Firelight (comic story)

Firelight was the main comic story published in Titan Publishing's Once Upon a Time Lord graphic novel, starring the Tenth Doctor and Martha Jones.

Summary
From inside the control room of his TARDIS, the First Doctor tells a new companion that if they are determined to keep on travelling with him, then they must know exactly what to do if they face the Pyromeths. This speech is continued throughout the Doctor's lives, as the Second Doctor describes them to Jamie McCrimmon as "hideous" and having existed since the dawn of time, while the Third Doctor tells a disbelieving Jo Grant that they are even older than the Time Lords. The Fourth Doctor explains to Leela that they gave the gift of fire to every race in the universe, but the Fifth Doctor clarifies to Nyssa that it was not to cook or keep warm - the Sixth Doctor tells Frobisher that it was to tell stories around, as they feed on psychic energy from imagination. The Seventh Doctor warns Ace that she must keep her guard up, as the Eighth Doctor tells Molly O'Sullivan that she would be snatched away to a secret location, telling tales forever. The Ninth Doctor warns Rose Tyler that if she stops, then she will be extinguished like the fire they grant, and urges her to remember one thing. Finally, sitting in the TARDIS with the Tenth Doctor, Martha Jones asks what that one thing is, but the Doctor changes the subject as they have just landed at a new destination.

Stepping out, he welcomes Martha to the planet Bobalabinko, pointing out its county fair that he wanted her to visit purely so they could taste a rare drink that tastes exactly like ginger ale on Earth. As the Doctor sprints off to find some, Martha explores and finds three red-haired, cat-eyed children sitting alone in front of a puppet show booth. They ask her to take over with some good stories and she happily obliges. As she turns her back, however, their faces turn into dark flames, with piercing red eyes and jagged teeth visible through the fire. The Doctor returns with his treat, only to see that Martha has disappeared.

Martha awakes in the Pyrometh realm, revealing the children to be the monsters in disguise, and they order her to tell tales else she is cast into the void forever. Naturally, she begins to tell the story of the Doctor. Explaining the importance of his companions and the danger he faces, she tells of a time when he visited the Plasma Seas of Sirenia 7...

A giant ship made of bones crosses the Plasma Seas, manned by an eyepatch-wearing Sycorax named Admiral Scarrr, as their ship narrowly dodges an enormous creature. Meanwhile, on his quest to find the most valuable thing in the universe, the Doctor charters a sailing ship from Captain Polly, a robot who speaks through a blue-and-yellow parrot growing out of his right shoulder. Polly immediately rejects him because of the dual threat of Scarrr and the mighty Troutanicus. Unaware he is being watched, the Doctor eventually wins Polly over and is welcomed aboard along with the TARDIS, which the Doctor calls his "tackle box". Meanwhile, a spy for the Sycorax runs into a nearby tavern to tell Scarrr and his men that Polly is back to try and land Troutanicus, and he is death-whipped in response.

On Captain Polly's boat, the Doctor hooks up a jelly baby as bait on a fishing rod, unaware that the Sycorax ship is rapidly approaching from behind and it smashes the boat in two, forcing the duo to cling to the TARDIS in the sea. The Doctor calls out to the other ship to reel them in but they are bound by Scarrr's laser lash instead. Scarrr boasts to Polly that he will use him as bait for Troutanicus, and the Doctor replies by shuffling around the TARDIS exterior to demand their release. The Sycorax simply laugh in his face and cast the TARDIS further out to sea, but the Doctor uses his time talking to allow him and Polly to slip inside the doors.

From inside, the Doctor activates the TARDIS' true weight to forcibly pull the still-tethered Sycorax ship under the Plasma Sea and out the other side. As they fall, the gargantuan Troutanicus itself emerges and eats the Sycorax ship whole. Polly describes capturing the giant as the greatest prize in the universe, but the Doctor says he is looking for something different and materialises the TARDIS inside Troutanicus' stomach where the Sycorax are waiting. Although Scarrr is furious, the Doctor offers him the chance of a safe exit in the TARDIS on the condition that he says "please". He reluctantly agrees. Before he leaves, however, the Doctor looks around at the other digested spaceships and discovers the Sunglider of Ra, the legendary lost flagship of the Osirans.

The Pyromeths ask Martha if the hero of her story found his goal of the most valuable thing in the universe, but she explains that his journey continued, but will only tell it if they say "please". As they oblige, she details that the Doctor was in fact only interested in the Ankh of Ptah, a universal control key resting inside the Sunglider. However, this was not the great treasure either - instead, it could unlock a door in an ancient Osiran temple that was buried deep under the deserts of Egypt until it was uncovered by even greater villains in 1940...

Under torchlight at an ancient Egyptian archaeological site, Colonel Heinrich Münsterhausen and his Nazi officers order a local to keep digging until she has unearthed a prize for Adolf Hitler. However, she activates a hidden lever and enters the temple, leaving the Nazis trapped outside. Removing her disguise, the woman studies a wall of hieroglyphs in the hopes of reaching the treasure of Horus before Münsterhausen, but the Doctor has already arrived, holding the Ankh of Ptah and explaining that she needs a key. As she holds him at gunpoint, the Doctor holds up his psychic paper which displays him as being from the British Museum, so he takes the name of "John Smith". He recognises the woman as Dr Rana Rashad, a rare type of archaeologist that he has great respect for.

The Pyromeths interrupt Martha's storytelling to try and understand the Doctor's many "magic" objects, but she continues nonetheless. After using the ankh on a hidden keyhole, the Doctor and Rana narrowly avoid some booby-trap daggers. Outside, however, Colonel Münsterhausen orders the locals to surround the entrance with dynamite and he blows up the entranceway to get in by any means necessary. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Rana find themselves balancing atop high pillars overlooked by a sphinx statue, and the Doctor reasons that the Great Sphinx's famous riddle used the numbers four, two, and three in order, so they must jump on the respective numbered pillars. As they do, Rana nearly falls to her death but the Doctor catches her hand, leading them to further respect each other.

Next, the Doctor and Rana face a portrait of a queen and two buttons. The Doctor quickly recognises that they are secretly the same size and should be pressed at the same time, which works, and the door opens, causing him to praise the power of teamwork. As Münsterhausen and his major reach the pillar room and send several men to their deaths trying to overcome it, Münsterhausen reveals his plan to use the treasure of Horus to summon an army of the dead.

The Doctor finally reaches the end of the temple and comes face to face with the Osiran sarcophagus of Horus, but Rana is quickly set upon by a group of Osiran service robots disguised as mummies. As they are captured, the spirit of Horus himself appears and offers one final test to the travellers: to answer an unsolvable riddle. The air is crushed from their lungs as the Doctor admits he has no idea of the answer, so the Pyromeths argue about what the answer could be, prompting Martha to continue the story. The Doctor simply displays his psychic paper and passes the test. However, as Horus prepares their prize, Münsterhausen and his major arrive. Horus asks if they would wish to visit the Realm of the Dead, and when they agree, the service robots simply kill them instantly. When the Doctor is asked the same question, he takes great pains to request to be able to come back again, and his wish is granted, with the sarcophagus transforming into a portal. Rana believes this is the most valuable thing in the universe, but the Doctor explains that hopefully, he will find it inside. He asks his new friend to look after the TARDIS and gifts her the golden Ankh of Ptah as payment before he heads into the portal.

The Pyromeths continue to get increasingly invested in Martha's story, and she warns them that her next tale is one of monsters even scarier than them - a tale of the only time the Doctor travelled to the Ream of the Dead...

The Doctor arrives in a barren foggy landscape, trying to convince himself that there is no way he has arrived in actual Hell, instead presuming it is some kind of psychic plane where he will see visions of the dead created from his own mind. Indeed, he looks out to see a field of thousands of his greatest enemies from across his life assembled en masse. He makes a scan with the sonic screwdriver for the one being he is looking for, alerting the Krillitanes and the Sisters of Plenitude, and they prepare to attack him but are stopped by a hooded figure claiming that the Doctor is under his protection. He reveals himself to be the Host, and he transforms into his werewolf form and drives the Sisters away as part of his debt to the Doctor for ending his suffering in 1879 Scotland. The Doctor asks if he can give him a lift.

Therefore, the Doctor rides on the back of the Wolf through the valley of monsters, ignoring their many tactics to get him to hand over the Doctor. When that does not work, they try to block his way with a huge army led by John Lumic in the form of the Cyber-Controller and his Cybermen. Luckily, their lasers have no effect on the Wolf, so the Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to summon the one species he has destroyed the most: the Daleks. They immediately engage in a great battle, allowing the Doctor and the Wolf to escape. At hearing this, the Pyromeths beg Martha to stay on the topic of the battle, calling it "way more interesting", but Martha promises that the secret of the most valuable thing in the universe is nearly upon them.

Approaching his destination, the Doctor asks the Wolf to stop so he can go it alone, considering his debt paid in full. The Wolf promises to wait to allow him to escape. The Doctor's goal is to meet one of the oldest beings in existence: the Empress of the Racnoss. Upon meeting her, he graciously lists his achievements of catching the uncatchable beast, answering the unanswerable riddle, and crossing an ocean of the dead, and asks her the question he has following all this time - where is the most valuable thing in the universe? The Empress asks why she should give the Doctor this information, and he retorts that he killed all of her children, meaning that she can spend eternity with them in the Realm of the Dead, and therefore she owes him a favour. Choosing to abandon his belief that the realm is purely in his mind, she relents, and tells the Doctor to visit the edge of the Tyross Expanse, hidden in the gravity well of the Tartus Nebula - specifically, the secret lair of the Pyromeths.

At hearing Martha tell them this, the real Pyromeths are startled and question why the Doctor, who they believe to simply be a fictional character, thinks that their home is the most valuable thing in the universe. The Doctor replies directly to them that it is not, but the safety of his companion is, and he now has all the knowledge he needs to find her. Terrified, the Pyromeths panic, and before long, just like magic, the TARDIS materialises inside their realm with the Doctor appearing in a burst of light.

They furiously lunge straight at him but almost immediately collapse, unable to move, on the ground. The Doctor proudly tells Martha that this was all her doing thanks to her telling the stories of him exactly as he asked her to, having texted it all to her in advance. As the Pyromeths feed off fiction, she told them truths, and it is something they literally cannot stomach. This shocks Martha and she wonders if all the ludicrous stories she told of him were actually real. The Doctor replies that they must have been, or else none of this would have worked. Safe at last, the Doctor and Martha depart once more in the TARDIS, just as the storytelling fire dies out in the Pyrometh realm for good.

Characters

 * Bronze Daleks
 * Casp
 * Cybusmen
 * Draconians
 * Empress of the Racnoss
 * Gelth
 * Ice Warriors
 * Martha Jones
 * Krillitanes
 * John Lumic
 * Major
 * Menoptera
 * Heinrich Münsterhausen
 * Ood
 * Osiran service robots
 * Polly
 * Pyromeths
 * Rana Rashad
 * Robot Yeti
 * Scarrr
 * Sisters of Plenitude
 * Slitheen
 * Sontarans
 * Sycorax
 * Sycorax spy
 * Tenth Doctor
 * Terileptils
 * The Host
 * Troutanicus
 * Wirrn
 * Zygons

Flashback

 * First Doctor
 * Second Doctor
 * Jamie McCrimmon
 * Third Doctor
 * Jo Grant
 * Fourth Doctor
 * Leela
 * K9 Mark I
 * Fifth Doctor
 * Nyssa
 * Sixth Doctor
 * Frobisher
 * Seventh Doctor
 * Ace
 * Eighth Doctor
 * Molly O'Sullivan
 * Ninth Doctor
 * Rose Tyler

Worldbuilding

 * The Eighth Doctor compares the Pyromeths forcing people to tell stories to the fate of Scheherazade.
 * Bobalabinko holds a county fair every other week.
 * Bobalabinko is 827 light-years away from Earth.
 * Bobalabinko has a drink that tastes exactly like ginger ale.
 * Martha used to come up with "the best" bedtime stories for her brother Leo.
 * The Tenth Doctor offers Captain Polly the fabled Sapphire of Sirenia, a winning lottery ticket, and his long-lost childhood toy named Mr Boo-Bear, and is also shown holding a recorder.
 * The Doctor's TARDIS usually weighs more than a moon or at least three Fijis.
 * The Ankh of Ptah can start the ignition of an Osiran ship or unlock one of their deadlock seals.
 * While in disguise, Rana Rashad refers to Colonel Heinrich Münsterhausen by the title of "Effendi".
 * Rana is half-English, half-Egyptian and studied at the University of Oxford.
 * The Doctor makes his sonic screwdriver activate without making its noise audible to most creatures, making it a "subsonic screwdriver" instead. This noise is particularly unpleasant to Krillitanes, Catkind, and the Host.

Continuity

 * When telling their companions about the Pyromeths, different incarnations are travelling with their respective companions
 * The Second Doctor is travelling with Jamie McCrimmon. (TV:, etc.)
 * The Third Doctor is travelling with Jo Grant. (TV:, etc.)
 * The Fourth Doctor is travelling with Leela and K9. (TV:, etc.)
 * The Fifth Doctor is travelling with Nyssa. (TV:, etc.)
 * The Sixth Doctor is travelling with Frobisher. (COMIC:, etc.)
 * The Seventh Doctor is travelling with Ace. (TV:, etc.)
 * The Eighth Doctor is travelling with Molly O'Sullivan. (AUDIO: etc.)
 * The Ninth Doctor is travelling with Rose Tyler. (TV:, etc.)
 * Admiral Scarr uses the Sycorax motto, "Sycorax strong! Sycorax mighty! Sycorax rock!". (TV: )
 * The Doctor notes that he would "usually point and laugh at archeologists". (TV: )
 * The Doctor mentions that the Osiran puzzles on Mars were "a lot easier" than the ones in the Osiran Temple. (TV: )
 * Amidst the residents of the Osiran Realm of the Dead are Zygons (TV:, Menoptera (TV: ), Robot Yeti (TV: , etc.), Draconians (TV: ), Terileptils (TV: ), Wirrn (TV: ), Ice Warriors (TV: , etc.), Sycorax (TV: ), Krillitane (TV: ), Ood (TV: , etc.), Slitheen (TV: , etc.), Sontarans (TV: , etc.), Gelth (TV: ), The Sisters of Plenitude (TV: , etc.), The Wolf (TV: ), Cybermen (TV: , etc.), Daleks (TV: , etc.), and the Racnoss (TV: ).
 * Matron Casp and the Sisters of Plenitude remember the Doctor from his trip to New New York. (TV: ).
 * The Wolf from the Torchwood Estate remembers the Doctor ending his suffering. (TV: )
 * The Ood claim to be "The Legion of The Beast". (TV:, )
 * John Lumic and his Cybermen remember the Doctor (TV:, ), and fight the Daleks (TV: ).
 * The Empress of the Racnoss and her children were all killed by the Doctor. (TV: ).