Post by The Master on Jul 21, 2011 21:31:27 GMT -5
PROLOGUE
Surrounded by a sputtering, coruscating force barrier, a small capsule hurtled through the swirling polychromatic chaos of the Vortex. It was buffeted by temporal winds, thrown about in a manner that could be described by analogy like a rowboat in a typhoon.
Within the capsule, clinging to the hexagonal control panel for dear life, the Master stared at the dials and gauges through cybernetic eyes. The capsule lurched again, and it took all of his enhanced strength to retain his feet.
"Madness," he muttered, making subtle alterations to the controls with his mechadendrites. "I should have known that this craft was unsuitable."
The craft in question resembled a TARDIS in broad strokes, much the same way an impressionist painting resembled an actual human being. A hexagonal control deck surrounding a rhythmically-rising time rotor, an interior that was modestly bigger than the exterior, and the ability to dematerialize into the Vortex. But it was purely mechanical, with none of the spark of life and sentience that allowed a real TARDIS to swim the seas of time.
No, this mechanical mockery of a true TARDIS bullied and plowed, attempting to force its way through instead of following along with.
And now he was, quite possibly, doomed.
The time storm had thrown him badly off course, sweeping him along a grand arc towards the far "end" of the Vortex, where time itself became thin as the universe cooled and expanded towards near stasis. His momentum was too great for the feeble main spacetime element to overcome quickly. At his current rate of deceleration, he would be more than 10100 years into the future before he could stop.
He didn't even want to think about the difficulties of returning to a civilized time.
And then the pseudo-TARDIS began to slow. Baffled, he checked the readouts. Then he checked them again. Then he opened the cover of the panel, checked for systems failures, and checked them a third time.
There was a... a structure. A construct, of some sort. Built to a scale that defied even the imagination of a Time Lord, and existing entirely in the Vortex.
And it was drawing him in.
He stared for a moment, unable to comprehend what he was seeing. And then he smiled, with half a face.
He was the Master. And whatever that was, it would come to know the truth of that statement.
The Doom of the Gods
