The Temple rocked with the anger of Tempos/Schlack.

 "I WILL BE FREE"

 "Lady Romana!" Dolon raced to tend to his President, but could elicit no response.

 Zoe screamed as the first chunks of the temple stone begun to fall. The entrance crumpled in and dust and debris rained everywhere.

 "THE CORRIDOR IS BROKEN! I AM FREE!"

 *************

 Chapter 11 - "Fallout"
by Alan Taylor

 Dolon shouted out over the noise of the temple collapsing. "Zoe! Help me! We have to get her free!"

 Zoe looked around her quickly. The earth was shaking under her feet, and she doubted that she could make it safely to Romana. But then, she doubted she could make it safely to the exit, either. So she ran deeper into the temple, to where Dolon struggled with Romana's body.

 A large rock had fallen awkwardly, trapping Romana's leg. Romana was still unconscious, and Dolon was sweating profusely as he wrestled to free his president.

 "What do you want me to do?" shouted Zoe.

 Dolon turned to face her. "Pardon?"

 Then Zoe screamed, and when Dolon turned he saw the earth opening up under Romana and her body slipping away, out of reach forever.

 The time corridor closed, the fierce winds stopped, and calm returned to Delphi.

 Tempos stood and surveyed the view around him. Directly in front of him, two figures were struggling from the wreckage of the temple of Delphi, while slightly off to the right, and just below where the time corridor had been, a Trion heavy cruiser landed awkwardly.

 Behind him, there was a small explosion, which he knew to be a Trion escape capsule exploding.

 He knew everything, because he was everywhere, and everywhen.

 He reached through space-time and plucked two individuals, bringing them to stand at his feet.

 One-of-many, Rubenstein, looked up at her God. He stood about eight feet tall, a perfectly proportioned male humanoid, wreathed in flame. His eyes looked down at her dispassionately.

 "Thank you," he said, and his voice was cold.

 Olec looked up at Schlack. The experience had changed him. When she had known him, he had been an ugly man in his fifties, but sweet and loving, always keen to explore new possibilities, always keen to investigate, always laughing.

 His lips were thin now, and fixed in an expression of neither pleasure nor anger.

 "How long?" she asked.

 "Too long," he replied, with a voice of infinite weariness.

 "And now we free my people?" asked Rubenstein.

 "Soon," replied Schlack/Tempos. "No deed of kindness should go unrewarded."

 "Where's Romana?" asked Demck. Then she saw the look on Dolon's face and regretted asking.

 "Where's Troilus?" asked Vicki.

 Zoe wordlessly indicated the fireball that marked the remains of the pirate escape capsule.

 "Are we all that's left?" asked Vicki. "All that's left to stop... that?"

 Tempos was clearly visible even from a distance due to his height and his flaming corona. He seemed to be simply standing on a small hill, not doing anything.

 "Perhaps he's weak," suggested Dolon. "Perhaps he hasn't mastered his powers."

 "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" asked Demck. They nodded at each other, one humanoid, one walrusoid, drew their guns, and prepare to approach Tempos from behind.

 "Typical men," said Zoe. "Jamie and the Doctor were just the same. Run off and leave us mere women behind."

 Vicki smiled.

 "So you remember the Doctor then?"

 "Yes," said Zoe, puzzled, "I do. I wonder when that happened."

 "Probably," said a voice behind them, "when Tempos rebuilt your mind."

 Zoe and Vicki turned to see the speaker.

 She was a short woman who appeared to be in her late forties, about five feet tall, and similar in width. The had a pile of curly black hair arranged around a podgy, matronly face. A white dress clung to her body, emphasising every unsightly contour, and dragging along the ground, as though it had been made for a slimmer, taller woman. Her head was held high, and her eyes had a fiery authority behind them that might have been almost playful. There was something almost regal and oddly elegant about her.

 "Don't just stand there gaping," she continued. "I don't know about you, but I am going back to my TARDIS to try to repair the damage that has been done before it gets out of hand."

 Zoe turned to look at Vicki. "Romana?" they mouthed at each other silently, and as the newcomer flounced off, they followed.

 Rubenstein felt Tempos' power surging through her, felt herself becoming one with time and space, seeing the universe as he saw it. She saw the patterns of the universe, the rises and falls, the textures of cause and effect.

 She saw the destruction of the Seren homeworld, a minor casualty in the Sontaran/Rutan story, but an essential part of Tempos' own creation. She knew that she could undo that destruction. She chose not to, though. She had tasted power, she did not want to risk destroying that power.

 No. That was wrong. The whole point of this power was to save her homeworld.

 No. She had power. She had to keep it.

 No. She had to save her race.

 No.

 And then she saw herself, from Tempos' point of view. Nothing. Irrelevant. A tool, at best. He had never intended to save her race, had never intended to give Trions power over time.

 Olec screamed first as Tempos absorbed her and Rubenstein, growing stronger, taller, brighter.

 Tempos had tasted power, and wanted more.

 A good soldier never abandons his comrades.

 Then he found them.

 426ahw had been torn into about a dozen pieces, fragments of various sizes, dripping green ichor from a range of wounds.

 The side of Turlough's chest had been trapped under a falling girder, impaling him almost directly through the heart. One side of his face was a bloody mess. His breathing had stopped and there was no sign of life, no breath. His expression, in death, was almost smiling.

 His duties discharged, Troilus hauled himself from the wreckage, in time to see Tempos raising his arms and floating slowly upwards into the sky, passing in front of the sun, and vanishing.

 He fell to his knees and prayed to Apollo.

 "Now he's gone, we should head back to our - to my TARDIS," suggested Dolon. "The High Council must be informed of developments. Only a miracle can save the universe now."

 "Zoe, can you trace the temporal signature of the probe?" she asked the younger woman, waving her in the general direction of the relevant controls.

 "I think so," said Zoe, hastily setting to work. "The Mangaria?"

 "Purged when I regenerated."

 Vicki looked at Romana in awe.

 "What... How... What...?"

 Romana smiled. "It's a Time Lord thing, Vicki. Sort of stressful, though. Takes a lot out of you." She yawned. "I could do with a nap, but it isn't really a good time, what with saving the universe and everything."

 She laughed, a high pitched nasal screech, reminding Vicki of a horse sneezing.

 "Is there anything I can do to help?" asked Vicki.

 "Did the Doctor ever teach you anything about how the TARDIS works?" asked Romana. She was leaning against a wall now, looking very pale.

 "A little."

 "Hopefully enough. This is what you need to do..."

 So he picked a planet; just a small one that nobody would miss. Four hundred million ursine and leonine life forms, with only a rudimentary mastery of language. Wiping them out was fairly straightforward, and gave him only a small thrill of pleasure. For a moment his light flared brighter, then he funnelled the energy he had freed back into the time rift.

 It made a useful storage place, since it had been his home for so long, bouncing to and from opposite ends of eternity. Unbreachable, easily accessible to him, perfect.

 More power. Another planet. This time, a more advanced world, the rogue world of Mondas, with an extensive population of humans and a handful of cybernetic entities.

 So easy to destroy it, and how delicious the consequences would be. He reached out to destroy it, and ....

 Nothing happened.

 He reached out again.

 Still nothing.

 He reached for the time rift, summoning fresh power.

 Nothing. The time rift had gone. Instead, there was just ... A tree?

 No, not a tree, but something that looked like a tree. Something that looked like a tree but had a multiplicity of dimensions and had somehow materialised itself around his time rift.

 With a roar, he summoned up the last of his energy and blasted Romana's TARDIS.

 There was a noise like a belch, and Schlack's corpse appeared ten feet from the earth, his flesh burning. He landed awkwardly, his limbs splayed out beneath him.

 "Like that?" asked Demck.

 Zoe had been touched by the tenderness between Vicki and Troilus at their reunion, and the reserved greetings between the new Romana and Dolon that hinted that he would follow her anywhere for reasons other than duty.

 Demck had wiped away a single tear when he heard about 462ahw, and clearly hoped that nobody had seen.

 They buried 462ahw and Schlack together, with the charred remains of Olec and Rubenstein, in a small grove behind the remains of the Oracle. Romana officiated at a simple ceremony, with a theme of forgiveness and gratitude.

 Zoe had looked up at the sky as Romana spoke, remembering the frantic moments in the president's TARDIS after Romana's collapse, when she had shouted temporal co-ordinates to Vicki, who had stabbed them in half-remembered patterns into the dematerialisation controls. Those few frantic moments seemed so far away, so far removed from the tranquillity of "Ancient Greece".

 It was not her sky, though. She had to go home.

 They had extricated Turlough's corpse from the wreckage, covered him with a simple black flag and placed him in cold storage deep in Romana's TARDIS. A hero's funeral was waiting for him, back in his own time.

 Vicki had agreed to join Zoe for the funeral, but Troilus had declined, explaining that he had had enough of the future for a while. Vicki had kissed him on the cheek before they left, and promised him she would return.

 He did not doubt it.

 EPILOGUE

 Zoe wiped a tear from her eye as she watched the slow progression of the Trion state funeral cortege, the flag-covered body of Vislor Turlough being carried ceremoniously to the pyre. The huge hangar of the Trion Space Transport Meriliuegh was an incongruous place to hold the ceremony, but Trion was once more on the brink of civil war, and it seemed wisest.

 "Born from the fire, he returns to the fire," intoned a priest, his decorative robes representing flames.

 "Don't blame yourself," whispered Vicki in her ear, "he knew what he was doing,"

 "But it was my message that brought him back, and if he hadn't come back in time, he would still be alive."

 "Zoe, he saved us all. Without him, everyone would be dead, All of us."

 Vicki put her arm around Zoe and hugged her. Zoe found herself, oddly, wishing that Romana had not been required on Gallifrey, and had to leave..

 Romana had not left.

 She was sitting in her TARDIS, disguised as a shuttle in the corner of the hanger, drinking tea, clumsily with her fatter fingers, and conversing with her companion as they watched the funeral.

 "How does it feel?" she asked.

 There was a pause.

 "Strange," her companion replied, turning to face her. The bright lights of the TARDIS reflected off the metallic plates covering the right side of his face, and gave a slight sparkle to the dull red of his artificial eye. "And a little confused. I still don't know why we have to go through with this pretence."

 "It's a matter of secrecy, Turlough," Romana explained. "I need an agent, someone to be my eyes and ears in places I cannot go. Someone invisible."

 "Someone dead?"

 "It's convenient. But ultimately the choice is yours. You can walk out of the door, explain it was all a terrible mistake, and never see me again, or you can take up my offer and travel through time, observing, recording and...."

 She let her voice trail away, leaving the word "intervening" hovering silently in the air between them.

 "Would I get my own TARDIS?" he asked.

 "With the implants in your cybernetic enhancements you won't need one. Effectively, you are your own TARDIS."

 "You know," he said, grinning lopsidedly. "This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

 "Don't count on it," she replied.

 And as Turlough's "body" was set alight, nobody noticed a shuttle dematerialise, a slight fluttering of papers, and then nothing.