Tag Archive: Full Fathom Five

Chapter Five

Compared to the universe, she burns bright and hot like a young star, yet she is ageless and infinite. Her wisdom goes hand in hand with her neurotic mischievousness, the sly smirk on her lips never belaying the surprise she feels at learning something new. Her temperament as unpredictable as her hair, and her fury…

Her fury burns hotter than all those bright stars.

It’s the fury the Daleks feel—smoldering white hot rage—as they die in droves all around her, screaming their ineffective threats of extermination. Some are panicked, yelling about impaired vision. If your eyestalk was sliced off, your vision would be impaired too. She moves like poetry, like water droplets playfully cascading down a brook, as she darts across the control room of the scout ship from one drone to the next. Her weapon cuts just as deep as words, an ancient sword rumored to have come from these very DARK TIMES, forged by the great weapon smiths of Andromeda, its alloy folded more times than could be counted, fused in the vortex itself and imbued with any number of incantations and spells, covered with magic charms and runes from dozens of galaxies.

It’s also on fire, because, reasons.

The sword’s name is lost to time (and likely unpronounceable, given the Andromedan alphabet) but legends passed down through the eons roughly translate it to “sharp burning stick”. A gift to her from Absalom Daak—

“You can stop there.” She warns, driving the blade solidly through the dalekanium hull of another drone. “Bad enough you gotta go all “smoldering eyes” on me, but to mention HIM…” She withdraws the sword and whirls on the Dalek commander, “is hitting below the belt.”

The Dalek Commander’s gunstick quivers, just enough to signify the retargeting computer has locked on her, and without a second thought she thrusts out and upward, decapitating the dome off the engine of war. The gun falls limp.

“Ha.” She says.

She looks around and takes a deep breath, and for the first time since this whole Time Lord Victorious started, feels reassured. As if history was back on track

And that’s when the temporal distortion wave hits and knocks her on her ass.

The Dalek scout ship instantly tumbles end over end, sending drones careening into bulkheads and ceilings, sounding like a washing machine full of cast iron skillets. Sparks fly from Dalek casings and computer bays, their interfaces fried by the temporal wave. Arissa dodges artfully and avoids most of the debris thrown around the control deck, finally coming to stand on the communications board. She nearly swoons, her mind awash on the shores of history, as the tide runs out and takes half the sand making up the beach with it.

“I never swoon.” She says through grit teeth, looking up at the forward view screen, now orientated on the ceiling, trying to get a feel if the Pyramid ship survived the impact. More sparks fly from shorts and blown connections. One certainty is that the scout ship won’t much longer. She was a little overzealous with the Osiran weapon pods when overtaking the Daleks, and of course there was the whole sword play thing.

“What was that—“ She starts to ask, but is cut off by the blaring speaker below her left heel as it starts to recite an incoming transmission. “But there’s no one to transmit—”

“Attention. Attention. The following schedule” (the voice pronounced it “shed-u-all” and sounded oh-so familiar) “reflects the next month of transmissions from Traveling The Vortex, delving into the Unbound rage from Big Finish:

482 – Doctor Who Unbound #1 Auld Mortality, #2 Sympathy for the Devil 

483 – Doctor Who Unbound #3 Full Fathom Five, #4 He Jests at Scars

484 – Doctor Who Unbound #5 Deadline, #6 Exiles

485 – Doctor Who Unbound #7, A Storm of Angels, #8 Masters of War 

“Follow along, or don’t. It makes no difference to me.

And my dear Arissa, if YOU are receiving this message, you’ll know what to do.”

The voice transmission trails off into a series of chuckles that chill her to the bone despite the heat coming off Sharp Burning Stick. It couldn’t be HIM…

She runs along the wall to the science console and kneeling down does a quick sensor sweep…

…only to have her worst fears confirmed. (Well, second worst fear. The recurring dream about showing up to the first day of class naked and surrounded by evil clowns is her worst fear, obviously.) But this is just as bad.

History HAD been rewritten. Whatever the Doctor has been doing in THE DARK TIMES was now over with, and time has reset. Which means with one or two exceptions, the Osirans die out here in the next couple of centuries.

Which mean they do not exist in the 35^th century. Which means they will never construct a golden Osiran Pyramid Ship. Which means it isn’t floating nearby, ready to get her home.

She is trapped in THE DARK TIMES, and the author is in terrible danger…

She tries to utter a dramatic “dun dun DUN!”, but finds her throat is too dry.