The Last Great Time War: part III

Seige of the Neverweres

"Hold positions," the Renegade ordered as an Nekkistani cruiser was surrounded by an impenetrable mass of living, energy sucking nothingness and its existence was devoured.

A flotilla of timeships was maintaining a probability filtration field in the time tunnel that led to the Sanctuary. Its original purpose was to prevent events from being altered by the addition of unlikely outcomes, but it was found to be useful in blocking off nonexistent outcomes also. A whole army of these had breached the main barrier in the vortex and was now attempting to invade the hub of the New Temporal Alliance.

It was the Army of the Neverweres, the foot soldiers of the Could've Been King. Like their leader, they were nonexistent beings erased from history that the War had brought back into reality. They were living voids of pure paradox, their original identities forgotten. They appeared as impressionistic beings of darkness, able to change their shape into anything and hide anywhere, but to see their true form would drive a person mad. No one is meant to see the true form of a paradox.
The Meanwhiles were like this too, but they never showed themselves. A Meanwhile could view an entire timeline all at once without being seen, and manipulate it in catastrophic ways. The Neverweres were different. They did not just manipulate timelines, but devoured them. They fed on order and existence and left nothingness and chaos behind. They did show themselves, but that was of little help to their enemies. Very few could stand against them as they swarmed across the landscape and destroyed everything in their path. They warped the laws of physics themselves to cause as much paradox and destruction as they could. Vast regions of time and space lost all coherence, just as the Eternals had prophesied.

Now, the headquarters of the NTA was about to suffer the same fate if they were not stopped. The flood of wraith-like, time-eating horrors continued to strain against the field, a few of them making it through. The timeships fired at the intruders, severing their links to reality and sending them back to being ideas floating in the void. But only the ones that got through were fired on so far.

"Commander Nogsath, Commander Theranos," said the Renegade, "it's time to deploy the Probability Net."

"Yes sir," replied the Nekkistani and Warpsmith commanders, respectively.
The fleet retreated, allowing the Neverweres to enter farther into the tunnel. The other half of the fleet came in from the main universe, deploying its own probability filtration field. The Neverweres were trapped in the middle. The fleets moved in closer, weaving the field into a ball around them. The shadowy, time-forsaken paradoxes oozed their infinitely varied and yet shapeless forms against any weakness in the field they could find, and yet fewer and fewer were getting through.

"Almost ready," the Renegade murmured to himself. He flicked a switch on the console, briefly turning part of the TARDIS inside out and back again to banish a Neverwas that had gotten hold of it.
The net grew tighter. The TARDIS creaked and groaned as the Neverweres struggled against their prison.

"Now!"
The fleet activated the sequence that would implode the field and destroy everything inside of it. The field shrank until it was about to disappear. Then it stopped shrinking, flickered, and wavered.
The Renegade was about to ask what was wrong when the TARDIS's power went out for a full second. When it came back on, something was different that he just couldn't place. Outside, the field was convulsing and growing larger.

"No no no!"
He raced around the console trying to fix it, but nothing was working.
"Attention HQ," he said. "Raise all barriers! Full Muave Alert! All nearby fleets defend the Sanctuary!"

Several roundels on the TARDIS walls blew out, as did a panel on the console. The cloister bell started ringing.
Still the Renegade hung on to the console and kept working, even as the TARDIS lurched and the lights flickered. He was so close to fixing it.

Then the bubble ruptured, sending the thousands of wraith-like Neverweres into the NTA fleet. The ships could not hold them back this time. Just as the Renegade was about to order a retreat, the TARDIS doors flew open, bathing the room in the stormy energy of the time vortex. A giant hand and a long, stretched out arm made of inky black shadow reached in and grabbed the Renegade, yanking him out of the safety of his TARDIS into the cold, cruel winds of time.