"Once, a long time ago, we were the Time Lords. But that was many universes past, and now we are confined to the time vortex. But we have brought an evil with us into every new universe that forms, which we cannot defeat. Time itself goes beyond the universe, and in each universe has provided an answer: the Three. Long have we sought them: the Redeemed, the Champion, and the Holy Man. But the Dark One's servant has moved faster than we have, and we fear that it is already too late."

 -- Author unknown, found in a cave on Gallifrey, dated to the Time of Chaos

 The Master looked at the smiling people in his slightly aristocratic fashion. He knew it didn't attract people to him, but he had always lacked the Doctor's skill with people. At least now he was helping people rather than trying to kill them.

 "Thank you," the Time Lord said, accepting the medal offered with as much grace as he could manage. The mayor of the village he had just helped nodded.

 "If I may ask a question," the mayor said hopefully. The Master simply nodded. "Why did you help us? You could have left on several occasions, but you still stayed."

 "One day, a long time ago, I would have," the Master replied. "But on one of those days, after I had regained this favourite form of mine, I looked at what I had accomplished and realized that it was nothing. Then, I looked at what my rival had accomplished, and realized it was everything. So, with most of my life behind me, I decided to change."

 The mayor nodded, and the Master made his way back to his TARDIS as quickly as he could. He was still having trouble thinking of it as his TARDIS; the last incarnation of the Doctor had given it to him freely after retiring to Earth with Carrie, but the Master still felt as though he was a stranger in it. He just hoped that after thirteen thousand years, he could do what the Doctor had done. He would do it far in the future, of course. The Time Lords couldn't track him past a point roughly equal to 10,000,000 A.D. on Earth, and so he had been operating two million years after that.

 It was after two hours of flight when the Master realized that something was wrong with the TARDIS.

 "By Rassilon!" the Master cursed, desperately fiddling with the controls. The TARDIS was heading towards event zero with incredible speed, despite his best efforts to stop it.

 "TARDIS! Vocal override: emergency landing!" the Master shouted, looking at the time readout; he only had two million years before event zero, and the TARDIS had accelerated to a million years a minute. His command went without notice. Suddenly, the TARDIS stopped.

 The Master looked at the time readout in shock. The TARDIS had stopped at the first millisecond of the Universe's creation. The Master turned on the scanner, looking out at the area. Somehow, there was a landscape outside, rocky but inhabitable.

 The Master stroked his graying beard. "Interesting. Impossible, but interesting."

 With nothing better to do, the Time Lord sat down to wait. He had a feeling that he wouldn't have to wait long.

 The being waited, watching as the time vortex slowly began to repair itself. The being could sense another hand at work, but it was unfamiliar with the species. The mortal who was helping the vortex repair itself was performing the task from a Time Lord computer; the being could tell that for certain.

 Finally, the vortex was repaired enough that the being could find an escape point. The being traveled through the universe, carrying a pocket of its own universe with it. Finally, it landed on a planet with bipedal inhabitants.

 The being traveled from inhabitant to inhabitant, completely unseen. The mortals could not yet perceive that they were being judged. Finally, the being prepared to act; the mortals had been judged worthy.

 The mortal screamed, blood streaming from his nose, mouth, ears and eyes. Slowly, the being destroyed the mortal's consciousness, the mortal falling to the earth in pain. The stream of blood ended, and the Dark One stood on corporeal feet once again.

 "Thank you Fenric!" the Dark One cried, lifting his arms into the air. He could sense that his servant was trapped and unable to accomplish anything anymore; it did not matter, though. Now the Dark One would control time and space, and Fenric would be released to do his bidding once again.

 But first the Dark One needed strength and power.

 The Dark One lifted his hands into the air, and willed the fires to come. All around him, he could feel the mortals around him flee in terror as the fire came to claim them, destroying their cities and then slowly and painfully consuming them. The lives released fed the Dark One the power he needed. With one iota of his power, he erected his tower. It was a tower that had stood in every universe, and there he had controlled time.

 But this time the Three would not bother him; he would see to that.

 He turned his attentions to the top of the tower, forming a rift in the time vortex at the summit.

 The Abbot ran as fast as he could, desperately hoping the angry mob behind him wouldn't catch up. The Abbot was rather flustered too; it was very rare when he made a mistake of this severity. Not only had he materialized on a world where all religious men were considered demons, but he had also arrived while there was a revolution in progress.

 From ahead he heard the sounds of another mob. The Abbot quickly turned into an alley in the plaza, hoping that the maze of streets would at least disorient his pursuers long enough for him to escape. He had a feeling that this particular research paper would have to wait. He heard one person behind him, and doubled his speed; already some of the natives were catching up to him.

 The Abbot came to a dead end. With the footsteps closing in behind him, the Time Lord unrolled his TARDIS scroll, and ran in, almost bumping his head on the entrance.

 Like most traveling Time Lords, the Abbot did have an emergency take-off procedure in case of difficulties like this. In the Abbot's case, one of the switches on his console both closed the door and placed the TARDIS into temporal orbit, allowing the Abbot to think of what to do next. The Abbot made full use of this; he barreled into the console and flipped the switch.

 As the doors closed, he heard a thump behind him. Obviously his quick pursuer had dived into the TARDIS right after he had. The Abbot drew his sword and turned to face him in one smooth motion. The Time Lord then found himself facing two surprises.

 First, the pursuer wasn't a man, but a slightly-built and fairly voluptuous woman.

 Second, she seemed to be even more worried than he was, pressing herself against the doors and staring at the edge of the Abbot's sword in sheer terror.

 "Who are you, and why are you here?" the Abbot demanded, trying to keep his voice steady.

 "You're a Time Lord?" the woman asked timidly.

 The Abbot approached, inadvertently forcing the woman to press herself farther into the doors. "I am. How do you know of us?"

 "I traveled with one of you," the woman stammered. "He called himself the Doctor."

 The Abbot dropped his sword to his side. "How did I guess? The second person to stow away on my TARDIS in fifty years, and she is also a former companion of the Doctor. So, who are you, and where will I find the Doctor now?"

 "My name is Peri," the woman said. "Peri Brown. But I don't travel with the Doctor now. Until just recently, I was the queen beside King Ycranos; that is, before they beheaded him."

 "And where are you from originally?" the Abbot asked, exasperation in his voice.

 "Earth. Twentieth century America to be precise."

 "The Doctor installs one of his companions as queen," the Abbot observed. "Why am I not surprised?"

 "He just left me!" Peri protested. "I want to know why."

 "Well, I have not seen the Doctor in around seventy-five years," the Abbot stated. "I will return you to your home planet, if that will suit you."

 "I suppose it will," Peri said, a dejected look on her face. The Abbot stepped over to the console, flipped some switches to order the TARDIS to set a course, and then looked up in alarm.

 The TARDIS was hurtling towards event zero. Whatever was causing this had yanked them from a temporal orbit, and the Abbot feared that he could do nothing to stop it.

 "Temporal orbit can last forever if I wanted it too," the Doctor said, relaxing in his armchair. "All it means is that the TARDIS is holding station at a particular point of time and space."

 Wil moved smoothly into a card trick, depositing the foam ball into his pocket. "And what is event zero?"

 "The creation of the universe," the Doctor replied. He leaned forward in his chair, turning to face the young jester. "Why do you ask?"

 "Because according to this panel, that is where we are going," Wil stated. "Is that bad?"

 The Doctor nearly dropped his cup of tea.

 Lady Romana, High President of the Time Lords of Gallifrey, looked with concern at the readout on her desk. She had been studying the aftermath of the recent collapse and restructuring of the Time Vortex for a week so far, and the recent developments were simply chilling.

 "If this is correct, Castellan, then we will never regain the full use of the vortex," Romana stated. The Castellan could only nod.

 After a moment of silence, the Castellan finally spoke. "We will try our best to reset the Eye of Harmony to make the best use of the vortex as we can, but most of the time capsules will be limited within a sixty million year range."

 "We must do better," Romana said coldly. "Improvise as much as you need to if it helps."

 She was about to say something else when the floor rose to meet her. The room shook violently and the lights went out, leaving a slight burning smell in the room. Romana stood up unsteadily.

 "Why is the power out?" the Lady President asked, a bit of alarm creeping into her voice. She could hear the Castellan fumbling around in the dark.

 "Lady President!" came a voice from her desk. "We are down to reserve power only! The Eye of Harmony has been destroyed! We need instructions!"

 Romana put her hands to her mouth in horror. With the Eye of Harmony destroyed, Gallifrey was no longer the home of the lords of time, but trapped slightly outside of it. To make matters worse, she had no idea of how to rectify the situation.

 "Doctor!" the Master said cheerfully. "So you have been called here too! At least our particular faction of Time Lord society is well represented." Behind him, Peri turned to look at the Doctor in confusion.

 "What are you doing here, Master of evil?" the Doctor demanded.

 The Master winced. "That takes some explaining," he began. "You see, I am around ten thousand years older than you are, and some things have changed..."

 "At last, the Three have arrived," came a new voice. "We made this place specially for you." The Time Lords and their companions turned to see several figures, clothed in white, regarding them.

 "Who are you?" the Abbot demanded. The Doctor turned to the Time Lord to see Peri beside him. His eyes widened in shock, but Peri didn't seem to recognize him fully. Perhaps that was all for the best.

 "We used to be the Time Lords of our universe, many eons ago," the figure explained. "You, Doctor, know more about us than you think; all of you do. You three have been reborn in each universe for one task."

 "This sounds like a bad movie," Peri muttered unhappily.

 "You once said that at the beginning of the universe there were two forces: one good and one evil. The evil force you called Fenric, and you did not know the fate of the good force. We are the good force, but you are mistaken about Fenric. He is only a servant of a far larger evil."

 Another figure stepped forward. "We saw our universe grow old and die, and found a way to survive: the only place that our physical laws could be preserved was in the time vortex, which has survived since the first universe. But where we were content simply to survive and observe, two of us wished to control. They were the Dark One and his servant Fenric. The Dark One began to destroy all so he could remake his own universe, but the Three rose to stop him. They imprisoned him in the vortex until the next universe rose, and his servant moved against the most powerful of them when he was reborn."

 The first figure began to speak again. "You are the Three in this universe. Long have we waited for you to be ready to fight the Dark One, but regardless of your readiness, he has already gained his freedom and eliminated the Time Lords."

 The Abbot gasped. "What do you mean? How could he have destroyed Gallifrey?"

 "He has trapped it outside of time," the second figure replied. "They are in no immediate danger, but they cannot interfere now. You three must stand against him, or he will destroy this universe, past, present, and future."

 "I don't understand," the Master said. "Why are we the Three'? Who are the Three'?"

 The first figure pointed to the Abbot. "He is the Holy Man. He has the greatest strength to stand alone, but he does not have the power."

 "How pleasant," the Abbot muttered.

 The figure now pointed to the Master. "You are the Redeemed. You were cast in the fires of evil, and now you may use those fires to fight evil. You already have started, and you must now be strong, even though that strength may come with difficulty."

 The Master was silent at this.

 The figure finally pointed at the Doctor. "And he is the Champion. He is both darkness and the light, and he will unify both the Redeemed and the Holy Man. Only together will you be able to defeat and trap the Dark One, as we cannot leave this place."

 The ground began to shake beneath the Time Lords' feet. The two figures looked up in dismay. "His reach has grown too long! He can now break into our domain! You must all flee, for we are destroyed! Fly! Run! Save yourselves and this universe!"

 The ground shaking violently beneath them, the Time Lords,Wil and Peri began to run towards the two TARDISes. They could feel the fabric of reality being slowly destroyed around them.

 "Into my TARDIS!" the Master shouted to Peri and the Abbot. "You don't have time to set up yours! Quickly!"

 The Master, Peri and the Abbot dove into the Master's TARDIS just as the Doctor and Wil ran into the Doctor's TARDIS. There was the grinding of the time rotors, and then the two time machines were gone.

 The first figure looked at the second one. "It has finally ended. He has won."

 "Not yet," the second figure said. "He is the darkness to our light. If he destroys us, then he can be destroyed."

 "If the Three are successful."

 "Yes."

 At that moment, there was a great light, and the first Time Lords finally passed into oblivion.

 "I mean that we have been pushed off course!" the Master snapped. "I am trying to land right now!" He stroked his goatee for a moment, and then flipped two switches. The TARDIS finally landed.

 "Where are we?" Peri inquired.

 The Master turned on the viewer, looking out around the landscape. His eyes met with a blue sky and rocky terrain, but nothing that indicated if the planet was hostile or peaceful.

 "We should explore," the Master said.

 "Is the atmosphere breathable?" Peri asked.

 The Master opened the TARDIS doors. "It was the first thing I checked."

 As the three time travelers stepped out and began to scout around, two beings watched them with satisfaction. They had come, just as the Great One had said they would.

 The Syrian advance was worrisome, but it could be stopped. At least, this time it would be, Captain Isaac Rabin of the Israeli armoured corps thought. He sat in his tank with his gunner and driver, waiting for the Arab tanks to cross over the hill. The waiting was the worst part of the battle, he thought.

 But nothing happened.

 He waited for another two hours, his tank battalion sitting in the hot sun. Finally the messages began to come in over the radio.

 "Isaac, where are they?" his second-in-command asked over the radio.

 Then the army began to advance over the hill. Rabin looked on in mystification; it looked like a group of infantry with edged weapons. Where were the tanks and missiles?

 "Confirm hostility before opening fire," Captain Rabin ordered. There was a host of affirmatives from his battalion.

 Then the first soldier stepped up to a tank, swung his sword, and sliced into the war machine as though it were hot butter. After a couple of slices, the tank exploded, its fuel lines cut.

 "Infantry is hostile, repeat, infantry is hostile," Rabin radioed. "Engage at will."

 The tanks opened fire with their machine guns, cutting down a few of the strange enemy soldiers. One of the enemies was cut in half by a machine gun burst, the two halves twitching as black blood stained the sand. Yet still the strange army advanced, cutting right through the tanks as though they were butter.

 It never occurred to Rabin to order a retreat; like many in the Israeli army, he would rather fight to the death than let the enemy gain Jerusalem. So, instead of a tactical retreat, Rabin ordered a flanking movement.

 Behind the strange infantry, an unearthly light began to glow. Suddenly, a blast of energy shot out of the glow. Rabin turned his scope to watch Jerusalem in horror.

 It was as if a high-yield nuclear warhead had been set off. The sky turned a bright white, and then purple. He could see the shock wave ripping through the city, followed closely by the fireball. The tank shook as the shock wave hit it, thankfully staying upright. Finally, the fireball mushroomed into the sky, and all that was left of the ancient city of Jerusalem was ashes.

 Rabin turned just in time to see the sword cut through his turret, and then there was darkness.

 He looked around the darkness, suppressing the alarm that was beginning to rise inside him. A familiar voice sent a chill down his spine.

 "At last, Doctor. I was beginning to fear you had lost yourself."

 The Doctor turned to see his worst nightmare standing before him, clad in the long black robes of a Gallifreyan court prosecutor.

 "What do you want, Valeyard?" the Doctor demanded, trying to keep his voice steady.

 The Valeyard smiled, and drew a long, naked sword out from his robes. "The time has come for a final reckoning, Doctor."

 The Abbot, Peri, and the Master had been captured within minutes of leaving the safety of the TARDIS, and were now being marched into a large temple.

 "Great," Peri complained. "They're probably going to want to sacrifice us, or something."

 "You're being silly," the Master said. "The chances of that happening are astronomical."

 "You'd be surprised at what has happened to me," Peri retorted.

 They were interrupted by a large pillar appearing in the middle of the room, made of multicoloured lights that seemed to weave an intricate pattern in the column.

 "I am the Great One," the column said. "All of you are known to me. You are the Master, who once knew me."

 "I cannot recollect ever having met you," the Master stated.

 "You have, but I had a different form then. You are the Abbot, the Holy Man."

 "I suppose I am," the Abbot stated. "Who are you?"

 The Great One ignored him. "And you are Peri, who carries the heir of King Ycranos in your womb."

 "I knew it had been a bit too fun there," Peri grumbled. Both the Abbot and the Master looked at her for a minute.

 "Oh my," the Master commented quietly.

 "Where is the Doctor?" the Great One asked.

 "We do not know," the Abbot replied. "We were separated."

 "This is not good," the Great One said. "I did not foresee this."

 "You did not answer the Abbot's question," the Master stated. "Who are you?"

 "I have seen your futures, for they are many," the column began. "You, Holy Man, will face your death. Only if you can pass beyond it will you succeed."

 "That will keep me guessing for a bit," the Abbot said.

 "You, Redeemed one, must pass again through your own darkness, or the legions of the Dark One will prevail."

 "What are these legions?" the Master asked. "Who are you?"

 The column moved closer. "I am the one the Doctor once called Adric, made into a god by my death. You must flee now, for the legions of the Dark One have arrived. I can only hold them off for a brief time. You must seek out the demons of Bel-Haragoth. They have the power to hold the Dark One off long enough for you to act. Go now!"

 There was screaming from outside, and a severed head rolled into the chamber. The Abbot drew his sword alongside the Master, who took out his TCE. From outside they could hear the clash of metal against metal, and the screams of dying men.

 "Do you think we will be able to get back to the TARDIS?"the Abbot asked.

 "We're trapped," the Master said. "We'll have to use yours."

 A horrible creature jumped into the room, holding a vicious looking sword. As the creature charged, the Abbot ducked and struck, disemboweling the creature. The Abbot looked at his sword, stained with black blood, in shock. Behind him, Peri looked as if she was sick.

 "Take out your TARDIS and set it up. I'll hold them off," the Master insisted. He moved to cover the door with his TCE. He fired twice, and there were two screams. "You'll have to hurry! We don't have much time!"

 The column moved out of the room, and there was the sounds of desperate fighting where it had gone. "He must be holding them off so we can escape," the Abbot realized. He finished unfolding the scroll, and ushered the others into his TARDIS.

 As the TARDIS dematerialized, there was the horrible sound of a god being defeated.

 "What is it?" the Doctor asked, looking around for a place to escape and finding none.

 "It is the blade of power, forged in the universe of the first Time Lords," the Valeyard answered. "It can only be wielded by the Champion, and it can destroy the Dark One forever, just as he destroyed the Light Ones."

 "So why do you have it?"

 "Your previous incarnation could have had it, but Fenric disposed of him," the Valeyard explained. "You lost the qualities that you need to become Time's Champion, and now your strength and power lies with me."

 "You want to join with me," the Doctor realized. "I will not let your evil corrupt me."

 "You have no choice, Doctor," the Valeyard smirked. "In your sixth self, I once told you that a violent storm was approaching, and that Time required a champion. I also said that death would have an avatar as well. All of these have now come to pass, and you are still as weak as your sixth self. As a champion you will fail, because you are incomplete. Your inner darkness, me, you have not embraced, and the strength and power you need comes from both your light and dark sides combined."

 "All you want is to ensure your own survival once I have entered my twelfth self," the Doctor declared. "I know this game; we have played it often enough."

 "I have already ensured that, Doctor," the Valeyard said, his smirk even larger. "The seed was firmly planted in your last life, and my real self finished the job shortly after your regeneration, or don't you remember? Now the entire universe is at stake, and you must finally become complete. Take the sword and join with me, and you will have a weapon that can end the coming storm and prevent it from ever happening again!"

 "No!" the Doctor declared. "I will not!"

 "Then the Dark One has already won," the Valeyard said sadly, and the Doctor could see all of his previous incarnations in him. "The only weapon that can defeat him must be wielded by a complete champion, which is why I am the one who has it."

 "This is the only weapon?" the Doctor asked.

 "You already know that I speak the truth," the Valeyard said. "This is the only weapon that can harm the Dark One."

 The Doctor could feel deep in his very soul that his dark side was telling the truth. He drew a deep breath, preparing mentally for what he must do. "Then I have no choice," he said quietly. "I cannot let the universe suffer and die over my conscience." The Doctor then reached out and grabbed the hilt of the sword.

 He could feel the Valeyard flowing into him, placing a taint on his very soul, breaking down the walls he had laboured so hard to produce over his sixth and seventh selves. He shut his eyes, trying desperately to keep control of the integration of his darker side. Finally, he opened his eyes to see Wil looking over him with concern.

 The Doctor looked around the familiar console room, and tried to rise, surprised by an unexpected weight in his right hand. Had it been all a dream, a phantom of his unconscious? Then he lifted the object in his hand.

 The sword was just as it was when he had seen the Valeyard holding it in his dream. As he touched it he could feel the power in it, making him finally complete.

 "Doctor, I was worried when you..." Wil began, but the Doctor silenced him with a curt look.

 "I have become whole," the Doctor said, and there was a new menacing edge to his voice. "I have become the true champion of Time." He held up the sword, watching the blade glitter in the light, seeming to possess a cruel intelligence of its own. "And all of the enemies of the universe will fall before me. But in order to do it, I have sold my soul for the universe. What have I done?" The Time Lord looked at Wil helplessly, the sword falling to his side. "What have I become?"

 -- from The History of the Timewars

 To be continued...