Doctor Whooves: The City of Pillars

by DoubleDeadline

Chapter 1: Sand

"This was when Princess Luna burst into the room of squabbling chronologists and, stomping Her mighty hooves in frustration, declared in Her full Royal Canterlot Voice, 'THIS IS ANNO ONE!' Putting an end to the months of fruitless debate regarding the reformed dating system. This, of course, made the year Princess Luna was banished Anno -999 and the year She was returned to us 'Anno 0'."
~ Horology Tocksworth, A Brief History of History (Anno 1276), p. 23

"In short, my dear Clover, I am an old stallion with many regrets. Regrets as dark and numerous as the pillars of that nameless city where even the King of Dragons fears to tread. Learn from my mistakes, and grow from them. But, where I am going, do not follow me."
~ Starswirl the Bearded, Historionica Magicka (c. Anno -10,228), preface

Little Octavia's breathing was laboured and heavy as she reached the top of the ridge, nostrils flaring. Her instructors, before they had died screaming, had told her to, whenever possible, breathe through her nose while they were in the desert, as breathing through one's mouth caused one to lose water faster. Octavia almost always did as her instructors told her, with a noted exception of the previous evening, when the Matron had said "HELP ME!" and Octavia had ignored her, running off into the desert until she couldn't hear the shouting anymore. She obeyed them in this case, however, and breathed through her nose rather than through her mouth.
Octavia had no way of knowing whether breathing through her nose was prolonging her life or not, or if it really helped her to retain water. As it was, her coat was heavy with sweat, dust clinging to the dampness as grime. She pressed forward, down the gravelly, dusty slope. The sun was going down, causing the ruins in the distance, the great City of Pillars, to cast long shadows.
Assuming the advance party was as dead as Matron Ratchet had assumed they were, the only source of more supplies were at the archaeologists' camp at the City itself. And, further assuming that nopony else had escaped the camp last night, Octavia was now the last surviving member of her family, the last of forty-seven siblings. She pressed on.
Octavia reached the bottom of the slope and came to a skidding halt in a shower of loose pebbles and gravel. Stopping only a moment to catch her breath, she started up the next incline, breathing deeply and deliberately, watching her hoof placement but keeping a lively pace. The sun was setting.
Her legs were heavy and shaky and her lungs were burning as she pushed herself harder and harder to get up the ridge faster. It would be dark soon. She threw a hoof over the crest of the ridge and pulled herself up, half crawling, and allowed herself to gasp through her mouth, collapsing on the dusty ridge-top, wincing as her empty stomach hit the rocky ground.
She pulled herself up on shaky legs and opened her eyes to look at the ruins again. She still had several ridges to go, several frozen waves of sand and stone, all radiating outward from the ruins. Octavia smiled. Then she looked down.
Her smile dropped. Her ears drooped. Her heart sank. Her eyes grew large and her breathing slowed. Below her, between the current ridge and the next, sat, squatting like spidery frogs, a thicket of walking cacti. The sun was setting. Octavia slowly started to back away, back down the ridge she had come.
A jolt and Octavia's front hoof slipped, she fell forward, tumbling down the slope of the ridge toward the bramble. She scrambled, flailing her hooves for purchase on the loose material, sliding ever closer toward the purple, writhing mass of vines and poison thorns. She screamed. She curled into a ball, bracing herself for the impact with the sharp, crushing coils. Then she stopped.
The sound of sliding rocks and falling debris continued around her, but she had stopped moving. She had slid onto a protruding slab of granite, sticking out just over the thicket, exposed by the sudden shift of material. Shaking, Octavia spread her hooves out to find a grip on the rock, steadying herself. She peered over the edge and screamed again. The cacti were uprooting themselves and beginning to climb toward her. She struggled up to her haunches, recoiling from their slow advance. Each cactus was the size of a pony, a columnar mass of leg-thick vines with hoof-long poison thorns.
She turned around, careful not to lose her balance, and jammed her hooves into the side of the incline, causing little rock slides of pebbles around either side of her little hooves. When they felt anchored into the loose material, she pushed herself up with her hind-legs, yanking out one fore-hoof and jamming it into the gravel higher up on the slope. She could hear the cacti now. Somewhere, deep within their mass of coiled vines, they had mouths. They were breathing, slavering, making scratchy, wheezing and crackling sounds.
Octavia ripped her hoof free and jammed it yet higher on the slope, waited for the shower of pebbles to stop, then pressed on. There was a cracking sound, tearing through the air, like a whip, followed by a shower of pebbles from her left. A big purple vine had lashed out in her direction, landing just a leg's length from her. It was coiling and retracting now, dragging material down with it.
Octavia felt hot tears on her cheeks and couldn't stop herself from sobbing, her breathing a mess of stutter-stop open-mouthed gasps. She gritted her teeth and took another hoof-step up the slope. Another crack and Octavia was certain she was done for – but this one was followed by a peel of thunder, echoing through the desert. Octavia looked up, then turned to look at the ruins, losing her balance and sliding back down to the rock where she had started, which the vines were now coiling around, either pulling themselves up or the rock down. Whichever gave first.
Octavia started up the slope again, faster this time, pushing up, and sliding down, desperate. Panicking. There were vines on either side of her now, and the rock she had thought solid was now starting to tilt and shudder as the vines continued to pull.
She shrieked at the uncaring stars that were just starting to appear in the evening sky. She screamed in anger at the harsh, relentless desert, punching the rocky slope, sending dust and gravel flying.
There was another peel of thunder, followed by a roar and the scream of tearing air. Something exploded and Octavia felt a sharp, stabbing pain on her flank, then on her hind leg, then burning heat. Her tail was on fire.

It had been a trap, of course. A distress signal luring his time-space ship to space-station Tartarus, orbiting the immense black hole the Eternals had called "The Howling." There had been a time, when the universe was much smaller, much darker, when the Old Ones and the Great Vampires roamed the stars, that the Eternals had used the Howling to banish horrible, terrible things to the Void between worlds. The Carrionites, the Hervokens, the Nightmare Child and the Court of Shadows – all banished through the Howling. So when he landed on space-station Tartarus, he scolded them for building their station in orbit around such a monster in the first place. Then, when he was separated from his ship, they intentionally sent the station hurtling toward the event horizon. They were all sent hurtling into the howling void.
But, because fate loved him, because his mind was sharp and his will to survive immense, he found a way to punch a hole on the other side of the void, and plummeted, along with the worst creatures in creation, from the dawn of his universe, into a new reality. He hit a planet almost immediately, and, even though he died on impact with the planet, after a time, the Doctor woke up.

Octavia coughed out a mouthful of sand and gravel. She had a pebble up her nose. When she blew the little stone out of her nostril it came with a bubbling of blood. She couldn't feel her hind legs. She was on her back, buried up to her middle at the base of a tall dune of sand and gravel. She scraped her hooves against the sandy ground, trying to pull herself free. It wasn't working. Her stomach was going numb. The numbness was creeping up her body. Octavia let herself fall on her back, sobbing, screaming up into the night sky, hot tears and mucus and blood turning the dust all over her face to mud. The sounds coming out of her mouth became garbled growls of animal fury. Her fore-hooves struck the ground weakly. The sun was setting. Her eyelids were heavy. Her eyes would not focus.
"Hold on! I've got you!"
Her eyes fluttered back open. The sun had set. Unable to focus, her eyes stinging and blinded with tears and dust, she couldn't see who the owner of the voice was or where it was coming from. Her throat was tight and clogged and burning with an acidic, bloody taste. A large, brown form was shoving at the rocks and gravel burying her lower half. Teeth gripped mane and tugged at her painfully, dragging her the rest of the way out. "Ow!" she rasped.
"Sorry! I... I can't seem to... I don't seem to have fingers yet. I think I'm still cooking."
"C-cook...?"
"I can't lift you. Can you try to crawl onto my back?" She could make out the outline of an earth-pony stallion. His face came very close to hers and he was down on the ground, and made a gesture with his head to his back.
Octavia shook her head weakly. "No..." She tried to push herself up anyway.
The stallion sighed and jammed a foreleg under her shoulder, pushing his hoof between her wither and the ground, lifting her up a few inches and began dragging her backwards on three legs. Octavia closed her eyes again. She was very tired. She didn't hurt anymore. She didn't feel anything.

Octavia couldn't remember her dreams when she woke up. Her eyes wouldn't open. She couldn't move. She wasn't breathing.
Panic gripped her and a bright light shone through her eyelids. For a moment, she could see through them, blue and purple afterimages dancing and pulsing across her retinas. She felt hot and cold at the same time. Sensation rushed through her, tingling, burning, tickling. Air burst into her lungs and she was panting, chest and stomach heaving, mouth and nose tasting of antiseptic and cold mint tang. Her eyes were open, but the afterimages were all she could see. She was on her back and her rear, her hindlegs were in front of her, her forelegs were at her sides.
Something went BING!, deafening her as it resounded in the small space.
"Hey," came a muffled voice, followed by the sound of a hoof tapping. "Hey, you okay in there? Are you alive?"
Octavia coughed and moaned weakly. "No..." she croaked, furrowing her brow.
"Humour! That's a good sign. Hang on, I'll let you out."
Octavia held her hooves out in front of her. Slowly, her vision cleared. She could see her hooves. She touched one hoof to the other – a raggedy gasp entered her. Her sore eyes were hot, and tears were falling again. She bit her lower lip and, shakily, reached her hooves up to touch her face. She could feel her face, and her neck, and her chest and shoulders. She hugged herself and cried. She was alive.
A loud hissing noise and the left and right walls of the enclosure slid away, allowing the cold night air of the desert to sweep in. Octavia curled into a tighter ball and sobbed. "Oh, oh dear – um..." the stallion's voice fretted. "There there?" he said, half reassurance, half question. He reached out a hoof to pat Octavia on the head. He did so, once.
As he lifted the hoof up to pat her a second time, Octavia bit him on the fetlock, viciously, burying her teeth down past hair and skin and reaching muscle before releasing him and dashing through the other side of the enclosure. The stallion screamed.
The enclosure was a white sphere with two portholes on either side that were almost as large in diameter as the sphere was tall. Octavia hid herself low to the ground on the opposite side of the sphere, waiting, wiping her eyes with the back of her hoof and licking his blood from her lips.
"WHAT WAS THAT FOR!" the stallion roared.
Octavia growled and clacked her teeth together, trying to sound menacing. She spread her hooves out in the sand, ready to run in whatever direction to stay out of his reach. She was in the shadow of the sphere as outlined by flickering firelight. The sphere and the stallion were between her and a fire. Fire would keep the walking cacti away, and attract other creatures.
"I'm not going to hurt you!" the stallion shouted. "I'm the one who saved you!"
Octavia growled again. It was a low, gurgling sound in the back of her throat. She had never been good at hissing or shrieking like some of her brothers and sisters had been, and she had no wings to make herself look bigger.
"Ow..." he said, sucking air through his teeth. "That really hurt!"
Octavia crept around the base of the sphere, careful to stay in the shadow, and peeked around the side at the stallion. He was standing there, cradling his wounded foreleg. His foreleg was...
Octavia rubbed her eyes with her hoof, blinking several times. When she looked again, she still saw the same thing. The stallion's foreleg, just above the hoof, was glowing. It surged with yellow light, tiny will-o'-the-wisps and glittering dust pouring out from the bite she had chomped into him. When the surging stopped, and the light died away, he shook his foreleg, rolling the hoof on the fetlock, and then stamping the ground with the hoof.
Octavia ran behind the sphere again, shaking.
"There we go," the stallion said, stamping the leg a few more times. "Good as new."
"What are you?" Octavia called through the sphere, risking to lift her head to look through one side and out the other, then ducking back behind the white metal base of the sphere.
"Well..." he hummed a moment. "That's sort of a complicated question at the moment. The short answer doesn't make very much sense, I'm afraid, but it's short, so I'll just lead with it: I'm the Doctor. I'm a Time Lord from another dimension. I fell through all of reality in a Nekkistani emergency medical pod I nicked from a prison ship orbiting a black hole. I'm... sort of amazing like that. And you are?" He took a step toward the sphere.
"Stay back! I'll bite you again."
He made an exasperated sound. "Oh, for pity's sake! I'm not going to hurt you! How can I prove to you I'm sincere?" He puffed for a few moments, his breath slowing. "Okay," he said. "You can talk, so you're obviously intelligent. We're both intelligent beings, we can discuss this. You're scared of me. That's been established. Why? Why are you scared of me?"
Octavia frowned. She drew her hooves in closer together and sat, looking down at her hooves, her ears flicking occasionally.
"Well?" the stallion asked again.
"You're bigger than me," Octavia said at last. "And you're an adult."
"Am I? Well that's a relief. I would have hated to regenerate as a juvenile of the species, I like being able to reach high shelves – it's always where all the best stuff is at! Yeah?"
Octavia snortled in spite of herself. "You're weird," she said. "And you don't make any sense."
"Oh, I'm an expert at not making sense. Dangerous thing, making sense. Does nothing but get you into trouble. Are you in any trouble? Is that why you're scared?"
Octavia looked down at her hooves again, furrowing her brow. "I don't know."
"Are there... adults trying to hurt you?"
"Ha!" Octavia snarled. She rubbed her right foreleg with her left hoof. Startled, she jumped back, staring at her right foreleg. She moved into the puddle of light at the middle of the sphere's shadow, firelight shining through the empty middle where she had been sitting. "What did you do to me!"
"Why? What's wrong?"
"NOTHING!" Octavia shouted.
"Then what's the problem?"
"No! Nothing is wrong with my leg! That's the problem! My scars! The... my leg. It... it healed funny, when I was little. It's not... What did you do to me?"
"Uh, no... no no! Nothing! I mean, well, yes, something. I healed you! I mean, the machine, I used – that is, you see, I'm brilliant, very, very clever, so, I sort of found a way to save your life – which you haven't thanked me for, by the way, but-"
Octavia jumped up onto the lip of the pod. "What did you do to me!" she shouted through the pod at him, tears again in her eyes.
"This!" he waved a hoof at the pod. "This device, it healed you. Did you see the energy, the light, that was on my arm just now? Where you bit me? That's the same sort of energy that this pod used to heal you. Well! I say the same, and, in a way it is, but really it's a little more complicated than that - semi-intelligent syntheo-symbiotic nanogenes channelling my bled-off regenerative energies would be more accurate, but you get the gist of it." He sniffed, shrugging. "But, you know..." He sighed nodded to himself. There was a long moment of silence. He made a clicking sound with his tongue. "You were dying," the Doctor said at last. "I did what I could. I'm sorry if I upset you."
Octavia wiped her eyes again with her hoof, frowning. "You are... really weird." She laid down on the seat in the middle of the "pod", keeping her eyes fixed on the stallion.
"Yep, that's me."
Octavia laid her head down on top of her forelegs, burying her muzzle under her hooves. "And you really aren't going to eat me?"
"Eat you? No!" he scoffed. "If I did that I wouldn't have anyone to talk to! And besides, I've got plenty of food here, came equipped with the pod, survival kit, 's got lots of food packets."
Octavia's guts rumbled. She sat up and glared down at her treacherous stomach.
"I've got plenty to share if you wanted some," he said, moving away from her. "I'll just be over here by the fire if you want any."
Octavia pulled her lips back from her teeth. She looked out into the dark expanses of the dunes. She stuck her nose in the air and sniffed. The chill night air carried the smells of sand, dust and death. Walking, shambling, skittering death. Her stomach rumbled again.
"Sorry, did you say something?" called the strange stallion. "Or was that your stomach?"
Octavia stood up and growled low in the back of her throat. She crept around the base of the pod and glared toward the fire. "Hey!" she said. "Those are mine!"
The stallion, the "Doctor", looked over his shoulder at her, holding Octavia's sun-goggles in his hooves. "Oh, these?" He spun them around his hoof by the strap. "Well, here, why don't you come over by the fire and I'll give them back, and you can have some of this food while you're here?" He waved a shiny packet with his other hoof.
Octavia narrowed her eyes to slits. "Throw them."
"What?"
"You just want to punish me for biting you. I'm not coming over there."
The Doctor tossed Octavia's sun goggles toward her. They landed half way to her with a thud in the sand. Holding the silvery packet with both hooves he tore the bibbly edge of the packaging with his teeth and tossed the opened packet half way between them as well. "Suit yourself. I'm not going to hurt you, either way."
Octavia looked to him, then down at the food, then back up at him. She made a dash for the food and the goggles, pausing only briefly to snap them up in her mouth and run back to her hiding place at the base of the pod. The Doctor didn't stir. He poked at the fire with a flimsy stick, and threw more bramble on the burning mass.
Octavia's ears stuck up. "Where did you get that wood?"
The Doctor turned to her. "It's not wood, it's brush. Found it yesterday when I got bored. Over there, about two minutes meander away. Couldn't go very far while you were here. Didn't know when you might wake up or if the pod might have needed prodding."
Octavia looked to where he pointed. She couldn't see past the light cast by the fire. "How long was I asleep?"
"Three days." The Doctor turned to look at her, smiling. "Glad to see you up and about."
Octavia didn't answer. She sniffed the open food packet. There was a hard, brownish-red bar inside. She licked it. Then she tore the package apart with her hooves and crammed the entire bar in her mouth, chewing sloppily with her mouth open, swallowing it down after only a few chomps, licking the package for any stray particles. Then she tried tearing at the silvery package.
"No-no-no! Don't eat the packaging!" The Doctor shouted, scrambling up to his hooves and taking a step toward her.
Octavia dropped the packaging and dashed to the opposite side of the pod.
The Doctor sighed. He returned to his fire. "Great..." he muttered.
After a few minutes he turned to grab another "hoof-full" of bramble. "AH!" he shouted, falling backwards when he saw Octavia stealing another food packet from beside him. Octavia jumped and dashed away, dropping the food packet. "Oh this is just silly!" he shouted. "Have I done anything to indicate I had hostile intentions? Anything at all? How much of a timid bunny rabbit are you?" The Doctor sighed.
"I'm not a bunny rabbit!" Octavia shouted, startling the Doctor again. She was on the other side of the fire from him.
"Apparently not." He tore open another packet and tossed it over near her.
Octavia hesitated, then took the offered food, eating it slower this time, chewing the processed food bar thoroughly.
"Here, this is your canteen, isn't it?" he set it down a little ways away from him. "I refilled it. Survival pack has an emergency supply."
Octavia stopped eating and looked at the Doctor from across the fire. "Why are you being so nice to me?"
"Why shouldn't I be?"
Octavia looked down at the food between her hooves and, after another moment of silence, started eating again. When she had finished, she licked the inside of the packaging for any crumbs she could find. Then, watching the Doctor as she moved, she walked halfway around the fire toward him. She laid down and drank from her canteen. "Did you need some?" she said, holding the canteen out by the strap.
"Yes, thank you." The Doctor got up and moved slowly the few steps toward Octavia, and extended a hoof. Octavia flinched slightly, but did not run. The Doctor took the canteen and poked at the lid with his hoof.
"Ugh," he said. Repositioning the flat of his hoof over the cap and twisting the cap while applying pressure. "Just about... there..." The cap dangled from the chain that connected it to the metal bottle, and the Doctor took a little swig. Then, touching his hoof to the cap, he laughed out loud, startling Octavia to her hooves. "Sorry."
Octavia settled down again.
"It's just – it's amazing! I want to pick up the cap, and it just adheres to my hoof!" He replaced the cap and gave it a twist. "And when I want to put it down, it just falls away! Brilliant!"
Staring at him, Octavia blinked once.
"Well, I guess it's all old hat to you. Thank you," he put the canteen on the sand between them. "But to me this is all quite new!" he continued. "I've only been in this body three days."
Octavia cocked her head to the side, furrowing her brow.
"Oh, well, I don't want to panic you again, but I'm an alien, I came from outer space, I only look like your species because that pod decided to make me look like the local population – probably homed in on you specifically because you were the only advanced animal life-form in the vicinity of the landing area. Sorry! By the way. For crashing so close to you."
"That was you? The fire from the sky?"
"Well..." he puffed out his cheeks... and released it. "Yeah. Again, sorry about almost landing on you."
"You landed on the monsters."
"Monsters?"
Octavia nodded but did not elaborate further.
"Hm. Good for me, then." The Doctor threw another clump of brush onto the fire. "So... what were you doing out here in the desert? Do you live out here? I saw a good chunk of the planet on the way down, looks fairly green elsewhere."
Octavia took a deep breath and exhaled heavily, looking at the fire. "What's an 'alien'?" she asked after another moment, not looking away from the fire.
"Oh... well, an alien is a being that is from a different planet than you, I suppose."
Octavia said nothing for several second. "What is a 'being'?"
"You know, a creature, a living thing."
"Oh. What's a 'planet'?"
"Oh, come on!" he said, making Octavia jump half way to a standing position, looking at the Doctor again. She frowned at him. "Sorry!" he whispered. "You have to know what a planet is. A world – a round ball of rock and dirt, the thing you're standing- er, sitting on!"
Octavia looked at the ground. "So, Equestria is a planet?"
"If that's the name of this world, then yes. No if 'Equestria' is the name of the desert or a country we happen to be in."
"Equestria is a realm – a union of small kingdoms and republics, ruled over by a single monarch."
"Well, that sounds rather like a country or empire to me. Not a whole planet. Are there countries and governments outside of Equestria? Other monarchies and republics?"
"Mm-hm," Octavia nodded enthusiastically. "There are thirty-two recognized foreign powers, and several more sparsely populated regions – I can name all of them if you like."
"Sure!" the Doctor said. "Go ahead, I'm listening."
Octavia started to name the other realms of the world and giving the basic facts of each one, and how they related to Equestria. There was the Kingdom of Trottingham, an island kingdom to the north east, a cold, rainy group of islands that had a long seafaring tradition and often traded with Equestria. South of Trottingham was the lands of griffons and hippogriffs. They had a number of kingdoms and principalities and republics and confederations which little Octavia listed in great detail, including their capital cities, their type of government, the titles of their heads of state and heads of government. She also listed their suspected military strengths and dispositions to each other and to Equestria and Trottingham.
Octavia continued listing adjacent territories and regions and nations, the lands of the zebra tribes, the towering city states of Saddle Arabia, where horses dwelt, and the lands farther east, where dragons, ponies, horses and all sorts of creatures all lived together in a vast empire that Equestria only heard of second or third hoof in stories and rumours.
"And where are we now? Is this Equestria?"
"Um..." Octavia looked off to the side. "In a way... These are the Badlands. It makes up the southern border of Equestria, but nopony really lives here. Not for a really long time."
"I see," the Doctor nodded. "I guess that would explain the really old ruins on the horizon." He gesture over his shoulder in the City's general direction, though it was too dark to see past the ring of light cast by the camp fire.
Octavia's ears drooped. "Yes," she nodded, looking at the fire. After a few more minutes, Octavia turned wide, pleading eyes up to meet his. "Doctor?"
"Yes?"
"Can I have some more of those food packages?"

The little filly was curled up under a thermal blanket from the survival kit, sleeping snuggled up against the Doctor and his own blanket. The Doctor was watching the stars, frowning. Strange stars rolled across the heavens in the shapes of constellations from his own universe. They were not the same stars, however.
The Doctor's ears perked at a noise just outside the ring of firelight. He had burned all the bramble, and so was left only with the dim flicker of the fuel tins from the kit. He looked into the darkness, squinting. At his side, the little filly was muttering and twitching under her blanket, rustling the empty food wrappers she had nested herself on top of after she had licked their insides clean.
The Doctor had warned her that she would give herself a stomach ache.
The filly kicked her hind legs under her blanket, whimpering and panting, her ears and forelegs twitching, her teeth gnashing and her eyes squinting tightly shut. The sounds from outside the ring of firelight resumed, the sound of clattering pebbles and rocks. At his side, the little filly's fevered mutterings became louder, and, every few seconds, the muttering formed words such as "No" and "Stop" and "Savart" and "Nacht". The Doctor turned his eyes away from the edge of the darkness surrounding them to look down at the little filly pressing her back against his side. Her hooves were kicking to her side, running in bursts, then flailing sporadically. Then rocks started to bubble up out of the sand.
Small white pebbles surfaced from underneath the fine grains and rolled in small circles. Some pebbles jumped and adhered to the bottoms of the filly's hooves, and then were propelled into the darkness as she failed her limbs. Some of the stones began to coalesce into a rough pyramid shape. Larger rocks rolled in from the darkness, spiralling and gimballing on the sand as the little pony muttered and fretted at the Doctor's side.
The sand was moving. Waves rippled through the sand in the firelight, rolling like the waves of an ocean, breaking on a shore of pebbles on the pyramid that became an island. Then the sand swallowed up the pyramid, forming a blob that shaped and moulded itself into the shape of a pony, a pony with a horn – a unicorn. A second sand figure appeared, a smaller one, a filly, without a horn. Then a flurry of sand tentacles burst out of the ground and tore the sand unicorn into pieces, the sand filly ran from the scene, falling apart after it left the area of the waving sand. The doctor heard the flesh-and-blood filly at his side muttered the accusation "you're dead", full of spite and spittle, followed by a growl. "You're weak... dead... s'no'more... Savart..."
Then something else started to grow out of the waving patch of sand. Something with eyes. Something with gnarled horns. Something with a mouth as wide as the Doctor was tall, full of teeth as long as the Doctor's leg.
"Wake up," the Doctor breathed, his eyes fixed on the seething apparition of sand. "WAKE UP!" he shouted, jumping to his hooves.
The filly's eyes snapped open and the creature collapsed into dust and sand grains, its outstretched arm and hand crumbling to a pile of dirt at the Doctor's hooves. The filly by his side leapt up and ran beneath the Doctor. She was panting, her head craning in every direction, turning around in circles, looking out to the darkness. She poked her head out from beneath the Doctor's chest, looking up at him. "What?!" she shouted. "What was that!"
"I... think... it's gone."
The filly stepped out from under the Doctor and walked around the fire.
"You were having a bad dream," the Doctor said. "I think... we both were."
The filly poked at a rock with her hoof, staring at it for a moment. Then she looked up at the Doctor. "You... have scary dreams too?"
"Oh yes," the Doctor said, his voice low and pointed.
"About... monsters?"
The Doctor chortled. "No," he shook his head. "I'm not scared of monsters. Monsters are scared of me. No, there are worse things than monsters to be scared of."
The filly stared at the Doctor, studying his face. She walked toward him, her eyes fixed on his. She sniffed in his direction, then cocked her head to the side, blinking. "My name's Octavia."
"Hello, Octavia!" the Doctor said, grinning broadly. "Very nice to meet you!"
Octavia narrowed her eyes. "You're weird."
"Oh yes." The Doctor confirmed. "Come on, we should get ready to get going." The Doctor sat down in front of the huge metal survival kit, opening it and pulling out a pair of folded backpacks. "These aren't the best for hooves, ergonomically speaking, but – make do and carry on! Work to be done!"
The Doctor fumbled with the zippers and gave one to Octavia, and began loading his own with supplies. Octavia loaded her pack with the remainder of the food packets and clean packets of water and little else besides her sun goggles. She slung one of the shoulder straps over her neck, took two steps, and tripped over the second should strap. Her face slammed into the loose sand as she toppled forward.
"Whoa! Easy now!" the Doctor helped little Octavia up. She spit sand and shook her head, blinking. "Here, let me help you." He showed her how to wear the back-pack.
"How am I supposed to reach things when this is behind my head?" Octavia walked around in a few tight circles, trying to reach the zipper with her teeth.
"Well, it's not really designed for quadrupeds, I'm afraid. But like I said, it's all we've got handy."
Octavia stopped spinning around and looked up at the Doctor. "'Handy'?"
The Doctor sighed. "All that we have 'on hoof', as it were."
"Oh," Octavia said, scrunching up her brow.
The Doctor struggled his pack on over his back and went through a mental list of the supplies they had packed. His ears swivelled about, startling him. Then he smiled, poking at his directional ears with a hoof. He turned his head in the direction his ears had been turned. Octavia was staring in that direction already, out beyond the ring of firelight. Her head was low, her ears were back and she was backing away toward him slowly.
The Doctor sniffed.
"It can't be," he muttered.
"Don't run," Octavia whispered.
The Doctor stayed still and let her walk backwards underneath him, half hiding her face behind his foreleg.
"They'll come up through the ground if you run," she continued.
"I know," the Doctor said, straining his ears. The slithering, rustling, spitting noises of the plants filled the darkness beyond.
"You've seen these before, haven't you? That's why you're alone."
Octavia's voice was so low and so quiet that if her head hadn't been pressed against the Doctor's leg, he may not have known she was speaking at all. "Yes."
"And... I am so sorry."
Little Octavia looked up at him. "Why?"
"Because... I brought these here – they come from my universe, from a place called Skaro. We call them Varga plants."
"I don't care," Octavia said, shaking her head. "Let's just leave – very, very slowly."
"Good idea."
They walked backwards from the fire. In a moment, they could see more writhing, spiny vines crawl and drag their way into the firelight. It was a very long, very slow march into the desert until they could no longer see or hear the carnivorous plants any longer. Then they turned and ran into the night toward the ruined city.

In the cool and dark of the night, Octavia was in her element. Her violet eyes dilated, her huge black pupils devoured the meagre light, her ears scanning the world around her of their own accord, her hooves easily found steady purchase on the moonlit sand and rocks. The Doctor was watching the skies.
"Are there a lot of ponies up there?" Octavia asked.
"Hm? Where?"
"In the sky," she pointed. "You came from there."
"Well... Technically I'm from another universe entirely. This sky is all new to me..." he said, trailing off.
"Oh." She did not ask what the word "universe" meant. "The sky is new to me too." She looked up at the twinkling stars the Doctor was staring at.
"Really?"
"Mm," Octavia nodded. "I grew up underground. I didn't like it."
"Understandable."
"I like the sky. It makes my stomach feel funny – all tingly, and makes my head feel all dizzy, like I'm going to fall up into it." She looked straight up and turned around in circles, then trotting and jumping in circles, eyes on the starry sky.
The Doctor smiled at the little skipping, twirling filly. Watching her, he almost tripped over a rock, and turned back to watch where he was going. His face soon grew more neutral, verging on serious. "So, Octavia, the Varga plants – those were the monsters my pod landed on?"
Octavia stopped twirling and came up alongside the doctor, trotting at an even clip. "Yes. We call them walking cacti. They're from the Dragon Wars."
"Dragons? You have dragons here?"
"Well, they were driven out of the Badlands – they don't nest here anymore, but they still migrate through here."
"I meant on the planet – we're talking about the same things, yes? Big scaly lizard thing with wings and the fire-breath, yeah?"
Octavia nodded. "Uh-huh. They're mean."
"Well, I'd imagine. Still I've met a nice dragon or two in my time."
"Really?"
"More or less. I remember this one time..." The Doctor trailed off and came to a stop. Octavia was no longer by his side.
She was standing several paces behind him, stone still. Her forehooves were spread apart and the front of her body was held low. Her eyes were wide and round, eyebrows pushed up nearly to her hairline, her ears flicking about in mad little stutter-stops. Her breathing was coming in tiny, quick half breaths through her parted lips. As her breathing became faster and shorter, her mouth opened farther, her teeth catching the moonlight. Then her lips formed a single, short, quiet word. "Run."
"What?" said the Doctor, quirking his head to the side.
"RUN!" Octavia screamed, bolting past him. The Doctor frowned, watching her as she fled.
Then he felt the rumbling beneath his hooves, the skittering of small rocks and sand grains across the ground, the shifting of the dunes. "Ah! I see! Yes. 'Run!' Excellent idea, Octavia!" He yanked his hooves out of the sand they were rapidly sinking into and ran after her. The little filly was too far into the near darkness to see, the sound of her pounding hooves drowned out by the roaring of shifting sand and stone. The Doctor tried calling out her name, but found his voice was totally lost in the sounds of the enraged desert.
As he had done all his lives, as every adventurer across time and space had done before him, he ran – galloping into the night as the ground beneath him shook itself into a fluid consistency. It was often said about the Doctor that he ran and never looked back. There were several things said about the Doctor that weren't entirely true.
The Doctor looked back over his shoulder as he ran.
The creature rising out of the ground was tall enough to blot out the moon and the stars. Its eyes, each large enough to drive a train through, cast a mucus-yellow glow across the desert before it. Its mouth was a cavern filled with pale green flames. The stone giant pulled one leg completely out of the dunes, its craggy body grinding and rattling, bits of shale falling off like scales.
"Magnificent!" the Doctor said before turning his eyes back around to front, galloping with all the speed he could manage, hearts thundering in his chest. The world was illuminated in flickering green light and waves of heat washed over the Doctor. Again turning, he saw a wall of green flame rushing toward him, licking at his tail and scorching his rear-hooves. "HOT! Hot-hot-hot-hot-hot!"
The wave of flame ebbed like the tide, plunging the doctor into near total darkness. He did not see the gigantic stone hand come crashing down around him. A cutting gust of sandy air, displaced by the giant's palm, slashed through the Doctor's coat, scraping hair and skin raw. His shoulder hit the ground first. He skid in the sand until his head slammed into the side of the giant's splayed fingers. Light exploded behind his eyes, swimming the world in multiple directions at once.
The Doctor coughed a mouth and nose caked with sand. His limbs flopped and flailed and the giant raised his hand back up into the air. The yellow-green light flooded over the Doctor once again. A burst of light popped a pony into existence beside the Doctor. His wobbly vision drifted upwards, burred and doubled he could make out the rough outline of the pony by the yellow-green light. She was looking up toward the giant.
"What...? Who...?"
"You're in a state, eh Doc?" the other pony said, putting her face down close to his.
Before he could focus on her face, something on her forehead started glowing, and then surged with brilliant blue light that popped them out of existence just before the giant's palm came crashing down again.

Twilight watched the giant from the top of a crumbling minaret on the edge of the City. When she saw the flash of the teleport she charged her own horn with energy and began counting down. "Four... three... two...one..." Minuette and the stallion popped into existence behind Twilight "Zero!" Twilight shot a bolt of energy into the keystone at the top of the minaret. The keystone glowed with energy and a shield fizzled to life around the city in a bubble of light that glittered for a moment and then faded to transparency.
The giant looked up toward the minaret and roared, green flame shooting from its mouth and crashing into the invisible shield around the city. The shield flickered and strained, fizzling. The giant stared straight at the minaret, its face a still, slack-jawed, blank expression.
After another few moments of vacant staring, the giant turned and lumbered off into the night and the desert. Twilight released her breath, sitting back down, hoof over her thundering chest.
Minuette leaned close to Twilight's ear and said: "The shield should hold-"
"AAH!" Twilight yelped. "Don't do that, Colgate!" she scolded, standing and facing the taller, bluer unicorn mare. She reached up a foreleg and wrapped it around her mentor's neck and shoulder, hugging her tight and nuzzling the top of her head against Minuette's jaw and chin, the side of her horn rubbing against Minuette's fuzzy blue cheek.
Minuette snickered and petted Twilight's streaky mane with a forehoof. "Bit jumpy, Twi?"
Twilight gave Minuette's chest a light punch. "YOU!" she accused. "You could have been killed!"
Minuette snortled and drew breath for a witty retort when the Doctor groaned.
"Ah, right," she said, turning toward the fallen stallion. "Help me with this lug, Twily. You know how Earth ponies react to teleportation."
Twilight and Minuette, between them, managed to lift the Doctor up with a foreleg over either of their backs and helped him down the spiral stairs of the minaret to the dusty city street below. "Who is he?" Twilight asked, struggling under the weight of the fully grown stallion.
Minuette guffawed.
"Colgate!" Twilight shouted.
The Doctor winced, Twilight having shouted almost directly into his ear.
"Oh! Sorry, sorry," Twilight whispered. "Are you okay?"
"I had..." the Doctor started. "I had... a friend with me... a filly... where...?"
"She ran into the city ahead of you, I lost sight of her, but she's on this side of the barrier, she's safe... um, safe-ish, anyway. Magog didn't get her."
"Oh good... What...?" the Doctor trailed off, made a noise that was exactly not like a hiccup, and slumped forward, his hind legs going slack.
"Whoa!" Minuette said, followed by another brief laugh. "Well, that's typical. His companion's safe so he passes out, expects us to carry him!"
"Ugh! Who is he?" Twilight said, repositioning his foreleg around her shoulders with a grunt.
Again, Minuette laughed. "Oh, if only you knew. Hm, let's just say a once and future old friend?"
"Colgate!" Twilight shouted, coming to a stop, causing Minuette to stagger as the Doctor's limp body nearly slipped out of her grip. "Cut out the mysterious time-pony nonsense! It's not cute anymore!"
"Alright, alight," Minuette surrendered. "Twilight Velvet, meet the Doctor – and, incidentally, the very stallion we've been waiting for."
"Wait... the Doctor? You mean... the Doctor? The one you're always on about?"
"The very same."
Twilight Velvet blinked her blue eyes repeatedly, staring down at the unconscious stallion. "I thought he'd be... I don't know... taller?"
"What are you two doing out here!"
"Oh, hello," Minuette said, turning toward the dark beige stallion. "Help us with this guy, Cabbie, I don't think Twily is up to it – no offence, hun."
Twilight grunted. "None taken."
"Who is this!" the stallion demanded, snorting loudly. His dark, bushy eyebrows furrowed down over his eyes in a piercing glare. "We don't have enough supplies for tourists!" He trotted down from a pile of crumbling brickwork that totally blocked a side-street off the main thoroughfare. His coat was tawny and closely shorn, but bristly. He wore a khaki vest and a pith helmet, and his face bore a five o'clock shadow and a permanent scowl.
"Calm down, Cabbie, he's part of Matron Ratchet's group, with one of the packages we've been waiting for."
"Finally," Caballeron sighed, his face coming as close to not frowning as it was able. "I have no intention of dying in this place."
"Package?" Twilight cast a glance at the Doctor's backpack, then at Minuette, then she looked at Dr. Caballeron. "What package? I thought we were waiting for a linguistics specialist?"
"That too, darling," Minuette said, nudging the unconscious stallion between them. "The Doctor here speaks every language known, and some that aren't."
"Bah!" Caballeron huffed, pushing Twilight out of the way to take up the Doctor's body with Minuette. "Nopony speaks every language! I hope his actual skills are not as overblown as your bluster, Colgate!"
Minuette only smiled.
Twilight lagged behind the other three, looking around at the darkened sandstone buildings, the empty doorways and windows, the innumerable black obsidian pillars that lined every street. "Should I stay behind and look for that little filly? She's probably terrified."
Caballeron gave a dry, mirthless laugh. Minuette glared at him. She looked back over her shoulder at Twilight. "No, hun, we should stick together for now."
"But, she's just a little filly, won't-"
"That filly is not just a filly," Caballeron spat.
"Cabbie!" Minuette warned. Her voice softening, she turned to Twilight. "Hun, have you ever been to an orphanage school?"
"Of course, I used to volunteer at the Royal Canterlot School every week."
"Well, Matron Ratchet's school is nothing like that – it's a... military school."
This caused Caballeron to snort and chuckle again.
Minuette ignored him. "That little filly will find her way to us soon enough, don't worry about her, hun."
"But-"
"Don't. Worry. Hun." Minuette said with stern enunciation.
Twilight made a pouty frown but fell into step behind them, sparing only the occasional glance toward the black, doorless doorways and deep, inky shadows. In these shadows she failed to see the small form of the grey filly, eyes glinting dimly in the moonlight, trailing them back to their camp.