• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

'Do not be afraid at what you see,' said Azmael. 'It is all that remains of Mestor. He is trying to break out, evacuate my dying frame.' The strain grew into a pulsing blob. 'But he won't succeed.

I can sense his strength is failing.'

Azmael began to cough tiny specks of blood. 'He is finished.'

Then slowly, almost imperceptively at first, the blob began to shrink. Somewhere, in what sounded like the distant depths of time and space, a ghostly scream was heard. It was Mestor.

'Why did you regenerate?' said the Doctor sadly.

'I had no other choice.'

'We should have mind-linked. Together we could have defeated him.'

Again, Azmael coughed, but this time blood flowed freely from his mouth. 'My friend, you are too unstable. He would have swamped you... You would have been the pebble drowning in his lake.'

'But to throw away your life ...'

Azmael smiled for the last time. 'It was nearly over.' He paused, the effort to talk was proving very painful. 'My only regret,' he panted, 'was leaving Gallifrey when it needed me most... To become a renegade is to give up one's roots...'

The Doctor nodded, knowing only too well how he felt.

'But still, my friend,' the voice was even weaker, 'I did try to do my best for Jaconda...'

Azmael started to cough violently, the rattle of death apparent. The old man was fading fast.

'Jaconda certainly gave me a good life... Many great moments.'

The words were separated by violent gasps for air. 'But one of my best... was that time by the fountain... my friend ...'

The elderly Time Lord coughed for the last time and died.

The Doctor gazed down at his mentor. He felt sad and angry. 'I shall miss you, old friend,' he muttered. 'I shall indeed.'

In spite of having the twins as protection, Hugo and Peri had not had an easy time getting to the TARDIS. They had had to contend with Noma and his troop, who in spite of Mestor's strict instruction that the twins were not to be harmed, had attempted some rather unpleasant things.

Slarn, Mestor's senior chamberlain, had been sent to supervise the action, but instead of being a cautionary influence, had become over-excited and added to the mayhem.

But that was now all over. Azmael had been right when he said that all Jaconda was affected by Mestor's thoughts. Now he was dead, and his control relinquished, the Jacondan guards and courtiers seemed to have lost their drive and motivation. Like lost children, they wandered aimlessly around, confused and concerned as to what would happen next.

All except Slarn. As one of Mestor's most trusted advisers, he was only too aware, once his fellow Jacondans had recovered from their temporary disorientation, what would happen to him. He had been too diligent, too enthusiastic to serve his master and in so doing had made a lot of enemies. Knowing that his next appointment would be with an execution squad, Slarn had tried to bribe Peri and Hugo into taking him away from Jaconda in the TARDIS.

With his mission and career in tatters, Hugo had been tempted to try (after all, six million credits is a lot of money), but the memory of the Doctor's warning that it was more difficult to fly the TARDIS than it appeared, had jolted him into caution.

Slarn had then turned to the twins who were convinced that, for the right price, they could mathematically deduce how to operate the time-machine. Such was Slarn's desperation that he entered into negotiation. By the time the Doctor joined them, they had forced up their price, much to Hugo's chagrin, to ten million credits.

The man who returned from witnessing the death of Mestor and Azmael was very different from the one Peri and Hugo had left behind in the laboratory.

Gone was the vague and erratic behaviour. Gone, too, was the false bravado. The Doctor had now fully regenerated. Peri wondered how the new Doctor would behave and whether he would still want her to travel with him.

As the Doctor ordered the Jacondan guards from the TARDIS, she became aware of a colder, more remote manner to the way he spoke.

Wanting