This world was a bit primitive, to be sure, but it had its perks.  The accommodations, for one - this enormous mansion seemed ideal for his purposes, preyed on his sense of opulence and excess.  It might not've been a floating fortress, but the protective enchantments that'd been in place when he'd moved in coupled with a few advancements of his own made it just as impervious to attack.  The dark stone spires and peaked roofs, the grand double-doors and marble flooring and animal skins made it all so much more stylish, as well.  In this room, for example, he had not only an enormous four-poster bed hung with velvet curtains and a manticore-skin rug to take away the chill, but also a throne of a chair by the fireplace in which to sit and contemplate his conquest.  The carved snakes seemed a bit much, but he couldn't complain.

The man kneeling naked and compliant at his feet was icing on the cake.

The Master carded his fingers through the kneeling man's hair, smoothing out the innumerable flyaways that never seemed to fall to any amount of combing.  Bartimous murmured his appreciation and nudged against his hand, rubbing his cheek against the leather of his trousers.

"Such a good boy," the Master crooned.  "My most faithful of servants.  Gone to hell and back for your Master.  Tell me - what of the boy?"

Barty grinned against his knee, stifling crazed laughter.  Even so, the slight hiss of breath that came between his teeth came strong and clear in the echoing stone of the Master's private chamber.  "No longer a concern."

He'd done in a month what the Dark Lord had failed to do for nearly two decades.  But of course he had - Voldemort had been nothing more than a power-mad child, blind with his lust for conquest and spectacle.  Where he'd failed countless times in attempts to slay the Potter boy with elaborate traps and schemes, the Master had done away with him in the simplest and most elegant way possible: he'd sent his most loyal of lieutenants to slide a knife between his ribs.

The Master had decided early on to ignore how closely some of his wild and grandiose schemes resembled Voldemort's.  That was unimportant.

"And his friends?" he asked, tilting Barty's face towards his with the tip of his wand.  Less elegant than a screwdriver it was, but dead useful, and the re-engineered horcrux encircling his right ring finger gave him the power to wield it as well as any of these freaks.

"Dead," Barty assured him.  "The girl screamed - oh, did she scream.  I wish you could've heard it."  His tongue flicked once, twice, against the corner of his mouth, and the Master smiled indulgently.

This was a world he could get used to owning.  The shattering of his Paradox had punched innumerable tiny holes in the skin of the world, and he'd used them to escape his imprisonment aboard the TARDIS - how dare Theta think to keep him chained up like a dog.  This alternate dimension in which he'd so conveniently landed had offered him the perfect opportunity to reclaim his place as the Master of All Things, the Doctor included; a bit of fiddling with the Chameleon Arch had given him the ideal tool for conquest.  Unfortunate that it'd driven the Doctor mad in the bargain, but this was something he could live with.

More unfortunate still that the TARDIS had dropped him more than a decade before the Master had wanted.  From what he gathered, the Doctor had been through quite a time at the hands of this world's previous conqueror.  Lucky, then, that the Master had already been planning to dispose of the fool and take his place.

At the back of his crazed mind, Bartimeus Crouch, Jr., had always known that there was something amiss with his Lord and Master.  Voldemort had never been quite right, not until he'd come back in this new skin.

"Come here," the Master coaxed, opening his arms invitingly.  Barty rose and crawled into his lap, straddling his his hips, lips parted slightly and eyes dark with want.  He stretched tentative fingers out towards his Master's bare chest, asking silent permission, and when the Master nodded, he dove against him with a wild hunger, touching and tasting as though he'd never have enough.  The firelight sent flickering shadows dancing across his thin, pale back, across the welts and scars left behind as marks of ownership and devotion.  His own wand lay on the arm of the chair, given up freely the moment he'd entered the room.

And the Master, the victorious conqueror, basked in the attention of his Theta, at last content with his proper place.  The Chameleon Arch had changed his face and his mind, certainly, but his longing to kneel at his Master's feet - that was nothing new.