The Wizard's Guide to Timelords and Other Demons Book 1: The Forgotten War

The Doctor's Dream

The Doctor awoke suddenly to total darkness, and to complete silence. The last thing he could remember was kneeling over Elise, pouring wave after wave of regeneration energy into her body. He recalled feeling his own body grow weaker while his life force drained out of him as he fought desperately to bring Elise back from death. Had it succeeded? He did not know.

The Doctor assumed he must have blacked out at some point and was now flat on his back on the floor of the TARDIS. He reached out with his hand, hoping to feel the cold, metal grating beneath him, but it was not there. He tried to sit up and found that his body wouldn't move. In fact, he could not even feel his body at all! Then hit struck him—I'm not really awake, am I?

The vision came suddenly, without warning, but the Doctor was not surprised. Somehow, he had been expecting it. At first, it appeared to be the same vision he had seen a few days ago as he drifted just outside the Medusa Cascade, only this time it was much clearer. He saw thousands of men and women dressed in military uniforms chanting praises to the Beast. The Beast's army, he presumed. At least that is what Elise had told him when she spoke of her own vision.

Then he saw Rose, staring into the distance, just as before. She was semi-transparent and shimmering as if she were some kind of spirit. Vibrant patterns of light danced around her form. She turned to face him just as he had remembered, only this time she did not speak. Instead, she gestured for him to follow her. In his mind, the Doctor willed himself to comply.

The vision changed, and the Doctor found himself standing in the midst a great battle between wizards and myriads strange, amazing, and even frightening creatures. Then all at once the fighting stopped and the Doctor could see in the distance a gigantic man-like creature with horns, kneeling on the ground and bowing its massive, horned head before a tiny, hooded figure standing before him. The creature looked very much like the Beast in the form the Doctor had seen in the pit at Krop Tor. The hooded figure lowered its cowl, revealing what appeared to be the head of a wolf—a white wolf. Elise! He thought. Had she defeated the Beast?

The vision changed again and, as before, he was standing in the middle of a raging conflict. Only this time, thousands fled in terror across a field drenched in blood. Behind them stood the Beast, roaring with anger (or laughter, perhaps?) and bellowing great plumes of fire from his cavernous maw that consumed the swarms of fleeing people. Their scorched remains littered the ground for as far as the eye could see.

Far in the distance and all around him the Doctor could be seen the smoldering remnants of once-great cities and civilizations that had been razed to the ground by the armies of the Beast. He glanced about, earnestly searching, but Elise was nowhere to be seen. In fact, he somehow knew that she had never been here at all.

Once again, the vision changed to another battle, and then another...and another...until the Doctor had seen it a thousand times. Each time the battle was very different. Sometimes it took place near Hogwarts and included those he now considered to be friends, while at other times it was in places he had never before visited, where he found himself fighting alongside people he had never met.

In some versions of the vision, the Beast would prevail as conqueror, leaving death and destruction in its wake across the universe. Then, in other visions, the Beast would be defeated and banished for eternity. At first the Doctor thought he might be seeing the same war fought across alternate universes, but then he heard the voice of Rose in his mind.

"All of these are but possible realities," she said. "Any of them could happen, but only one of them will. Watch and learn, Doctor, for much of how it will truly unfold depends upon you."

So, the Doctor watched. As each scenario was laid before him, he could see patterns emerge. He identified the strategies that brought victory against the Beast, and those that led to ruin. Most of the campaigns he saw were failures, but after seeing so many, the Doctor began to recognize a common element that was the same in every outcome where they won: Elise.