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Romana tripped on a root and fell face first into the muddy undergrowth. In front of her, Leela continued to hack their way in with her knife, seemingly oblivious to all but the trees around her.
“I never knew there were such forests on Gallifrey,” she whispered, “This is almost like being in the jungles of the Sevateem again!”
Romana sighed, pushing herself up to a sitting position, and scrunching her nose at the dirtied state of her outfit.
“Oh, trust me Leela, the Loomforest bares only superficial resemblance to any forest you might have grown up with...” she said, trying to remove some of the mud from her hair.
“What is so special about this place anyway?” Leela finally turned, noticing Romana’s disheveled state “Everyone back at the agency acted so strangely when they picked up this anomaly here, as if they were afraid of this Forest of the Loom!”
She helped her friend up, refraining from making any comments about her abilities, or rather, lack thereof, to navigate through a dense forest without any technological help. Now was not the time to retread their old arguments.
“The Loomforest… Well let’s just say it is a living reminder of certain parts of Gallifreyan culture many would like to pretend doesn’t exist”
Romana unsteadily pulled out her Temporal Anomaly Detector again, hoping to orient themselves toward whatever was creating the waves of instability they had picked up just a few days ago. The device turned on, and immediately stopped with a spark. She made a frustrated sound, but was not surprised by the result. It had been a few hours now, and one by one their equipment had fizzled out, starting with their communication link back to the CIA. It was only to be expected, she supposed. The Loomforest was rumoured to have strange and unpredictable effects on technology, from simple interference, to giving sentience to any device. At least this was better than being stuck in a philosophical debate with a navigation system filled with aspiration of self-actualisation…
“You know, we do not need this to find our way Romana.” Leela said, interrupting her train of thoughts.
“And how exactly do you expect to even find the anomaly without guidance? We can’t just wander around and expect to fall into it!”
“The last readings pointed to the center of the forest did they not? I might have lived on Gallifrey for many years, but a Warrior of the Sevateem never forgets how to find their way through the forest! Getting to the center? Nothing could be easier.” Leela smiled, and offered her hand to Romana, “Come on, we better hurry up, Narvin must already be near panicking!”
“He knows losing communication was likely to happen”
“You know how he is,” she retorted, “He worries about everything!”
They both laughed, and made their way forward, hands in hands.
~~~
The trees around them had grown taller and taller, blotting out the sky, and plunging everything in a never ending dusk. Long, thin vines were weaved in the foliage, hanging off branches. Flashes of light coursed through them, illuminating a cat’s cradle embracing the entire forest. With every new flash, it seemed the vines had rearranged themselves in new patterns, creating shifting shadows reflecting on the silver leaves covering the ground.
It felt like even the air was alive, and Leela was almost convinced there was something watching them, but even her own accuented senses were thrown off by the atmosphere.
Looking around, she noticed the misshapen look of some of the trees, and every time a new streak of light passed over her head, she couldn’t help but feel the trees had almost human faces, glaring accusingly at her.
She shook her head, and looked again. Nothing.
“Probably a trick of the light…” she muttered
“What was that Leela?” Romana’s muffled voice sounded from a short way ahead. “Oh, come along! I think I see a clearing just this…” The rest of her sentence was cut short by a horrified sound.
“Romana? Romana!” Leela ran, screeching to a halt as she saw what had caused her friend’s reaction “What… What is this?”
In the middle of the clearing stood a lone tree, even more twisted than any of the others she had seen so far. Overhead, the vines converged onto the top of the tree, creating a mesh of light. Except she could see now they were not vines, but rather threads, made out of some unknown material, and the streaks of light came from a moving, near gelatinous mass that seemed alive, writhing in unbearable agony.
But the worst was the trunk of the tree. She could see a childe’s head, a torso ,a hand, and could almost feel the shape of an arm in the turn of the bark. The flesh was merged in the tree, as if the head itself had grown out of its side, thrown out alongside the regular branches, and then stopped before the entire body was able to form.
She turned, and realised that she could see it everywhere now. In the shapes of the branches, twisting like a broken leg, in the shape of the leaves, extending themselves like fingers trying to grab a sky they would never be able to reach or even see, searching for a light long gone. In every knot formed by the wood there was the shape of eyes, the grain of the wood itself reminders of what could once have been, or maybe what should have become skin.
Every tree surrounding the clearing seemed to have a face, but none as gruesome or humanoid looking as the one in the twisted tree. She couldn’t see any sign of life and yet, felt like the forest itself was watching her.
Slowly, she made her way forward, getting closer and closer to the childe in the middle, and crouched down, staring at the unmoving face.
“What happened here?
Romana stood behind her, seemingly frozen at the sight “I… I didn’t know it would look like this…” she whispered under her breath
“Like this? Romana, what do you mean? Do you know what this all means?” Leela was ready to turn and face her friend until she got answers, but before she could even move, every tree around them opened their eyes simultaneously, and the face in the tree turned to look her straight in the eyes. And started screaming.
The entire clearing had suddenly come alive, sensing the presence of intruders. Leela stumbled back, trying to get away from the screaming face. Turning around, she realised the clearing didn’t seem to have an opening anymore, and they were surrounded by the glaring trees, and the threads that formed the ceiling seemed to be closer than she remembered.
She blinked, and realised that the threads were actively coming at them, acting as so many tentacles. She drew out her knife, ready to go down as a warrior if needs be, but before she could attack, Romana stepped forward, with her hands reaching out to the threads.
As her fingers connected with the writhing mass, a blinding flash pierced through the forest, and she fell backwards with a pained scream.
The lights strobed faster and faster, reflecting on the leaves thrown on the ground, creating a kaleidoscope of light and sound, like the night sky itself had come down to meet them, drowning out Leela’s worried shout, her rush towards Romana’s prone body silhouetted by the crescendo of flashes. The screams reached a high pitched climax as she bent over, and then as suddenly as it had started, the screaming and thrashing stopped.
Above her head, the threads slowly rearranged themselves, and in less than a minute, the clearing was back to its former peace and quiet.
Leela blinked, her head throbbing and her ears still ringing, and looked at the misshapen tree-childe. It was calmer now, and looking at her with curious eyes. She shuddered, realising she could read the exact same expression in every eye around the clearing, all focused straight on her. She shook herself together. Now was not the time to be awed by the obvious spiritual powers of the forest, she had to focus on Romana. Whatever she did, it had calmed down the spirits. Leela just had to hope it did not cost Romana too great a cost as she called out for her unconscious friend…
~~~
Falling.
She was falling through an endless void.
And then. Images, flashing by.
Fast. A giant bat, flying in space. Too fast. Sneering skulls. Burning. Explosions… Ship? Planet? She was caught in it either way, burning, changing, shifting. Falling.
Faster. Still falling.
Faces now. A dark haired woman dressed in white. A snub nosed woman. A long haired, regal looking woman, dressed in ceremonial robes. A young faced, ebony skinned woman. Smiling.
All so familiar. All so distant.
Future and past. Past and Future. Could be and Never was. Mixing, merging, into one final face.
A blond woman.
Present?
Falling, the void fading into a vortex of voices, of names. Calling for her. Trying to become her, voices twirling around her, trapping her into a cocoon of what she could become.
A queen of the eve of War, surveying her Nine Realms from her golden tower.
Of who she refused to be.
An Imperiatrix, ruling over her people with an iron fist, ready to face her destiny.
Of glimpsed futures that should have been. And now never would.
She kept falling, falling. Possibilities swarming around her, trying to get in, to erase her.
Words pressing down on her, trapping her, controlling her. Shaping her against her will… or perhaps shaping her will against her?
Imperiatrix. Time Lady. Coordinator. Cousin. President. Homeworlder. Elemental. War Queen.
She was screaming now. Screaming without sound, trying to deny the imposing realities. Not her. This was not her.
She thrashed about, wanting, needing, to break free. But there was just the falling and the increasing pressure of infinity closing in on her.
Falling.
Then.
Another face. Calling out. Familiar and yet not distant. An anchor in a world of madness. She tried to focus, to make out the voice in the middle of the chaos.
A voice calling.
For her.
“Romana!”
~~~
Romana jolted awake. Leela was looking at her, worry and fear written all over her face. She tried sitting up, head still throbbing. Falling. She put her face in her hands, pushing the vision to the back of her mind.
“Romana! Oh Romana, are you alright? What happened?”
“I’m ok… I just got zapped with residual energy I think” She answered, trying to convince herself it really was just that.
Unsteadily, she stood up, only to fall back down again.
“Just give me a minute before we move on I think”
Leela sat down on the glittering leaves next to her, offering her shoulder for support. Behind them, the tree-childe was now making soft, irregular ululating sounds, as if expecting an answer.
“We are not going anywhere until you feel better… And until you explain to me exactly what you did and what exactly is going on in this Loomforest of yours?”
Romana remained silent for a short while, watching the intermittent streaks of light reflecting in the silver leaves, the dust slowly setting back down and dancing in the few rays of the sun that reached even this forsaken place.
“Oh well, I just indicated to the forest that we weren’t the intruders it thought we were. I simply had to let it read my biodata, that’s all. I was President of Gallifrey and all her dominions you know!” She said with a dry laugh. “Thankfully, even with so much degradation, the remaining strands are still able to recognize the imprimatur this left in my biodata”
She let herself rest entirely on Leela, knowing that the psychic wave she just endured had taken a toll on her. She closed her eyes, and suddenly… She was falling again, the void pressing on her in an unending and unforgiving blackness that could swallow her and leave nothing behind not even a temporal trace...
Romana opened her eyes, catching the tail-end of Leela’s question, asking about the nature of the strands. There was no avoiding it. She would have to explain, knowing already Leela wouldn’t like the answer.
“Those strands are the reasons we call this the Loomforest. This is, as you already guessed, no ordinary forest, even by Gallifreyan standards. It was born out of old and forgotten Looms, discarded and left without supervision. They grew, mixing with the local plant life, turning the forest itself into a large cemetery for the Neverweres of old Houses. As you can see, the biodata contained in the Looms is still somewhat active and heavily unstable, which led to rumors and myths about the Loomforest, saying that the descendants of Gallifrey still look upon us. Of course, I never believed a word of it, but well…”
She gestured at the trees around them, their watchful eyes following the movement of her hand.
Next to her, Leela suddenly laughed.
“Everything on Gallifrey truly is backward, is it not? Your ghosts do not haunt you from the past, but the future! You are haunted by your own descendants, and yet, every Time Lords in the Capitol would still refuse to admit that there is any sort of spiritual power present in their society!”
“Oh Leela, there is nothing spiritual about any of this! Simply some temporal echoes of potential timelines flowing through the leftover strands. Usually, it doesn’t really create any detectable anomalies, though it is a weak spot in the fabric of reality, and can be quite dangerous for anyone with psychic abilities.”
“After all this time! Still you too refuse to admit anything but your science!”
“It’s not like this and you…” Romana’s answer was cut short by a low rumbling sound, coming from somewhere outside of the clearing “Wait… Did you hear that?”
“It sounds like footsteps of some large beast… Are there any other inhabitants here apart from your ghostly future?”
“Not to my knowledge”
They both rose up, Leela taking her knife out, and adopting a fighting stance. Romana looked at the general direction of the looming sound, trying her hardest not to blink, not to think of the...
Falling, in a void so dark, so deep than even the memory of light seemed nothing more than a farflung lie...
She stumbled, catching herself on Leela’s shoulder as the bushes parted, and a bear-like silhouette appeared in the dusk of the undergrowth. Romana stared at the approaching figure, a look of recognition dawning on her face.
“An avatroid?”
~~~
The mechanical creature stepped inside the clearing, and headed straight for the tree-childe, ignoring entirely the two women holding onto each other near the border between the dense trees and the opening.
It walked up to the childe, and whispered softly, until suddenly, they stopped the low, ululating sound, leaving only the deep silence of the forest to bear down on Leela and Romana.
“What is it doing here? I thought avatroids only took care of childrene?”
Struggling to find her words in the midst of the raging storm taking place inside her mind, Romana managed to stand up without falling, forever, losing more and more control and edging closer and closer to the spider at the center of the web…
“I… I think that’s exactly what it’s doing, taking care of the remains of the childrene” she stuttered.
“You mean… That childe in the tree? Is it actually conscious?”
“In a sense, it seems to be…” She found it harder and harder to speak, to think clearly even.
Leela looked at her, worry written all over her face.
“Romana? Are you alright?”
But before she could answer, Romana fell forward, and fainted. At the same time, the avatroid seemingly stopped working, twitching at random intervals.
“Romana? Romana!”
Leela tried shaking her friend awake, to no avail. She could hear Romana half whispering about falling, the void, and a spider, but the meaning of it all was lost to her.
Panicking, she looked around for something, anything, that would wake Romana up from her trance-like state, and noticed the avatroid stumbling back, away from the childe, shaking its head. Leela stared at it, suddenly realising that whatever was affecting Romana had affected the robot too. She pounced up, and grabbed the bear-like creature, only narrowly avoiding its huge tusks.
“What is going on here?”
The robot remained still for a few seconds, before its speakers sparkled into life.
“Psychic… Attack… Can’t… Protect…Childe”
Every word was slow, the sounds fighting an invisible barrier to escape into existence.
“Attack? By whom?”
In a corner of her mind, Leela wondered if that might be the cause of the temporal anomaly picked up by the CIA.
“The Spider… At the Center…”
The avatroid gestured towards the heart of the Forest itself.
“Take… There?”
As Leela watched, a path suddenly appeared, and trees parted until she could see a glimmering light in the distance, brighter than any of the flickering threads. The glitching avatroid gestured for her to follow, and then slowly but surely made its way toward the light, the trees’ eyes watching it silently as it went.
She hauled Romana in her arms, knowing full well she was probably walking into a trap. But she had to help her, had to find a way to bring her back. Even if that meant walking into the lion’s den.
She stepped forward, and watched over by the Forest itself, prepared to meet the Spider.
~~~
She was back in the void again.
Falling still.
She closed eyes that were already shut, but still couldn’t stop seeing everything around her. Holding her breath, she waited, dreading what would come next.
Falling. Into the web.
Landing on the delicate threads and suddenly….
Voices and visions crowding in now. The Spider engulfing her and in one fell swoop she was falling in the last rabbit hole, down an interconnected strand of light and biodata, deep. Deep into the past/future/present. Deep into the Spider.
She stood in the past, facing the one who ended the old age, Urizen the Destroyer. The last of her kind, fleeing to a nearby star. Last Matriarch on the planet.
She was the present that should be, an age of spirit and powerful magic, ruling over the untamed and wild galaxies.
She saw the future, war raging on in Heaven, war everywhere, burning, destroying every possibility into one inevitable eternity. Destruction and creation merging in an ouroboros.
Past. Standing, facing her enemy. Her might towering in the sky, her anger storming the newborn Lords, defiant to the last.
Present. Banished, forgotten, watching from the depth of memory as the age of reason, logic and complacency takes root. Eons and eons. Unmoving. Unchanging.
Future. Another war. Another destruction. Everything red. Wherever she looks, war. No escape. No hope. A future that isn’t one.
Present. She is revered. She is hated. She is forgotten. She never existed, was always there, will always rule, has always fallen.
In the depth of the past, the Lord of all Lords is anchoring himself, and she is falling, her last Curse raining on the planet and its childrene. Falling forever, her final vision before eternity claims her is him, standing, unmoving at the center of the Spiral. Smiling despite the Curse. Or maybe because of it?
Why? Why why why why why!
Years and years. Millenia. Seconds. Forever. Resentment turns to anger. Anger to hate. And hate, to revenge.
A seed, festering, searching for any cracks. Always and never succeeding. Hoping and hoping and knowing.
A light. A crack. Childe crying, possibilities swarming and swarming and suddenly.
She exists again. Always has existed. Will emerge soon.
Merging past, present and future into her. Finding the web that once was and working her way to the center. And then.
Waiting. For the next to fall.
~~~
Leela heaved Romana into the deepest part of the Forest, aware with every step of the many eyes following her progress. By now, her avatroid guide had been joined by others of its kind, all seemingly suffering from the attacks of the Spider, which, as far as Leela was able to understand, was the cause of both the anomaly and the attack on Romana.
Getting closer now, the only light still remaining came from the ever increasing amount of live threads, illuminating their small procession into the chamber of the beast.
And then, suddenly, the trees just stopped. Silently, and acting as one, the avatroids spread out in a circle as Leela cautiously made her way forward. In front of her stood a cat’s cradle of thread and biodata, in the middle of which she could glimpse a moving shadow.
She put Romana down on the ground carefully, and surveyed her surroundings, mentally noting any possible means of escape in case she needed to make a quick exit.
There was no opening, only a menacing circle of tusks and fur, and the slight tremor of bushes as the only proof that there was a path between the trees just a few seconds ago.
She sighed, preparing herself to fight to the very end, and walked up to the impossible figure. It was ever changing and looking at it caused her pain on a deeper level than simply physical, the shifting limbs and colors leaving only an after image in the eyes similar to that of a large spider. The only constant was the pulse of the biodata as it was absorbed into the void, helping it grow ever so slightly.
Keeping her hand on her knife, Leela called out towards the blackness
“Are you the one they call the Spider?”
And at once, she knew the answer, felt it in her bones, and in the air all around her. It did not speak as such, simply rearranged the world around her to convey her words, weaving information directly into the very fabric of the universe.
I have had many names. Some older than time itself, others only carried by the tongues of a few. Once I was in the service of the great Matriarch. In this Forest I am but a spider, surveying the Spiral and the forced stability and stagnation imposed on it by the Lords’ accursed History.
Leela was surprised to find herself shaking, and somehow, still standing. Around her, less than a second had elapsed, and yet, she had felt thousands of years of loneliness, pain and anger.
Gathering her spirits, she spoke out once more, resisting her instinct to physically attack. She had to gather information to help Romana who was clearly suffering, and for that, loathe it as she might, she would have to play the diplomat towards this relic of a distant past.
“Then, Spider, what did you do to the keepers of this Forest? And why exactly would you ever harm Romana?”
She is a tool. A daughter of Time with the power to finally put right what went wrong. She is nothing to my present, and everything to my future.
Before Leela had time to understand what exactly the voices meant by that, Romana suddenly opened unseeing eyes and started screaming. Leela sprung into action, all thoughts of diplomacy and information collecting thrown aside, her knife quickly reaching for the threads that seemed to be the life force of the creature.
And she remained still, unmoving, her knife unfeeling in her hands, barely the hints of actions in her thoughts. She was held in place by a nagging voice, reminding her of how much she resented Gallifrey and its stuffy Time Lords, how she hated their cold and unfeeling logic, never recognizing the value she held, never showing any respect for her abilities.
Why, wouldn’t the universe be better off if only Gallifrey went back to its roots? Finally, a society she could fit in and get the wide recognition she oh so deserved! The looming ever present wars might be averted if only History was undone.
Surely, she could see that this is what she had been waiting for ever since she stepped foot under this miserable orange sky?
She just had to wait. Do nothing.
With a start, Leela realised the insidious voice was not her own. She saw the darkness smiling at her without a mouth, and heard it whisper in her mind. She was pinned in place by a force greater than she could comprehend, doubts swirling in her head…
A sudden movement cut off her meddled train of thoughts. From the corner of her eye she could see the avatroids slowly carrying a still and yet clearly suffering Romana slowly toward the nest of shadows woven between the threads.
A small sacrifice to pay for everything you’ve ever dreamed of wouldn’t you say?
Leela struggled against the force. No. She could not accept that. Images of her wildest dreams flashed behind her eyes, again and again. No.
You would refuse all of this? You would choose one of Them over everything you believe in?
With a scream carried out by her pure force of will, Leela broke free from the ghostly influence and with one swift turn of her knife, cut off the threads carrying the unstable biodata, and finished by plunging into the darkness, yelling for the world, the universe and all its infinite possibilities her truth.
Yes. Over anything, over the world and the spirits and logic, she would always choose her.
The darkness fought back, tendrils extending themselves onto her, her arm, her face, reaching down her history and her mind. Still she held on, her beliefs and hope shining through, breaking every bond the creature still held. No matter where, no matter how. In no possible timeline would she ever sacrifice Romana.
And with a final twist of the knife, the entire clearing burst into light, echoing throughout burning and withering timelines. The last remnant of a distant past, finally gone.
Leela was thrown back by the impossible explosion, and everything went black.
~~~
Romana awoke in a daze, her head pounding. Above her, she could see the burning sky she was so used to, and to the left, a retreating group of avatroids, slowly going back to their Forest to take care of their childe.
She tried sitting up, and realised that was more than her current strength could handle.
A shadow descended upon her, and through her misted vision she saw a familiar, although bloodied, face.
“Leela? What in the name of Rassilon just happened?”
“Oh Romana, it is all over. I called the CIA, Narvin will get us back”
“The anomaly?”
“Gone. I took care of it.”
She felt herself slip away into unconsciousness again, her body taking the toll of her long and nearly deadly psychic fight. A sliver of memory ran through her mind, of a choice her friend made, their old arguments reopened, and she knew, before the darkness claimed her again, that she had to ask.
“But… Why would you?”
“Don’t you know? What I believe in, above everything?”
But Romana had fainted again. And with the sound of the TARDIS sent to rescue them echoing in the air as it materialised, Leela bent down, and whispered it in her ear.
I believe in you.