(Note that this contains some minor spoilers - so you might want to read it after reading the instalment)

Have set up a 'teaser' with the discovery that Nyssa has somehow been mummified millennia ago, this section of the book is to do with capitalising on the confusion of the readers and the characters. As the Doctor tries to work out what is going on, so the readers are on the same narrative journey.

That's not to say there isn't room for character work too. This confusion, and the situation, allowed me to explore Tegan's feelings. Without Nyssa and with the Doctor distracted she is very much alone - and Tegan is someone who I thought always puts on an act for whoever she is with. In this section she is in a daze, her world falling apart - in a later chapter she articulates that. It was a useful device later to be able to have Tegan alone with Nyssa's sleeping body in the tomb, thinking about who she really is and what's happening.

This is also a time when I could set up things for later pay-offs. We learn a bit about Rassul's background for example - both explicitly in the sequence where he is told of the grave robbing, and implicitly in his telling Nyssa that 'a father should not outlive his children.' This will be a key pointer to Rassul's motivation, a hook that helps us sympathise with the villain and realise that he, like everyone else, is being used by Nephthys...

It also mirrors the overall theme of time's circularity - Rassul tells Nyssa: 'I have heard it said that a father should not outlive his children.' He does not tell her that it was Nyssa herself who said it to him when he met her for the first time (in his timeline) in ancient Egypt. Nyssa recalls the phrase, and after she is sent back to ancient Egypt she says it back to him (watch out for that in the next exciting installment). Rassul's reaction is instructive, as is the fact that he still remembers her words thousands of years later...