She felt like her body was on fire. She was on top of the highest tower at the Deadfort. The sky above glittered with silver stars and her eyes were drawn towards what was above her. She couldn’t move. She felt frozen in place. Against the night sky was two moons. They were glowing with a golden/orange hue and between them the space/time vortex was open.
Standing on a mountain, higher than anything else on the planet, was a figure. A beam of coloured light was being channeled from the vortex, through the figure on the mountain and towards her.
They had done it. They had found a way to defeat her.
She tried to scream but she couldn’t as she felt herself splitting in two, but not physically. This was different. She felt like something was being pulled out of her. The channeled energy was ripping her very soul from her body.
Celestia frowned to herself and then shook her head. Those memories were still there and were beginning to come to the surface, but she couldn’t let her past defeats control her now. She had to move on. She had to plan anew.
She was sat on a bench in what these Earth creatures had called Trafalgar Square. In front of her was Nelson’s Column, the lions either side as children tried to climb on them to have their photos taken. She could take this world without a problem. There were time sensitive’s across the globe that she could bring to her cause, and even if they didn’t join her she could make them join her. There would be no resistance, and then she could plan her revenge against the Gallifreyans.
She could hear a strange, cooing sound below her. A child was feeding the pigeons some scraps of a sandwich he didn’t want.
She looked at the child. The child didn’t seem particularly happy that he was feeding them his sandwich, he just seemed to be mesmorised by their scavenging for the dry scraps.
“Don’t feed them, Billy,” said his mother, as she took his hand and led him away, “they’re just rats with wings.”
Celestia looked back down at the pigeons and then narrowed her eyes. She breathed in and then held up her hand. A bolt of energy shot out from her finger tips, hitting a small collection of the birds in front of her, killing them instantly. She smiled as people cried in shock and began walking away from her. She still had that power. It was still there. She looked up at Nelson’s Column and smiled. This would be where she would make her plans.
This planet would fall.
“Tea? Seriously?” said Maxus.
“The world can’t function without a cup of tea,” said the Doctor, furiously clicking through data on a computer monitor. He had downloaded the relevant files and information on the First Time Lord to the lab computers and so far had made no headway.
“Tea it is then, Doc,” said Maxus, shaking his head.
“Humour him,” said Faith, smiling as Maxus went off to make the tea.
“Oh, I’m used to him Sentinel,” said Maxus.
Faith waited for Maxus to leave and then slowly approached the Doctor. She put a hand on his shoulder and sat down next to him. He eventually looked up from the monitor and then noticed her arm on his shoulder.
“How are you, Doctor?” she asked.
“I’m fine,” he said, smiling and returning to the screen.
“No, really, how are you?”
He didn’t look at her as the data flashed across his eyes. “I feel a sense of déjà vu.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’ve lost Reikon before, a long, long time ago, except he returned from the dead. That won’t be happening this time.” He looked down from the monitor and then to Faith. “I’ve always been disconnected from my family, but with Celestia and Reikon and Caleb I had something there. I was forging a bond.”
“You have Lilly though.”
The Doctor nodded, but there was sadness in his eyes. “Lilly doesn’t belong with me though. She belongs with Holly.”
“Can’t they both belong with you?”
He got up from the monitor and made his way across the room, staring at the empty, open casket. “Holly can’t stay with me forever. Nobody can. I thought that Caleb maybe could and when he died…well, I thought that maybe Lilly could. But I couldn’t heal her.”
“She seems pretty much fixed to me, Doctor,” said Faith.
He still had his back to her. “And that was all Holly’s doing. I stabalised her. Holly was the one who fixed her.” He placed his hands on the edge of the casket and hung his head. “But then I thought that I had Reikon and Celestia and maybe I could try and enjoy some kind of family life. And now both of them are gone as well.”
Faith frowned and thought back to her daughter and estranged husband back in Australia. It made her wonder if she should go back to them and leave this life behind. Permanently.
As if he was almost reading her thoughts the Doctor turned to face her. “What was your daughter’s name, Faith?”
“Ruby,” she smiled.
“Hold on to her tightly,” he said, smiling sadly at her. “You never know how much longer you have left.”
The relative quiet of the lab was broken with a communication signal from elsewhere in the building. Benton’s voice came over the intercom. “Sentinel, this is Obsidian, I think we have something.”
“We’re on our way, Obsidian.”
“And Mr. Benton?” said the Doctor, looking up to the ceiling.
“Yes, sir?”
“Call Quinn and ask him to bring the tea upstairs.”
The sun was setting when the Master and the Doctor arrived on the outskirts of Trafalgar Square. It had turned decidedly chillier and the pair of them had opted to wearing scarves to keep themselves warm. The area surrounding Nelson’s Column had been evacuated and numerous armed vehicles surrounded all exits from the area.
The Master looked up as a news helicopter hovered overhead. “You can always rely on the media of this planet to be right in the centre of things.”
Celestia was stood at the top of the steps, her dress billowing in the wind. When she saw the Doctor and Master approaching she made her way down the steps. “So you came?”
“We saw you on the TV,” said the Doctor. All around her were dead pigeons. “What have you done?”
“It’s my understanding that the people of this planet despise these creatures. I have helped them.”
“You’ve frightened the people of this planet,” said the Doctor.
“They are only frightened because they do not understand,” she said. “But then they are so simple. They just need somebody to guide them.”
“Guide them to what? The people of this planet aren’t so stupid to fall under your control.”
The Master nodded knowingly. “I tried a number of times to take control of them but I always failed. That’s why I decided to tackle a few more personal issues. Like our daughter.”
“Where is our daughter?” said Celestia.
“Safe and away from you,” said the Doctor.
“Oh come now, Doctor,” said Celestia, “I would not harm her. The three of us – and her – are all outcasts from our people. Surely you can see that.”
“What I see,” said the Doctor, “is a bitter, ancient woman who wants to get her revenge on a people that are so far removed from what created her that they can’t even be considered the same anymore.”
The Master nodded. “He’s right, you know. The Gallifreyans have become weak and so entrenched in politics and boredom that I doubt you’d recognise them.”
“Then we must return them to their former glory,” said Celestia.
The Doctor frowned. “What do you mean? You went to war with them.”
“I did,” said Celestia, “and that was partly because of what they did to me, but that is not the complete story.”
“Well you’ll forgive us for being a little bit dumb,” said the Doctor, “but your history is shrouded in myth and legend.”
“Yes, did you ever own a unicorn?” said the Master.
“Be quiet.”
“You refer to the horse I used to ride. The horse with the speared forehead - Avagar. How I miss him.” She looked distant for a moment before the whirl of the helicopter blades above brought her back to reality. “But as I said – you don’t know everything.”
“Then tell us,” said the Doctor. She smiled. “I didn’t want to destroy the Gallifrayens – at least not to extinction – I wanted to control them. I wanted to elevate them into beings like myself. I was the First of their kind. I was born to rule them.”
To be continued...
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