The Doctor pulled himself up from the snow and tried to crawl towards Elena and Yarox. The Time Lord was so weak from the biting cold, he couldn't even attempt to stand up. It was taking all his effort just to hobble a few inches closer. Aside from the fearsome weather, the ground was also shaking. In the distance the Doctor could also see through the blazing snow what looked like a gigantic blue skinned humanoid stumbling off of its feet. The creature must have been over 70 feet tall and had a large mane of red hair and a long thick beard.
As the Time Lord's strength quickly depleted, the Doctor could feel the beginning of his next regeneration coming.
"Not now" he thought to himself. The Doctor's regeneration's didn't have a history of going smoothly at first, and he couldn't afford to deal with his usual post regenerative sickness in the middle of this crisis. The Doctor had also wanted to get as much out of this body as he could. He felt he had rattled through his regenerations somewhat too quickly.
Still he didn't have a choice, though the fact that his body had already given in didn't look hopeful for Yarox and Elena.
"Well here we go again. Hope my next body's stronger." The Doctor said as he prepared for the change. A few more minutes passed however and the Doctor didn't feel any different. In fact he could feel the regenerative powers fading which was not a good sign. The regenerative process was failing, most likely due to the extreme cold. If the regeneration process were interrupted in this fashion, then it would result in an actual death for a Time Lord.
He had only a few minutes left at the most.
"It can't end like this." The Doctor thought to himself. "I have to get somewhere, somewhere" In a few more seconds, the Time Lord's last ounce of strength depleted. His arms and legs were completely stiff and lifeless from the cold. His breathing was so weak he couldn't even scream for help. (Not that anyone would have heard in this freezing blizzard.)
Normally the Doctor didn't fear death. He couldn't possibly live the type of life he did, if that were case. He'd had a good innings, (despite having maybe been a bit too reckless with his incarnations) Having lived for over 1500 earth years at least.
Still the Doctor fought to the very last second, but sadly even his great strength of will couldn't save him this time. The legendary time traveller didn't even make it to the corpses of Elena and Yarox before collapsing dead, face down in the snow.
"You're every bit as stubborn as that oaf who stole you. Aren't you?" Scratchman screamed at the TARDIS.
All around him, the Demon's entire world was crumbling. The vast armies of his enemies and allies were all clinging to whatever little patch of his castle were left as more and more of the universe crumbled.
Much like the creature that had pursued Elena, some of the Demons and their victims were only to happy to fall into the comparative peacefulness of the abyss, but others including many of Scratchman's loyal minions desperately tried to cling on.
The Devil placed a barrier around the ruins of his castle to protect it. It was just about all he could shelter now.
Only a few hundred of his minions had made it inside, or already were within the castle. Those who were trapped outside struck furiously at the barrier for help.
"Please, please lord we have served you for centuries, we helped bring you the Time Lord. Please!"
Scratchman however didn't even respond. If anything their terror and misery was giving him a small boost.
Old Harry had used every trick he could to hurt the TARDIS, but he had come no closer to breaking it, and time was running out a lot faster than he had initially thought. Suddenly it dawned on him.
"Of course. You and he. You're two peas in a pod aren't you? Both fancy yourselves as heroes." He said with a cruel delight.
Scratchman suddenly teleported a group of alien rebels from inside the castle who were fleeing the crumbling planet to inside the TARDIS.
"You're too stubborn to break through pain alone. I get and respect that now. However I can break you by bringing you down to my level." Scratchman said.
"What do you mean" one of the aliens inside responded.
"I'm not talking to you morons. Listen carefully." Scratchman said to the TARDIS.
"I'm going to make you take off, but I'm going to tamper with your circuits to some extent. You won't simply carry the aliens with you, nor will you merely take off without them. When you dematerialise, you'll only take the aliens skin with you, or rather you'll rip their skin off, slowly as I'll spin out your take off for as long as I can."
One of the aliens started to beg Scratchman.
"Don't do that, you know it makes him stronger." One of the other aliens pleaded.
The TARDIS started to take off against its will, and the aliens fell to the floor in pain. They could feel all of the skin on their body being slowly pulled at by a tremendous force. Cuts, tears and splits started to appear all over their bodies.
As gruesome as it was, the TARDIS couldn't give in now. These aliens torture would be nothing compared to what Scratchman would do to its own and countless other universes if he were freed.
"How does it feel to know that in a few minutes you'll be a butcher of innocent people just like me? Oh sure I'm the one who is forcing you to take off, but you are still the one who is ripping their skin off of their bodies slowly. You could stop it at any point. Just drop your shields and give me access to your power centre?"
The aliens started to cough up blood, whilst the largest and strongest who had earlier forbidden his comrade to beg, threw himself onto the TARDIS console and started pleading. He didn't even know who to. It certainly wasn't Scratchman.
The TARDIS couldn't take it anymore and let down its shields. Scratchman however still didn't stop the machine from taking off until the very last second. When the skin on the aliens was stretching to almost breaking point, and some of them began to pass out.
"Don't worry." Scratchman taunted. "I might still need them if you try anymore tricks."
The aliens however were then pulled into the green swamp that had replaced the TARDIS floor by several Zombified hands.
"That way I know they're safe" Scratchman mocked. In truth they were all dead, but the monster had others he could use to force the TARDIS to do its bidding.
"Now then time is of the essence, let's see how much power you really have. The Time Lords are such an ingenious race. Even their outdated junk is beyond most civilisations. I do so look forward to conquering them." Scratchman said.
"What, what's going on." The Doctor said as he was roused from his sleep by a strange, impish creature. It was an Elvian, or an Elf or Elves for short from the planet Qiras.
They were generally friendly creatures, though some were known for having quite a naughty sense of humour.
The Doctor saw that he had been taken to a cave of some sort, with a large fire lit in the middle.
It was still freezing however, but at least the Time Lord had the feeling back in his arms and legs.
"Doctor, Doctor." Elena said as she came rushing out of a nearby dark cavern, wearing a coat made from some strange kind of animals skin.
"Elena I thought you were dead. In fact I was pretty sure I died out there. Where's Yarox."
"I'm fine Doctor." Yarox said as he came into view from behind.
"You did die out there." Yarox continued. "We all did, but from what I'm told you never stay dead here too long."
"No matter how you die in this place alien." The Elf interrupted.
"Frozen out there, stomped by the frost giants, or carried away by that winged horror, or eaten by Scratchman's guard dog. You'll be reborn each time to die again and again. I don't know how many times you died before we managed to drag you in here. When you die out there they all tend to blur into one, but we've gathered enough food and torches over time that you might live a few more years down here without dying."
"Thank you, but I don't think that's possible." The Doctor said.
Suddenly the ground began to shake violently.
"He's losing his grip I tell you." One of the Elves at the back said.
"We can only hope." Another Elf replied.
"The Demon that controls our reality. In the last few years we've noticed the ruins of this, once proud world of Heleim crumble. Piece by piece it has begun to fall into the dark. I don't know what that monster is planning, but now the giants spend much more time fighting among themselves than they do chasing us." The leader of the Elves said.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
"Scratchman isn't planning anything for you lot." The Doctor assured.
"He is losing his grip. The remains of the previous universes he's conquered like this one are all that's sustaining him, but even that won't last for much longer. Unless we act fast, he'll use my vessel to escape into my, or should I say our reality. I know your race. You don't come from, whatever this reality used to be."
"No we don't. May I ask what species are you from." The Elves leader asked.
"Time Lord."
"Ah yes I've heard of your kind. I always wondered if your people were real or not, but I suppose if the Devil exists."
"Yes quite" The Doctor said.
"Not to sound rude or anything but it doesn't really matter how we all ended up in this godforsaken place, all that matters is getting out of it." The Time Lord continued.
"What makes you think there is a way out." Elena asked.
"If there is a way in, there's a way out." The Doctor assured her.
"There is a gateway" The Elf leader said.
"It's guarded however by one the Devil's most ferocious pets. Garmr. It rests atop the largest mountain in the valley, then there are also the Frost Giants and the Corpse Eater."
"What's the Corpse Eater" Elena asked.
"A gigantic undead Vulture so large its wings can create snowstorms." The Doctor replied.
"I remember reading about it in old Norse myths." The Time Lord continued
"We'll never get by all those monsters." Yarox interrupted.
"Well like our friend said if they kill us then we'll just come back again. Besides you also said those brutes were too busy fighting with themselves. Added to that with Scratchman's power weakening, I'd say this is our best chance to make it through the gate and stop him." The Doctor said somewhat more confidently than he had done with anything recently, though it was most likely more bluster.
"All right." The Elf leader said.
"Not that I think you have a good chance of stopping Scratchman, but at the very least it will be over. I warn you however at the first sight of Garmr I'm gone. I've been killed by him once before. I'd rather die a billion times in that freezing cold out there." He continued.
"Yes well that's not the most encouraging thing you could have said." Elena replied.
"Come on Time Lord. You will need the skin of one of the giants for insulation. Even with that you'll be lucky to last an hour out there in that cold. How do you plan to stop Scratchman once you have reached his palace. I take it your attempts to do so didn't exactly go well before?" The leader asked.
"His power is depleting. If my ship can just hold out long enough then by the time we get there he'll be so weak we might just have a chance at overpowering him. If not well then old Harry will have another universe to add to this gruesome collection."
Once they got what they needed to stay warm in the overwhelming cold outside, the Doctor, Elena and Yarox left the cave and trekked their way through the snowstorm of Heleim with the aid of several of the Elves and their technology which did its best to shield the travellers.
Even then however they were all finding it difficult to walk. The Doctor had almost collapsed at certain points.
"Remind me to do all of those things I said I'd only do when hell froze over old boy." The Doctor said to Yarox through chattering teeth. "I'm a man of my word after all."
Along the way they had been lucky enough not to encounter any of old Harry's monstrous servants, save for the Corpse Eater. They had briefly seen the monster flying high above a few times, but fortunately it didn't appear to notice them. The snowstorm was so fierce that they could barely see the giant, and so not surprisingly it also missed the tiny creatures below too.
At bottom of the other end of the latest hill the Doctor, his companions and the Elves had barely managed to climb, there was the corpse of one of the Frost Giants, sprawled out below. The monster must have been over 200 feet tall. Aside from its great size it looked human for the most part, though its skin was bright blue, and it had razor sharp fangs and claws.
"I hope whatever did that isn't still around." The Doctor said as they prepared to slowly walk down the steep hill. Up ahead was the giant mountain the Elves leader said the portal existed on.
As the Time Lord and his companions neared the end of the hill, the Corpse Eater suddenly flew ahead of them and landed on the giant's corpse.
"Don't worry" the Elf leader said. "If we keep quiet he should miss us."
Suddenly however the Frost Giant rose up and reached for the Corpse Eater.
"You really don't stay dead long in this realm do you?" The Doctor said.
Some of the Elves fled in panic, but most remained with the Doctor, Elena, Yarox and the Elf leader who tried to stay calm, and together they slowly crept out of the monsters view.
Fortunately it didn't matter either way as the beasts were so caught up in fighting one another.
The giant grabbed the bird by its talons and pulled it down to the snow. It then tried to stamp on the Vulture's body, but the giant Bird wiggled free from the monsters grasp and flew straight into the Frost Giant's face. The giant let out a deafening scream as the Bird used its talons to slice through one of the giants eyes, but the pain only drove the monster on. The giant reached out and tried to grab the Birds wings again. In the struggle however the Corpse Eater this time slashed its claws across the giants throat cutting it open.
The giant then stumbled back a few feet, before the Bird went for its head which it caught between its two talons and started to crush, after which the giant then collapsed face down in the snow, with the Corpse Eater landing on its back.
"He'll only have a half hour or so to finish that meal before the Frost Giant pops up again. Should be more than enough mind you." The Elf Leader said.
The Doctor looked up at the foreboding mountain ahead of them.
"We'll never make it up there. Look how long it took just to get up that hill. I'm already struggling to stand." The Time Lord said through chattering teeth.
"Me too" Elena agreed weakly.
"We have no choice, it's the only way up." The Elf leader protested.
Their argument however was broken up by the sound of the Corpse Eater flying above into the air and screaming.
"He goes to all that effort and then he just leaves his meal?" The Doctor asked. Through the blizzard the Elf king could also see several more Frost Giants running down the hill.
"They all know this reality is crumbling" the Doctor said.
"That's why they're not hunting us. Doesn't mean they won't kill us if they see us though." The Elf leader replied.
Scratchman's castle was now the only scrap left of the universe he had called home for the past several millennia.
In a way he was almost sad to see it go. He had spent so long in this domain, the monster felt he had time to create the perfect Demons, most of whom had fallen into the oblivion around them. Still Harry wouldn't be losing any sleep over it.
The Demon king had connected the TARDIS's "veins" to the tiny crack still left in the forcefield. The TARDIS had tried to trick the Demon a few more times, but Scratchman was either too wiley for the TARDIS, or if he did suspect trickery he would simply threaten to make the TARDIS flay more prisoners that he kept hostage.
"In a matter of minutes a new world will fall and tremble before my feet." Scratchman said with giddy anticipation.
Some of Scratchman's enemies had managed to make their way into his castle before it collapsed, thanks to the Black Knight, the armies man on the inside. Among those who had escaped the oblivion included the Queen of the Harpies, who was now possibly the last of her kind. She still fought against Scratchman's Demons even though they had mostly been reduced to fleeing now.
The Harpy Queen picked up one of Scratchman's most notorious torturers from the rabble of fleeing monstrosities and flew him towards the very edge of the castle that was beginning to crumble away into nothing.
"Do you remember a Harpy named Eiserka? Do you!" She screamed as she dangled him over oblivion.
"Please I can help you, I swear I can. Scratchman's power is depleting. He is not erasing this universe out of choice, he needs to escape it as much as we do. If we strike together we can take the monster down."
The Harpy considered this.
"He is trying to use an alien's vessel to escape?" The Demon said.
"I know all about the Time Lord's vessel. In fact chances are I knew about it before you did. Still you've shown me that his power over his minions is genuinely fading. I thought this reality crumbling was just his usual scorch the earth, or rather universe policy, but you'd never have told me he was weak before. I can tell when you're lying. Still I don't believe you were forced into hurting people at his command. I know you. You loved it." She said as she dropped him into the abyss below.
The Harpy then flew over the crowd of Demons and monsters that had escaped into Scratchman's castle below.
"This universe is crumbling. Many of us suspected it for a long time, but some of us foolishly held out hope that Scratchman could be appeased, or that if we helped slaughter one another we'd be spared his wrath."
She continued "He's going to flee this reality in a matter of minutes and leave us to tumble head first into oblivion. You can see it around you, whilst he'll be laughing at us as he tears apart another universe. Now is the time to stop him. He's weak, weaker than he's ever been before, which is why he can't hold this universe together. We can at last make him pay for turning us into his servants. What will you do, remain loyal to a Demon that's about to condemn you to oblivion, or try and drag him down with us."
Not all of the Demons responded to her speech, but enough of Scratchman's minions who had barely managed to claw their way into his castle didn't need much more encouragement to fight him. A horde of Demons and Centaurs and Satyrs soon charged their way through Scratchman's halls, whilst the Devil had been observing this on his scanner.
"Do they honestly think that I'd get this far and let them stop me?" Scratchman said as he opened up portals to his previous hell dimensions.
A whole host of new monsters soon emerged to tackle the army, they included Griffins from the bridge dimensions, Frost Giants, Erlik the king of the tar dimension and Pan himself who assumed his firey form.
"That should keep them busy. Now where were we" Scratchman said as he returned to the TARDIS.
Back in the frozen world of Heleim meanwhile.
"We're done for." Yarox said. "We'll never get by that many of the giants."
"I doubt they'd see us through this snow storm" the king of the Elves countered.
"He's right, we just have to hope they don't notice us. Besides remember we can always just come back. Probably." The Doctor replied.
The weary travellers crept through the blazing storm to the side of the mountain keeping well clear of the thundering giants. Fortunately the monsters didn't take any notice of them as they scrambled up the mountain.
"Okay we only have one chance here, we need to run into the portal and once we get there hold on." The Doctor said.
"To what?" Elena asked.
"Yourself. I'm not naive. I don't think Scratchman would make it easy for people just to slip through realms like that. If you thought the cold out here was bad. There's a good chance we won't survive."
The travellers waited for a few more minutes until a chance presented itself, with the nearest Frost Giants being a about 30 or so feet away (though it was still hard to make out in the blizzard.)
As they prepared to scramble up the mountain however into the portal the Elves stopped the Doctor, Elena and Yarox in their tracks at the sound of a massive roar they knew only too well.
"Garmr! We need to go now." The leader of the Elves said.
Just then, an immense wolf emerged from the portal and scrambled down the mountain to confront its masters enemies. Little did the Elves know the wolf could sense the second anyone got near the portal and could teleport there in an instant. (Virtually no Elves had ever lived long enough to reach the portal.)
There really was no escape from one of Scratchman's hells if he didn't want it.
The wolf must have measured over 100 feet long and stood over 50 feet tall.
Despite this however in contrast to the Corpse Eater it could see the Doctor and the others very clearly through the blizzard. Worse the Frost Giants behind had been alerted to their presence by Garmr.
As all seemed lost suddenly another figure came charging its way out of the portal and down the mountain. It was the black knight.
"Sorry for taking so long Time Lord." The Black Knight said.
"I had some business to attend to upstairs."