The Last Great Time War: part II

Eternal perspective

The Warrior awoke with a splitting headache on the cold metal TARDIS floor. Several of the roundels on the walls were blown out, and the rest were dimmer.
He got up, untangled his legs from the mess of cables on the floor, and staggered to the console. The Warrior cursed when he saw that the TARDIS was in need of major repairs. Not that he was surprised.

The doors swung open on their own, and the Warrior walked outside.

Peace had finally returned to the Medusa Cascade. In the sky, a dim yellow aurora and some floating bits of wreckage were all that were left of the once mighty battle. To most beings, the fading glow of energy from the scar of the rift and the De-mat blast was not even visible. Soon it would be gone completely.

The moon the Warrior was on had been partially blown away by the devastating wave of time energy. The rest was covered with lava and iridescent glass, somehow retaining just enough air to survive.

The gleaming, colorful surface of the ground clicked and squeaked as the Warrior walked to the base of a peak, where several figures waited for him.

"Oh no," the Warrior said before they could hear him. He knew who these people were, and knew better than to trust them. Even though they were almost certainly the ones who preserved a breathable atmosphere.

A man and a woman stood at the front, with about thirty others behind.
"Hello, Doctor, Warrior, Renegade," said the man. "I am Time."
"And I am Death," said the woman. These were the Eternals, transcendent semi-immortal beings who were once worshipped as gods on Gallifrey.

"What do you want with me," the Warrior said. "I have enough on my plate as it is."

"This is important," said Time.

"I get that a lot. People I meet are always telling that there's Daleks or Degradations or Travesties or whatever on such and such planet, or please save my family member or friend and how could you be so heartless and so on and so on. I'm truly sorry, but I don't have time to save individual people or sometimes even planets at a time. I'll save far more by putting a stop to this War. Besides, I know your motives. You play with people's lives for your own entertainment. You treat living beings as playthings. If you are gods, you are petty gods, and I don't have time for you."

"This War has ravaged the space-time continuum," said Death. "In the center of the War millions are killed every day, only to be brought back and killed again and again."

"Tell me something I don't know," the Warrior said. "I'll bet I've been out there for more relative time than all of you put together. If you have something important that I haven't already seen or heard about, then by all means tell me. If not, let me wait out my TARDIS repairs in peace."

"You must take us seriously," said Time. "The flow of cause and effect has been disrupted. Soon it will break, and vast swaths of reality will lose all coherence."

"That has already happened."

"Not like we have foreseen," said Death. "Shapes of things lost from time will re-emerge into existence, to destroy all structure and order and harmony. The Children of the Howling will sweep across creation, devouring and destroying all that they can. Even the terrors of the War that already haunt the cosmos will quail before them. The Time Lords will not stand a chance. The end of time will come, and creation will cease forever."

"So what am I to do about it," the Warrior asked.

"There is nothing you CAN do," said Time. "These things are not to be averted."

"Then why tell me?"

"Because we offer you a chance," said Death. "The Eternals admire you. While we have used the lives of fledgling races as our toys and fled from true danger, you have fought at the forefront of doom to save them, even to the cost of your own life.
This reality cannot be saved. It will come to utter ruin and fall into darkness and oblivion. Before that happens, we will flee into the Howling and construct a new one of our own, safe from the War. We invite you to come with us, and live."

"So you've given up, then," the Warrior said. "You're just going to turn tail and run away. Well I haven't given up. Even if it takes all of my last regenerations, even if I have to steal more, even if I can't finish the work myself, I will not rest until this War is ended and the universes are saved."

"You do not know the true extent of the oncoming storm," said Time and Death simultaneously. "This is your last chance to save yourself. Come with us and live!"

"No," said the Warrior. " I AM the Oncoming Storm. I'm either going to save creation or go down with it. Goodbye."

"Are you sure," the Eternals said. They didn't wait long for an answer. The look in the Warrior's eyes said everything. The next moment, they were gone, never to be seen again.

The Warrior walked and climbed up the huge glassy peak ahead of him. For hours he went, until he was well over a mile higher, at the very top.

At the summit of the mountain, there was a roiling lake of molten lava, billowing off noxious fumes and spilling out through a gash on the other side. It was several hundred feet across. The Warrior waited for the wind to blow the heat away before getting closer. Even so, the air felt like an oven, and the rocks were literally hot enough to fry an egg on. The Warrior walked around the rim. On the other side, he could see the river of molten rock pouring from the lake and meandering for several miles, before plunging into the colossal molten basin that covered a third of the moon. This was where the Warrior's homemade superweapon had stripped away the moon's outer layers.

Although he did not know it, the planetoid on which he stood would later become renowned as the fifteenth broken moon of the Medusa Cascade. After the War, the lava would all cool into shimmering glass, turned rainbow and iridescent by the touch of the time energy. On this spot would be built a colossal obelisk surrounded by a garden, a monument and a memorial to a terrible, incomprehensible War.

What the Warrior did know was that he could not let the Eternal's prophesy be fulfilled. He took off the ragged, burned, bloodstained, stitched, patched jacket that he wore. It was the last item of clothing from when he was still the Doctor, still full of naive optimism. He held the ragged, once green coat aloft for a moment. Then, he cast it into the volcano and watched it burn to dust and ash. The last remnant of the Doctor was gone. No more.