Leah packed in record time.
It was hard not to when Kieran was standing in your doorway, reminding you of every limited minute as they slipped away, sixty seconds at a time. Her only saving grace was that her father's bags were acceptable to Kieran's standards, if a little large, but as he put it, she'd 'be the one carrying them anyway'.
With all her Teridian clothes thrown in with her Hilt, her drawing kit, several new notebooks and two of her own reference journals, Leah closed the bag and hoisted it over her shoulder, as Kieran's count reached seven.
"Let's move," was all he said as they left for the Spire.
The group was already assembled and waiting when they arrived.
Leah saw no friendly faces among them, and considering her previous late entrance, she didn't blame them. She'd redeem herself later, she promised herself, not that it mattered. This was temporary, at least until Emrys allowed her into the research team.
Most of them ignored her as Kieran moved to the front to speak with someone. If she had to guess from the hair of the groups, she was by far the closest thing to a pureblood in it. Though most had streaks and hair tipped in Radiant colours, for the most part, they were mixed bloods leaning on the human side. Only one other person in the group had a full head of Radiant hair, a boy that looked a few years older than Leah herself. She considered speaking to him before he burst out with laughter with two of the others and decided against it.
"Okay team," said Kieran. "Grab your Hulari Displacers. We'll pick up our return ones when we get there. Meet you on the other side!"
The team moved into a side room, each retrieving a glowing, white Displacer similar to the kind Asriel had brought Leah to the League with. One by one they disappeared, and Leah's anxiety of screwing up something else increased tenfold.
"You have any idea how to use a Displacer?" said Kieran in his usual bored tone that suggested he'd rather talk to the wall.
Leah swallowed, well aware of how badly she needed his implied offer. "No."
"Hold it out in front of you." Kieran grabbed her arms, straightening her elbows to his approval. "Now--not yet, just listen--when you're ready, you're going to use your Light on it the same way you would on any other crystal. You do know how to do that at least, right?"
"Yes."
"Good," said Kieran. "The bag will come with you as long as it's on your back. Whatever you do, remember that the Displacer is going to return itself to the place in the Spire where it was carved, so if your fingers are anywhere but where they're supposed to be, they're going to get stuck inside. Don't do that." He stepped back. "Go."
Leah exhaled, tightening her fingers on the handlelike shape carved into the Displacer. Even though being stuck in a giant pillar of crystal didn't sound like such a bad place to be at this point, she didn't want to give Kieran another reason to hate her.
She called her Light, and the world flashed white.
The same way it had with Asriel, her vision was slow to return. Her body felt numb, and one half of her was terrified to try and move her fingers off the crystal. The flash faded, her sight returning with relief. Her hands were safe inside the Displacer's shell, which was once again one with the Spire.
"You can let go of it now," said Kieran's voice beside her. "We have things to do." He stepped away as she did, the only difference being his purposeful stride that followed. Then, in a louder voice, he called, "Grab your League Displacer and don't lose it! We don't have any spares assigned for us, so you'll be staying here until the next shipment comes in if you do! Everyone is responsible for their own Displacer!"
Unlike the League's Displacer storage, this Spire's was far more organised. There were attendants that issued them and noted down their number and owner, the entire thing efficient and clean. Despite being clueless the entire time, Leah walked out of the secure Spire grounds holding a Displacer, more than a little bewildered.
"Might wanna put that in your bag," said one of the team as they exited. Leah glanced over to see the boy with Radiant hair glimpsing her way. "Even if humans can't use them, they'll steal them and try to sell them back to us, and you don't exactly look like a hard target."
Leah quickly took the advice. "Where are we?"
The boy shrugged, disinterested. "Hulari. Human capital. It's the closest Spire to the ruins we'll be exploring."
He looked away after that, but the small kindness was enough to help Leah steady her breathing and keep up with the rest of them.
Hulari was different from the League. Despite the civilised feel they both shared, Leah found herself comparing it to Teridia. The towering buildings made out of smooth, carved stone and the clean, manufactured streets with the integrated crystal-tech of the humans was at complete odds with the rough, formidable structures of the Teridians, but they shared the same atmosphere.
There was life here, she realised. At the League, there'd been people, but it hadn't been alive in the way these streets were.
She stuck close to the group as they moved through the bustle of street vendors attempting to sell their wares to anyone who was stupid enough to make eye contact with them or their product. As a result, Leah found herself caught up, attempting to get past a street merchant who refused to get out of her way. With her group fading into the crowd and no prior knowledge about how to deal with him civilly, Leah went with the Teridian option.
She stood on the tips of her toes, getting right up in his face, and snarled at him.
That stunned him enough for her to slip past. Heart hammering, her bag caught on more than one person's stray hands as she clutched it to her chest and wove through the crowds, honing in on the Radiant boy's hair. Only when she was close enough to reach out and touch him did she slow down.
Kieran led their group down a sidestreet, glancing around for a quick headcount that Leah lowered her eyes for. In her mind, he'd been hoping she'd been left behind.
"Okay," he said. "We're not staying in Hulari like last time, so if there's anything you were intending to pick up, you have half an hour. Meet back at the same place as last time--everyone remember where that was?" Nods. "Good. Our transport will pick us up from there, and we'll be arriving at the smaller town we're staying at this afternoon for a bright and early start tomorrow. See you in half an hour."
With that, the group scattered in every direction, leaving Leah standing around, wondering where the meeting place was at all and how much Kieran would yell at her if she followed him.
It was the Radiant boy who came to her rescue. After a quiet word to the others he'd been walking with, he approached her with a cautious smile.
"I kinda remember what my first expedition was like," he said. "And I didn't even have to deal with Kieran. Need an escort?"
"About as much as I need the sun," replied Leah, barely able to hold back the tears of relief. "I'm Leah."
"I know," he said, holding his palm out. "My name's Saisef, but Sef's good for short." Leah met his palm. "I have to pick up a few things from the markets, so I hope you don't mind a detour or two."
"Not at all," said Leah. "Lead on!"
They walked back they way they'd come, back onto the main street. Sef glanced back on occasion, ensuring she was still following as he led her through the crowds. His teal-coloured hair made him easy to spot when someone came between them, and eventually they turned into what seemed like an indoor market for crystals.
"Ruins tend to be pretty dark and torches aren't always an option," he explained, placing several purchased crystals of varying sized in his bag. "Storing Light inside these before we go in can help a lot, especially if we get in a tight spot, especially for those of us with more Radiant blood than the rest."
That done, Sef stopped in at a few other shops with Leah close behind, using the time to investigate several of the human curiosities.
"Ready to go?" asked Sef as she was peering into the windows of a shop that seemed to specialise in tiny crystals imbedded in delicately shaped metals.
Leah stood up and nodded. As Sef smiled and turned, she caught him by the shoulder, withdrawing her hand as he glanced back at her, curious.
"Um," she managed. "I just wanted to say thanks. For taking me along. Otherwise I probably would have followed Kieran, and, well, yea. Thank you."
Sef laughed. "Heh, uh, that's okay. I remember what Kieran was like when I joined--and I wasn't even late to my first meeting."
Leah scuffed her feet against the sidewalk as they walked. "I got lost coming from the research lab. I didn't even know I was on an expedition team until this morning. I have no clue what I'm actually supposed to do."
Sef's brow shot up. "Really? Wow." He was silent for a few moments before continuing. "From what Kieran told me, Emrys came to him and basically told him Terrell--our other documenter--was being moved to another team and that we'd have a 'proper' Radiant overseeing the information. Kieran, uh, wasn't too happy about that."
Leah's insides twisted around themselves. "I took Terrell's job?"
"Um. Yes."
She could have curled up and died on the pavement right there and then. "No wonder you all hate me. I don't blame you."
Sef turned away, looking ahead once more. "They'll come around eventually."
He didn't sound convinced, and Leah didn't think they would either. It wouldn't exactly matter when Emrys moved her to the research team, something that had become the one beacon of hope in her future. Ruins held their excitements, but she wanted a cure and she'd find that in a lab, not some crumbling ancient Radiant grounds where the murals were half-scratched out.
The city around them lost its height as they walked, back in the previous direction. From what Leah could tell from from the buildings, the humans built their structures with metal supports and filled in the walls with stone before overlaying some kind of resin that smoothed them out. It wasn't crystalite like the League, the entire place having been crafted from Light. Instead, the humans had made their cities from the materials the land had offered them, and they'd turned it into something wonderfully strange.
People glanced at her, too. More than once, she caught fingers pointed in her direction or eyes locked on her hair or crystal-imbedded skin. Not entirely sure how to deal with the attention, Leah ignored it.
The team's meeting place turned out to be a quiet garden hidden between the buildings. Clean brick walls held back gardens of flower bushes with benches nestled in their indents.
A few others were already there when they arrived. Sef held his palm up to his friends in greeting and went over to meet them. Leah hung back against a wall, placing her bag at her feet. She was tempted to pull out her notebook and sketch the scene, but the thought of what Kieran would say held her back.
So instead, she waited, staring between the bushes, peering into the city life beyond this quiet island of vegetation.
It wasn't long before the others trickled in. Kieran was one of the last to arrive, but when he did, it was aboard a strange rectangular platform with seats and wheels underneath a shadecloth.
"Let's go!" called Kieran.
Sef leaned over as he passed her. "It's called a bus. Humans can't use the Displacers, so they invented other methods of getting around. This is one of them."
Leah grabbed her bag and lingered at the back of the group as they filed onto the bus until her turn came.
"Thank you for keeping to schedule this time," said Kieran as she hoisted her bag so it wouldn't catch. "It's much appreciated, trust me."
Cheeks burning, Leah took a lone seat as far away from Kieran as she possible could.
She stared out the window as Kieran did a headcount and gave the go-ahead to the driver. She watched the result of a group of people whose culture had never involved the ability to crystallise Light rolled past, wondering just how much of it had changed or been influenced by the Radiants in ancient times. How much had survived.
The books she'd read that studied the three races were a little biased. She'd known that from the point that it'd described the Radiants as a race of demigods. She knew her own mortality well enough, had almost accidentally killed herself several times over growing up in the Teridian lands that weren't meant for people of a Radiant's physical tolerance.
Where the Radiants were the race of the Light, the books had said the humans were the race of the mind. The book had gone on to say that the Radiants were the shepards for the two lesser races, but looking at Hulari, Leah couldn't agree. This wasn't the result of Radiant influence. It was the result of sheer determination, of discovery and experimental measures given a practical use.
If Leah were honest with herself, she saw more potential in the humans she was passing. Their race had nothing her own didn't. They were plagued by disease and sickness, yet they were thriving. They were stubborn. They found solutions.
She admired that.
The city eventually disappeared in favour of a single road leading off into a distance Leah couldn't quite manage to make out. There was something there, but generally, it seemed like they were driving off into a desert, a dead land. The winds grew hotter the further out they went, until eventually, a small town came into view on the horizon, essentially a smaller scale of the streets she'd wandered earlier with less people.
They exited the bus outside a modest looking building that beared the not-so-modest insignia of the League on its sign. It stuck out like a blister on a Teridian's tail.
Ten minutes later they were checked in and assigned their rooms. With six to a room and three rooms, Leah found herself clutching her very own room key as the others discussed dragging a mattress from the third into the others for their friends.
She let the metal bite into her palm and stared at the wall. It hurt less than the fact that Sef seemed content to ignore her existence once more.
"Food's in an hour in the dining hall," said Kieran. "Get your prep for tomorrow ready, ensure you've all got enough Light to go into the ruins--use the last hour or so of daylight to recharge if necessary. We'll be leaving at sunup, so be ready."
The group wandered down the hallways to the rooms with excited whispers. Leah lagged behind, picking up her bag slowly under the guise of pretending to reorganise something inside. It was heavier than it'd been before, and by the time she stood outside her door, the other two rooms were open and alive with excitement.
Key in handle, Leah pushed her own silent room open. She dumped her bag beside the bed furthest from the window and sat down. There was an ache in her chest as she fished around for her notebook, carefully selecting a pencil from her drawing kit and poising it above the paper.
She tried for several minutes, but her earlier urge to draw was gone. After failing miserably at several easy strokes of drawing nothing in particular, Leah stabbed the pencil into the paper and ripped it across, mangling several pages under its tip before throwing the pencil at the wall.
It bounced off with a hollow clink as she pushed the notebook off her bed and laid down facing the wall, wishing her damned pillow would stay dry.
*+*+*+*
A/N - I really wanna get the next chapter written so I can write the chapter after that O_O Any guesses what happens then? ^_~
Wordcount: 19, 385 [1k over goal!]