#dave stone

Maybe it was just the comedown from the Janies, but Mora had the distinct and crawling feeling that the blue box was watching her. Not something inside the box - the box itself. Watching her specifically and speculatively. Like it was deciding whether it wanted to eat her up.

And they streamed through the city, towards the black monolith of a building that stood in its centre like a whole but completely rotten tooth. It is doubtful that they thought in any recognisable terms, it is doubtful that they thought at all - they merely, instinctively, were aware of the cold and vast intelligence housed in that tower, knew that it was drawing them. They were powerless to resist. Burning moths drawn, inexorably, to a black lantern that gave no visible light.

And then the wind was gone, and there was a moment of relief before a million tiny things exploded and ruptured inside him and he swelled. The pain was indescribable, as he would subsequently discover after attempting to describe it, at length, at every opportunity, for months to come.

It was that last damned regeneration again. He remembered the feel of the spectrox toxaemia back on Androzani Minor, the feel of the things in his blood. He remembered again what it felt like to die, in some fundamental sense, before his proper time.

The Doctor was looking at him again. But this time there was something else in his eyes. A kind of rage, hotter than suns but perfectly, absolutely, under a control that not even the Saloi could aspire to. And there was something that was just as immense. It would be later, years later, before Sareth could even begin to give it a name. Even then he would think of it as pity before he realised that it was more a kind of anguish that was big enough to take in the entire universe.

Benny had momentarily debated with herself the pros and cons of attempting to open friendly dialogue, and then decided that it would probably be the best for all concerned if she just legged it.

They had run. Ravla, yet again, was struck by how her people - even though in fear for their own lives - shoved her ahead, protected her. She heard the screams behind her as Dakhaar after Dakhaar was taken by a monster, but nobody let her pause or look back. Once again, she realised she was noticing things and thinking things about her subjects that had never had occurred to her before. She hoped it would last. It made her feel bigger inside, somehow.