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.


---------------------------------------------------------------------------


Chaos Hunt.

Seven


Nyssa stood in the great bow window,over looking the court of the fountain.
She was watching the hypnotic weaving of the water arching over in the
basin, and fretting.  Agalayne was perched on the rim, his agitated
movements mirroring her own tumultuous thoughts.  It had been hours since
the Doctor had twisted out of existence before that shimmering curtain of
water.

The Brood had refused to elaborate on the exchange by the fountain that
morning. Wayland had gone back to his forge.  The ringing of his hammer could
be heard faintly.  There seemed nothing to do but wait.

For the first time in her life Nyssa found waiting a sore trial.  No matter
how she tried to school her inner self, the equanimity of the Union would
not come.  So, she stood in the window and worried, watching the light
going from the perfect summer day.

Out in the court, one of the Sisters was on her knees, pulling weeds from
between the flagstones of the court.  Adric was sitting on a tumbled block
nearby, watching her with his interested gaze.  Nyssa studied the woman.
Duo Danella, she thought; though with the Brood it was hard to be certain.
Hadn't that one changed into a green frock -- and braided her hair with a red
ribbon?

Out of uniform, all the Sisters dressed differently, expressing their own
individual facet of the mosaic mind that was the unitary creature that was a
Brood.  Except, Nyssa remembered, Octra and her left shield sister Septa. For
some reason they had changed into identical costumes of long pale blue skirts
and lace frilled white blouses.

Nyssa looked closer at the profile of the woman, who was working with an
air of ineffable patience, rooting out green shoots from the cracks between
the paving.  Yes, it *was* Duo Danella!

A hand fell on her shoulder. startled, Nyssa spun round.  Sedra was
standing there.  She was wearing a long, full, blue skirt, with an
intricately embroidered bodice.  The neckline was trimmed with white lace.
Puffy sleeves were gathered in above the elbows and also trimmed with lace.
Her slender forearms were covered in white linen gloves; and a broad brimmed,
straw hat was perched on her coiled up hair.  She looked the epitome of a
grand Victorian lady.

Not unkindly, Sedra smiled at Nyssa.  "Fretting will not cause the
continuum to change one wit," she lilted in her melodious voice.  "What is!
*is*!  What will be!  *will be*!"

"That's all very well and good -- for a Brood Sister," Nyssa spoke more
unkindly than she meant.

Sedra drew back a little at the sharpness in the tone.  She pronounced a
trifle defensively: "We are going to tend our grave."

Nyssa's mouth dropped open.  "Your grave?"

Thinking on things, throughout the day, Nyssa fancied she had come to some
small understanding of these strange alien creatures.  Now, just when she
thought she had pinned down some hard facts about these thirteen, their
image in her mind twisted out of her mental grasp.  Nyssa stared in open
incredulity at the unconcerned woman before her.

"Yes, our grave," Sedra confirmed.  "Every living being has one - eventually.
Why not come and help?  Little tasks done with purpose, We find, have great
power to overmaster the unbearable.  They can take the mind from things over
which it is impossible to exercise sway.  Ever it has been the Brood way,
little one!"

Blankly, Nyssa watched the serene woman gather up a large woven basket of
tools, topped off with a large bouquet of flowers.  Quite oblivious to
Nyssa's stupefaction, Sedra went on.  "It is over yonder in the corner of
the church yard.  A very pleasant spot.  We chose it ourself.  It is a very
agreeable location for the little sleep of death.  Come!  Come and see for
yourself.  It is very restful there.  And that old tree, keeping watch
 over the graven image which needs must stand in substitution for our bodily
remains, is a particular friend.  We like to spend our quiet hours there,
tending the grave."

Sedra turned to go.  "Come," she commanded; and without waiting to see if
Nyssa obeyed, swept from the comfortably appointed sitting room, in a soft
swish of skirts.

Nyssa was given a moment's pause, considering what she should do.  Would it
be impolite to refuse Sedra's request to tend to her grave?  Nothing in her
life's experience to-date had prepared Nyssa for such an eventuality.  As
she stepped away from the window, she caught sight of her reflection in the
glass.  A pale face stared back.  A thought leapt into Nyssa's mind,
unbidden: did the Doctor, in the dead of the night, when she and her
friends slept soundly, ever tend to his grave?  Surely, he must have one -
somewhere, some-when?

Nyssa winced at the lugubrious thought.  She shook her head to clear it.
Perhaps some simple task would be the best remedy for this unbearable
waiting.  Her mind was wandering to matters moribund and tormenting.
Turning, she exited the sitting room.

Once outside of the house, Nyssa walked quickly to catch up with Sedra.
The woman, seeing her coming, paused to wait. Together, they crossed the
court at a serene pace.  Sedra led her to a small gate set in the back wall
of the churchyard.  She opened and stood aside for Nyssa to precede her
into the grounds.

Nyssa paused, looked around the tranquil scene.  Duo Danella was sitting
back on her haunches watching them, her gaze full of omniscience.  She was
fingering some of the weeds she had uprooted with an air of sad
resignation, as if she regretted her brutal murder of the innocent
greenery.

Adric still sat on a stone nearby, his expression abstracted now.  He was
seeing a world of numbers and equations, not aware of this world at all.
Nyssa shrugged.  To each his or her own way of dealing with stress.

There was a flutter in the still evening air, and Agalayne lit upon the wall
that bounded the cemetery.  He watched the Brood Sister and Nyssa with his
intense green gaze.  His ears were erected and turned about, this way and
that, the tufts at their tips fluttering.   She gave the curious creature a
smile, and went through the gate.

They came to the monument under the yew tree.

"This is your grave!" exclaimed Nyssa.

"Yes."

"But, how can you live with...with knowledge like this?" Nyssa waved a hand
at the monument.

"All things must die," Sedra said simply.

"But..."

Sedra gave her an almost pitying look.  "The Brood does not experience time
in the rigid linear fashion of the Ephemerals, little one," she explained.
She nodded to her grave.  "We rather like that era, and spend a lot of our
spare time there.  We have already chosen that era to be in when He comes for
us.  What could be better than to pass between and beyond from then?  when we
are most happy,  in our favourite of the ages of men.

She set down her basket of tools.  Pushing off the broad brimmed hat, she let
it fall to the grass.  The elbow length gloves she drew off and dropped into
the basket.  Throwing out the skirts of her dark navy dress, she knelt and
rummaged in the basket, glancing up at Nyssa.

"Would you change our flowers?   while we sort out this."

"Yes," Nyssa answered in abstraction.  She was still nonplussed by the fact
that Sedra's grave was before her, with the woman herself kneeling at its
side.  She accepted the posy of flowers.  Secretly, she was appalled at this
macabre little ritual.

"I can't help it, but I find it all rather ghoulish," she said.

"What is it that disturbs you so, Nyssa?"

Nyssa waved vaguely at the black granite monument.  "All this.  The grave
and you tending it so matter of factly, but most of all that you know when
you will die."

Sedra put down the trowel with which she had been rooting out some spears of
green forcing their way gamely up through cracks in the footing of the
monument.  She gazed up steadily at Nyssa for a long moment.  A black bird
began to sing in the yew tree.  Mellow measured notes dropped to them through
the cool evening air.  Sedra cocked her head, listening to the bird whilst
she considered a reply.  It was a long moment before she spoke.  "We have no
idea when we will die."

"You don't?" Nyssa waved a hand at the monument.  "You mean this is all a
fake?"

"By no means."

"It is actually your grave, then."

"At the moment.  But If we pass beyond somewhere or somewhen else then it
will not be."

"But it exists," Nyssa insisted, her pretty features twisted in
incredulity.

"It exists," Sedra conceded.

"Then you died when this inscription says."

"Not yet, and not necessarily ever," Sedra answered the girl enigmatically.

Nyssa reached out a hand and stroked the silken slick surface of the cold
stone.  "But it is real, I can touch it."

Sedra chuckled. "The universe is a whole less unreal than you think, Nyssa.
For you this monument is a real artefact.  But to us it is a ghost."

"Ghost?"

"Yes.  A temporal ghost," Sedra confirmed.  She gathered herself and rose.
Reaching out, she took the posy of flowers from Nyssa's unresisting hands.
She removed the faded bunch from the holder, and set the new ones in place.
She stood for a long moment regarding her handiwork, then turned to smile at
the puzzled countenance of the Traken girl.

"What you see as a solid object, is merely a manifestation in reality of
our intention to pass beyond in that year.  If we pass beyond elsewhere and
else-when then it will no longer have a valid temporal presence, and simply
will not be -- will, in fact,  never have been."

"But...But wouldn't someone notice that it's not there any longer?" Nyssa
floundered, her mind trying to take in this new perspective on reality and
time.

Sedra chuckled again.  "Of course not, since it would never have been here."
She laid a hand on the girl's shoulder.  "Do not worry your mind over it,
child.  It is not a concept that comes easily to those who do not
anticipate time in the way the Brood experience it." She fell silent a moment
in thought before going on.  "Perhaps a small demonstration may help to
clarify the matter?" She held up her arm, showing the unblemished skin where
Agalayne had bitten her.  "See, child?  You remember the injury Madelaine's
pet gave us?"

Nyssa nodded.

"Watch!" Sedra commanded.  The teeth marks reappeared.  Blood welled and ran
down to pool in the crook of the elbow.  Nyssa put a hand to her mouth in
shock.  She looked from the fresh wounds to Sedra's laughing eyes.  Slowly,
the teeth marks faded away.  In seconds, the skin was once more perfect.  The
only sign of the remarkable exhibition was a pool of blood in the hollow of
the elbow which was slowly dripping to the grass.

"I don't understand..." Nyssa puzzled.  "How do you do that?"

"By riding Time," Sedra explained with an amuse chuckle.  "By simply
regressing our own personal time-line until the moment when the wound was not
there, then choosing another line of probability - one where we were not
bitten by Agalayne - and following that branch forward to the present.  For
us this is a small thing."

A sudden appalling thought occurred to Nyssa.  She waved a hand
at the monument. "Does...Does this sort of thing happen often?  Is history
not irrevocable?  I mean is it that easy to...alter reality?"

"As we speak and think and breathe, so it changes for us, " Sedra assured
her.  "Though we must, of necessity, take great care not to repeat overmuch
such manipulations in a single focus of reality; for the Universe will not
suffer a paradox.  The laws of the conservation of integral reality are very
powerful.  In extreme cases, it will recourse on itself, knot itself up and
seal off that line of reality.  When that happens there is no
further possibility of change.  That is why we closed the Gate."

"Lassiter and Monroe's Constant!" exclaimed Nyssa.

"Just so," Sedra smiled, pleased to find some point of contact between them.
She stooped and put her tools in the basket, straightened and gazed around
the churchyard in the soft silver light of evening.  Being of the Brood, she
had to concentrate to fine down her perceptions in order to Anticipate a
single stable time line.  All around them, the world flowed and changed, the
endlessly multiplying possibilities over lapped and intermingled, bringing
out new realities that in their turn spawned more possibilities which divided
and over lapped in a multiplicity of realities.  To Sedra it was just her
normal view of this universe.  But there simply was no way in which she
experienced this universe which could be made understandable to one of its
inhabitants.  The concept had no meaning here.
How could you make a blind person understand colour?

The black bird in the yew stopped singing.  Somewhere in the distance, a dog
barked.  The crisp flap of pigeons' wings split the air as a pair took off
from the tower of the church.

Sedra sighed and glanced at Nyssa, who was watching her with her big dark
eyes, her usually serene countenance beset by an expression of
awed incomprehension.

"Let us return," Sedra suggested.  "It was a foolish notion to bring you
here.  We are sorry that it has caused you so much consternation."

Sedra gathered up the basket.   They turned and progressed along the gravel
path to the back gate of the churchyard.  At the gate, Nyssa paused,
thoughtful.  She unlatched the panel and swung it open.  Sedra passed
through, paused and turned to wait for Nyssa, who hesitated inside the gate.
In the silence, the gentle swishing of the forever fountain, mingled with the
rustle of the beeches, drifted to her.  At last, with a sense of trespass,
she asked.

"What...What are you?  The Brood I mean?"

At the sudden surge of pain and despair that smothered the air between
them, Nyssa knew in her heart that it was a question that should not have
been asked.  She wished that she had not asked it.

To Sedra's senses, a pathway through the formless mist of possibilities
solidified until it had become the most solid thing about her
ever-shifting perception of the world.  At last the question had been put.
It was no longer only possibility.  Setting down the basket of tools on the
grass, she came to confront an uncertain Nyssa over the bars of the gate.
Reaching out,  she placed her gloved hands on the Traken girl's and squeezed
in a reassuring way.

"I'm sorry," Nyssa began; but Sedra smiled, in that sad, regretful way, that
was a perfect match of the aura that she had in Nyssa's mind.

"Be not sorry, little one.  And though we should not, we will tell you of the
beginning and the plight of the Brood.  You are owed a debt of understanding
for our ill considered fancy in showing you our grave." She took off her
great hat and set it over the post of the gate.  Reaching up, she unpinned
her hair and shook it out.  There was something of ritual and ceremony in the
actions.

"There now," she began again.  "You asked what are we?  That is not a
simple thing to say.  Since your friend Adric is from there, you know of
E-Space?"

"Yes," Nyssa responded, her heart beating hard, possessed of a strong
feeling that she was to learn some dark secret this evening.  And she was
not at all sure that she wanted to know it any more.

Sedra nodded slowly.  "The Brood's roots go back into that other realm of
being.  But the reason for our creation goes back even further in space and
time -- especially time." She paused and cocked a head to listen.  The black
bird was singing again.  "How sweet," she murmured, before falling silent for
a long time.  They stood in the grey light, facing each other over the
barrier of the gate, the Traken girl and the creature who saw behind time and
space, to the working of the multiverse.  They enjoyed, in a companionable
quiet, the bird singing from the top of the yew tree, sheltering the grave of
the deathless Brood Sisters.

At last Sedra let out a long sigh, and addressed herself with determination
to Nyssa.  "Time.  That is the key.  And the self styled masters of time.
Once they were just a people like to these of this world, with ambitions and
aspirations, which they were determined to fulfil at any cost.  One spoke
against them, a quasi-mythical presence, and a goddess almost, one who bade
them forcefully to desist from their mad dash into the cacophony of infinity.
But those high and haughty Lords of Time would not hear her wise words, and
in fear and panic of her powers moved to pull her and her Sisterhood down.

"The Pythia cursed them mightily, and blighted their souls forever.  But they
persisted, and in a final, desperate revenge, she bled some of the Elixir
into the Vortex where its primal power causes the spontaneous spawning of
Chaos Beasts.

"These creatures were meant to prevent the Time Lords from
using their technology.  And so, in turn, the Time Lords made us to devour
the time monsters, and open the way for them once more."

"Made you?  Do you mean that they bred you like animals?  That's
appalling!"

"There was some breeding involved and...other things.  They needed a
biological creature that could Anticipate the Winds of Time enough to ride
them."

"Your people could do this?"

"Yes."

"Then you are a Tharil?"

The sudden bitterness in Sedra's eyes burned into Nyssa's soul.  "Not any
longer!" she spat. "Not those who were called forth and made over in Brood.
No, not Tharil any more."

Nyssa gently disengaged her hands to stroke the gloved forearms of the woman
to comfort her, to soothe some of the pain and longing she sensed.

Sedra said.  "We just want to go home, to a universe where things have a
solid reality, one where we know that what is true today will remain true
tomorrow."

"Why can't you?  You seem able to travel at will."

"It is a matter of balance.  The two spheres of reality must be equal.  If
something transfers there - then something other must come here."

"In that case, how is it that you are here at all?"

Sedra gently disengaged an arm to indicate the unseen fountain in the court.
"The Gateway.  It equalises the energy, regulates the flow back and forth,
and may be used as an engine of torture to command our compliance in this
game not of our making.  It bleeds energy back and forth; without it, we
would be driven mad with pain and need.  Finally, to die in agony and madness
and for our withered husks to be sucked to E-Space to force the balancing of
the scales that the Time Lords set apart in the long ago time and which they
keep balanced with mighty temporal engines.  The thing is so finely balanced
that should one of us force a passage back then it would endanger both
universes."

"So you are trapped here?"

"Yes."

"That's horrible," Nyssa whispered.  "And the Time Lords did this to you?"

Sedra nodded.  "Now, mayhap you'll find it in your heart to forgive our
attack upon the Doctor when we first met.  There was not only the fact of
being found out in a high crime against them, but a long grievance that goes
back to the beginning of time travel."

Nyssa stared past the Brood Sister, her features set with a grim
determination.  "What...." Her voice trailed off as she lost her nerve, and
then she regained her will, for her scientist's mind would not let the
question go unasked.  "What is your crime?  What is so horrible that you
would murder the Doctor over it?"

Sedra tilted her head toward the young woman.  "We travelled to Karn, where
the Sisterhood persist in spite of the Lords of Time.  They are what could be
termed...our mothers.  For it was the Pythia and her curse upon Gallifrey
that spawned the need for us, and it was the blood of the Pythia coadjutors
that was mixed with the Tharils."

The young Traken girl suppressed a shudder.  "What happened on Karn?" she
asked softly.

"We took of the Elixir of Life.  It was necessary to sustain us.  Without it,
we would have been overwhelmed by the madness.  The Sisterhood recognised
that and gave to us - perhaps more to harass the Lords of Time than to spare
us pain.  But for that, we blame them not."

Nyssa asked: "These Chaos Beasts yu feed on? Was none to be found in the
Vortex?"

Sedra laughed without humour.  She gave the young woman a sardonic smile.
"There was."

"What happened to it?  Was it not enough?"

"No, little one." Sedra smiled again, a horrid, hollow smile.  "We did not
feed.  A TARDIS died."

This was terrible to Nyssa.  The Doctor's TARDIS had come to be her home, her
very sense of home, since the destruction of the Traken Union.  She could not
imagine the TARDIS' death, of the effect that it would have on the Doctor,
let alone her.

With thoughts of the doctor in her mind, she  lifted an imploring look
deep into the woman's eyes.

"Isn't there any way at all to help the Doctor.  To see if he's safe?"

Sedra did not answer at once.  Instead, she leaned against the gate and
looked toward the sky, her dark eyes seeing histories and futures and
possibilities swirl in an enkindling dance. At last she spoke.

"There may be a way.  But the path is uncertain and fraught with peril about
the boundaries of a Limitation.  The choices made there and the things done
cannot be undone.  One false step and we would find ourselves *locked* in the
wrong reality with no road back.  A reality where the Doctor is not.  Then
how would we help him?"

Nyssa remained silent for a moment, frantic thoughts tumbling over and over
in her mind.  At last she beseeched, "But there IS a way?"

Sedra nodded.  "There is a way indeed and we are minded to take that road
even though the strictures imposed by the Limitation still have potency."
Sedra, knowing the dangers of opening the Gate in the teeth of a
Lassiter-Monroe Constant, tried to harden her heart, to do what she knew must
be done.  But Nyssa's eyes were so full of a desperate pleading for the
safety of the Time Lord that it touched her soul with the power to over
master the ingrained caution of eons of walking the void.  For the very first
time in their existence, the Brood would act upon impulse.

Sedra stepped back and shook out her long mane of hair.  She raised an arm
imperiously to the sky.

Agalayne, perched on the wall, stirred.  He spread wide his wings.  croaking
hoarsely, he began hopping impatiently from foot to foot, sensing a change in
the fabric of the world.

"What is it?" asked Nyssa in growing alarm.

"We have opened the way," Sedra answered the Traken girl.  "Come child!
There is a way to circumvent the Limitation." She paused to study the
suddenly eager face of Nyssa.  "If we arrive safely on Orion, you must
promise me that you will do *exactly* as I command; for the real peril will
come after the crossing Between.  The danger will be at its most deadly and
any action, even the smallest could upset the balance of Time herself.
Will you abide by my words in this?"

"Yes," she answered quickly.

Sedra searched her face for a long moment, before nodding in satisfaction.
"Then come, little one.  We travel Between!"

The Decima TErcia of the Earth Station Brood spun in a whirl of soft silks
and gossamer black hair to hurry towards the house.





---------------------------------------------------------------------------