The Doctor stood frozen before that colossal metal door for what felt like an eternity. When she finally crossed the threshold and vanished inside, the heavy blast doors slid shut behind her, sealing her away from the world. For the remainder of the night, not a single soul on Rhodes Island caught so much as a glimpse of her shadow.
Initially, a wave of genuine worry swept through the camp. They couldn't help but fret over whether an adult woman could actually manage to wander off and lose her way inside her own landship. After all, outside of a freak navigation accident, they couldn't conjure up a single comforting reason to explain away her total, overnight disappearance.
But considering the strategist's profound, ancient ties to this iron leviathan, Theresa ultimately decided to seek out the omnipresent, all-knowing Kal'tsit to pry for answers. The clinician merely offered a flat, dismissive reassurance that there was absolutely no need to worry, allowing the monarch to finally let the matter drop.
In all likelihood... the Doctor was probably holed up in some forgotten corner of the ship, drowning in the crushing weight of nostalgia. It was entirely within the realm of possibility that she had spent the midnight hours weeping uncontrollably over the ghosts of her past.
This exact theory was validated the very next morning when the Doctor miraculously materialized before them. Not a single person had picked up on her approach, leaving everyone to wonder if she had somehow unlocked a masterful new stealth technique overnight.
"My apologies, everyone. Last night, I had to personally oversee some highly confidential matters, and I completely neglected to inform you beforehand."
Those were the first words out of the Doctor's mouth, offered as a blunt, immediate apology for her erratic vanishing act. Leaving her companions stranded in a subterranean vault without a single word of explanation was undeniably reckless and inconsiderate, and the Doctor was entirely willing to own up to that lapse in judgment.
However, Jeanne and the others barely registered the apology itself. Their collective focus instantly locked onto the raw, gravelly scratch in her voice.
In a split second, the collective gaze shifting toward the Doctor turned overwhelmingly tender and motherly. What does a missing night matter? As long as you didn't throw yourself down a maintenance shaft, everything is completely fine! Frankly, you can go vanish again tonight if you need to.
The current consensus among the group was a deep, lingering dread that returning to this ancient cradle had triggered a severe psychological relapse. They worried the sheer, agonizing weight of her memories would drive her to a sudden, tragic breakdown—especially since her mental baseline had never been particularly stable to begin with.
Even Kal'tsit, who rarely offered the Doctor anything short of a razor-sharp tongue, consciously softened her vocal tone. She spoke with a rare, delicate gentleness, looking as though she were terrified that a single sharp remark might send the fragile strategist leaping off the highest deck of the landship.
This sudden influx of suffocating warmth left the freshly returned Doctor profoundly bewildered. She had only been absent for a single evening, yet everyone was treating her like an endangered species. Did a ghost somehow slip aboard the vessel while I was gone?
The Doctor shuddered slightly at the thought, but her gaze instantly locked onto Jeanne. With a literal holy maiden standing right there, what kind of phantom would ever dare to cross us? In a flash, her lingering trepidation completely vanished, replaced by an armor of absolute fearlessness.
Seeing that no one was intent on interrogating her regarding her midnight whereabouts, the Doctor let out a quiet, internal sigh of relief. The truths she had faced the night before were far too heavy to share, and she desperately wanted to keep that sacred secret locked away from the rest of the world.
The core leadership naturally understood the unspoken boundaries surrounding the Doctor's past. While Closure might not have possessed the full chronological context of the situation, that mattered very little in the grand scheme of things. By tacit agreement, the group smoothly steered the conversation toward a fresh topic, burying the tension entirely.
Once the logistical briefings were out of the way, Jeanne's burning desire to inspect the celestial impact zone was brought back to the forefront. Seeing as her schedule was entirely clear, Theresa offered to accompany Jeanne out to the excavation site.
Naturally, they made sure to drag the Doctor along for the excursion. Part of the decision was rooted in a desire to get the strategist out into the open air to clear her mind, but on a practical level, they were also in desperate need of an expert guide.
"To be completely frank with you, the physical reality of this Catastrophe site borders on the miraculous. The second your eyes land on the coordinates, you'll understand exactly what I mean..."
The Doctor repeated variations of that exact sentiment multiple times throughout the bumpy vehicle ride. As a brilliant scholar who possessed a profoundly deep mastery over the mechanics of Catastrophology, the structural anomalies of this specific impact had thoroughly captured her intellectual curiosity.
What kind of celestial anomaly could possibly leave an epoch-making academic like the Doctor completely spellbound? The answer became blindingly obvious the exact moment Jeanne and Theresa stepped onto the rim of the basin.
Had the Doctor not explicitly explicitly declared this coordinates to be ground zero of a Catastrophe, an ordinary traveler would never have linked this serene valley to an unprecedented celestial strike. The entire sector looked indistinguishable from a standard, perfectly ordinary mining excavation.
Hundreds of laborers were working beneath the open sky, their shouting voices echoing through the canyon as they excavated the bedrock with feverish intensity. Yet, looking across the vast expanse, there wasn't a single trace of the horrific, scarring devastation that inevitably followed a Catastrophe. This level of environmental insulation was something Jeanne and Theresa had never witnessed in their entire lives.
By all accounts of modern science, a Catastrophe was defined by its localized environmental pollution. Following a meteor strike of this magnitude, the impact basin should have been transformed into a terrifying, jagged forest of raw Originium crystals—the kind of lethal, high-density hot zone where a single unprotected step would cost a mortal their life.
Attempting to harvest Originium in that type of radioactive hellscape was nothing short of a suicide mission. Jeanne had been deeply plagued by that exact logistical nightmare prior to her arrival, which was why she had intended to deploy her own draconic summons to handle the heavy lifting. After all, neither she nor her dragons harbored any fear of acute Originium poisoning.
"Spectacular, isn't it?" The Doctor muttered, matching their pace as they walked down the main access ramp. She couldn't resist sharing her findings; keeping an intellectual puzzle of this magnitude locked away in her own mind was becoming an unbearable chore. "When I first surveyed the data, I found it entirely impossible to comprehend. Out of the thousands of Catastrophe case studies I've analyzed across my lifetimes, this is the single most bizarre anomaly on record. It refuses to behave like a Catastrophe."
"The surrounding environment is completely devoid of airborne contaminants," she continued, her fingers tracing a clean geological map. "Every ounce of radioactive pollution triggered by the celestial impact was seamlessly dragged beneath the earth alongside the tectonic collapse. Yet, looking back at our planetary sensors, there wasn't a single pre-existing seismic reading or orbital trajectory that accounted for this strike..."
Jeanne and Theresa maintained a respectful silence, offering no verbal rebuttals to the Doctor's complex scientific jargon. Truthfully, the highly technical equations and academic data went entirely over their heads, so they contented themselves with acting as a quiet, attentive audience.
The Doctor didn't seem to care that her companions couldn't engage with the high-level science. Having been isolated in this subterranean sector for days, she was practically bursting at the seams; she simply needed a sounding board to vent the profound, unanswered questions echoing through her mind.
The physical reality of this celestial event had delivered a deafening, humbling blow to the scientific frameworks she had spent lifetimes constructing, forcing her to look into the void and question the very baseline of her theories.
"It mirrors a scenario where an invisible entity waited until the continent was completely vacant, only to gently place this priceless treasure into the bedrock, patiently waiting for a specific individual to come and claim it," Theresa murmured, giving voice to the profound thought taking root in her heart.
Though the concept sounded completely preposterous on paper—what kind of entity possessed the godlike capability to utilize a world-ending Catastrophe as a localized delivery service?—the Doctor immediately nodded in quiet agreement. Her gaze locked directly onto Jeanne, her eyes narrowing slightly as she studied the silent holy maiden beside her.
Jeanne, however, had fallen into a deep, contemplative silence the moment Theresa's casual observation echoed through the valley. Unlike the others, she was fully aware that her family circle included a literal Almighty God who possessed a notorious track record of utilizing world-altering Catastrophes as casual playthings for His children. Manifesting a flawless, purified crystal core and dropping it into her lap as a localized gift was entirely within His operational playbook.
Though, strictly speaking, wouldn't it have been infinitely more convenient if Lord had dropped this delivery straight into the northern snow plains? Jeanne grumbled internally. All I would have had to do was step outside my front door... Well, whatever. The gift has officially arrived. Perhaps our Lord was simply running a bit behind schedule and delegated the shipping to a mortal intermediary?
Jeanne lifted her eyes to stare toward the deep trench where the meteor lay buried. A sudden, overwhelming warmth blossomed in her chest, looking for all the world like a young child realizing their parent had sent them a belated Christmas or birthday present across the miles. A profound, genuine sense of gratitude washed over her.
Watching the sudden transformation ripple across Jeanne's features, Theresa and the Doctor instantly solidified their suspicions: this world-altering celestial event was undeniably, fundamentally linked to the girl standing before them! Even the fiercely secular Doctor began to harbor a nagging doubt that perhaps a divine entity truly had altered the laws of physics on her behalf.
They watched in silent amusement as Jeanne's expression shifted from quiet confusion to radiant, unadulterated euphoria. Her stride became noticeably lighter and more buoyant, mimicking a young child skipping down the street after tearing open a highly anticipated birthday present.
While she couldn't definitively prove that this meteor was a direct care package from the heavens—after all, celestial bodies didn't exactly arrive with a tracking number attached to the hull—the reality was simple: as long as she believed with all her heart that it was a gift from God, then it was a gift from God!
Though the colossal mass of Originium remained completely buried beneath hundreds of tons of solid bedrock, Jeanne was entirely convinced that the sheer, unadulterated magical density locked within that core would provide more than enough power to manifest her long-awaited, companion: Fafnir!
The moment the summoning circle finalized, she would have a magnificent True Dragon added to her ranks. She could already visualize herself happily scratching Fafnir's massive, scaly tail whenever she pleased, completely liberated from the constant threat of getting physically reprimanded whenever she tried to touch Talulah's tail!
Wait... phrasing it that way makes me sound like a terrible, unfaithful woman who abandons her old flame the moment a new model arrives, doesn't it? Jeanne blinked, a sudden flush of guilt hitting her. I'm simply harboring a healthy, academic curiosity regarding draconic anatomy... Besides, it's not like Talulah can actually accuse me of raising a secret, secondary dragon behind her back!
As those chaotic thoughts swirled through her mind, Jeanne's heart swelled with an absolute, unshakeable hope for the future. Staring down at the excavation site, she could practically feel the weight of her impending destiny resting in her hands, and she couldn't bring herself to wait another single second.