Soul's Shadow (Doctor Who - SI)

Part X (VI)

The whole scenario couldn't get more cliche, could it? First we stumbled right into a saloon, then there were ghosts of some sort and now we were about to visit an ancient burial ground?

"Gee, you have to make this all up," I mumbled dumbfounded.

The Master chuckled. "Nope. It's all unbelievably real, I'm afraid." Casually he stirred the horse a little to the right and continued, "The Doctor took scans of every place we heard of where those apparitions appear. And he did find a bunch of readings at each. Combined and when ran through some... you wouldn't understand... Let's just say they point with brightly glowing arrows at a certain location."

"That... doesn't make it less cliche, though."

"Guess not. Doesn't matter. He's probably there already. This is kind of a thing for him... Whatever."

So we rode for another while, this time in silence. My eyes wandered over the dry environment, brown in every shade imaginable, sand and rock. Here and there stood a dry tree, some shrubs and cactuses. Once I had played a video-game in this setting, I remembered. But there it had all looked a lot livelier. Well... and a lot more filled with radioactive monsters.

I smiled and closed my eyes. There was a lot going on inside my head, but most of it was too interwoven with too many other things to pick a single strand to follow. I knew the relationship between the two Time Lords was complicated, so much so that it seemed impossible for them to... to what? What were they to one another? It made me curious and at the same time gave me a bad conscience. This wasn't my business. And what was with the ghostly apparitions in this place? Why was all of this connected to a portal inside an enormous and empty ship?

I felt a soothing warmth pooling into my mind, like smoke swirling through me. It made me remember the hand on my hip, wrapped around my front, made me remember the man sitting right behind me. Even in the heat of the day it didn't bother me. There was something cool about him, something that had nothing to do with the temperature of his skin.

I still was scared of this closeness and in some moments downright terrified of getting too close to... anyone, I suddenly realized, glaring at the moving horse neck.

"Stop ruminating," the Master said and chuckled. "Your distress is rather... loud."

"Don't read my mind, prick," I grumbled.

He laughed. "I don't. Your emotions just seep through."

"Tsk, you're the one using me, right now. If my emotions don't taste well, don't touch me."

That too made him snicker and he obviously restrained himself to not scare the horse again. His hand stayed where it was and for the next few minutes we were silent again. I did stop ruminating, though and decided to disturb him a little, by making an effort to shift my awareness. Because I did enjoy this ride, the closeness, the... I blinked perplexed and smiled to myself.

The sensation of being weirdly safe.

I felt him stiffen for a few moments and actually felt his confusion now. Good. Have your own medicine.

And then we reached our destination and all of my pondering was instantly blown away, because what lay there before us was not what I had expected.

I had thought we would find a bunch of burial mounds, piles of stone and dirt, adorned with some sort of decoration. Instead we entered a vast space through a gap between the red rocks around us. In it were rows and rows of black slates rising from the ground. Some were shaped like boulders, others were erected in a straight line, looking like ancient pillars. The shapes ranged from rough and natural to others that were clearly shaped by the hands of sentient beings, too smooth and too regular to be not.