Welcome to Echoes Across Time

[Romana]

"I don't like the sound of that. Are you saying that the dead could be stirring?"

Romana shook her head, "No....I am saying that their are beings out their that utlize the dead. Nothing goes to waste in the galaxy."

It could have been an effect of the torchlight, but she jumped and pointed as a reaction. "I think something moved over there!"

Romana glanced at the bones that lay in a pile and she sighed in relief when a rat scurried past. "It's just rats."

[Val]

Val let out a long sigh of relief as her hearts started to calm down. With an embarrased chuckle, she said "My heart felt like it was going to run out of my chest for a minute. My heart beats fast enough without the need for getting worked up like that."

[Romana]

There was suddenly a loud sqeeak and Romana's heart sunk to see a pile of rat bones where the rat had been.

"Blast it..."

She suddenly grabbed the bottle of wine and tore a piece of her dress and stuffed inside the bottle and ignited the bottle with the torch and threw it at the shadows, "That should keep them at bay for awhile."

The Sister frowned, "Keep what at bay?"

Romana sighed, "The Darkness....the never ending darkness, they consume light, they feed in the dark."

Romana nodded, "Sort of, hopefully it isn't fully infested here."

The sister frowned, "Infested with what? Rats?"

Romana shook her head negatively, "No, much worse. Sister, has anything strange happened in here lately?"

The sister sighed, "Well we buried Father Paul a few days ago in here. He was always fond of growing things, he tended the garden. We thought it fitting that he should be given some plants."

Romana sighed,"Well they normally like wood but I suppose any plants would be a good place for them to dwell, they like forests, and perhaps they migrated."

"What migrated?"

Romana sighed, "They're called the Vashta Nerada, quite litarally it means shadows that melt the flesh. There's no cure to them, they are part of every environment. Best thing to do is keep close, don't go into the shadows and try to hurry and hope the inefection is just limited to one area."

[Val]

Val swallowed in apprehension. "I hate to ask this, but how do we get out of here? Nearly everything here is in shadow. I wish i knew how I got here. I'd much like to leave again."

[Romana]

Romana sighed, "And I have no idea how I got here either. I was in the middle of a war and all of a sudden I end up on Earth with little memory of what happened in between. It means that my mind was damaged somehow and the only way to fix it is to have one of my people telpathically sort through my mind and fix the broken links. It's so frustrating."

She sighed and she said,"There's one thing we could do, and that's burn the whole catacomb down to the ground. Shadows can't survive in light, let alone fire, but I have no desire to roast myself alive either. We need to trap some rats. we can't go anywhere without some meat, they thrive on stripping meat down to the bone."

[Val]

"There's a good chance that a fire would spread to the temple above, besides, we don't have any extra meat on us. Can the torches hold them off long enough for us to reach the exit?" Val asked. While she didn't want to put a wet blanket on the fire concept, she didn't see how it was acheivable at this time.

Thinking over to what Romana said about her last memories before her arrival, Val decided to relay a short version of her own, just in case it could help. "The last memory i had before arriving here was that of my orner pushing me down into a corner. He raised his hand to beat me, and then suddenly I was in the woods and I think I spooked your horse or something."

[Romana]

Romana sighed, "I have little memory of the past few days. I will have to trust you on what you've said."

Sister Simplice added, "You were loved by Lord Arieon. He wanted you to be his wife. It's well rumored that you had bewitched him."

Romana snorted, "I bewitch no one. Nor do I have any memory of it." She sighed,
"We move forward and we watch our shadows, it is rummored before they strike that a person will have more than one shadow."

[Val]

Val started to move foreward as Romana advised, although apprehensively. She had a bad feeling about the answer but had to ask the question nonetheless: "And how do we deter them if one of us gets a second shadow? Will the fire ward it off?"

[Romana]

Romana sighed, "It generally means it is too late. You are marked as pray, like any beast that has it's sights on you. But we are fortunet in some respects, this is a catacomb, there are many already dead things here, and rats. Perhaps they will feast on them rather than on us. The dead are an easy meal."

Sister Simplice huddled closer, " But why?"

"Why do wolves or any other predator does anything. Survival. I just wish..." Romana paused, "I wish that Vashta Nerata would eat a Dalek and leave us alone."

Simplice frowned."What's a Dalek."

Romana said firmly, "The enemy of my people. They kill everything in sight, they are in many ways no better than the Vashata Nerata."

[Val]

The work DALEK echoed through Val's head, causing a flood of images to stream through her head. The images were nonsensical to her, featuring flashes of studded machines killing all within the range of their weapons. Screams of helpless sentients echoed through her as well as intense feeling of outrage and anger. The onslaught caused her to waver and fall to her knees, cluching her head.

[Romana]

Romana reached out to catch Val. "This is no time to faint because you're sick over being consumed by some pre-historic carnivorous spore."

For Romana, was pretty sure that Val's reaction was more or less the idea of being devoured by the Vastha Nerata.

She looked to the nun, "Have you any smelling salts? Essance of.....well essance of something to restore her sprits."

The nun quietly took a vial of something and handed it to Romana who opened it and drifted it under Val's nose.

[Val]

Just as the vile was placed under her nose, Val's head snapped up as she screamed out "They all died! Every last one exterminated!" She was only half aware of her current surrounding, as the images kept her disoriented. Yet, they were fading quickly as she was being pulled out of that torturous neatherworld and back to the now. She stumbled to her feet as she spoke incoherently "Daleks! We must retreat. We can't stop them."