He was happy.
That particular evening was a warm and sunny one. He watched the sunset over the treetops in the distance and almost dozed off, when suddenly the sky was illuminated in a brilliant, white light. Corrinas got to his feet and stared out through the window as something appeared to fall from a gap in the clouds and land behind the line of trees in the distance.
He made his way out of his chamber and down into the courtyard where already news of the falling object had spread to the King. His majesty was already astride his horse, flanked by ten of his best soldiers.
“Your Majesty,” said Corrinas.
“Shouldn’t you be in bed, old man?” said the King, his men laughing along with him.
“I saw the object fall from the sky,” said Corrinas.
“We are headed that way now,” said the King. “Care to join us?”
“Indeed I would, your Majesty.”
The King smirked. Corrinas was an inquisitive type, but the King was kind. “Find yourself a horse and catch us up.”
Thirty minutes later the twelve horses and their riders were in a forest clearing. In the centre of the clearing was a smoking pit with bits of metal strewn around, still glowing red-hot.
The King, followed by Corrinas, walked up to the edge of the crater.
“I can’t see anything,” he said. “The smoke’s too thick.”
“Look,” said Corrinas, pointing as the smoke cleared.
Lying there - dead - in the middle of the crater, was the twisted and broken form of a man. Except this wasn’t any normal man. This was a man covered in the scales of a lizard and wearing a suit of armour.
Corrinas’s eyes narrowed as the King and his men clambered into the pit. Corrinas felt his heart beting faster and faster. He would write about this and tell the world of the lizard man. He would be famous. He would be rich.
“So, what’s this book called?” said Holly, as her, the Doctor and Lilly entered the central library. Roxy had opted to return to the hospital where Simon Fox had been transferred to following his blackout. Holly felt sure there was still a connection between them.
“It’s not a very well known book. In fact it was a very obscure book. The man who wrote it - Tobias Corrinas - never made anything from it. The poor man ended up committing suicide,” said the Doctor.
“Nice,” said Holly sarcastically. “And to answer my first question: what’s it called?”
“The Book of Darkness,” said the Doctor.
“It’ll be in the reference section,” said Lilly.
Holly guided the two of them up the stairs onto the 1st floor where she herself used to work. She smiled at her ex co-workers. She missed them all, but she felt a twinge of jealously at the fact that they had kept their jobs and she had lost hers.
Eventually, on an old dusty shelf right at the back of the room, they found the book. It was a reproduction of the original, of course - the original had been lost many, many years ago - but it still had all the same information in it.
The Book of Darkness
By Tobias Corrinas
The Doctor clutched the book in his hand and sat down on one of the library chairs. The two women joined him sitting opposite.
He smiled. “Now, there’s no point in reading the whole thing, because I’ve done that before, and to be honest the majority of it is full of superstitious claptrap that makes no sense.”
“Are you sure it makes no sense?” said Holly.
“Pretty sure,” said the Doctor. “The point is that Mr Corrinas happened to find one of these lizard men. It was during the time of King James I. In 1573 Corrinas writes that he and the King found one in a crater.”
“The Riders?” said Holly.
“Yep,” he opened the book. “It doesn’t really explain what they are, but he does go into some detail over what they found.”
We stepped into the smoking hole and stood before the Devil himself, dressed head to foot in warriors armour, battered and damaged by his fall. Where had he fallen from? Surely not Hell, unless Hell was placed beside Heaven up above. There was no life coming from the creature, but when I reached out and touched his skin, I felt a whole gamut of emotions run through me. It was as if the creatures life - past, present and his own people’s future - was poured into my own head. It seems that his people were psychic.
They had come so very far. Travelling from one version of our world to the other, destroying each of them in turn before moving on to the next. This one, his name being Visquis, had gotten lost from the rest of the pack and had strayed from the path, falling through into our world on his flying machine that lay broken and battered all around the clearing.
We tried to extract the corpse, but it soon dissolved into nothing. Melted away leaving a repulsive smell. The King and his men and I decided that it was best we never spoke of it, but I felt that the world needed to know of the Kro’Tenk and the coming darkness.
“The King found out about the book and had in burned and Corrinas later committed suicide, but Corrinas had made two copies and centuries later it was released to the wider public. The theories about the lizard men were ridiculed and the book fell into obscurity. But never-the-less, here it is.”
Holly leaned back in her very comfortable library chair and frowned. “Even so, how do we know this Corrinas guy is talking about the same creatures?”
“Because,” said the Doctor, “in the book he mentions that their names are the Kro’Tenk, which is an ancient language from the time of the dinosaurs.”
“The dinosaurs didn’t have a language,” laughed Lilly.
“Oh, my dear Lilly, you may have learnt a lot, but you still have a lot more to learn. The Kro’Tenk roughly translates as the Sky Travellers or the Riders.”
“I see,” said Holly. “So these things are aliens?”
“No, actually,” said the Doctor, closing the book. “They come from another dimension and have existed since the dawn of time.”
“Always the dawn of time,” said Lilly, rolling her eyes.
“Now, obviously here we’re dealing with alternate dimensions,” said the Doctor. “Do you understand the basics, Holly?”
“Of course. The theory that there are an infinite number of dimensions and that every decision creates a different reality no matter how small.”
“Exactly. Did you read that in a book?”
“I was always a fan of those mirror universe Star Trek episodes.”
“The legend has it that the Kro’Tenk cross from dimension to dimension, conquering worlds and then moving on. But they only exist on Earth. They can’t travel the galaxy. The can only traverse the dimensions. Their origin is a mystery, but they have existed for so long that nobody is ever going to find out where they came from.”
“So what makes the other worlds different from ours?” asked Lilly.
“It could be anything,” said the Doctor. “Maybe someone got out of bed the wrong side one morning, or maybe Mr Rogers had a bath instead of a shower. It doesn’t really matter, all that matters is that it’s the reality next to ours and, if Mr Hick’s timing is to be believed, the dead have already been walking for around a month and in roughly five months time the Kro’Tenk will break through into our dimension.”
“It still doesn’t explain how the lines are blurring with our counterparts,” said Holly.
“Well not exactly, but we can posit that as the time draws closer, the barriers then become more likely to fall and we begin to see what our counterparts see. Well, glimpses at least.”
Holly sighed. “Okay, so how do we stop them?”
“I don’t think we can,” said the Doctor.
“What? You’re joking?” said Holly.
“The problem is they’re not going to arrive for around another five months.”
“Is there no way of stopping them before they get here?” asked Lilly, suddenly finding herself becoming concerned for this planet for the first time in…forever.
“To do that we’d have to fly the TARDIS into the dead world.”
“The what?” said Holly. She wasn’t sure what they were talking about, but it was quite clear that it was something only they knew about.
“It’s…our device. A way of travelling from one place to another,” said the Doctor, not wanting to get into a massive long explanation.
“Like a car?”
“It’s a bloody time machine,” said Lilly.
“What?!”
“Lilly!” said the Doctor, his hand to his forehead in disbelief. “What are you doing?”
“She’s gonna find out eventually,” said Lilly with a incredulous laugh. “She’s not about to turn around and walk away.”
“No, I’m not,” said Holly.
“That’s what I’m worried about,” said the Doctor. He got up and crossed over to the window and gazed out over the street down below, the people going about their normal business, unable to comprehend what was going to happen in a few months.
Holly went over to join him. “Why can’t you take your machine into the dead world?”
“Because it’ll simply accelerate their crossing. They’ll break through sooner. It’d be like pouring water onto tissue paper. The barriers would just collapse.”
“So there’s nothing we can do? At all?”
The Doctor didn’t look at her. He simply shook his head.
To be continued...
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