Chapter Text
Chapter 1
Once there was a planet, old in tradition but young in technology. Its people celebrated and respected the forces of nature and the benevolent will of their Gods. Their culture matured, though their respect for the Gods and their magic never diminished, creating a society that eventually became of interest to the Federation.
An alliance was made, and as a gesture of good-will, a young doctor was sent to school the planet’s healers in modern medicine. The people of Rosa respected the doctor but were disdainful of his so-called enlightened methods, preferring the old ways of prayer and incantation to the technology he had brought with him to the planet.
The doctor was arrogant, sure of his knowledge and the technology the Federation relied on to heal its people, however the people of Rosa remained true to their healers and time-honored methods.
Soon after his arrival, the planet was struck by a plague, one that affected everyone but had a particular fondness for children. The doctor tried to help the people of Rosa, but most of the plague victims refused his help, wanting only the attention of healers of their homeworld. Only once nothing else had worked would they bring their ill to the modern doctor in hopes for a miracle.
The doctor worked himself well past the point of exhaustion in an effort to save the plague victims, but he could not save everyone. Most had waited too long, their trust in the older ways becoming their downfall.
One of those ill-fated patients was the daughter of two of the most influential people on Rosa. Her father was what in old Earth governments would have been called a king. Her mother was the high priestess, an intermediary between the Gods and their worshipers. They had taken the child to their best healers, praying to every God to listen to their pleas. Finally, when all else failed, the girl was presented to the doctor.
Immediately the doctor knew that her parents had waited too long, but still he struggled and fought to preserve their daughter’s life. He did everything he could, enraged when all his attempts were eventually rebuffed by implacable death.
Furious, almost crazed over the loss of his young patient, the doctor condemned the people of Rosa and their traditions, mocking their Gods as constructs of an illiterate culture. The girl’s father was prepared to order the doctor’s death for his acts of sacrilege, but his wife intervened. She had witnessed how relentlessly the doctor had worked to save the children of the local villages and understood that it was grief that had sharpened the doctor’s tongue.
The king demanded that the doctor be punished while the high priestess begged for leniency. She, and the parents of all the children that the doctor had been able to save, finally prevailed upon the king’s conscience. However the doctor had committed blasphemy and, for that, he had to be punished.
The Gods looked into the doctor’s heart, learning that his actions had been motivated not by heresy, but by grief. Love lost combined with guilt for misdeeds both real and imagined had been the cause of his blasphemy.
A glimpse into the doctor’s memories offered the proper punishment – the doctor would be forced to live in a world created by the magic that he so scorned, destined to follow the traditional path of love and redemption that was the common thread through all the stories favored by someone he had loved but could not save.
The doctor was escorted to a valley far from the village, a place that was held sacred because magic ran so strongly through the land. Before she set her spell into motion, the high priestess implored the doctor to take back the words he had spoken in anger, to beg for the Gods’ forgiveness.
Still grieving the death of his young patient and losses that were far more personal, the doctor again lashed out, sealing his fate. His condemnations continued until the ground shook beneath his feet, silencing him only moments before the magic caught hold and swept him into a blinding whirl of gold-tinged light.
Muscles and bones twisted, sculpting a wrenching agony that dragged an anguished cry from the doctor that would linger in the nightmares of all that witnessed the man’s punishment. Fur burst through pale skin as teeth lengthened into fangs and nails grew into thick, curved claws.
The doctor’s screams echoed through the valley, almost drowning out the sounds of stone being torn from the depths of Rosa to be shaped by a quieter, though no less impressive, transformation. Pale gray rock smoothed into a structure that resembled a castle from a child’s storybook while shimmering white blocks formed themselves into an impossibly high wall.
When the magic had finished, the high priestess moved to the doctor’s side, gently placed a hand on his shoulder and whispered reassurances that his transformation was not permanent. As he tried to move a body not-quite his, she promised him that the magic of Rosa would protect him and keep him in comfort, his new home kept hidden from any who would do him harm.
Her family would honor his life as a healer and find a way to release him from the spell that now bound him. She explained that though they would do everything possible to assist him, the breaking of the enchantment would hinge on the doctor’s own actions and those of another. Until he once again understood love and forgiveness, Dr. Leonard McCoy would be forced to remain a beast . . .