, but having ballooned to the shape of an astrolabe.
The Doctor soon stops 'singing' and the spheres disappear, with her turning to me and saying, "Nothing to fear, and certainly not from any Celesti. Your biodata is… perfectly normal, my dear. Well, unless they had the nerve to imprint their Mark in your far future, but I doubt that. Standard procedure is planting it the moment they marked you, and they're not particularly discreet about it."
I then move my mouth ask what a Celesti could even be, but The Doctor sees and is swift enough to answer for me, "Ah, naturally you're wondering who these Celesti fellows are. Possibly a concept more complicated than biodata," she sighs out, "They were Time Lords once, like me, though even back then they fancied themselves an elite cadre. But the trouble with such power over time is eventually you run into futures you rather you didn't.
For the Celestis, it is said they saw a tomorrow so apocalyptic it would make your Book of Revelation look like Sunday afternoon tea. So they fled reality itself, becoming purely conceptual beings, but they couldn't bring themselves to cut every tie. Hence the Mark of Indenture, written in a chosen contact's biodata to confirm their contract to the Celestis."
That- that is a lot to take in, but from here I guess one of two things is likely. Either those above are these 'Celestis' but they didn't think someone like me warranted a full mark, and if they really are turning people into Time Lords they'd fit the theory. Or those above are not Celestis nor they are turning people into Time Lords… but then what are they? If they were Celestis, that'd at least be an answer. And add 'an apocalypse worse than Revelation' to my growing list of Things I Don't Want To Think About. I do bring myself to comment on something nicer, "Er, Doctor. That singing of yours, it was… nice."
"Again, don't strain your throat, my dear. But thank you, my melodic gift hasn't been all that appreciated in the past, although…" The Doctor says, "That wasn't exactly singing. Those activation phrases I gave were in my own tongue of Gallifreyan, just left untranslated by the TARDIS. To Earth ears, it's a very musical-sounding language. Now, if I may be excused," she then heads up the spiral stair to a hexagon-shaped door, "I rather ought to get changed. I said when we met that I had the indecency to be wearing my old incarnation's clothes, so it's past time I saw to that. Just keep a watch on the TARDIS scanner, won't you dear? I would not be surprised if one so lacking in etiquette as The Rani tried to pull something while we're in here."
I'm nobody else's idea of security, but I nod and try keeping my eyes on the screen she pointed to for now. I unsurprisingly don't do a very good job of it, for it's then that something approaches me right from within the TARDIS.
It's a… tiny little creature, like a fairy almost. Thinking a bit more and straining what memories I have, it reminds me of a creature called the 'jackalope' in folklore, a rabbit with antelope horns, though this is even more a crossbreed, also having a bat's wings, cat's paws, and a bushy fox's tail. It also looks stitched together, like one of its eyes is just a sown-on button. "Why hello, my dear," this fairy creature says to me, in a voice lower than I would expect, "Ah, you are The Doctor's next companion, I presume?"
"C-Companion? Er, she says she's gonna help me get home," I'm able to say to him.
"I'll take that as a yes," he says for me, "You're far from the first human girl h- she, I do apologise, has let into here. Jo, Tegan, Peri, Mel, Ace, Grace, just to name a few. It's long something of a tradition. But anyway, where are my manners? I myself am part of the TARDIS, shaped through its dimensional stabilisers, think of me as a 'temporal fairy' if you will. The Doctor's past incarnation came to a rather, ahem, unfortunate end, so the TARDIS thought it best if she sent me to check up on the next girl who entered."
Unfortunate end? I almost ask, but again I'm afraid to. So instead, I pursue a different topic, "I've heard those words brought up lately, 'regeneration', 'incarnation', but nobody's really explained them to me."
"I'm not surprised, The Doctor will have their secrets, till it's too late anyway. Hmm, have you heard of reincarnation, or of the phoenix hatching from its ashes? Time Lords work the same way, only the process is instantaneous for them, getting to start anew after death already as adults. Usually The Doctor likes to go out in a blaze of glory, but their last incarnation, not so much…" the TARDIS fairy said, "He'd believed he failed, failed to redeem the one he so tried to, killed by The Rani a second time."
I bite my lower lip as this fairy brings up The Doctor's death, for the past incarnation anyway, but it gets me wondering, "Wait, was it The Rani," of all people, "who he tried to redeem?"
The fairy shakes his head. "Goodness no, not that Rani. It was, hmm, another of his former friends, shall we say?"
"Ah, my thousand-year diary, knew I'd left it there!" the Doctor's voice echoes down from above.
"Look, I'd best be off. Listen 'Lavinia' is it? Might I request you not bring our little talk up with The Doctor? If she learns the TARDIS is worried, most likely she'll get worried even more, and she already needs all her mental strength figuring out how to deal with this Oterne place. Plus, she wouldn't like to hear you've been using your throat," the fairy says. I nod, guessing his logic makes sense, and he adds, "Good. And don't worry about keeping a secret too long, I'll reveal myself when the time is right."
The fairy then scampers away the moment right before the Doctor comes back down the stairs. The way she's now dressed, in a black dress and coat with white lace frills above long stockings, puts me in mind of the porcelain dolls they had back during Queen Victoria's reign, helped by her pale features. Well, those dolls were meant to be little white girls, but The Doctor's features are more East Asian I guess. Don't think I'd know; I can't remember that many people beyond my fellow servants.
"Sorry, my dear. Took longer than I meant to, since my daft old selves only packed so many feminine clothes in the event I regenerated into a Krunda," she chuckles, before she less jovially adds, "That's my little joke word, now that I am a 'Krunda', it'd be most impolite to say it in front of any other Time Lords. Well, ones who aren't bigoted, which is sadly fewer than you'd think."
"You mean it's an insult?" I take it.
"Careful with your throat, dear. But yes, Krunda's a Gallifreyan word that taken literally means 'accident' or 'aberration', but more and more it's been used to describe, well, people like me. When someone who's normally Time Lord regenerates as a Time Lady," she tells me, "The word Xassu is the opposite, originally it just meant 'confused' before people starting using it to insult Time Lords more known as Time Ladies. And to think my homeworld prides itself on having grown past gender…" she sighs.
"Wait, so you're like Princess Ozma then?" I figure. "Er, the Oz books are one of many I can remember reading. She's introduced as a boy, but she then becomes a girl at the end!"
"Hmm, not the closest analogy, I wasn't hexed by any witch, but for a girl from the 1960s that's rather a clever way of putting it," The Doctor smiles at me. "Shame not all of L. Frank Baum's beliefs could be as forward-thinking as his views on gender, but I'm getting side-tracked. Yes, I am indeed a woman who once identified as a man, thanks to a trait us Time Lords have called 'regeneration'." She then proceeds to tell me about it, with me feeling a pang in my chest that I can't tell her I've already been told what regeneration is.
Afterwards, she then heads over to the console and talks to the TARDIS, "Well, let's see if we can't take you on a test drive to that altar Lavinia mentioned, since we can at least move around this castle. Certainly better than having to climb all those stairs. Oh, and do be gentle on Lavinia, old girl, she's… been through quite a lot."
The whole TARDIS starts wheezing and groaning, before the doors open to show no less than the grey stone altar where the butler communicates- communicated to those above, where the rest of us servants would make our offerings. The two of us then walk out, as I assume there's something here The Doctor would like to investigate… only for us to hear an all too familiar voice state, "You didn't think you'd escape me that easily, did you?"
"Honestly, simply teleporting your TARDIS out of my own and expecting to get away was your actual plan?" The Rani's voice says, with her walking out from the shadows and pressing her steam screwdriver, the same which had set my whole lungs on fire, right into the back of The Doctor's spine, "You let me teleport right along with you. Do you take me for a fool?"
I could see The Doctor flinch, but still she as almost always was able to remain calm and say, "Temper temper, Rani. Brandishing what I'll remind you is a screwdriver like a gun, how uncouth. But as for me simply moving the TARDIS out, I was going for an Occam's Razor approach, shall we say? Oh yes, that does raise the question of whether you have heard of dear William and his razor, given a mind as mighty as yours will leap to assume that what's more complicated is true-" she has to flinch again as The Rani prods her screwdriver further into her flesh.
All I want to do is run right over and shove The Rani away from my- The Doctor, but my knees won't budge, my throat and lungs just start to hurt again at even the thought. And yet, for all my fear of having The Rani's attention on me again, I'm still able to raise my voice and cry, "W-why are you doing this?! Didn't you say you were once both friends?"
"Lavinia, please, your throat!" The Doctor tries to tell me, with how much I had to shout.
"The operative word there being 'once'," The Rani says. "Not that I ever changed, it was The Doctor who grew ever softer, ever more weak-willed."
"I fail to see how repeatedly stepping up to tell you No counts as weak-willed," The Doctor says back, "That the universe is not our plaything."
"Plaything? Does your new incarnation take me for a child?" The Rani says. "The universe is my laboratory, if anything, a laboratory you just like any other Time Lord fails to take advantage of." The Rani and Doctor are now reminding me how I once heard that the older friends are, the less inhibitions they'll have about arguing with each other. Not that I could confirm for myself, since… did I ever really have friends? I mean, it's possible I once did and just had them erased from my mind. Then, would I have been erased from their minds too?
It's in the middle of The Doctor trying to talk sense into The Rani and me lost in my anxiety that a dim yet brightening light begins to glow. While it's coming from the Doctor's TARDIS, it isn't from anything that's part of it. I can see the Grimoirum Malebene itself, left just indoors. I go over to pick it up and see what could possibly be happening with it, but the moment I have it in my hands the book itself starts yanking me, or that's how it feels anyway. I feel myself being pulled closer and closer to the stone altar to those above, like I'm being compelled by them to finally complete the task the butler gave me not that long ago. Except, do I want to? I have to think how little time has passed since I would've said 'yes' without question, but now…
I breathe deep and try to hold back as much as I can, keeping my hands tight on the book so it doesn't go flying over to them. And yet as much as I try to anchor myself, the book keeps trying to inch on further to the altar. The only thing I feel I can do is yell out for The Doctor to come grab me, and while I'm then grabbed before that, it's by a cold metal hand instead.
"And what is this?" The Rani asks as her attached third limb swipes the Grimoire away from me.
"Well I'd say 'nothing that concerns you' but that would only make you want to pry even more, eh Rani?" The Doctor mutters, before she sighs, "That is the Grimoirum Malebene. Far as we've figured the thing out, it contains knowledge of good and evil that Those Above don't want their servants knowing."
"Good and evil? How trite. What place does a child's morality have in a world governed by science?" The Rani asks.
"Oh, I can think of quite a few things," The Doctor says, doing a little eye roll, "But in the case of our Oterne, this book would let servants and anyone else captured learn any sort of morality that doesn't fit what Those Above would like them to think. That emotions might be good, that remembering the outside world doesn't make them impure, get them to ask what being 'impure' even means. You know, your usual wrongthink. Dangerous thing books to the authoritarian."
"Emotions I can do without," The Rani says outright, "In my field they invite only bias."
"My, then I know some silver gentlemen who'd be most delighted with you," The Doctor smirks at her, with me left wondering if that was some sort of inside joke. "Though seriously Rani, have you discarded the notion that an emotional drive and love of learning are what have inspired a great many scientists in the first place? Including your own self, at least once upon a time."
It said something that The Rani chooses not to respond to what The Doctor just said, but instead asks, "Then what would happen if I showed its contents to the rest of Oterne's servants? Especially after how that butler's outburst triggered a psychic surge." I then backed away on instinct as The Rani opened the book up, with all the images reappearing.
"Oh, and it's also a light show. Did I forget to mention that?" The Doctor chimes in. I'm expecting she'll shoot down The Rani's idea of unleashing mass psychic panic just to study what happens, but well, that's not quite what I get. "I can do you one better. We'll use the grimoire as a bargaining chip, threaten to show it to all the servants if Those Above don't submit to our demands. In the case of Lavinia, I and even all the servants, have Those Above be polite and finally let us leave their castle."
"We may agree on something, for that 'bargaining chip' idea of yours could prove fruitful," The Rani says, also shutting the book before that image of an eye can appear again. But any hope of mine that she may relax and hold off is dashed when she snarls, "Again, you encounter a great mystery to science and you only wish to run away. As if I need another reminder of why a mind like yours flunked the Academy."
The Doctor, not looking like she wants to acknowledge that barb about the Academy, an Academy I don't know anything of, tells her, "My 'wish' is to get Lavinia home, or anywhere that isn't this endless castle at least. Though that said," The Doctor then turns around to look over the balcony from which all Oterne, well the part of it I know anyway, can be seen, "tis a shame about this castle's landlords, it'd otherwise be a most achingly romantic locale. Oh right, would have to do something about those stairs, they make me wonder if Those Above have some absurd grudge against wheelchair users."
Oterne? Achingly romantic? I… I do suppose one could see it like that, if looked at a certain way. I never really thought about the castle aesthetically, any more than I thought about how the Earth looked like when I had all my memories. Oterne was the world, and the world was what it was. Of course, it wouldn't be the world to The Doctor, but one place among many. Like I guess Oterne would've been for me, when I first got here. Yet to have an experienced traveller be thinking of someone like me now first and foremost…
"Why are you talking about aesthetic appreciation of all things when-" The Rani begins, but on cue The Doctor looks back and cuts her off.
"You were about to say that art and aesthetics are unscientific, weren't you?" The Doctor asks, before launching into, "For shame, overlooking the field of psychology. Colour theory, the effects of light on the brain, our relationship with size and space. All perfectly peer-reviewed if you so insist."
"Well Doctor, if you must obsess over aesthetics, why don't you explain this?" The Rani gives a thin smirk as she moves over to the altar to those above. "A hexagon atop a raised platform, now tell me what that reminds you of. Unless you would again claim this place has nothing to do with the Time Lords."
"I…" I try to say to The Doctor, with The Rani implying the altar is, or is at least linked to, a TARDIS console. "I didn't think of it. When I entered your TARDIS, a-and The Rani's too, I just thought when I saw the consoles that was what all altars looked like, that hexagon shape."
"And you were right not to connect the two, Lavinia dear. Again, The Rani is forcing the evidence to fit her hypothesis," The Doctor says. She then walks over to the altar and continues, "Let's say this altar is in fact a console, well then where's the rotor? What about the controls, hmm? If however we judge that it's merely patterned like a TARDIS console, that leaves the possibility it was built in imitation of the Time Lords, not by them. Or even that we Time Lords merely patterned our consoles in imitation of these here altars, then hushed up where we got the inspiration."
"Heh, it's beginning to sound like you are the one blinded by their hypothesis," The Rani says. "I am not comparing Oterne to Time Lord design, a TARDIS even, because of the shape of this altar alone. You can't deny that the castle more than matches the description 'dimensionally transcendental'."
"You're about to bring up those Celestis, aren't you?" The Doctor was quick to ask. "If so, that's a theory you can definitely drop. I've scanned Lavinia's biodata, there's not a single Mark of Indenture in sight."
"According to the obsolete technology of your outdated TARDIS," the Rani says, before again she glares at me, "If you truly want to disprove any Celesti theory to me, though you'll find I never once brought them up, that was your conclusion, then you'll let me look at this girl's biodata myself. Since Those Above were able to puppeteer her into nearly giving them their book, it's clear they've some sort of Mark on her, Celesti or no."
The Doctor responds by immediately stepping in between The Rani and me and saying, "Absolutely not! Lavinia, quick, get back to the TARDIS!" She didn't need to even tell me, the mere thought of The Rani coming after me again meant I was already about to break out running. That was, until I suddenly felt someone right behind me, and not any mechanical limb reaching around.
My fellow servants, my once fellow servants I guess, had snuck up on and surrounded us. The gardener I saw on the stairs, the cleaners who were working on that statue, maids, guards, they were coming in on us with the same pulled-along gait I had when I'd been drawn to the altar. State of my throat or not, I wanted to yell at them to try and fight back, but that same lack of control seized me again too. I found myself walking right towards The Rani with my arms made outstretched, trying to reach out and grab the grimoire. Again, I tried to resist, walk on back, but for all I tried the pull just got stronger. I didn't want to think it, but a voice in the back of my head kept asking if this was all a mistake, if it'd been better if I hadn't gone along with The Doctor at all and just stayed where I was…
As I was made to lunge at The Rani, she swiftly responded by grabbing me the very place I didn't want to be grabbed by her, my throat. Not even with a mechanical limb, with one of her own flesh hands too. "Do you see what happens, Doctor, when you keep delaying my research by playing contrarian?" The Rani hisses at her, "To think I could've been done here before this ambush of servants had time to strike."
"Yet we have the means to call this ambush off right now," The Doctor says, as she then walks right up to the altar. I expected someone like her to grandly proclaim her demands to those above, but instead her voice remains calm, cold you could say, as she addresses them. "Those Above Oterne, if you are the ones treating your servants like puppets and flinging them at us, then I'll give you one warning to call them off. If you don't, we'll open the Grimoirum Malebene for all of them to see, with every moral teaching that contradicts yours being laid bare." Those above not relenting in their control of us servants, assuming they were the ones in control, it's then The Doctor says, "Rani, now!"
The Rani then re-opens the grimoire, with her free flesh hand and a mechanical one so to not lose her grip on me. The great streams of light and shadow re-emerge, with all the servants witness to them. Already I'm afraid the only thing this will force those above to do would be to just kill all of us off and find more servants to replace us, but no, The Doctor wouldn't have the book opened in front of us if she thought that'd be the outcome… right?
At first, the blurred faces of the servants slowly start to restructure themselves, and with a couple of them they stay in human form. But others begin to crack as they turn all the way back to their alien selves, with some looking like plants, others like insects, others like walking fish, and others barely describable. "Aha, so that's what they kept locked up in that book the whole time!" I heard a voice say, with it turning out to be that runaway valet again coming right up the stairs, maybe having noticed all this light shining out of here? "When Those Above rip out any dissenters' souls, that's where they stuffed all their sense of right and wrong, in the pages of that book!"
"Well, if we're to take that as true," The Doctor says, keeping one eye on this valet as she keeps her other on The Rani, "that might explain the book's 'Language' of Good of Evil. No true pictographic language at all, but rather the impulses and rationalisations through which a mind processes morality." Or used to process morality, in the case of the dissidents.
"Why are you humouring this madman?" The Rani asks. I can feel her grasp loosening on me, if probably because a whole bunch of other things have come up for her to deal with.
"Erratic as he may seem, as the worker here the longest who hasn't been brainwashed by Those Above, he's been one of the best sources on Oterne we've had," The Doctor tells her. Though with how fleeting our last meeting was with him, 'one of the best sources' may still not be saying much.
The butler's breakdown released enough psychic power to cause a whole statue to move, and that suit of armour from before that I realise may've been jumpstarted by my own shock, back when The Doctor first opened the grimoire. So naturally the resulting psychic release from all these gathered servants was massive, to the point where it felt like the entirely of even a castle as big as Oterne was quaking. Pillars twisted and moved, staircases rearranged themselves when they didn't fall into the abyss, but closest to us, the altar to those above started to levitate, rising ever higher.
"See? This is what Those Above do to anyone who crosses them!" the valet shrieked out after running over to the hole beneath the altar. The Doctor held my hand as we both walked over and saw in the pit under the altar… corpses. Hundreds, maybe thousands of corpses, some human some alien, but none I could see with their eyes left intact. It's like the altar was just as much an execution block as a place of offering. I couldn't bear to look a second longer, I just shut my eyes as tight as I could! All the while the valet kept saying, "What else did you think all the eyes around the castle were? They're our eyes, their sight forced to serve Those Above after death!"
The Doctor ushers me away, but then she ushers all the servants right over to the pit. "Then everyone may want to see this, learn just what Oterne can do to them," she says. With such a crowd of servants it takes time for them to gather around the pit, but once they do…
The sheer shock of the servants on seeing what happens to any of their co-workers who step out of line makes the whole castle not just shake, but inflicts enough strain that the whole place starts to tear apart. A great crevasse of blinding light appears high in the air and through it I can see… the sky! Stars! Planets even!
"Ah, and with Oterne's dimensional barrier weakened enough, that might just be our cue to leave. Poyekhali, Lavinia dear!" The Doctor beams as she takes me by the hand ad runs back to the TARDIS.
"What are you doing?!" The Rani then shouts after us, "Our TARDISes have been interlinked, remember? You'll drag mine along with you!"
"My, perhaps you should have thought of that before you interlinked them, Rani. Couldn't have happened to a nicer person," The Doctor smirks back at her. But The Doctor then takes one last look at the servants and says less cavalierly, "Though you do remind me. Captured servants of Oterne," she then announces, "it may be cumbersome, but I can take you all back to your original planets in my TARDIS. It may look small from outside but trust me when I say it has more than enough room for everyone."
I may have gotten my hopes up too high. I was eager to believe that all my fellow servants would jump at the offer and we'd all escape. But well, that's not what happens…
To drum up more activity in this thread, this here's an Episode Template that people can fill in to submit story ideas tailored for this particular incarnation of The Doctor and Lavinia. If you give permission, I may even write up these episode ideas as stories myself, though not that I don't have quite the backlog of my own episode ideas:
Title:
Time:
Place:
Pitch: (quick synopsis of the main idea)
Villain(s):
Supporting Cast:
Part 1 - Introduction: (usually establishing a sense of mystery and an initial stakes-setting cliffhanger)
Part 2 - Development: (finding out more about the world and the situation)
Part 3 - Escalation: (raising the stakes, possible twist)
Part 4 - Finale:
Influences: (anything inside and outside of Doctor Who that inspired this idea)
Since we're nearing the end of The Castle of Oterne, thought I'd use it as my example:
Title:The Castle of Oterne
Doctor: Alt-10th, post-Shalka (intro episode)
Companion: Lavinia Mortlake (intro episode)
Time: Unknown within Oterne, 60s for when Lavinia comes from
Place: Piranesi-esque pocket dimension castle
Pitch: The unseen lords of a sub-dimensional castle 'choose' (kidnap) people to be their servants, promising them 'ascension' once they lose all memories and emotions. The Doctor and The Rani both crash land in the castle after TARDIS-combat in the Time Vortex, with The Doctor befriending librarian 'Lavinia Mortlake', a name she chooses having forgotten her real one, her being a shy, unconfident girl from the 1960s.
Villain: Those Above, The Rani, Knights and Statues around Oterne, the butler (arguably), Celestis (mentioned)
Supporting Cast: Other servants like the gardeners, the runaway valet within Oterne
Part 1 – Introduction: The librarian of Oterne is instructed to bring the 'Grimoirum Malebene' to Those Above. Just as she retrieves it though, The Doctor suddenly appears and, insulted by how Oterne operates already, has the book opened anyway. This apparently leads to them getting attacked by a psychically controlled suit of armour, which they defeat and the librarian, now going by Lavinia for lack of any name she can remember, dons for safety.
Part 2 – Development: Trying to find the butler, The Doctor and Lavinia meet a runaway servant, who says the eyes Those Above use to see are plucked out from the 'disappeared', that objects in Oterne are made from the entombed minds of dissidents, and that any sense of morality contradictory to Those Above is sealed within the grimoire. Later,w ith them meeting and angering the butler, it's established that the knights and now statues coming alive is due to the servants' repressed emotions psychically erupting, not due to Those Above controlling them. The Rani appears and starts speculating about just what Oterne is, like it being a rogue TARDIS or Those Above being Celestis.
Part 3 – Escalation: The Rani takes the butler and dissects him, showing he's not human but was altered to appear so by Those Above. She also turns out to have 'captured' The Doctor's TARDIS within her own, letting her teleport along with them when The Doctor and Lavinia try to escape. They arrive at the altar to Those Above, where Those Above apparently take control of Lavinia directly into handing over the grimoire, only for The Rani to snatch it first. The Rani raises the idea of showing the servants the Grimoire to see the effects of the fear of the book unleashing their repressed emotions, which the Doctor surprisingly goes along with, as causing such a psychic outburst might actually defeat or at least sufficiently threaten Those Above. (Cut idea for time: Given Those Above appear able to see through any representation of an eye, it is suggested either to cross out any eyes, or turn this ability on them by creating more and more false eyes to overload them.)
Part 4 – Resolution: The fear of the Grimoire The Doctor unleashes on the servants as they're controlled into ambushing her, combined with the servants then being shown Oterne's Execution Pit, either unlesheas enough psychic power to break Oterne's subdimensional barriers or at least get Those Above to relent, allowing the Doctor's and Rani's TARDISes to go free. The Doctor says to the servants she'll give anyone who wants to leave a lift back home, but Lavinia ends up being the only one who goes with her.
Influences: Susannah Clarke's Piranesi, xxxHolic (when it comes to The Doctor's new regeneration), audio plays Chimes of Midnight and Holy Terror, little bit of Time's Crucible
So this here's an Omake I wrote for a Quest, specifically Crystalwatcher's Chasing the Sun (a recent spinoff of their Magical Girl Quest), using Lavinia and my take on The Doctor, that I thought to also crosspost here. The title, Dream in Time, was Crystalwatcher's idea. Hopefully it won't be hard to follow what's going on for readers coming from the other end of the crossover:
You, the Angel Adriel, were paying what, as far as you knew, would be your last visit to the Goddess Shrine. Well, maybe phrase that as 'last visit for the foreseeable future', try to keep your hopes up, eh?
Any peace you found or final thoughts you had however were promptly interrupted by what your worried instincts leapt to fearing was an invader from Darkness. Had to be an intruder at least, since you'd never heard any sound like that, a wheezing, groaning whir, made by anyone in Heaven. Then again, with how a short a time ago you'd been Formed, you had to admit there were many sights and sounds in Heaven alone that'd still be unknown to you-
"Hello there. Not interrupting anything, am I?" a deep and husky yet oddly chirpy woman's voice asked, snapping you out of your spiral of thoughts. Her appearance however*, pale ashy skin like a corpse, crimson eyes framed by pitch black hair, had all the markings you'd been told were typical of Unified Darkness. *(Alt. faceclaims)
Afraid you were up against your first real enemy, you reached without thinking for the weapon you carried, prepared even to channel your Grace, as you bellowed "S-stand down, intruder! You are in the presence of an A-Angel of Light!"
Not the least bit intimidated, this woman's reaction was to promptly scold you like a child, which you in a way still were despite your looks. "Really, young lady? Such poor hospitality, if this is how you greet just anyone around here. And I've encountered a fair many people calling themselves 'Angels' on my travels, if you think that alone will make me quake in your presence," she said, before she raised her hands in front of you, "As you can see, I stand before you unarmed. Well, unless you would seriously call having a screwdriver on you 'armed', which distressingly more and more people do these days. Or at least the people I tend to meet."
Yet you couldn't yet relax too much around this intruding woman, for you then pointed out, "What's to stop you casting a spell then? I mean, you were able to teleport this... thing in here." You pointed your weapon at the vehicle in which this woman arrived all the way here in the shrine, a vehicle you, er, could only describe as a rectangular blue box with 'police' scrawled on top. Was this really how the forces of Unified Darkness got around? While you had heard bad things about the police from some of the other Angels, you still pictured the travel methods of Darkness to be more along the lines of spiked chariots, rotting ghost ships, portals that tore reality, those sorts of things.
"Excuse me, did I hear you just refer to the TARDIS as a, I quote, 'thing'?" this strange woman glared at you before she sighed. "The nerve. Your rudeness, young lady, would otherwise tempt me to leave, especially as I had such a nice picnic planned with Lavinia at the Eye of Orion. However," she then said as her tone lowered, "The TARDIS never lands anywhere by coincidence, she wouldn't have brought me here without reason. So, I'm afraid you're just stuck with me for the time being, young lady, like it or not."
You then sheathed your weapon and said, "I do apologise. I've heard much about Unified Darkness, but never faced down anyone from it, having Formed not too long ago. So um, with how out of nowhere you came, you can see why I leapt to conclusions. But I'm assured now, you don't act anything like how I've been told how soldiers of Darkness do, well, no orthodox one anyway."
"Good, always such a shame to be called 'orthodox'," this woman said, before she turned around and called into the box she called the 'TARDIS', "It's alright, Lavinia dear, you can come out now. Miss Angel here means us no harm." She then turned back to you and said, "You do mean us no harm, don't you young lady?"
"I don't, o-of course I don't," you told her, your words true for now anyway. But you still had to make one thing clear, "I, Adriel of Light, am an Angel, regardless of whoever you've met that has pretended to be. I was brought into this world by prayer, by her prayer," well, 'her' prayer was only half the equation, but you wouldn't trust even those you knew with the full story, let alone this stranger, "That's how I know I'm an Angel!"
"Never specifically said you weren't, young lady," this woman told you, with you suspecting she said that less because she now believed but rather to agree to disagree. You nodded, and still wondering why this woman had to raise her voice to call into a box, you peered inside the TARDIS... and saw its door was a portal, like there was a whole sliver of reality contained within.
"Dimensional transcendentalism is the scientific term," the woman chimed in, "but of course, I expect as an Angel of Light preparing to fight against the Legions of Darkness, you'd naturally know all about it, wouldn't you?" Needless to say you didn't.
A bespectacled girl with dark braided hair* slowly and shakingly made her way out of the TARDIS, then her saying, "I'm okay, I was watching everything on the TARDIS scanner, like you told me too, Doctor. I'm okay." She then looked at you and gasped, "You... really are an Angel? I'm sorry that- that The Doctor doubted you, but I know she would've just been trying to make sure. Er, oh my, I go by Lavinia Mortlake, you see I've, er, lost my original name." *(Alt. faceclaim)
"I however do know my original name, but it's my business what I do with it. Though yes, Adriel dear, you can call me The Doctor, it's good enough for most," the strange woman, 'The Doctor', said to you.
"Although, if you're not with Unified Darkness, and you're not Angels or anyone who knows of us, then what... are you?" you had to ask, "Wait, to reach here, you must be Magical Girls just like Selene is!"
"'Girl'? I do beg your pardon, Miss Adriel, but I have not lived nearly a thousand years to simply be called 'girl'," The Doctor said. "Nor am I 'Magical', unless you mean in the Clarke sense. No, Lavinia and I are but travellers, that's all really."
"Wait, by 'Magical Girls', you mean like witches or sorceresses?" Lavinia asked you, but on second thought said, "No, it sounds like you mean something more specific, like when you say 'Magical Girl' it's as a proper noun. Ah, so I assume. I'm just human, really that's all I am, but The Doctor, we'll she's..."
"Gallifreyan, a Time Lady," The Doctor said, helping Lavinia along, "If Miss Adriel must know. That's where the name 'TARDIS' comes from, short for Time and Relative Dimension in Space. My granddaughter likes to think she came up the acronym, so I humour her. Ahem, my granddaughter being someone completely dissimilar to Lavinia, of course."
"You're time travellers?!" you shout upon inferring, "T-then that makes you Divine Beings, they're the only ones who have that ability!"
"Divine? Most certainly not!" The Doctor said before she sighed, "Even if quite a few of my people would rather like to think they are. Then again, I suppose the whole reason us Gallifreyans have time travel is due to quite the messianic figure in our past, so that could be what you mean."
You nodded along for now, though your suspicions were once again on the rise.
It was then Lavinia approached you and asked, "Ah, if it's nothing personal, well I suppose it is- Sorry, you said you were formed by someone's prayer, a girl called Selene?"
"Yes. Selene is my Sun, she prayed that someone, anyone, would love her, so I exist for that reason," you told them, light itself beaming out of your face.
Hearing that made The Doctor narrow her eyes at you. "Existing for a single person? Romantic as it may sound, are you absolutely certain of that path?" she asked, "I suppose you must be, given that's what brought you into existence, apparently."
"Oh, ah, I wasn't thinking that at all!" Lavinia tried to insist before The Doctor's words put you on edge again, "It's just that, well, I was in a place where I was left praying a lot too, but... no angel came for me."
"Of course they did, you had me arrive!" The Doctor beamed as she told her companion, "Though I am naturally a nigh thousand-year-old Time Lady rather than a being only just brought into this world through prayer, but semantics."
"It's possible your prayers did Form an Angel, actually," you then said to Lavinia, "There are many of us, chances are yours manifested somewhere out here in Heaven. If you were strong enough in will to do so, of course."
It was then The Doctor took you to one side and said, "Listen, I'll be blunt. If Lavinia has psychically manifested an Angel, I would rather the two remain apart, for I do not need someone who bases their identity on completely obsessing with her following her around."
"What are you implying?" you hissed out, "That I'm some sort of danger to Selene?"
"Your relationship to Selene is your own business, dear Adriel, but Lavinia is in no state to have any distant figure watching her every move," The Doctor said.
"...Because that's your job, isn't it?" you caught on. You expected The Doctor by now to fume or retort, but for the moment she instead said nothing, looking somewhat defeated.
Eventually The Doctor did reply, "I... just want what's best for her. She's been through a lot, kidnapped, isolated, near brainwashed. Incidentally, your forces of 'Unified Light' may want to keep a lookout for a sub-dimension called Oterne, I can't say if they're with your 'Darkness' but I would hardly put it past them."
Taking that all in, you then looked at Lavinia and said, "Well, ah, if you do have an Angel, I'm sure they're already acting in your best interest. Wait, actually... is it okay if I ask you two to do something for me?"
"Ask away," The Doctor said, sounding okay with it on the surface.
You thought, should you ask them to check on Selene if they can travel like that, make sure she's okay given all she's been through? No, isn't that your job? Are you being irresponsible in asking such a thing of people you've just met? In the Doctor's case, of someone suspicious of who you even are?
