by Clive May (clive@cj4386.demon.co.uk)

A story of the Fifth Doctor, Nyssa, Tegan and Adric.

The copy right of all things pertaining to the concept and characters of Dr
Who is the property of the BBC.  This Story is a work of fan fiction; it has
been written simply for the pleasure it gave me in writing it; and no money
has or will change hands with respect to the story.

The story and original characters are copyright Clive May 2001.


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Chaos Hunt

Two


Curious for once, the Gatherer came to witness how it began.

Standing under the whispering beeches, amid the abbey ruins, he waited with
infinite patience to behold the advent.  More shadow than the shadows
in which he lurked, he was barely a flicker in the reality of this particular
world.

Before him, the court of the fountain was bathed in moonlight.  As he waited,
he indulged a near forgotten sense of wonder in the timeless shimmer of the
waters cascading in the moon light; whilst overhead, the wind whispered
ancient secrets in the leaves.  The rustling melted in and out of harmony
with the splashing of the waters, touching his soul with peace.  In his line
of work, it was not often that he could know such moments. Savouring the
sensation, he waited for the thread of happenstance to find the now.

His heart grew heavy, as he felt its remorseless approach, moving out of the
distant past, pregnant with disaster.

The time was at hand.

The breeze dropped.  The whispering in the trees stilled to silence, as the
world caught its breath.  The only sound now was the splash of water in the
fountain.  Under the trees, as he felt the moment arrive, he stirred. Sighing
with gentle regret, he reached up to sweep off a top hat, and turn
his moon-pale countenance up to the tower.  He had worn many faces, and many
forms, in the course of his work; but his garb of an undertaker was
particularly fitting to this situation.

At the top of that centuries-weathered pile of stone, under the grey slated
roof, the Bell hung.  Huge and dark, it brooded in the chamber, a harbinger
of ill omen.  With a groan, the Bell lurched into motion.  The clapper
struck, to send a dull boom rolling away over the fields and woods.

Now the madness was begun.

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When *that* Bell rang, the local people in the huddle of cottages and houses
of the nearby village of Little Deeping reached for the television remotes.
With deliberate intent, they turned up the volume, to drown out the gloomy
sound, and bent their attention to the mirages of life playing out on the
flickering screens.  They would not hear *that* Bell.

But the Brood had to hear.

Ever they waited, with eager anticipation, for the summons which bade them
hurry to the Hunt Between.  It was a chance to sate a need engendered in them
against another's need.  That need, the Incarnators kept keen by a cruel
denial of a sufficiency of the life sustaining energies.

As the first heavy boom of the Bell sounded, the Sister-Selves came hurrying
to the Hunt.  Thirteen graceful, female forms issued forth from the doorway
of the rambling stone-built house, crouching among the ruins.  In a long
line, the thirteen identical women, clad in midnight, whirled into the
moonlit court, like a murder of crows settling.  Their faces shone pale in
the silver light; their bare arms glowing with milky brilliance.  In a
whisper of silken robes, and a misting halo of sable hair, they circled in
upon the fountain, squatting in the centre of the court.

By that mass of stone, stood another figure.

As the line of women came to him, the man held out a medallion, graven with a
curious, twisted design.  It gleamed and flashed in the moonlight.  Each in
turn touched a right hand to the disk, before passing on to the fountain.
They paused a moment at the rim of the stone monstrosity, crossed arms over
breasts, bowed once to the cascade of water, and rotated out of existence.
As one moved beyond, another stepped into her Sister's place, bowed, and
vanished Between.

Thus did the Brood hurry to the Hunt Between.

As the last woman passed Between, the world breathed again.  The air came
full with the whispering of the wind in the beeches, to the man standing a
lone vigil by the rim of the stone basin.  He stirred, troubled by a vague
unease as the sound brushed fingers of ice through his heart.  The disquiet
prowled around the edges of his awareness.  He turned to look directly into
the darkness under the trees; but there was nothing there.

And Between...

The blissful release from the physical sang a paean of joy in the Broods'
con-tessaraite consciousness.  As a single entity, they abandoned their
physical forms to spread like shadows upon the rolling discord of time.  The
Brood were once more in their element; they had come home.

And there was a better pleasure promised.  For to be called to the Hunt meant
a sating of the need that the Time Lords barely kept endurable by the miserly
dribbling of energy permitted to leak from the Gateway.

There was no more pacing in agitated hunger, awaiting the call.  Now,
Between, they could glut themselves upon the organised energy of the Chaos
Beasts - that last vindictiveness of the Pythyr, visited upon her tormentors.
Spontaneously, the beasts called themselves into being, to prey upon the
travel capsules of the Gallifreyans.

Octra, the lead sensitive and pack leader, had scented the quarry already;
and was signalling madly for Sedra to focus the Brood.

"Together! Sisters," she called softly into the maelstrom of possibility. "On
the command!"

In a practised swoop the blemishes came together to form a hollow hemisphere,
if such a concept as shape could be said to have meaning in the Vortex.
Stealthily, they moved to engulf the coiling coherent chaos that was the
beast.  It continued on, intent on enfolding the tiny pulsing sphere of
reality that was forging ahead into future possibility.  The travel capsule
had alerted the Brood to its danger, and brought them hurrying to the Hunt.

Silently, the Sister-Selves crooned a heartfelt thanks to the living machine.
It could have called the Orion Station, *should* have.  Although the line of
travel through the vortex had brought both the Earth Station and the Orion
Station within "strike range" of both, the Orion Brood preferred to hunt
ahead down the time lines; and this particular capsule was moving into future
possibility.

An unsought for gift, indeed.

The Earth Station Brood would feast!

With practised skill, Sedra manoeuvred the Brood, calling Octra's left
shield, Septa, in a little tighter as the beast sensed their presence.  The
Brood swooped in closer, eager for the strike.

Suddenly aware that, not only did it hunt, but that it too in its turn was
hunted, the beast pulled back from the capsule.  It twisted away.  In an
attempt to elude the pursuit, it extended its substance into infinity and
folded in upon itself.

Sedra smiled.  They always tried that; and it never worked.  She could almost
taste the energy, could feel it soothing the Need raging within.  Soon, she
and her Sisters would rest in satiation. For an instant, Sedra allowed the
con-tessaraite mind to dwell lovingly on thoughts of the blessed release, but
the Brood never needed encouragement to Hunt.

Sedra gave the order.

The Brood pounced.

And in that moment, utter disaster struck.

By the fountain, rooting his Brood in this reality, Wayland flinched and
staggered.  He began calling into the void, his voice sure and steady for
the Sister-Selves to home in upon.  He held out before him the Yontra.  The
medallion glowed and flashed in the moonlight.  The humming of a million
enraged bees tormented the air.  On and on the call went; but the Brood did
not come.

Fretful minutes passed.  Then they were back, shadows dark upon the face of
the night, circling in to the fountain.  They rotated into reality.  The
thirteen women brought with them a light silvery mist of mica dust which
soured the air - a mere whisp of that arid fog which enshrouded Du Lac,
concealing a secret too terrible to be voiced aloud.

There were no questions.  Though Wayland stood apart, he was with them
always, and knew what the Brood knew.  As one, they turned from the moonlit
fountain, and drifted through the dewy night to the rambling house.

Wayland paced behind them, his strong features marked by grave misgivings.
They had failed on the hunt.  They knew what would come next; and it
frightened him to his core.

Inside the comfortably appointed Brood-Hold, Wayland restrained his sister
with a hand upon her arm.  "We MUST NOT do this thing," he entreated.

Sedra's reply was to shake off his hand, close the door of her private
chamber in his face, and lock it.  The physical separation of the closed door
was no barrier to Wayland; it could not divorce him from the con-tesserate
mind of the Brood; wheresoever his Sister-Selves went in space and time,
Wayland was one with them.  What troubled him now, was their withdrawal from
unity with him.  He knew not whether this was to exclude him from the Counsel
of his sisters, or to shield him from the on-set of the madness?

He listened to the sound of Sedra pacing her chamber, aware also of the
restless animation which gripped the entire house.  Though they had shut him
out, Wayland could still envision the form of Sedra, pacing in agitation, her
black robes swirling madly about her lithe form.

Inside the unitary mind of the Brood, the fabric whispered words of
rebellion.

"What did they know, the hallowed Lords of Time?  What did they know of
suffering?  Of innocence?  Of even Death?  They are untouched by Shame, or
Time, or Death, even untouched by Pain...except for *That One*." Scattered
throughout the rambling manse, the Brood shook its collective head at the
remembrance of the Lady Harmony, caught up and overwhelmed by the catastrophe
that had over taken the Earth Station Brood; and who was now
inextricably embroiled in the secret the Time Lords had, in their craven
fear, buried deep under the sands of Du Lac.

"But are they truly the monsters Kendron would have us believe?"

"Does it matter?  What they have done to us, they have done.  What they will
 do to us when we go to Karne, they will do."

"When all roads lead to ruin, to ruin we are bound.  When the only choice is
to act, then it falls to us to act."

Sedra surfaced from the madness enough to focus the consciousness of her
Sister-Selves.  The desperation for Satiation would drive them to Karn, and
the Well of the Goddess.  This was a fact, inescapable.  So whatever the Time
Lords did about it would have to be endured.  Any punishments they decreed,
could not stand comparison with the agony of the Need.

"So be it then!"

Wayland stood outside, one hand on the wooden frame, the other clasped round
the medallion.  Through the smothering exclusion, he felt their resolve
stiffen.  They would go Between to Karn.  He had no power to prevent it, save
words of sanity - but would the insane hear?

And the Lords of Time would know.  Eventually, they knew everything.  In
their fear, the retribution would be terrible.

The lock on the door clicked. The panel was thrown back.  Sedra stood in the
entrance, hands twisting into her robes.  "We know that we must go there,
brother?" she whispered, her throat tight with the Need.

"They will know."

Sedra did not answer.  Turning from the door, she strode towards the centre
of the room.

"Sedra?" Wayland cried, his voice a tortured appeal.  "This is open
rebellion!  They will *never* forgive!"

But his cry went unheard, for within one step and the next, Sedra rotated at
right angles to existence, and slipped into the gaps between the overlapping
layers of reality.  From their respective rooms, Wayland felt the surge of
power as his Sister-Selves departed for the Vortex.

And Between...

Sedra slithered quickly along the interstices of the universe, diving in and
out of the time streams, like a dolphin cleaving the sea surface, to check
her position.  Then she came to the point of Chaos; once more she rotated
herself, this time into the spiralling vortex of forever.

With a deep sigh she relaxed, permitting the memory of the physical form to
fade from her mind.  She lost material cohesion, and diffused into an
irregular taint, staining the chaos of the void.  She spread herself like a
great black crow's wing, allowing the time winds to catch her and carry her
along.  Laughing wildly with the sheer mad joy of release from physical
constraints, Sedra drifted down the spiral of time, while twelve more shadows
fluttered into being around her.

"To Karn then, we go! And be damned to all prohibitions!"

In the old house amid the ruins of the abbey, in the fields behind the
parish church of Little Deeping, Wayland stared thoughtfully across an empty
room, through the window beyond to where a pale sickle of moon was dying in
the light of a dawning day.  He was acutely aware of the Brood departing from
the house, taking with them the pressure of incipient madness.

What should he do?  What *could* he do?  The token of office gripped in his
hand seemed to burn into the flesh.

Then he had an idea.  There was someone who *might* look upon his dilemma
with, if not friendly intent, then at least without that strident and
disdainful animosity the Time Lords affected when dealing with their fleshly
fashionings.

Yes.  There might yet be a way to hold off total disaster.

With a new and uncertain hope lightening his heart, Wayland turned his back
on the empty room, closed the door and strode to the library.  There, he
picked up a telephone and dialed a long number, a very long number.


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Nyssa buried her pale face in trembling hands.  She would not look any more.
Yes, that would be best, she would not look again.

Adric, sitting in the seat next to her, watched the sunlit rural scene
flowing past through the window of the speeding car.  His dark eyes were wide
with excitement.  It was clear that he was terrified, yet fascinated at their
rate of speed.

In the front passenger seat, the Doctor gripped the dash with a hand that
showed distinctly whitened knuckles.  He kept glancing significantly at Tegan
in the other seat.  She was peering intently through the windscreen, watching
the twisting country lane, unwinding before the powerful sports car, and
pretending not to notice the looks.

With an easy skill, she straightened the car out of another bend, saw the
long straight stretch before her, empty of traffic, and grinned.  She loved
to drive, and had acquired a taste for speed on the long, straight, open
roads of Aus.  She would have been the first to admit that it was not quite
the same thing on these narrow English roads; but she was having too much fun
just now to give that any thought.  The Doctor *had* said it was an
emergency; they had to get to Little Deeping quickly.  Adjusting her grip on
the wheel, she floored the pedal.  The red BMW sat down on its back axle, and
leapt away down the road.

The sight of Nyssa in the rear view mirror, cringing into the seat and
pressing her hands tight over her eyes, gave Tegan pause.  She relented a
little, lifting her foot a smidgen.

The Doctor watched the green hedges blurring past with a mix of trepidation
and excitement.  Tegan was a superb driver; and he was glad to see her having
a little harmless fun, but still...

"Tegan -- slow down!  You're frightening Nyssa."

Damn him!  Tegan thought.  He knows exactly how to work my levers!  Her mouth
twisted with irritation, but she slowed the speeding car.

"How much further?" Nyssa asked in a long suffering tone.  On Traken, hardly
anyone moved faster than the public conveyance carriages which, in most
cases, were drawn along at a stately progress by either real draft animals or
robotic facsimiles.  Every thing on Traken had moved at a stately pace.
Everything that is, except its destruction.  Nyssa shuddered and dropped her
hands into her lap, staring grimly out at the fields and trees as they
flashed past.  Anything was better than having to contemplate that particular
pain.

Her mother, Kassia, had once told her that all pains of the soul diminished
with the passage of time.  Watching the countryside blur past the window,
Nyssa found herself wishing that time would pass by at the same rate.
Perhaps then, her grief and desolation would not agonise her so.

A dappling of light and shade raced over the contours of her pale face, as
the car shot from bright summer sunlight into the shade of a small wood.

"We're nearly there.  It won't be long now, Nyssa." The Doctor looked back
and gave her a reassuring smile, then looked sharply back as Tegan braked
hard to swing the car round a tight right hander.  They came out of it with
the near side of the car raked by stinging nettles.  "If we ever get there at
all," he added under his breath.  He gave Tegan another significant look,
which she blithely ignored.

Once through the wood, the car shot suddenly out into a little picture book
village, with a green to the right, a church before them, and a pub directly
to the left.  The village inn squatted among trees, fronted by an empty car
park.

Tegan swung the car into the park and brought it to a precise halt.  She
switched off, and looked defiantly at the Doctor.  She said: "Well, we're
here." The statement came out a touch more acid than she intended.  Catching
sight of Nyssa's pale countenance, Tegan felt instant remorse.

"Thank your God," Adric sighed.  There was something in his voice that Tegan
didn't like.  He was spoiling for a fight.  Well, he'd chosen the right
person, if that's what he wanted?

"You didn't seem to mind it much?" she bit back.

"I didn't have much of a choice, did I?  An unfortunate skill that I've
gained from earning my badge in mathematical excellence, is the ability to
calculate the fantastic speed you were going.  I think that you reached
ninety-five miles an hour there at one point -- and on a road with a limit of
forty?"

Tegan glowered at him in the rear view mirror.  Sensing a hot retort readying
itself, the Doctor moved to head off the spat.  With rather more fuss than
was strictly necessary, he opened the door and clambered out.

"Come along!" he chivvied.  "We mustn't be late."

Adric smirked.  "How could we be late?  With Tegan's driving -- "

"That's it!" Tegan ground out through clenched teeth.  "One more word from
you *boy* and you'll find yourself walking back."

That said, she gathered up her flight bag, clambered out and stalked off
along the road into the village.

"Don't tempt me!" Adric yelled after her.

If Tegan said anything in return, it was lost on the breeze.  The Doctor
watched her leave, his expression concerned.  Then he shook his head, and
opened the door for Nyssa.  Extending a hand, he gently helped the girl from
the car.

A hundred yards away, Tegan paused by the churchyard gate.  So, this was
where it was to happen, whatever it was?  She peered over the low flint wall
beside the lych gate and studied the church.

From a long ago project in high school, the knowledge surfaced that this was
a typical towered church, Norman, rebuilt on Saxon foundations, and rebuilt
again and again.  It was a charming English country church, no different from
a dozen in the surrounding villages, sitting foursquare in its neatly
manicured churchyard.

Gravel paths wound about the flint wall building.  Gravestones tilted in
wavering rows on the neatly trimmed grass.  Some were time-worn, some grown
with a softening coat of moss; and here and there the stones of newer graves
waited patiently to acquire their own patina of age.  In the flower beds
lining the walks, and on a couple of new graves, bright blossoms bobbed and
danced to the touch of a summer breeze, tempting the eye with a splash of
colour.

Tegan sighed.  She laid her coat on the wall.  It certainly did not seem like
the place for some terrible danger to strike from.  Turning, she leaned her
back against the rough flints.  The others were still standing near the pub.
They were talking together; but she could not hear their words at that
distance.  Nyssa was casting reproachful glances at her.  Tegan drew her
brows together in irritation.  She hadn't been driving *that* fast.  It just
looked fast on these windy, Toy Town Brit roads.

 She'd started out in a really good mood and all.  The Doctor had made a
solemn promise that he was going to put her back into her own time-stream
this time for certain.  So she'd spent a while getting her scant belongings
together, putting on her airline uniform, not yet worn in anger, and had been
composing a difficult farewell for Nyssa.  She was going to miss that young
woman.  The boy on the other hand....

She pushed herself upright, collected her jacket and pushed open the gate.
Passing under the roof of the lych gate, she paced up the path, the gravel
crunching discordantly under her shoes.

In aimless abstraction, she wandered around by the south wall of the church,
and inspected some of the old stones.  Their time worn inscriptions were
illegible.  Many of them had acquired a whiskery down of rust coloured
lichen.  With a fingertip, she traced the lettering carved in the marble,
enjoying the feathery feel of the soft moss on her skin.

Bees buzzed busy among the blossoms and shrubs.  The air was full of the
scent of flowers, notable among them, lavender.  Butterflies skipped and
danced over the grass, skating on the lazy breeze.

In the Southeast corner of the grave yard, a giant yew tree shaded some seats
and a large, dark Victorian-looking monument.  Tegan followed the path,
wending its way among the graves towards the shaded corner.  She came at last
to stand before the shadowed monument under the yew.

The massive block of masonry squatted in a waist-high fenced enclosure.  It
had been fashioned by the mason into the semblance of some sort of
unconventional angel or woman growing out of a bloc of grey polished granite.
The dark angel held hands out before her, as though in prayer.  The robes,
falling from her shoulders, had been carved in fine detail.  The folds of
stone caught the shadowed light under the yew like real silk.  Tegan had
never seen clothing so exquisitely realised in stone before.

She gazed into the sightless eyes, whilst tracing a hand over the carved
silken folds that fell down the back over shoulders, hunched in ernest
prayer.  She touched a fingertip to the hands pressed together before the
breast, and wondered at what it was about this beautiful stonework-- that
caused a shiver to run down her spine.

The simple one line inscription on the face of the stone read:

Sandra Tharilsborne, Who Gained Her Reward 15 January 1878

Tegan frowned.  There was something vaguely familiar about that name --
something to do with the Doctor?  Or something he had said?  or told her?
No, something to do with that boy, Adric?  But the memory wouldn't gell.
With a shrug, she gave up on it; and turned her attention to the flowers.

Someone had recently set a fresh bouquet upon the monument.  The offering was
composed of many different kinds.  As the multicoloured blossoms nodded in
the breeze, the colours blended into a shifting pattern of chaos.  For some
reason the sight added to Tegan's feeling of  unease.

She hugged herself, peering fearfully around at the dark under the Yew.  The
tree loomed over her, sighing coldly in the breeze.  The shadows under the
spreading branches seemed to thicken and reach towards her.

She turned away from the dark, back to the sun lit graveyard.  Bees droned
among the flower-beds along the perimeter wall.  Somewhere, a pigeon cooed
lazily.  The sunny ambience did much to restore Tegan's shaken peace of mind.

The playful breeze ruffled her curls, before wandering away to whisper
timeless secrets to some beeches in the field behind the church.  Led on by
the gentle zyphre, Tegan strolled in that direction.  She came to a gate.
Leaning on the top, she peered over into the grounds of some rambling old
stone built house which stood amid tumbled ruins.  The dabbling music of
water falling into a basin, came to her, the sound mingling pleasantly with
the whispering of the leaves.

With slight misgivings about trespass, Tegan pushed open the gate and
wandered out among the tumbled stones.  Almost immediately, she came into a
little court to discover the most curious fountain she had ever seen.

The central structure was in the shape of an egg, dividing into twelve
segments.  Each segment was carved in the form of a woman, contrived in such
a way that it seemed they had been caught, frozen in the very act of hatching
from the egg.  Above them, rising from the top of the ovoid, was the torso of
a man.  His arms were drawn out from his sides as he restrained the women
with ropes formed from their braided hair, six in each hand.  In front of the
man knelt another female form, down on one knee.  Her slender hands were held
as though in prayer.  This woman had two braids.  The man held one in each
hand, completing the perfectly balanced composition in black marble.  While
his face bore a look of stoic forbearance, and was turned down to the earth,
those of the women were turned up and out, bearing expressions of resolute
daring.  All the countenances were similar, though each had a subtle
individuality.  The features of the lead woman brought to mind the stone
angel in the grave yard.

All the women seemed on the point of taking flight.  Their hands were held
before them in an attitude of profound beseeching.  Twelve jets of sparkling
water sprayed in silver streams from between the cupped palms.  As they arced
up and over, the streams diffused into a shimmering rainbow mist, before
falling, gentle as a summer shower, back into the basin.  Seen through that
nebulous curtain, the forms of the women appeared to fade in and out of
reality; while the man standing above the shimmering mist, stood, like the
rock he was, solid against the sky.

Fascinated, Tegan moved closer.

With each step, she grew aware of some kind of twisting tension.  It was like
an elastic band being wound inside her head. A sudden sense of foreboding
brought her to a stumbling halt.  The sunlight seemed to lose its warmth.
She shivered.

The strange pressure in the air intensified.  It felt almost like a charge of
static building up in a thunderstorm.  The hair along her neck began to stir
and itch.  She fancied she could catch the distinct scent of ozone on the
wind.

A fat blue spark leapt from one of the jacket buttons.  Tegan yelped, and
started violently at the shock.  She dropped the jacket.  A pressure at her
back, that was not the wind, urged her gently towards the fountain.  Under
that insistent pressure, she took another step - then another.  Her left foot
fell upon the paving of grey flagstones about the fountain.

And the monstrosity was there!

It rose before her, unfolding from the misting curtain of water, chattering
and screaming.  Like a demon wrapped in a great jute sack, it flapped and
fluttered in the air, born aloft by a white hot wind from the very pits of
hell.  It brought with it a bitter taste which soured the air.

Tegan screamed.  She flung up her arms to cover her head.  Green eyes
flashed.  Fangs gnashed in a long snout, inches from her neck.  Great
leathery wings beat the air, spreading wide and closing about her cowering
form.  Tegan screamed again, and ducked aside in a desperate bid to avoid
being wrapped in the leathern embrace. Razor sharp talons raked through her
hair. She fell against the basin of the fountain, overbalanced, and toppled
backwards.

Still screaming, Tegan fell into a blinding white heat.




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