Daleks, aim for the eyestalk. Sontarans, back of the neck. Vashta nerada...run. Just run.

The Tenth Doctor

Shadows of the Air

The moon couldn't be seen from its host world.

Not by virtue of being a new moon. Not by virtue of some newfangled cloaking device. No...this moon, like many airless balls of rock in a universe doomed to heat death, did not produce its own light. It merely reflected it. But with the stars burnt out, there was no light. No reflection. No shadow.

There was only darkness on the world it orbited.

Within the darkness, the shadows moved. Swarmed. Spread. Embraced this paradise. Once, their spores were on a billion worlds. Now, as the calendar of Creation moved into the trillions, the number of worlds they touched numbered in equally high figures. No light, no power. No power, no technology. No technology...nothing to stop them. If they were the river of darkness, the dams of light had long since crumbled. Now all they had to do was swim downriver and find their prey. Prey that was increasingly hard to find. The dimming universe had given them ample opportunity, but had decreased their prey significantly.

Yet opportunity had again presented itself.

Prey...huddled by a dying fire, precious wood being burnt to provide even more precious heat. Trying to ignore one inevitability, and completely unaware of the inevitability approaching them. None saw the shadow move through the darkness, or were even aware of it. Or if they did, they ignored it. If it got darker...well, the whole universe was dimming. If the fire dimmed further...well, it was running out of fuel. If their skin felt itchy...well...there was a logical explanation. Even if they had no idea what that explanation might be. And as the swarm struck, they never would.

There were no screams. Perhaps it was like going to sleep, albiet much faster and with a bit of pain. The piranhas of the air didn't know. They didn't care. They weren't capable of caring. They were a force of nature, and as trillions of years of history had showed, one couldn't stand against the forces of nature. Not flesh, not blood, not bone. Nothing would. Nothing could. And as the flesh evaporated, as bleached bones reflected the light of the dying fire, nothing was all that remained of the prey.

The universe had come to nothing.

And therefore, nothing could stop the shadows of the air.

A/N

Most of my 'monster fics' for Doctor Who have been on the Weeping Angels so far, so it was nice to try my hand at another one of Moffat's beasties. Admittedly setting it in the stages of the universe's heat death (as seen in Utopia) came later, but hopefully it worked.