Doctor Who in the Land of the Lost: Chapter Seven

 DOCTOR WHO in the LAND OF THE LOST

VII.

 Holly’s mind was in turmoil as she ran. She was extremely confused, and couldn’t figure out what the Doctor had said that was so offensive. It was almost as if she had reacted instinctively and instantaneously instead of rationally and logically. She stopped and took a deep breath, puzzled by a glowing red light in the near distance. 

It was the Zarn

.

“Holly Marshall,” he said in a cold, flat tone. “Your emotional state is causing me distress.”

Holly’s mind flashed back to an instance in the past when she and the Zarn had a similar encounter. She was much younger, and the two had a discussion she had never told her brother, or Uncle Jack, or even her father about. The Zarn had expressed anger at the male Marshalls, but he was clearly less severe with her. Once the experience of Déjà vu washed over her, she walked over to the Zarn and addressed him.

“I don’t know that I’d like to discuss it.” She said.

“Regardless,” said the Zarn. “It is affecting me in a negative manner, and I am uncomfortable with the thought of your emotional unease.”

Like the mood ring she’d once had long before her family had fallen through the time hole in the waterfall, she watched in fascination as the Zarn’s physical color scheme shifted from red into its more familiar neutral shade. She was calming down. Still, she felt awkward standing in the presence of the alien being who’d sworn vengeance on her brother and father so long ago.

“Where have you been?” she asked him. “We haven’t seen you in decades.”

“I have been in temporal hibernation while my ship repaired itself and cloaked our whereabouts with a shield of invisibility.”

“I see,” she responded. Nothing surprised her in the Land of the Lost.

Holly’s mind was reverting back to normal, and she had a slight headache. “I need to get home. Was there something you wanted to discuss with me?”

The Zarn and Holly spoke at length in the shadows, and Holly was curious as to why he spoke in so low a tone that she alone, and no one else, would be able to hear him relate all the information he was conveying. What he told her changed her perspective about a lot of things, but she opted to keep it private until the right opportunity arose.

---

“Well, Enik,” the Doctor grinned. “I have a cursory translation of this instruction manual programmed into my scanning device; we should have a more thorough explanation of how the Pylons work before too long. When shall we make headway toward our Library of the Skulls expedition?”

“Let us inform the Marshall siblings of our intentions, and then I shall attempt to obtain for you the mercy of Altrusian Grace, despite the fact that you are only partly human.”

“Well, in spirit, anyway,” the Doctor smiled.

“Since you are attempting to accomplish a task that will be of ultimate benefit to me, and I am an extension of the Sleestaks by genetic association, you should qualify for Altrusian Grace. But, as is our custom, you may only ask the Skull of Primacy one question, and no more. It may be a question broken into parts and segments, but I would advise you to avoid pressing for more answers than the Skull of Primacy is willing to present to you. He is a being of limited patience.”

“He won’t be the first of that sort I’ve had to deal with,” the Doctor replied, thinking of Davros, and the Sontarans, and the Cybermen, and all the other villains who dared cross intellectual swords with him over the course of his multiple lives. “And he certainly won’t be the last.”

Holly entered the primary chamber of the Marshall encampment just as the Doctor and Enik were about to being their journey. She acted as if nothing were wrong, but her head swirled with all the Zarn had told her, and a part of her brain ached pained her as she resisted the fierce anger she felt at that moment toward the Doctor. These emotions were wrong, she knew, but she wasn’t sure what to do about them.

Enik immediately sensed something was wrong, but resisted the temptation to read Holly’s mind; she had always been a highly emotional human, and as Rick Marshall once worded it to him, it was very obvious that Holly was “high strung,” whatever that meant. Rick never did tell Enik what a “strung” was, and he’d been wondering about it for decades, forgetting to ask every single time he had an opportunity to.

Several Sleestaks were waiting for the arrival of the Doctor and Enik. Enik stood before them and, with a formal wave of his hand, said, “We are here under the covenant of Altrusian Grace. This human seeks audience with the Skull of Primacy on a matter of great benefit for the Sleestak race.”

The Sleestaks let them pass without question, and after a winding journey through the chambers of the Great Hall, the Doctor and Enik made their way to the Skull of Primacy, which immediately turned blue when the Time Lord approached it. This fascinated Enik, almost as much as the new layout of the Lost City’s interior did; it had been severely damaged after the earthquake that occurred when Rick Marshall was thought to be returned to his own time, and many of the underground corridors had collapsed in on themselves.

The blue skull began to speak, and the Doctor blanched; it sounded incredibly like the voice of Davros, and the voices that emanated from the other skulls  in the chamber sounded every bit like the voices of Dalek drones. How was this even possible?

The Doctor barely grasped what was being said to him as the effects of the mysterious smoke of the Library of the Skulls was impacting him in a way that it did not impact either humans or Sleestaks. Finally, he steeled himself and listened as the Skull of Primacy intoned, “The Book! The Book! The Ritual of the Book!” But by this point, it was too late. The Doctor had passed out cold on the stone floor.

Down below, in a chamber hidden by a deep, misty cloud, an unseen beast growled with such a horrific rumbling tone that it seemed as though the entire Lost City might collapse in on itself.

TO BE CONTINUED…