Wow, that was a good one. I really enjoyed writing the part with the doctor and the sorceress. I wan't planning to do that, but I have a great, evil idea at the end of Flesh and Stone, with Amy and the doctor.
You'll have to wait and see..... Anyway... on with the story.
"Up look up."
They all stare around them, a bit dazed. The sorceress blinks a couple of times as she gets used to the new surroundings. The doctor holds out his hand to help her up.
"You ok?" he asks her.
"Yeah, I knew this was gonna happen, and it still confuses me," she answers.
He smiles at her and wraps an arm around her comfortingly. They look over to see Amy and River talking. Amy looks up, confused and gasps.
"Move your feet," the doctor tells her and comes over to them.
She moves her feet off the thing in the floor, and the sorceress pulls out her pink sonic and buzzes it.
"Doctor, what am I looking at? Explain," Amy instructs him.
"Oh, come on Amelia, think," the sorceress tells her.
"The ship crashed with the power still on, yeah?" The doctor adds, "So what else is still on?"
Amy thinks for a moment, as the sorceress continues talking, "The artificial gravity. One good jump, and up we fell. Shot out the grav-globe to give us an updraft, and here we are!"
She points the sonic back at the circle.
Octavian looks up as he says, "Doctor. The statues, they look more like Angels now."
"They're feeding on the radiation from the wreckage, draining all the power from the ship, restoring themselves. Within an hour, they'll be an army," The doctor replies, as he tries to hurry the sorceress.
She glares at him as the circle opens up into the inside of the ship, just as the lights begin to go out.
"They're taking out the lights," the doctor points out, "Look at them, look at the angels. Into the ship, now, quickly all of you!"
The doctor jumps into the hole, and the sorceress jumps in after him.
"How?" Amy asks as she peers over the edge, to see the two timelords standing upright.
"It's just a corridor," the sorceress smiles, "The gravity orientates to the floor. Now, in here, all of you. Don't take your eyes off the Angels. Move, move, move!"
She buzzes her sonic again at the keypad.
Octavian calls out to his men, "Ok, men, go, go, go! The Angels, presumably they can jump up too?"
Everyone crowds into the corridor and the door closes behind them.
"They're here. Now. In the dark, we're finished. Run!" The doctor tells them.
They run through the corridor, and again a large door closes behind the, blocking off their entry.
"This whole place is a death trap," Octavian whispers.
"Nah, it's a time bomb," The sorceress jokes.
"Well. it's a death trap and a time bomb. And now it's a dead end. Nobody panic," The doctor corrects.
They hear sounds as the Angels attempt to come through the door. The sorceress' hand finds the doctor's and she grasps it firmly.
He looks over to her and smiles, "Not just me, great. What's through here?"
"Secondary flight deck," River answers.
"Ok, so we've basically run up the inside of a chimney, yeah?" Amy asks, "So what if the gravity fails?"
River begins to work on bypassing the power as the doctor replies to Amy's question, "I've thought about that."
The sorceress gives him a look, "Is it a helpful answer? Or a stupid one?"
"I don't make stupid answers," he protests.
"Yeah, you do," Amy agrees.
The sorceress smiles at her, "We plunge to our deaths. He thought about it, am I right?"
She turns to him and he nods glumly, "The security protocols are still live. There's no way to override them, it's impossible."
"How impossible," River asks, pausing her work for a second.
"two minutes."
They all hear the humming sound of engines powering down. The way out had reopened giving them all a clear view of outside.
"The hull is breached and the power's failing," Octavian tells.
All the light go out, and as they flicker an arm of an angel can be seen, poking through the hatch. The sorceress tenses and the doctor draws her closer to him.
"Sir! Incoming!" A cleric shouts.
"Doctor! Lights," Amy says.
The sorceress lets go of the doctor's hand and rushes over to help her best friend with her sonic. The lights flick back an as she works.
"Clerics, keep watching them," Octavian instructs his men.
"And don't look at their eyes," The doctor reminds, thinking about the sorceress, "Anywhere else. Not the eyes. I've isolated the lighting grid. They can't drain the power now."
"Good work, doctor," Octavian congratulates.
"Yes, good. Good in many ways, good you like it so far..." he rambles, his thoughts wandering.
"So far?" Amy interrupts.
"Well, there's only one way to open this door. I guess I'll need to route all the power in this section through the door control," he tells her.
"Good, fine, do it," Octavian hurries.
"Including the lights. All of them. I'll need to out the lights," The doctor elaborates.
"How long for," The sorceress asks, from her position next to river.
"Faction of a second, maybe longer. Maybe quite a bit longer," the doctor answers.
The sorceress gets up, and brushes off the invisible dust from her skirt.
"Maybe?" Octavian asks.
"I'm guessing. We're being attacked by statues in a crashed ship, there isn't a manual for this!" The doctor kinda yells.
The sorceress walks up to him, sliding her hand into his again. He gives a thankful smile.
"Doctor, we lost the torches. We'll be in total darkness," Amy retorts.
"No other way," The sorceress tells her, sternly.
"Bishop?" the doctor asks him.
"Dr Song, I've lost good Clerics today. You trust this man and his lover?"
The doctor almost chocked when he heard that word, "lover?!?!"
The sorceress just stands still, shocked, wide eyes.
"Oh, come on," Amy says, in her rough Scottish accent, "It has to be you two. I've seen the way you two act. And you're literally holding hands...."
They look down at their conjoined hands, and break apart immediately.
"Doesn't matter," Octavian interrupts, "Do you trust them?"
"I absolutely trust them," River says.
"They're not some kind of madman then?" Octavian asks.
River tenses as she repeats in the same voice, "I absolutely trust them."
"Excuse us," the doctor says to them, and drags the sorceress off to work on the door.
"I'm taking your word, because you're the only one who can manage this guy. But that only works so long as he doesn't know who you are. You cost me any more men, and I might just tell him. Understood?" Octavian whispers to her.
"Understood," River says.
"Ok. Doctor, we've got your back," Octavian calls to him.
"Bless you. Bishop," the doctor says to him, making the sorceress giggle.
He smiles at her and Octavian addresses his clerics, "Combat distance, ten feet. As soon as the lights go down, continuous fire. Full spread over the hostiles. Do not stop firing while the lights are out. Shot gun protocol, we don't have bullets to waste."
"Sorceress," the doctor says, as he turns to her, "When the lights go down, the wheel should release. Spin it clockwise, four turns."
"Ten," the sorceress found herself saying.
"No, four, four turns," the doctor corrects.
"yeah, four turns, I heard," the sorceress agrees, frowning at him.
He shrugs and she takes her position in front of the door, both hands grasping the wheel.
"Ready!" The doctor calls as he places his sonic into the circuit he was working at.
"On my count then," Octavian tells them all, "God be with us all. Three..... two.... one. Fire!"
The lights go out, and the ring of bullets sounds in the air. The sorceress grasps the wheel tighter as she turns it. Once. Twice. Thrice. Four times. The door swings open, as they all slip through.
"Fall back!" Octavian calls to his clerics.
They walk back slowly, the door being held open by the sorceress and Octavian. One by one they climb through. The sorceress is the last to go through, and she slips daintily through, the door closing just behind her. She lets out a breath as she smiles up at the doctor.
"Doctor..." she grins.
They look around them, carefully examining the flight deck around them. It lays in disuse and disrepair, everything either broken or torn. The sorceress wipes the dust of a chair, before sitting down on it.
"Magnetized the door," Octavian tells them, "Nothing could turn that wheel now."
The sorceress watches as the wheel slowly turns, "Oh yeah?"
"Dear God," Octavian exclaims.
"Ah, now you're getting it! You've brought us time though, that's good. I am good with time," the doctor tells him.
"Doctor!" Amy warns as another wheel begins to turn.
"Seal that door. Seal it now!" Octavian tells one cleric.
The cleric rushes over to the door and places a device on it. The wheel slows down its spinning.
"We're surrounded!" River panics.
The third wheel begins to spin and another cleric rushes forwards at Octavian's command, to magnetize it as well.
"Doctor? How long have we got?" Octavian asks after the last door had been magnetized.
"Five minutes, max," the doctor answers looking at his watch.
The sorceress mouth moves against her will, as she says, "Nine."
The doctor looks over at her relaxed form on the chair, "Five."
"Five, right yeah," she sighs tiredly.
"Why did you say nine?" The doctor asks her.
"I really didn't" The sorceress argues/
"We need another way out of here," River calls to the doctor, and he shakes his head, dismissing it as she didn't hear the facts correctly.
"There isn't one," Octavian points out.
The sorceress shakes her head, "Of course there's a way out. This is a galaxy class ship, goes for years between planet-falls. So," she snaps her fingers, making the doctor chuckle, "what do they need."
"Of course," River thinks.
The sorceress smiles and gets up from her chair, stretching.
"Of course, what?" Amy asks, "What do they need?"
"Can we get in there?" Octavian interrupts.
"Well it's a sealed unit, but they have installed it somehow. This whole wall should slide up," the sorceress says as she presses against the far, back wall, "There's clamps. Release the clamps!"
She pulls out her sonic again, the doctor looking at with distaste. She uses it on the clamps, and they release.
"Oh, get over it," the sorceress says, looking at the doctor as she waves the sonic, "It does it's job."
"What's through there? What do they need?" Amy asks again.
"They need to breathe," River says, as the door slowly rises open.
The sorceress smiles at the doctor and hugs him.
"But that's.... that's a," Amy stutters awestruck.
The door finishes opening, and it reveals a large portion of trees and plants, growing over the ship.
The sorceress breathes in deeply, "It's an oxygen factory."
"It's a forest," Amy concludes finally.
"Yeah, it's a forest, it's an oxygen factory," the doctor agrees.
"And if we're lucky, an escape route," River explains.
The sorceress smiles as she says, "Eight."
"What did you say?" River asks.
"Nothing," The sorceress answers, sick of having this conversation.
"Is there another exit? Scan the architecture, we don't have time to get lost in there."
"On it!" Octavian shouts, as he steps into the forest, "Stay where you are until I've checked the Rad levels."
"But trees!" Amy exclaims, "On a space ship?"
"Oh, more than trees, way better than trees. You're going to love this," the doctor says as he steps into the forest, the sorceress shaking her head and smiling after him, "Treeborgs... Trees plus technology. Branches become cables, become sensors on the hull. A forest sucking in starlight, breathing out air. It even rains. There's a whole mini-climate. It is an eco-pod running through the heart of the ship. A forest in a bottle, on a space ship, in a maze. Have I impressed you yet, Amy Pond?"
He shows her the technology and the sorceress smiles to herself, and walks over to him.
"There, you go. You've got your impression in," she says to him.
"Yeah," he says
"Seven?" The sorceress smiles.
"Seven?" he questions.
"Seven?"
"You said seven," he says, his eyes searching the sorceress' face.
"For the millionth time, I didn't say anything," The sorceress sighs.
She walks away from him, leaving him saying, "Yes you did," under his breath.
He stares after her, worried.
"Doctor!" Octavian calls, and the doctor turns to face him, "There's an exit, far end of the end of the ship, into the primary flight deck."
"Good," the doctor mumbles, still deep in thought, then her repeats it louder, "Good. that's where we need to go."
"Plotting a safe path," Octavian tells him.
The doctor nods, and follows the way the sorceress left. He puts a hand on her retreating form, stopping her.
"Hey," he says.
"Hey," she whispers tiredly.
"Are you keeping something from me?" he asks her.
She pauses before answering him, still not looking into his face, "No...."
He was about to ask something else, but the radio he kept on himself, crackles again and Bob speaks again.
"Sorceress?" he says, and the sorceress snatches the radio from the doctor, "Excuse me. Hello, sorceress? Angel Bob here."
"Hello, Bobby," she jokes, making her way back to the chair he was sitting in before, "How's life? Sorry, bad subject."
The doctor and Amy follow her, as the Angel keeps speaking, "The angels are wondering what you hope to achieve."
"Achieve?" The sorceress questions, "We're not achieving anything. We're just hanging. It's nice in here. consoles, comfy chairs, a forest. How's things with you?"
"The angels are feasting, sorceress. Soon we will be able to absorb enough power to consume this vessel, this worlds, and all the stars and worlds beyond."
The doctor leans over the sorceress, "Did she mention that we have comfy chairs?"
The sorceress giggles, and pushes him away.
"We have no need of comfy chairs," Bob replies in his monotone voice.
"I made him say comfy chairs," the doctor jokes to the two girls.
"Six," The sorceress laughs.
The doctor sweeps in front of the sorceress, and to her dismay takes the radio off her, "Ok, well, enough chat. Here's what I want to know: what have you done with the sorceress?"
The sorceress opens her mouth and closes her mouth, tears coming to her eyes. The doctor glances over at her, his forehead crinkling in concern.
"There's something in her eye," Bob tells him.
"What's in her eye?" The doctor says, deathly quiet.
"We are," Bob answers.
The doctor looks over at the sorceress as she gets up.
"I'm five," the sorceress tries to say, "I mean, five. Fine! I'm fine."
She falls to the floor in dismay, the doctor rushing over to her in concern.
"You knew this was going to happen," he asks.
She nods her head, and brings her legs up to her body, cradling them. The doctor looks at her gloomily as he asks her one last question.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
She looks down at her feet and back up at him, "I couldn't."
He nods dismally, "You're counting."
"Yeah, I know," she says.
"You could hear yourself?" The doctor asks.
"No, but you guys wouldn't shut up about me mysteriously saying numbers. And I can count, so.... yeah."
Bob's voice comes over again, "We shall take her, We shall take all of you. We shall have dominion over all time and space."
"Get a life, Bob. Oops sorry. There's power on this ship, but nowhere near that much."
A screeching sound can be heard through the ship and the sorceress puts her hands over her ears.
"Dear God, what is it?" River asks Bob.
"It's hard to put in your terms, Dr Song, but as best as I understand it, the Angels are laughing," Bob tells them.