Thank you everyone who has read and commented on this story. Your encouragement has led me to pursue writing beyond the scope of fan fiction. To that end, I rewrote this story with the goal of improving my craft. I learned a lot, and you'll notice the story has been streamlined, though the most important elements are still in-tact. My goal was to make Victor a more realistic character and remove myself from the writing to allow the story and the character to shine through. I've improved leaps and bounds now that I've invested in books, lectures, and read every article I can find on writing. The story is only 15 chapters long now. The remaining chapters will be blank, but I'll leave them up to keep the old reviews in place. Thank you so much. Please give it another read. With the added scenes, it will be well worth your time. And I hope you come to love the characters as much as I do. Thanks again to Bria, my beta.

The Price of Victory Chapter 1

Victor wiped the grime from the window pane with the back of his black velvet sleeve. In the distance, the capitol building in the city square collapsed in a spray of debris, embers streaking across the night sky. Pathetic. Not even their anti-technology pulse could save them. Hardly the challenge he'd hoped for from the famed planet Starfall.

The floor planks shifted behind him. His servant's reflection appeared in the glass and bowed, revealing the smooth crown of his charcoal-gray head. "My Lord," said Sikah in his usual velvety voice, "we have reports that the planet is surrendering on all fronts. What shall I tell them?"

"Tell them something insulting, something trite." Victor used the window as a mirror and straightened his collar. "Tell them, 'To the victor go the spoils.'"

Sikah dipped once more, then faded from the lamplight, leaving Victor's reflection hovering alone over the destruction. He ran his fingers down the contour of his unfamiliar face, still smooth from his morning shave. Regenerations were always such tricky affairs. One never knew what to expect, but this latest body suited him, so lean and young with eyes the same rich shade of brown as his hair—his favorite by far.

The stench of ozone punctured the stale air. A static charge prickled the back of his neck, sending tingles scurrying across his skin. How odd. Were the ash particles ionizing the atmosphere? He leaned forward and peered up at the stars barely visible through the smoke.

Blue light exploded around him. Granules embedded in his tongue, tasting of soot and old floor polish. He coughed, slung his arm over his mouth, and fumbled for his laser screwdriver.

A figure stirred in the far corner. Three footsteps sounded against the floorboards and a young woman emerged into the light. A wide-set jaw dominated her features, rivaled by eyebrows that looked too dark next to her blonde hair. She took in the bare room, then her gaze locked onto him and her mouth fell open. Recognition perhaps? Her attention fell to the laser pointed her direction and her expression twisted into confusion.

"This can't be right," she said with an old Earth accent that exuded 'underclass'. She dug out a communication device from her pocket and pressed it to her ear. "Control? Control?"

No one answered.

The girl cursed and snapped her communicator shut. "Have you got a name?" she asked him at last.

"Are you telling me you don't know who I am?" Not an intelligent assassin if she didn't know her target.

"I can't tell you that unless I know your name, now can I?" Before he could answer, she whacked the side of a circular device hanging around her neck—some type of yellow dome nested in a metal disc. "Blasted thing," she said. "Why isn't it working? It oughta be charging."

"It's the ZEG. The electro-magnetic gravitation interferes with anything that has an electrical current. Or haven't you noticed the lack of electricity?" He gestured toward the few oil lamps fastened to the wall.

"Say what now?" She clutched her forehead. "Oh, don't tell me I've landed in the outreaches of the Gerrosic Rift."

"Yes, you have. So tell me how you were able to get past this world's natural defenses when the most infamous Time Lord in all of history had to resort to alternative methods."

"Infamous?" She paused, then eyed the instrument in his hand. "I take it that's not a sonic screwdriver?"

He lowered his arm a centimeter. "Don't be absurd. It's laser-powered." Sonic powered screwdriver? Who'd have such a thing? Honestly.

"ZEG immune I imagine?" she asked without deviating her gaze.

"Best not to test that theory, for your sake. The interference could cause unpredictable results."

"I see." Her face brightened with an expression too polite to be sincere. "Well, I've got somewhere else to be, so if you could just give me a ride out of range of this little electro-magnetic pulse thingy, I'll be on my way."

He trained his weapon higher. "I don't think so, child. You appeared in the middle of my strategic headquarters during the eve of my victory. You aren't going anywhere."

She threw him an accusing look. "Oi! I'm not a child."

How odd that words cut her when threat of death did not. "Who are you?" he asked.

Once more, she fiddled with the gadget at her neck. "Doesn't matter."

With a flick of his wrist, a red beam shot the metal disc and it skittered across the floor.

She glanced down at the smoking hull. "Good shot. I'm impressed."

"I don't have time for your games, ape. Speak your name."

She giggled and pressed her hand to her mouth. "Sorry, mate. I know you're trying to be all threatening. It's just, you called me a—oh, you had to be there." She rolled her shoulders back and attempted a serious face, but the corner of her lips twitched. "Okay, commence with the threatening."

"Do you think this is funny? I could end you right now." He circled around her, his thumb grazing against the button.

"But you won't," she said without hint of concern. "'Cause you like a mystery, don't you? I fascinate you. You don't understand how I got here, and that's why you're gonna keep me alive."

He tightened his grip around his laser but didn't fire. "Easy enough to remedy." Red light raked along the front of her navy jacket, then puttered out. He hit the side of his screwdriver. Nothing.

"Trouble?" the girl asked with unmistakable amusement.

Blasted ZEG. He'd have to scan her tech aboard his ship for a proper diagnostic. He slipped his laser back in his breast pocket and patted the bulge. "I can glean enough from here. You're human, that much is obvious. Never liked humans as a whole. Primitive beasts, the lot of them, their ignorance matched only by their penchant for destruction. You are nothing."

She tilted her head to the side. "Is that so, Time Lord? Well, go on then. See for yourself. Look into my mind and tell me what you see." She stepped toward him.

Instinct compelled him back. Was this a trick? How did she know he was telepathic? This could be her moment to strike, and yet … something urged him forward, a hum along his senses like the sympathetic resonating of a tuning fork. Time energy, she bristled with it, but how?

As he inched toward her, the lingering scent of singed ozone intensified. He sucked in a breath and pressed his fingers to her temples. An image burned into his retinas of a goddess bathed in vortex, suspended outside of time and space. Converged timelines swirled in her wake.

He jerked back. "You're a walking paradox. That's impossible."

"Not impossible," she said looking far too pleased with herself. "Just a bit unlikely."

"Who and what are you?"

She flashed her teeth. "Oh, lots of things. Plus One, Defender of the Earth, The Valiant Child, the Stuff of Legend." She paused. "Oh, I'm being facetious, aren't I? Thing is, I can't say."

"Why not?"

"It could cause a chain reaction in the causal nexus, and those are nasty to clean up. I should know."

How dare she talk of time as though she knew its infinite intricacies? "Dropping a name is not going to alter the course of history. I think you give yourself far too much credit."

"We'll see." She sidestepped him and walked toward the window. "What about you? Got a name?"

"Victor." He over-emphasized the sharp consonants, willing the word to bite her.

"I knew a bloke once," she said. "Doctor, they called him, but he wasn't a doctor in the sense you would think. It was more of a title." She watched the fire spread along the hillside. A hard-to-read expression flickered across her face and then disappeared, replaced with that smug air that seemed to be her default demeanor. "Victor. Vickter, Weektorrrr … It's just a title innit? Not really your name. To the Victor go the spoils, am I right?"

He yanked his laser from his pocket. "What are you? An assassin?" The diagnostics on his screwdriver might be glitching, but he could still get off another shot.

"Don't be so daft," she said with a dismissive wave. "Why would I bother hopping in here unarmed to go against a Time Lord? You're what? Several centuries old? Still a few regenerations left, I'd wager. I'd say the odds are in your favor, mate."

He slid the notch on his laser to the highest level and he felt the cool metal power up under his fingertips. Good, it was working again. "How do you know so much about my species?" he asked her. He'd just defeated Gallifrey—he was still exhaling regeneration energy from the nasty ordeal—but the finer details of the life cycles of Gallifreyans ought to be nothing but forgotten tales in linear time.

A smile sat crooked on the girl's face as though she knew some great secret. "Are you afraid of the big bad wolf, Victor?"

Another blast from his screwdriver sliced into the glass over her left shoulder and expanded into a spiderweb of hair-line fractures. "Pity, I missed." He shoved her against the riddled pane and pressed the metal diodes deep into her throat. "Do you reckon I'll miss his time?"

She didn't flinch. "No," she said softly. "I reckon if you shoot you'll find your mark, but at the cost of your own life."

"You're not very imaginative, are you?" He pushed the laser further into the soft tissue of her neck. The glass crackled in warning. "Like I haven't heard that before."

Her gaze didn't falter. "Maybe, but it makes no difference what you've heard or haven't heard. You're in grave danger. We all are. That's why I'm here."

She was either fearless, or an incredible actress. He relaxed his grip and squinted. "Explain."

"It's the darkness," she whispered. For the first time, he saw just a hint of fear—a widening of her eyes so slight he could have taken it for a trick of the light. "It's eating my current universe, and every universe. The stars are going out, one by one."

He pulled away but kept her at the end of his weapon. "Preposterous. I've seen no evidence of this."

She straightened herself and tugged at the end of her jacket. "That's 'cause I skipped ahead to a universe further out. Last jump, I almost dived straight into nothingness. Missed it by mere minutes before it consumed the planet I landed on. I'm trying to stay ahead of it, but make no mistake: it's coming, and it will be here soon."

"Travel between universes is—"

"Impossible. I know," she said. "If I had a shilling for every time I heard that one."

"I think I'd know more about it than you."

"Yeah? Well here I am standing right in front of you, mate, and I came out of nowhere so I'd say that has to count for something."

The floor creaked to his right. Sikah paused at the entrance. His dark gray skin and tunic melded into shadow and rendered him all but invisible except for his white eyes hovering in the air.

"Summon the guard," Victor ordered him.

Sikah blinked and vanished.

"Creepy," the girl said next to him. "So what is he then, some sort of cheshire cat wannabe?"

"Cat? No, he's a shadewalker."

"Oh." She chewed on edge of her thumb and glanced down at the nubs of her fingernails as if his answer satisfied her.

Such an oddity, this human. Impudent to a fault, sharp-tongued, and quick-witted, but a mystery in her own right, a mystery which warranted solving. He slipped his laser to the inside of his jacket. If she were capable of killing him, she would have done it.

A mass blocked the doorway. His prized Chulan warrior ducked his elongated snout under the cross-beam of the ceiling and entered, his talons scraping along the wood. Sikah trailed behind the reptilian's swinging tail.

"Process her and load her up with the rest of the loot," Victor said to the guard. "Don't forget her things, and try not to kill this one before I interrogate her."

The Chulan let out a low rumble in acknowledgment, then sprang on the girl and jerked her arms back to tie them.

"Easy there, big fellow," the girl said as she struggled to remain upright. "Blimey. Are you lot always in the habit of constraining your hitchhikers?"

Victor plucked a pebble from his sleeve. It skittered across the floorboards. "Actually, you're the first foolish enough to attempt it."

Sikah handed him a tablet. "Lord Victor, the steam vessel is ready for departure. This is the list of artifacts on-board. With limited communications, we won't have the full inventory list from the other shuttles until we dock."

Paper, how quaint. He put on his glasses and scanned the list in the low light. "Just one correction. Add another entry, one human female." The girl shifted in his peripheral vision. Finally, a proper reaction.

"Shall I call her indigenous?" Sikah asked.

Victor handed back the inventory list. "Heavens no. She's not indigenous. I'd never bother with their riffraff."

"What shall I identify her as, my Lord?"

Victor moved forward to examine his new catch. Seemed he had captured a goddess, the only one of her kind—quite an addition to his collection. "Class one, exotic," he said to Sikah. He trailed the back of his forefinger down length of her cheek and her pupils contracted in defiance.

She didn't fear him yet, but she would. He'd make sure of that