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eponymous_roseTitle: The Deepsky Atlas (6/?)
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
eponymous_rose
Word Count: 2798
Rating: PG-13 (this chapter contains violence)
Genre: Adventure, Humour
Characters: Fourth Doctor, Harry Sullivan, Sarah Jane Smith
Summary: The sun has long since set and the darkness closes in. Light in the night, eyes in the shadows, blood on the altar; a bittersweet rescue.
Part One: Circinus
Part Two: Caelum
Part Three: Eridanus
Part Four: Setus
Part Five: Dorado
THE DEEPSKY ATLAS
CHAPTER SIX
The corridors were dark.
The journalist in Sarah bristled at such a stark description, but there it was. It was the sort of place that defied interesting turns of phrase, nothing particularly gloomy or sinister or malevolent or even comforting about it. Just dark.
"These corridors," the Doctor called over his shoulder, "well, they're rather dark, aren't they?"
She sighed. "I had noticed."
"Had you?"
And then he was whistling again, some annoying little ditty that echoed off the walls around them, to the point where it rather seemed like there was a chorus of lurking whistlers watching their every move. Sarah hurried up to walk next to him, resisting the urge to cover her ears as he struck a particularly piercing note. "Listen, Doctor, shouldn't we go back to look for Harry?"
"Oh, he'll catch us up."
"You said that an hour ago!"
"Then he must be well on his way by now," the Doctor said, and resumed whistling.
Sarah crossed her arms and stopped in her tracks. He kept on for a few paces, enough that she nearly gave up and stormed after him, but eventually he seemed to become aware of her absence. He turned, and his whistling broke off in a single questioning tone.
"I think," Sarah said, slowly and precisely, "that he might be lost."
"Oh," the Doctor said, "I don't think so."
"Well, why not?" Sarah winced as the louder tone of her voice set off her own set of echoes. "This place would put any self-respecting maze to shame!"
"No," the Doctor said, and resumed walking so that she had no choice but to keep up with him. "He's not lost. We are."
Sarah stopped again. "Well, that's marvellous," she said.
She could see the glint of his teeth in the dark as he smiled. "Isn't it just?" He pushed open a door that she could just make out on their right. A light flickered on, and she had to blink to let her eyes adjust. "This looks promising," he said.
She blinked a few times, then followed him into the good-sized room, which had the distinguishing feature of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves across each wall. The Doctor was already halfway across the room, and was-
"Doctor!"
He glanced up, tossed a fourth book over his shoulder. It landed with a resounding thud and fluttered open. "What is it?"
She stared back at him, tried to come up with a subtle way of conveying the fact that, in polite company, one didn't often go about destroying the contents of one's host's library of very expensive-looking books, and settled for a long-suffering sigh. "What is it you're looking for?"
"Oh," the Doctor said, and starting pulling books from the second shelf. "You know. Secret passages, that sort of thing."
"Secret-" Sarah winced. "Listen, Doctor, what makes you think-"
Right on cue, the Doctor tugged on a particularly large volume, there was a rumbling and a creaking of machinery, and the bookshelf swung aside, revealing an ill-lit passage that, unlike the corridors, seemed to revel in its unambiguous malevolence. "Well," she said. "That's just not fair."
"It was simple enough, really," he said, peering into the corridor, then started digging through his pockets. "Those corridors really did wind around a lot, but it seemed to me that there was some chunk of space unaccounted for after the third or fourth pass."
Sarah took the Everlasting Match he handed her. "Do you mean to say we were going around in circles back there?"
"Well," he said, "they were rather more like irregular ellipses." He lit her match, then lit one of his own; the flames seemed tiny compared with the oppressive blackness ahead. "Shall we explore?"
"Probably just a perfectly ordinary disused passage," muttered Sarah. A distant sound punctuated her words, a sort of bellowing screech that raised the hair at the back of her neck. They stared at each other. "I don't suppose that was just the wind?" Sarah said weakly.
"Let's find out," the Doctor said, and, raising his makeshift torch, he led the way.
After a few tense moments, the sound echoed through the corridor again. Sarah was pleased when her voice didn't quaver nearly as much as she expected. "What do you think that is?"
The Doctor turned to face her, and his eyes flickered eerily in the light of his match. "Hungry."
She scowled and swatted his arm. "Oh, stop it. It's a perfectly valid question - Caelum seemed quite sure he was alone here."
"I shouldn't trust everything Caelum says," the Doctor said. "He is mad, after all."
"There's a fair point," Sarah said. She couldn't shake the feeling that the matches would burn down soon, leave them stranded in the dark, and tried not to breathe too heavily for fear of blowing hers out, 'everlasting' or not. "Do you think this... whatever-it-is might have to do with the time distortion?"
"If it does," the Doctor pointed out, "it's very possibly some form of intelligent life. In which case it could well be grateful for some company - who knows how long it's been down here?"
The screech echoed once more. "Or," Sarah added, "maybe it's just a great angry beastie looking for a quick meal."
The Doctor cleared his throat, and then he was whistling again. Sarah tugged his sleeve. "What are you doing?" she hissed.
"If it is friendly," the Doctor said, "we may as well announce our presence."
Sarah winced as his whistling got louder. "And if it isn't?"
The Doctor grinned. "Then I'd much rather attract its attention while we're still close to the exit."
Sarah shifted her match from one hand to the other, glancing down at it nervously. Was it starting to burn down? She didn't much fancy the idea of fumbling around down here in the dark with-
-no, thinking like that wouldn't do them any good at all. She straightened up, kept her steps measured and even, studiously ignored the much louder screeches, and joined the Doctor in his mostly tuneless whistling.
They'd just reached the third verse of whatever bizarre tune they'd been creating when the Doctor stumbled and dropped his match, which bounced, still lit, off the floor and rolled into a corner. Sarah swung round to shine her matchlight closer to him. "Doctor!"
"I'm all right," he said, then winced and bent down to rub his foot. "Just ran into something. Look."
Sarah crouched down with her match, waving it back and forth to give them a flickering picture of the corridor ahead. It looked much the worse for wear, with occasional trickles of pebbles running down the walls, adding to the odd chunks of rock on the ground - it must have been one of these, Sarah realised, that had tripped the Doctor.
"Can't say I care much for the decor," Sarah quipped. The screeching howl echoed again, much louder this time, and she jumped, nearly dropping the match.
"Sarah, this is precisely why you shouldn't go around making a mess of other people's homes," the Doctor whispered.
"Me, making a mess?" Sarah said, rounding on him, though she knew that he was only trying to make her angry so she wouldn't be afraid. "You were the one throwing books all over the place!"
The Doctor tensed. "Shine that light up ahead, Sarah. I thought I saw-"
Something ploughed past them both, something heavy and furry and reeking of sweat and a coppery scent that Sarah was beginning to suspect was-
She whirled round to face their assailant - in the flickering matchlight it was a mass of hair and teeth and claws and nameless white protuberances that looked rather dangerous. It was indistinct, but large, and had several limbs, plated with what looked like bone, and four glinting eyes on a snout that glistened with fangs.
It took her a moment to realize that it had also just effectively cut off their escape.
"Ah," it said, in a voice that was unexpected cultured and cold. "This won't even be sport."
"Hello!" The Doctor ran a hand back through his hair, then extended it politely. "I don't suppose you're terribly glad to see us?"
In reply, the creature leapt for his throat.
Sarah shouted and jumped at the monster as it bore the Doctor to the ground, and jammed her flickering match as deep into its thick hide as she could manage. With a terribly human scream of pain, it dropped the Doctor and turned to stare balefully at her, its four eyes blinking and contracting. She had enough time to realize that she probably should have worked out what to do next, and started to turn, and then one of its massive, bone-plated limbs came spinning round and connected very solidly with her face.
Even as she fell against a pile of stones, tasting blood, she realized that she'd saved herself a split skull by turning with the blow, and then the pain struck and she rather regretted having done anything that clever.
The creature leaned over her, its breath chilling the blood on her face, "Hardly sport at all," it said again. Sarah had a delirious urge to giggle at the idea of being eaten by a monster with a perfect BBC accent.
It bared its rows upon rows of teeth, and suddenly the idea didn't seem quite as amusing. "It's rather difficult," it said, "to get any good hunts these days. Oh, the Brotherhood of the Infinite Cauliflower will toss me down the bodies of their sacrifices from time to time, but they're nearly all weaklings or cowards anyway, which utterly spoils the flavour. Are there no good warriors anymore?"
Sarah could only cough in reply - her nose felt broken and there was blood at the back of her throat and she could just see the Doctor over the creature's shoulder, but he was in a heap, unmoving. The creature resumed its rhapsodic monologue, and she scrabbled frantically behind her for a rock or a stone to use to defend herself.
"Well," it said, "the Brotherhood has promised me two very special bodies tonight. A warrior by the name of Caelum, they say, and a very strange man who calls himself Harry Sulli-"
But at that moment precisely, Sarah nearly burned her fingers on the match the Doctor had dropped earlier, snatched it up with a swift prayer of thanks to whoever had come up with the idea of Everlasting Matches, and jabbed it into the creature's right upper eye. It gave the terrible howl of pain again, and she rolled out of the way as one of its limbs came crashing down beside her. But she was still rolling and the world was spinning too quickly now, and she realized that she was coughing and sputtering and wasn't running for heaven's sake, she should be running, and the creature's claws swung past near enough to tangle briefly in her hair-
There was a loud crack, echoing like a thunderclap down the narrow corridor, and the sound of something very heavy striking the ground. Sarah stopped rolling at last, colliding with a rock, and started coughing again. A light, somewhere behind her, flickered nearer and she could make out the spatters of blood on the ground beneath her, and she realised that she must be crying, too, because the salt was stinging its way down her cheeks.
Something brushed gently across her hair, quick and almost furtive, and the light came nearer. She squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for the final blow, but all that came was another light touch, gentle but brief. "Sarah Jane?"
She turned to see the Doctor staring down at her, his expression unreadable - there were deep gashes near his neck, and she could see where the bruising had already started around them, but he was alive and that was all that mattered. Shakily, she sat up; the Doctor wordlessly handed her a handkerchief and she mopped at her bloody nose, then felt it more carefully, wincing at every touch.
"I don't dink id's broken," she managed, running a hand over her bruised cheekbone, and coughed again. "How-"
"No, no, don't try to talk," the Doctor said with a smirk, and she felt a sudden, refreshing urge to smack him. "I hit it."
"Hid id," Sarah echoed.
"With a rock," the Doctor clarified. "It's quite unconscious." He paused. "I hope."
"Ah," said Sarah, then straightened with a newfound sense of urgency. "Doctor! Harry-"
"I heard," said the Doctor. "Lean your head forward and squeeze your nose. We can't have you bleeding all over the place. I'll go on ahead and see if I can stop this sacrifice business-"
Before Sarah could protest, a footstep echoed somewhere further down the corridor, and then another. "Someding's coming," she whispered. The Doctor shot her a look and she obediently pinched her nose again.
After a few moments, the footsteps started up again, and the Doctor silently moved a few paces back, shielding the light with his cupped hand. Sarah realized that they were in no condition for a second fight, and inched as close to the edge of the corridor as she could, holding her breath.
"There was a light," said a voice up ahead. "I am certain."
Sarah blinked; it couldn't possibly be-
The Doctor stepped forward and removed his hand from around the match. Sarah stared past him to see Caelum, sword drawn and positively coated with blood, and Harry, a few paces behind, looking rather nauseated but otherwise unharmed.
"What are you doing here?" Harry gasped, and Sarah was suddenly aware of how they must look, the Doctor with gashes all down his front, she with her face covered in blood, and a great hairy beast taking an impromptu nap on the floor. She waved the Doctor's blood-soaked handkerchief in greeting.
"Well, rescuing you," the Doctor said. Sarah was somewhat cheered by the fact that he appeared about as flabbergasted as she felt. "How did you escape?"
Harry's face clouded. "Ask the Sculptor's Chisel over there," he said, with an odd note to his voice, and turned on his heel, stalking back the way they'd come. The Doctor looked at Caelum, but the warrior simply sheathed his sword and turned to follow Harry.
"Well," said the Doctor. "I suppose we follow."
Sarah struggled to her feet, wincing as the room took a bit of a strange tilt when she did, but quickly recovered her footing and stumbled after the Doctor's retreating form.
They all walked in silence, one-by-one like children in a queue, and Sarah couldn't shake the dismal feeling that it was some sort of funeral march. "What is it, Harry?" she called, and cleared her throat - it was starting to feel much easier to speak, so she expected the bleeding was slowing down. "What happened?"
There was no reply, but the footsteps ahead of them became faster. Sarah was gradually becoming aware of a growing brightness somewhere in the distance; the Doctor dropped his match after a few more moments.
She noticed a slight draught suddenly, tickling her face, cool against her throbbing cheekbone, and she had a sense of vast space somewhere nearby. "Some sort of cavern up ahead," the Doctor said. "We've been travelling downwards for some time, now."
And then they rounded a bend and the corridor yawned open into a massive chamber. Someone had made marvellous use of the natural pillars and foundations of the space, giving the whole space a living feeling, as though the ground had spontaneously erupted with convenient alcoves, and even a few large tables.
It was the altar, though, that drew Sarah's horrified gaze. It was massive, easily a dozen feet across, and stretched across the centre of the room like a boil.
And it was piled high with bodies, dozens of them, men, women, aliens of some sort, all wearing white robes, all with their throats neatly slit. Sarah staggered back a step, feeling bile rise in her throat, and realized by the streaks of blood on the ground that most of them must have been dragged to this position.
"Look at it," Harry whispered, and Sarah realized that the strangeness in his voice was hysteria. "Look at it." She couldn't, not anymore, but there was blood everywhere she looked, on the walls, on her clothes, on her hands.
The Doctor's voice was thunder. "What have you done?"
Caelum raised his chin, eyes flashing defiance. "Their god demanded sacrifice," he said. "I am a mere mortal. Who am I to defy a god?"
Author:
eponymous_roseWord Count: 2798
Rating: PG-13 (this chapter contains violence)
Genre: Adventure, Humour
Characters: Fourth Doctor, Harry Sullivan, Sarah Jane Smith
Summary: The sun has long since set and the darkness closes in. Light in the night, eyes in the shadows, blood on the altar; a bittersweet rescue.
Part One: Circinus
Part Two: Caelum
Part Three: Eridanus
Part Four: Setus
Part Five: Dorado
THE DEEPSKY ATLAS
CHAPTER SIX
The corridors were dark.
The journalist in Sarah bristled at such a stark description, but there it was. It was the sort of place that defied interesting turns of phrase, nothing particularly gloomy or sinister or malevolent or even comforting about it. Just dark.
"These corridors," the Doctor called over his shoulder, "well, they're rather dark, aren't they?"
She sighed. "I had noticed."
"Had you?"
And then he was whistling again, some annoying little ditty that echoed off the walls around them, to the point where it rather seemed like there was a chorus of lurking whistlers watching their every move. Sarah hurried up to walk next to him, resisting the urge to cover her ears as he struck a particularly piercing note. "Listen, Doctor, shouldn't we go back to look for Harry?"
"Oh, he'll catch us up."
"You said that an hour ago!"
"Then he must be well on his way by now," the Doctor said, and resumed whistling.
Sarah crossed her arms and stopped in her tracks. He kept on for a few paces, enough that she nearly gave up and stormed after him, but eventually he seemed to become aware of her absence. He turned, and his whistling broke off in a single questioning tone.
"I think," Sarah said, slowly and precisely, "that he might be lost."
"Oh," the Doctor said, "I don't think so."
"Well, why not?" Sarah winced as the louder tone of her voice set off her own set of echoes. "This place would put any self-respecting maze to shame!"
"No," the Doctor said, and resumed walking so that she had no choice but to keep up with him. "He's not lost. We are."
Sarah stopped again. "Well, that's marvellous," she said.
She could see the glint of his teeth in the dark as he smiled. "Isn't it just?" He pushed open a door that she could just make out on their right. A light flickered on, and she had to blink to let her eyes adjust. "This looks promising," he said.
She blinked a few times, then followed him into the good-sized room, which had the distinguishing feature of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves across each wall. The Doctor was already halfway across the room, and was-
"Doctor!"
He glanced up, tossed a fourth book over his shoulder. It landed with a resounding thud and fluttered open. "What is it?"
She stared back at him, tried to come up with a subtle way of conveying the fact that, in polite company, one didn't often go about destroying the contents of one's host's library of very expensive-looking books, and settled for a long-suffering sigh. "What is it you're looking for?"
"Oh," the Doctor said, and starting pulling books from the second shelf. "You know. Secret passages, that sort of thing."
"Secret-" Sarah winced. "Listen, Doctor, what makes you think-"
Right on cue, the Doctor tugged on a particularly large volume, there was a rumbling and a creaking of machinery, and the bookshelf swung aside, revealing an ill-lit passage that, unlike the corridors, seemed to revel in its unambiguous malevolence. "Well," she said. "That's just not fair."
"It was simple enough, really," he said, peering into the corridor, then started digging through his pockets. "Those corridors really did wind around a lot, but it seemed to me that there was some chunk of space unaccounted for after the third or fourth pass."
Sarah took the Everlasting Match he handed her. "Do you mean to say we were going around in circles back there?"
"Well," he said, "they were rather more like irregular ellipses." He lit her match, then lit one of his own; the flames seemed tiny compared with the oppressive blackness ahead. "Shall we explore?"
"Probably just a perfectly ordinary disused passage," muttered Sarah. A distant sound punctuated her words, a sort of bellowing screech that raised the hair at the back of her neck. They stared at each other. "I don't suppose that was just the wind?" Sarah said weakly.
"Let's find out," the Doctor said, and, raising his makeshift torch, he led the way.
After a few tense moments, the sound echoed through the corridor again. Sarah was pleased when her voice didn't quaver nearly as much as she expected. "What do you think that is?"
The Doctor turned to face her, and his eyes flickered eerily in the light of his match. "Hungry."
She scowled and swatted his arm. "Oh, stop it. It's a perfectly valid question - Caelum seemed quite sure he was alone here."
"I shouldn't trust everything Caelum says," the Doctor said. "He is mad, after all."
"There's a fair point," Sarah said. She couldn't shake the feeling that the matches would burn down soon, leave them stranded in the dark, and tried not to breathe too heavily for fear of blowing hers out, 'everlasting' or not. "Do you think this... whatever-it-is might have to do with the time distortion?"
"If it does," the Doctor pointed out, "it's very possibly some form of intelligent life. In which case it could well be grateful for some company - who knows how long it's been down here?"
The screech echoed once more. "Or," Sarah added, "maybe it's just a great angry beastie looking for a quick meal."
The Doctor cleared his throat, and then he was whistling again. Sarah tugged his sleeve. "What are you doing?" she hissed.
"If it is friendly," the Doctor said, "we may as well announce our presence."
Sarah winced as his whistling got louder. "And if it isn't?"
The Doctor grinned. "Then I'd much rather attract its attention while we're still close to the exit."
Sarah shifted her match from one hand to the other, glancing down at it nervously. Was it starting to burn down? She didn't much fancy the idea of fumbling around down here in the dark with-
-no, thinking like that wouldn't do them any good at all. She straightened up, kept her steps measured and even, studiously ignored the much louder screeches, and joined the Doctor in his mostly tuneless whistling.
They'd just reached the third verse of whatever bizarre tune they'd been creating when the Doctor stumbled and dropped his match, which bounced, still lit, off the floor and rolled into a corner. Sarah swung round to shine her matchlight closer to him. "Doctor!"
"I'm all right," he said, then winced and bent down to rub his foot. "Just ran into something. Look."
Sarah crouched down with her match, waving it back and forth to give them a flickering picture of the corridor ahead. It looked much the worse for wear, with occasional trickles of pebbles running down the walls, adding to the odd chunks of rock on the ground - it must have been one of these, Sarah realised, that had tripped the Doctor.
"Can't say I care much for the decor," Sarah quipped. The screeching howl echoed again, much louder this time, and she jumped, nearly dropping the match.
"Sarah, this is precisely why you shouldn't go around making a mess of other people's homes," the Doctor whispered.
"Me, making a mess?" Sarah said, rounding on him, though she knew that he was only trying to make her angry so she wouldn't be afraid. "You were the one throwing books all over the place!"
The Doctor tensed. "Shine that light up ahead, Sarah. I thought I saw-"
Something ploughed past them both, something heavy and furry and reeking of sweat and a coppery scent that Sarah was beginning to suspect was-
She whirled round to face their assailant - in the flickering matchlight it was a mass of hair and teeth and claws and nameless white protuberances that looked rather dangerous. It was indistinct, but large, and had several limbs, plated with what looked like bone, and four glinting eyes on a snout that glistened with fangs.
It took her a moment to realize that it had also just effectively cut off their escape.
"Ah," it said, in a voice that was unexpected cultured and cold. "This won't even be sport."
"Hello!" The Doctor ran a hand back through his hair, then extended it politely. "I don't suppose you're terribly glad to see us?"
In reply, the creature leapt for his throat.
Sarah shouted and jumped at the monster as it bore the Doctor to the ground, and jammed her flickering match as deep into its thick hide as she could manage. With a terribly human scream of pain, it dropped the Doctor and turned to stare balefully at her, its four eyes blinking and contracting. She had enough time to realize that she probably should have worked out what to do next, and started to turn, and then one of its massive, bone-plated limbs came spinning round and connected very solidly with her face.
Even as she fell against a pile of stones, tasting blood, she realized that she'd saved herself a split skull by turning with the blow, and then the pain struck and she rather regretted having done anything that clever.
The creature leaned over her, its breath chilling the blood on her face, "Hardly sport at all," it said again. Sarah had a delirious urge to giggle at the idea of being eaten by a monster with a perfect BBC accent.
It bared its rows upon rows of teeth, and suddenly the idea didn't seem quite as amusing. "It's rather difficult," it said, "to get any good hunts these days. Oh, the Brotherhood of the Infinite Cauliflower will toss me down the bodies of their sacrifices from time to time, but they're nearly all weaklings or cowards anyway, which utterly spoils the flavour. Are there no good warriors anymore?"
Sarah could only cough in reply - her nose felt broken and there was blood at the back of her throat and she could just see the Doctor over the creature's shoulder, but he was in a heap, unmoving. The creature resumed its rhapsodic monologue, and she scrabbled frantically behind her for a rock or a stone to use to defend herself.
"Well," it said, "the Brotherhood has promised me two very special bodies tonight. A warrior by the name of Caelum, they say, and a very strange man who calls himself Harry Sulli-"
But at that moment precisely, Sarah nearly burned her fingers on the match the Doctor had dropped earlier, snatched it up with a swift prayer of thanks to whoever had come up with the idea of Everlasting Matches, and jabbed it into the creature's right upper eye. It gave the terrible howl of pain again, and she rolled out of the way as one of its limbs came crashing down beside her. But she was still rolling and the world was spinning too quickly now, and she realized that she was coughing and sputtering and wasn't running for heaven's sake, she should be running, and the creature's claws swung past near enough to tangle briefly in her hair-
There was a loud crack, echoing like a thunderclap down the narrow corridor, and the sound of something very heavy striking the ground. Sarah stopped rolling at last, colliding with a rock, and started coughing again. A light, somewhere behind her, flickered nearer and she could make out the spatters of blood on the ground beneath her, and she realised that she must be crying, too, because the salt was stinging its way down her cheeks.
Something brushed gently across her hair, quick and almost furtive, and the light came nearer. She squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for the final blow, but all that came was another light touch, gentle but brief. "Sarah Jane?"
She turned to see the Doctor staring down at her, his expression unreadable - there were deep gashes near his neck, and she could see where the bruising had already started around them, but he was alive and that was all that mattered. Shakily, she sat up; the Doctor wordlessly handed her a handkerchief and she mopped at her bloody nose, then felt it more carefully, wincing at every touch.
"I don't dink id's broken," she managed, running a hand over her bruised cheekbone, and coughed again. "How-"
"No, no, don't try to talk," the Doctor said with a smirk, and she felt a sudden, refreshing urge to smack him. "I hit it."
"Hid id," Sarah echoed.
"With a rock," the Doctor clarified. "It's quite unconscious." He paused. "I hope."
"Ah," said Sarah, then straightened with a newfound sense of urgency. "Doctor! Harry-"
"I heard," said the Doctor. "Lean your head forward and squeeze your nose. We can't have you bleeding all over the place. I'll go on ahead and see if I can stop this sacrifice business-"
Before Sarah could protest, a footstep echoed somewhere further down the corridor, and then another. "Someding's coming," she whispered. The Doctor shot her a look and she obediently pinched her nose again.
After a few moments, the footsteps started up again, and the Doctor silently moved a few paces back, shielding the light with his cupped hand. Sarah realized that they were in no condition for a second fight, and inched as close to the edge of the corridor as she could, holding her breath.
"There was a light," said a voice up ahead. "I am certain."
Sarah blinked; it couldn't possibly be-
The Doctor stepped forward and removed his hand from around the match. Sarah stared past him to see Caelum, sword drawn and positively coated with blood, and Harry, a few paces behind, looking rather nauseated but otherwise unharmed.
"What are you doing here?" Harry gasped, and Sarah was suddenly aware of how they must look, the Doctor with gashes all down his front, she with her face covered in blood, and a great hairy beast taking an impromptu nap on the floor. She waved the Doctor's blood-soaked handkerchief in greeting.
"Well, rescuing you," the Doctor said. Sarah was somewhat cheered by the fact that he appeared about as flabbergasted as she felt. "How did you escape?"
Harry's face clouded. "Ask the Sculptor's Chisel over there," he said, with an odd note to his voice, and turned on his heel, stalking back the way they'd come. The Doctor looked at Caelum, but the warrior simply sheathed his sword and turned to follow Harry.
"Well," said the Doctor. "I suppose we follow."
Sarah struggled to her feet, wincing as the room took a bit of a strange tilt when she did, but quickly recovered her footing and stumbled after the Doctor's retreating form.
They all walked in silence, one-by-one like children in a queue, and Sarah couldn't shake the dismal feeling that it was some sort of funeral march. "What is it, Harry?" she called, and cleared her throat - it was starting to feel much easier to speak, so she expected the bleeding was slowing down. "What happened?"
There was no reply, but the footsteps ahead of them became faster. Sarah was gradually becoming aware of a growing brightness somewhere in the distance; the Doctor dropped his match after a few more moments.
She noticed a slight draught suddenly, tickling her face, cool against her throbbing cheekbone, and she had a sense of vast space somewhere nearby. "Some sort of cavern up ahead," the Doctor said. "We've been travelling downwards for some time, now."
And then they rounded a bend and the corridor yawned open into a massive chamber. Someone had made marvellous use of the natural pillars and foundations of the space, giving the whole space a living feeling, as though the ground had spontaneously erupted with convenient alcoves, and even a few large tables.
It was the altar, though, that drew Sarah's horrified gaze. It was massive, easily a dozen feet across, and stretched across the centre of the room like a boil.
And it was piled high with bodies, dozens of them, men, women, aliens of some sort, all wearing white robes, all with their throats neatly slit. Sarah staggered back a step, feeling bile rise in her throat, and realized by the streaks of blood on the ground that most of them must have been dragged to this position.
"Look at it," Harry whispered, and Sarah realized that the strangeness in his voice was hysteria. "Look at it." She couldn't, not anymore, but there was blood everywhere she looked, on the walls, on her clothes, on her hands.
The Doctor's voice was thunder. "What have you done?"
Caelum raised his chin, eyes flashing defiance. "Their god demanded sacrifice," he said. "I am a mere mortal. Who am I to defy a god?"
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-01-22 07:54 am (UTC)"Do you mean to say we were going around in circles back there?"
"Well," he said, "they were rather more like irregular ellipses."
xDDD Very Doctor-like.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-31 01:21 am (UTC)(Wait, that sounds weird, doesn't it?)
no subject
Date: 2008-01-31 03:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-22 08:27 am (UTC)Love the Doctor in this chapter!
no subject
Date: 2008-01-31 01:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-22 10:22 am (UTC)In reply, the creature leapt for his throat.
And that the creature had a BBC accent :)
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Date: 2008-01-31 01:23 am (UTC)Law of averages - some of the monsters have gotta have RP accents!
Thanks for reviewing - glad you're enjoying the fic! :D
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Date: 2008-01-22 12:13 pm (UTC)This had me LOL:
Right on cue, the Doctor tugged on a particularly large volume, there was a rumbling and a creaking of machinery, and the bookshelf swung aside, revealing an ill-lit passage that, unlike the corridors, seemed to revel in its unambiguous malevolence. "Well," she said. "That's just not fair."
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Date: 2008-01-31 01:24 am (UTC)This had me LOL
Hee - I wrote that bit on a bus trip, and I was smirking enough while writing it that the poor woman next to me kept edging away. Oops?
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Date: 2008-01-22 09:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-31 01:25 am (UTC)Thanks so much for reviewing! :)
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Date: 2008-10-09 06:21 pm (UTC)Will you marry me?
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Date: 2010-09-04 10:58 pm (UTC)