"What?" Yas breathes out.
This was about the only thing she had time to say before the Doctor released her hand and sprinted off towards where the figure had disappeared.
Yas groans out loud and takes off after her, she doesn't want to be alone in this day and time. Who knows what kind of creatures and humans would be lying await.
Doctor has already crossed the clearing and running up the hill towards the woods. Yas tries to sprint as fast as she can but doesn't really catch up with her until the Doctor stops and looks at her sonic in confusion.
"Lost it," the Doctor explains breathlessly.
"The guy?" Yas asks, reaching next to the doctor and trying to catch her breath as well.
"Yeah, well," the Doctor nods. "I think we might assume he was a guy. But according to the sonic, that was not a human."
"What was it?" Yas looks at the Doctor, nose scrunched.
Doctor stares at the sonic with even more confusion and distress.
"An elf."
Yas's mouth drops open. "Are you kidding me? An actual elf? Like in the Tolkien books?"
"Who?" Doctor spares a quick glance to Yas.
"A fiction writer. Very famous. He wrote The Hobbit."
Doctor smiles before focusing back to her sonic. "Ah, him. I haven't met him yet. Maybe one of these days."
Yas just throws the Doctor a curios glance and looks at the tall group of trees before her, where the assumed elf disappeared to.
"Do you think it is an actual elf?" she asks from the Time Lord. "Not like an alien like Vulcans?"
"Could be," the Doctor sighs. "I mean not a real Vulcan. Well there is no such thing as a real Vulcan but you get what I mean? My sonic is not really sure but it seems that elf was the closest thing it could match. Oh, it means it's something new, something I have never seen before." She smiles to Yas, one of these blinding smiles that makes her whole being shine. "Come on, Yas. Let's find him. I want to meet this new alien life form. This is exciting!"
And with that, she takes off again.
Yas rolls her eyes and follows the blonde woman with a chuckle. These kinds of episodes seem to happen a lot these days.
Since she had already lost the Doctor from her sight, she follows the rustling between the trees she hears somewhere in front of her.
"Oooh!" Yas hears a surprised yelp from the woods and races uphill to see what happened to the Doctor. When she reaches to the next clearing, Doctor stands there, scanning big row of rocks with her sonic.
Yas looks around and realizes that the rocks she thought there were random, form a line, a half circle of some sorts, parting the clearing in two. She can also see the row of rocks continuing to the two sides of the clearing and disappearing into the forest.
"Oh," Yas breathes out as well, sonic screwdriver's buzzing continuing somewhere around her. "It's like a Stonehenge. In the forest. This is so cool!
"It's not a Stonehenge," comes the voice of the Doctor behind one of the big and central monoliths.
"Well, duh, I know that," Yas answers back. "But what is it? Why is it here?"
"All very good questions Yas," Doctor huffs out, weaving between the big rocks, touching here and there. "I am not sure yet."
"What do you mean?"
Doctor looks at Yas and nods. "Well they look like stones. But they are not. They have some kind of energy field around them but it's nothing like I have ever seen before."
"Something new?" Yas prompts.
The Doctor squints her eyes and scrunches her nose. "Not really. This reminds me of the deadlock seal system. The energy signatures are kind of similar but at the same time it's fundamentally different as well. It's like they have used the best features and then tied it with something of their own, which I have no idea about. And I love not knowing about thing. It's such a weird feeling!"
The Doctor stopped pacing around and is just staring at the biggest rock on the clearing with awe. "Who would have thought that rocks will give me feelings? Way to go rocks!"
With a bright smile and a wave of her hand, she touched the big rock, making it shudder.
"Stay back," The Doctor threw a glance at Yas. "The stone just moved."
"I get that yes," Yas shuddered and stepped back few steps, loosing her balance and promptly falling down on her ass, nocking her shoulder against a smaller boulder.
The big stone made a noise at that and all of a sudden Yas saw symbols on the rock next to Doctor glow in faint green glow.
"Whoa," the blonde said, watching them in awe.
She cheered, "You must have activated something!"
Yas swallowed at that and tried to get up from the ground, touching the same stone she had elbowed before again.
"Oh, the symbols are gone!" Doctor huffed in disappointment. She turned her gaze to Yas. "What did you do?"
"I just fell over and hit the stone over here," she grumbled, standing fully upright and brushing off leaves and dirt from her backside. "I didn't do anything else!"
Doctor huffed out another breath and breezed past Yas to inspect the stone with her sonic.
"Even more interesting," she mumbled. She extended her arm and pressed her hand against the stone. It hummed in a low frequency and they both turned their heads to the central stone. And there it was, symbols on the surface monolith again.
"This must be the activator," she cheered and patted the dark-haired woman to the back "Good job Yas! Helping me out here!"
"I really didn't do anything," Yas mumbles but blushes at the sudden attention.
Doctor just smiles and says. "But look, we have symbols now, one step closer to solving the mystery!"
And with that, she promptly walks away from Yas and starts to sonic-scan the huge rock.
Yas is quiet for a while and let the Doctor do her thing, but as she stops actively sonicing, Yas moves closer to her and curiously glances the symbols.
"What do they mean?" she asks, eyeing them with interest. Some of them look familiar somehow, but many of them are not even close to her understanding.
"I have no idea," the Doctor smiles. "Some of the symbols resemble the characteristics of Silurian language but, the TARDIS should have been able to translate it. But this, however, is not translated. So, it means that it's not really a language. It has to be something else."
"So, they are just pictures?" Yas asks bending closer to the stone surface to see how the symbols are imbedded in there. She notices no other grooves or markings and the surface of the stone throughout the images looks the same.
"Not just pictures. Symbols," the Doctor shakes her head. "They must mean something to somebody. Otherwise they wouldn't be here in the first place. But why are they here and what are they for?"
Yas squints her eyes and leans closer to the rock. "Hey, Doctor. I think these symbols are not from the stone itself. They are somehow projected onto the surface."
Doctor hurries closer to her and shuffles right next her, squinting her eyes as well in the process. "You are right! But how? This is amazing!"
She nudges Yas aside and stares at the symbols. The darker woman huffs in annoyance but yields to Doctor's antics and steps away.
Instead of making sense of how the symbols are done, she decides to walk around the huge monolith and figure out what they mean. As she is finishing her second circle around the stone, she notices something.
"Doc!" she calls her friend. "Do you know which way is the North?"
Doctor stops sonicing the surface of the rock and looks up to Yas, nose scrunched. "Should be that way." She indicates with the wave of her hand. "Why?"
"It's just," Yas hesitates. "These symbols, some of them seem to be pointing to the north with their sharp ends – look here," she points to the upper right of the symbols. Then she walks a little bit forward. "And these point to the south." She takes another step. "And these point to the east and the other side they point to the west."
Doctor had stood up while Yas was explaining and was now following her around.
"But why some of them have no sharp ends?" Doctor asks, walking around the stone.
"I don't know. But there is some kind of a pattern here." Yas supplies.
"Yes. There is." Doctor nods and circles the huge monolith one more time. Then she touches one of the rounder symbols. They both hear a swishing sound come from their right, making Yas jump. She shuffles closer to the Doctor.
"What are you doing?" She whispers loudly.
"I want to see if I am right." The Doctor answers calmly, touching another one of the rounder symbols, making another swishy sound somewhere nearby. She walks all around the stone and touches two more of the symbols and all of a sudden, a wall of light starts to simmer in between two slim stones nearby.
"Oooooh," the Doctor breathes out. "I was right. It IS a doorway. This is where our elf disappeared.
Yas steps closer to the wall of light.
"It's beautiful," she whispers.
"Yes," the Doctor agrees, coming closer to the newly opened portal. "But it's also not very stable."
"Where does it go?" Yas asks, turning her face towards the Doctor.
"No idea," the Doctor shrugs and points the sonic at the portal. As soon as the sonic starts buzzing, a ray of the simmering light engulfs Yas and sucks her into it. The portal closes as fast it had appeared, making Doctor stand there in utter horror.
"This is not good, this is not good," she mutters and runs back to the big stone again. She activates the monolith again, touches the shimmering symbols but nothing happens, except a spark of light between the slim stones. She quickly checks her sonic and groans out in frustration.
"This is not good," she mutters again, taking off towards the TARDIS.