Who Universe
The distant fire had dwindled, but a pall of smoke still drifted over the city, choking the grey morning. Many new buildings were under construction. There was an optimism which was lost to the later Capitol that they knew. The upper city spanned the lower on vast arches. These were crowned by further arches and bridges, all of them carrying buildings and gardens, domes and belfries. The centre of the city, the sun broke through the smoke. It was a pale, stifled sun with no warmth as yet There was a tower ahead, rising clear above the honeycomb of arches. The Other was moving towards its summit, which was crowned with lush green planting.
A man wearing a dark red robe stood among the pearl-grey roses that grew there. The man was not tall and his moustache was thick and spreading. He was studying a chessboard, its pieces set in mid-game. But it appeared that, within each square on the board, there was yet another game with its own pieces. A game to be won before the square could be part of the greater game. Deep within those inner squares, there were more squares, pulling the eye down.
“Where have you been?” demanded the man in red and the spell was broken.
“Avoiding your personal guards, Rassilon. Why were they trying to kill me?”
“I instructed them to find you. No more than that.”
“They were more demonstrative.”
The ruler of Gallifrey looked into the depths of the chessboard. “I cannot afford to lose you.”
“Why? What do you need to confess now?”
“Nothing,” said Rassilon. “You will know that I have taken the action I deemed necessary to allow my reforms to continue.”
“And I can name you at least four provincial outer-worlds that have raised temples in Rassilon's name.”
“Against my express edict.”
The Other loomed over him. “Then have the statues torn down. Or strike them with a thunderbolt.”
“Now that's a power you never offered me,” said Rassilon with a wry smile.
Anger brewed in his prisoner's eyes. “I won't be tied by a blood-bargain or a pact. I was merely sent on approval.”
“On my approval, or yours?”
The Other gave a cold smile. “Rassilon, the People's God. How very quaint.”
“A state of affairs for which, you naturally take no responsibility.”
“I advise. You don't have to listen.”
“But you're too valuable to dismiss!”
“I will not be chained!” With a snarl, the Other smashed his fist against the energy nets. Purple sparks showered among the roses.
Rassilon backed away from the figure. “Who are you?” “What do you want with us?”
The darkness of the figure grew in the smoky sunlight. “I'm bored. Bored with wielding great power. Who wants to be a player, when he could be a pawn in the thick of the game?”
“You? Give up power and manipulation?” laughed Rassilon.
The Other snapped his fingers. There was an explosion in the cold air. The energy web disintegrated. And the Hand of Omega was at his side. Rassilon eyed the box. Steam drifted off its surface. It crackled to itself.
“You'll never give it up,” he said. “What about your Family? The ones you think you keep hidden? Will you take them too?”
“Rule wisely, Rassilon,” said the Other. “And be wary of your disciples, lest they worship the icons and not the man.”
He walked down from the tower unhindered, the box following.
“Guards!” shouted Rassilon. “Seal the ports and time wharfs. No one must leave!”
The Other stood on the steps before a new municipal building, gazing down across the city. The box was at his side.
Passing citizens ignored him. “Go,” he said to the box, but it had gone already.
There was a flash in the sky followed by the echoing boom of an explosion. A ball of flame billowed up over the miniature gantries of the distant space drome. He walked against the stream of people running from the building. The Gates and sealed doors opened as if they recognized the Other. He ignored the DANGER signs and marched unchallenged, straight through to the heart of the complex. An immense vault opened above and below, its oval shell veined with whispering instrumentation.
“Warning,” declared a synthetic voice. “Protective attire must be worn in the progenitive chamber.”
The Other, out along a walkway that spanned the chamber. Out through that calm air of expectancy peculiar and seminal to sacred places. The watchers lingered at the entrance. The Other had halted just before the centre of the bridge. A drone of rising power began to surge through the chamber. Klaxons began to bellow. The tiny massive cloaked shape of the Other figure, had turned to watch them. As the group turned in confusion, the energy surge peaked. A torrent of light fell in dazzling, twisting plumes from the upper pole of the chamber. It struck through an eye at the bridge's centre. The Other stepped into the light. The raw energy, a fierce, primal, living stuff, painful to look at, consumed the man's shape utterly. There was the sound of a great, whispered sigh. The Other died in the energy of the open progenitive cascades, just as the Pythia threw herself into the Crevasse of Memories. This chamber was the original Loom. The Prime Distributor that fed the subsidiary Looms in the Houses.
Before he died he gave the Hand of Omega instructions. “Go find the TARDIS and fly her into the future and wait for me.” Before he went into the chamber he programmed it to loom his exact DNA in the future after Rassilon dies.
***
The Gallifreyan empire came to an end. It was now only the planet itself. Rassilon decreed noninterference with the outside world throughout all time and space. Time Lords were only the ones that could leave and only with permission from the High Council. But there were many explorers and eventually that would even come to an end. Rassilon became obsessed with immortality and eventually did achieve it, but his ultimate plan was beings of pure consciousness. The Time Lords thought he was mad and locked him up in a tower, which they called his tomb. They elected a new Lord President.
Future generations wrote his biography as a hero, wise man, a god. But the truth was in the mix in a religious belief system called the Order. At the same time the Time Lords decided not adventure out the High Council decided to remove the religious system. There were only a few members left. Other religious system also rose before the removal of Rassilon, the Faction Paradox cult and the Cult of Vampire Rassilon. After Rassilon was imprisoned it would not be until several million years later the Doctor would be born.
To Be Continued...
in The Doctor’s Childhood
Sources:
TV: An Unearthly Child, The Chase, The Time Meddler, The Five Doctors, Remembrance of the Daleks, Ep. 2 The End of Time, A Good Man Goes to War
Books: NA05 Cat's Cradle Time's Crucible, NA07 Cat's Cradle Witchmark, NA38 Human Nature, NA56 So Vile a Sin, NA60 Lungbarrow, MA01 Goth Opera, MA29 Cold Fusion, BBC825 Interference Book One
Spinoff: BBC The Infinity Doctors
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