Fire and Brimstone (comic story)

Summary
On Icarus Falling, a satelloid in orbit around Crivello’s Cauldron, communications seer Ptolemy Muttonchops sees a vision of Armageddon in his augury pool. However, the satelloid’s paragon, Sister Chastity, advises him to keep this vision to himself for fear of fulfilling it. The TARDIS materialises on the satelloid, and the Doctor and Izzy are brought before its Leaderene to explain their presence. The Doctor fears that his arrival on the Cauldron that he launched into space 200 years ago is no coincidence, and his fears are confirmed when Icarus Falling is attacked by the Daleks. As the Argonauts try to hold off the invaders, the Doctor takes a sample from Muttonchops’ augury pool, realising that it’s part of the Cauldron -- which begs the question of how Muttonchops is able to survive communion with it. The Daleks then launch a Contagium, a nanite-producing weapon, into the satelloid; anyone infected by the nanites falls under Dalek control at once. Only Izzy, Chastity and Muttonchops escape. The Doctor gives Izzy his coat, which contains the sample from the augury pool, and then confronts the Daleks alone, certain that they are responsible for his arrival. The Daleks appear to exterminate him -- but this is just a trick to fool certain parties on the satelloid who are working against the Daleks. It fails, as Muttonchops can sense through his link to the Cauldron that the Doctor is still alive. He too falls victim to the Contagion, and Izzy and Chastity flee to the docking bay -- but before Izzy can try to fly a ship to the Dalek Hive and rescue the Doctor, Chastity stops her and reveals herself to be an agent of the Threshold.

The Doctor is reunited with Marquez, who is now revealed to be a Dalek agent who posed as Crivello’s servant in order to turn the experiment to the Daleks’ ends. Some time ago, an army of Daleks from an alternative Universe emerged through a freak spatial rift in the Magellan Cluster; they were successfully exterminated, but the Daleks can’t tolerate the thought of such creatures’ existence, and intend to traverse the timelines and wipe out all alternative versions of themselves. In order to do so they must create their own spatial rift, which is where the Cauldron comes in; since the Doctor has a psychic link with the living sun, they can use him to initiate the Cauldron’s controlled collapse and create a spatial rift through which to navigate the timelines.

The Daleks cut the connection out of the Doctor’s brain and leave him for dead, but Chastity arrives and revives him. There is no love lost between the Doctor and the Threshold, but he reluctantly agrees to help them stop the Daleks. Chastity leads him to the map room, where he locates the data conduit; if he can divert the information flow back through his own brain, he can prevent the collapse of the Cauldron. Or so he thinks. However, Izzy, now held captive in the Threshold’s base, has learned that the Threshold are working on behalf of other clients, and are using the Doctor to set a trap. When he completes the circuit, the Cauldron will consume the Dalek Hive and close again, trapping them forever -- and incidentally killing the Doctor.

The Doctor, suspicious of Chastity’s motives, halts before activating the circuit -- and then the Daleks arrive and destroy it, having found a more reliable plan. Ptolemy Muttonchops is in fact a symbiote of the Cauldron, and he is now under Dalek control. The Daleks use him to open the rift, but they have forgotten that it opens both ways -- and armies of alternative Daleks emerge from the wormhole and attack the Hive. In the ensuing chaos, Izzy uses the sample of Cauldron plasma that the Doctor took from the augury pool to distract the Threshold, and steals a Threshold ring and the prize promised to the Threshold by their clients. She uses the ring to return to the Doctor, who sees that box containing the Threshold’s reward is embossed with the Seal of Rassilon. As the Hive begins to break apart, the Doctor drops the box through a hole in the floor, and as Chastity and Marquez fight over it, the Doctor communes with Ptolemy, who frees himself from Dalek control and prepares to go nova. Izzy loses the Threshold ring, but the TARDIS appears nearby -- perhaps brought to the Hive by the Daleks, or perhaps sent by other interested parties. As the Doctor and Izzy flee, Chastity kills Marquez and opens the box, and the Cauldron goes nova, destroying the Daleks and the Hive and closing the spatial rift. The Doctor and Izzy watch from a safe distance as the Cauldron returns to normal, ensuring that the humanity will continue to survive. But Chastity reappears briefly to remind the Doctor that his last match with the Threshold is yet to be played out...

Characters
to be added

Continuity
to be added