The Last Great Time War: part III

The Beginning of the End

Years of work in the Cruciform's main Timeline Engineering Laboratory were finally coming to fruition. The project to create the Ultimate General, Sanction 96, had gone smoothly despite many others ending in catastrophe. The "Meanwhiles," as they called them, the unseen temporal predators sabotaging timelines, had gotten more powerful and more aggrressive. Now they were targeting entire fleets and even planets. They could never be captured, killed, or even observed directly. Any attempt to do so would result in the Meanwhile destroying whoever or whatever was hunting it, or, if being pursued by something that conceivably could capture or defeat it, vanishing and leaving the trail cold.

This were part of the reason Sanction 96 was being enacted. The paradoxical nature of the Ultimate General would allow it to successfully hunt down and destroy the Meanwhiles. The Daleks and the NTA would not stand a chance against it either.

Now, Rassilon stood in the laboratory control room. On the other side of a glass-like containment field above a panel of controls was the room where the timeline manipulation actually took place. It was a four-dimensional sphere about a mile across, its inner surface lined with a multitude of strange instruments that all pointed to the center. Floating in the room were all the timelines that had been retrieved for the project. Streams of events and matter like old projector film unreeled, people's lives laid out like frames of a movie.

The timelines were all connected to each other in some way, the events and identities blending into a whole. Soon there would be just one timeline comprised of all the others, being all of them and something new at the same time. This was what Rassilon came to oversee. The final blending together into a single time-transcendent being.

The Temporal Engineers at the controls finished what they were doing, and stepped back. Everything was set up to do the final sequence of the project, it only needed to be activated.

"Time to do the honors, Lord President," said the Chief Engineer, and stepped back.

"For Gallifrey and for victory," Rassilon said, and pushed the large green button in front of him.

The timelines in the room started to dance around each other and weave together, almost like ribbons on a May pole. All the events, characteristics, qualities, and ideas blended together, forming one entity while still retaining all of their component parts. A whole legion of different people from across time and space all merged together. As all the strands wove together, the Time Lords saw a single entity emerging. Its form was undefinable, flickering, shifting. It had every feature possible and no features at all, all at the same time. It could not have any one shape, since it was a billion different people of a million different species. It was not of an army made from one man, but one man made from an army.

"My child," Rassilon said as the final parts of the process were underway. "Speak to me, your creator!"

But something was wrong. The alarms that started were unnecessary, for they could all feel it. The entity being birthed on the other side of the barrier was not a creature of this or any reality. Something was hijacking it, consuming it, taking its potential turning it into itself. A creature of absolute nothingness pulling itself into reality, because at last the idea of it had something substantial enough to latch on to and pull itself into existence. A never-was given form.
The entity was pulling more and more temporal energy from the instruments on the walls, drawing in so much power that many of them glowed with it and burst apart. A whirlwind of energy, events, and nothingness was forming around the thing in the center.

"Shut it down," Rassilon ordered. "Kill it, destroy that abomination NOW!"

"We can't my Lord, it's out of our hands, it has a life of its own and it's taking control!"

In the other room was a terrible presence of unspeakable power, cloaked in darkness blacker than anything imaginable. An effect without a cause, a living idea, a sentient aberration of the Laws of Time, a paradox more powerful than any other.

"Whoever or whatever you are," Rassilon shouted, "return to the fell realm from whence ye came! You are not welcome in this reality!"

The entity turned to face Rassilon. Its appearance and geometry defied all terms, definitions, and descriptions, yet Rassilon knew that it was looking at him.

"Do you not remember me?"

It did not actually speak, but directly communicated what it was expressing.

"You destroyed me, Rassilon! All traces of my existence were wiped away, all of my origins lost! You banished me to the eternal void when I sought to be your ally!"

In that moment Rassilon understood who was talking to him. But it was impossible.

"Yes it is me, the King of Time!"

"There is no King of Time! You do not exist, you cannot exist! I defeated you forever! You are nothing but a memory, a Never-Was!"

"You fool, you understand nothing of the eternal void and the true power of ideas and potential! You can utterly destroy an existence, but you can never kill an idea! Ideas thrive in the void, and ideas can always return! Everything that has led to this point has transpired according to my design! My forces will tear down your reality and leave nothing but chaos in their wake! I will have my revenge, and all existence will be mine! You can never defeat me! I am forever! The Laws of Time will bend and break to my will! I am the God of Paradox, the Destroyer of Law and Order, the Father of Chaos, the Emperor of Unreality!
I AM THE COULD HAVE BEEN KING!"

The Could've Been King laughed, ripping away with all of his newfound power. The whole station heaved to and fro as its shields, containment systems, and power feeds were torn wide open. Rassilon activated his emergency time ring and vanished, just before the Cruciform exploded. A colossal wave of time energy swept and reverberated across all reality, consuming whole galaxies and leaving nothing that was not rewritten. Across vast regions of time and space, causality completely broke. The vast armies of the Meanwhiles and Neverweres surged in from nonexistence, ready to lay waste to creation. Back through meta-time, the Eternals themselves foresaw this and wept, leaving reality forever.

In the center of the War, time lost meaning. Every major battle curved in on itself and turned into an endless cycle of death and re-death. Survivors and casualties were no longer different things. The greatest Time War in all of meta-history raged forever, bringing creation to its knees.
Even on Gallifrey, behind all of the transduction barriers, changes and confusion were degrading the timeline. Did the Daleks breach Gallifrey's defenses in the first attacks? When was Rassilon brought back? At what point did the War begin? How long, just from Gallifrey's perspective, had it been going? There were no definitive answers anymore.

The final days had arrived. The New Temporal Alliance was under siege from all sides. Whatever happened next, the Renegade knew that it would determine the course of everything.