Leah blinked and glanced between Shade and the door. "How?"
Shade's steady gaze remained trained on her. "Figure it out. Prove that you can be useful. If you can't, well." He shrugged. "There isn't much point working with you, is there?"
Leah narrowed her eyes, not about to back down from the challenge. Shade seemed confident the door could be opened--maybe he'd even managed to open it himself--and she was not about to be shown up by this book thief.
She turned to the door.
Increasing the Light emnating from her crystals so she had a full view of it, Leah focused on the symbols. Shade had heavily implied that they were the key to this whole thing. Even if her reference key was incomplete, maybe she could figure out enough to fill in the blanks by herself. If she proved herself worthy, Shade might help her fill it in, but she wouldn't accept his help until this damned door was opened.
The central symbols on the door were also the largest, one inside the other. The larger one, the one that encompassed the other, was something she was familiar with. It appeared everywhere on everything. 'Light'. The secondary symbol, the one inside 'Light' was also common, but it was the bane of Leah's existence. The best she could narrow it down to was 'Life' or 'Spirit', but neither of those entirely fit. She knew the actual 'Life' symbol--it appeared beside 'Death' more often than not--but this one fit it in context. Sort of.
Still, it was good enough. Flipping to the back of her notebook, Leah started writing. 'Life' in 'Light' at the centre of the page. That was a start--likely what the chamber inside was for.
The rest of the door was a little more complicated.
Three strings of symbols, including several new ones Leah had never encountered before twisted and twined around eachother, completely encircling the central symbols before branching out across the room.
She picked one and followed it. It ran across the wall, up over the ceiling before splitting on the next wall into several strands, each one ending in one of the crystals imbedded into the wall. Leah touched her fingers to the crystals, realising they were designed to hold Light. Upon entering, she'd dismissed them as simple light fixtures, but maybe they were more.
Leah ran back to the door, finding the start of the string. After nearly ten tedious minutes, she'd worked out enough to guess the strings were indicators of which crystals needed to be filled with Light before the door would open. It was in the ancient's famous flowery wording, and though it started off simple enough, the place where the string split to end in different crystals was, to the best of her understanding, a question.
When she stood before the wall for nearly ten minutes, constantly glancing between her notebook and the wall, Shade cleared his throat from the corner.
"How's it going?"
Leah didn't answer straight away. The question didn't make sense, but she was sure she hadn't misinterpreted it. It wasn't a hard translation, despite the decorating twirls to the symbols. "The symbol strings are questions, I think, and the crystals are the answers. Light up the right ones, and it'll open. Only I can't figure out what this question is asking."
"What is it you think the question is?" asked Shade.
"It's... flowery, but the question is basically 'What is the greatest trait of our blood?'. I think I've worked out the answers, but some of them just don't make sense."
"What are they?"
Leah touched the symbols as she spoke them. "This one is 'Light'. This is, I think, 'Child' or 'Young'. This one is the 'Life' symbol within a 'Forever' or 'Eternal' symbol so I'm guessing it means 'Immortal', and then the highest one is just confusing. It's something like 'Happy' within 'Self'."
"Happy within self?" asked Shade, sounding more than a little amused. "The ancients were a little--wait, the ancient's creed. You remember that, right?"
Leah raised an eyebrow at him, turning away from the wall for a moment. "Ancient's creed?"
"It was the ancient's most sacred scripture," said Shade, pushing off the wall to join her at the wall. "One of the only ones they deigned to share with the other races, believing it to be a creed to live by, the one that had given them their divine right or whatever. One of the lines was something like 'May out blood forever remain filled with pride'. Doesn't that sound like it could be--"
"Happy within self!" said Leah, scribbling it down. "I was wondering why the two symbols were tethered together--usually they aren't unless they're--but yes, 'Pride' would definitely work!"
She reached up--fingers barely touching the crystal--and imbued it with Light.
The crystal gleamed. Light raced from its core, illuminating the string of symbols all the way to the door where half of the 'Life' symbol began to gleam.
Leah couldn't stop her squeal. "It worked! It actually wor--"
The Light faded.
Joy cut short, Leah jerked her head back to the wall crystal, once more dim. "I thought for sure that was right."
"Try one of the other crystals," said Shade. "Can't hurt, right?"
Leah narrowed her eyes at him. "You haven't actually opened this door before, have you?"
"Did I ever say I had?"
Leah huffed and reached for another crystal, the one that marked with 'Light'. "You heavily implie--"
As her Light entered the crystal, the ground beneath her feet fell away.
Leah screamed. She fell, back slamming against the floor as her feet plunged into the abyss below. Her own weight dragged her down, fingers unable to find something to grab in the second she had before the rest of her followed.
Her eyes were below floor level as Shade grabbed her wrist.
Leah's body snapped as Shade's grip stopped her fall. His grip held as her body dangled below the floor, Leah too shocked to do anything but hang, completely deadweight.
"Okay?" grunted Shade. His chest was against the floor above her, and though she could see nothing but his eyes, she heard the strain.
Leah's voice shook. "Please don't drop me."
"Not planning on it," he said. "Grab my wrist with your other hand. Tell me if you're going to slip. I'm going to pull you up."
She did as he asked. With a strength she knew she wouldn't have been able to call on, Shade lifted her up, little by little. First on his knees, then his feet--one foot either side of the pit until her shoulders were above the surface.
Only by the time they were, the floor that had disappeared from under her was returning, slowly sliding back into place and cutting off Shade's face from view.
"Get your feet up," he said. "Quickly. On the floor--like that. Good."
Leah was pretty sure she didn't breathe until she was several metres away from the hole, curled up on the floor. She pretended she didn't hear the faint growls and grunts coming from the pit she'd almost fallen into. It'd been deep enough that no amount of Light was going to get her out of that, and she didn't think it would have been much different for any other ancient Radiant who'd fallen in.
"So," said Shade, his breathing a whole lot more even than hers. "Apparently the wrong crystal can hurt."
Leah allowed herself a long exhale before she stood up again. She glanced at the floor, now without any sign of its dangers. "Yup."
She picked up her reference journal from where it'd fallen and was walking over to the second string's wall when Shade said, "One near death experience not enough for you in a night?"
"If the ancients thought one death trap was going to deter me, they should have included spiders," said Leah. "Big, Teridian spiders. But in their absence, I am getting this damned door open whether it almost kills me again or not."
With the adrenaline fuelling the shaking of her limbs refusing to subside, Leah's notes were a little more disorganised than usual, but still somewhat readable. The second question was easier than the first. Even the youngest Radiant knew their power was fuelled by the sun, and that symbol was literally everywhere, almost as common as 'Light' was.
But once again, after she lit the symbol string, it once more faded into oblivion.
"Broken?" suggested Shade.
"There's still the third string," said Leah, following it to the centre of the room. This time, it didn't lead to a wall with crystals. It went straight across the floor, encircling another 'Light' symbol.
Puzzled, Leah crouched down, searching for a crystal and finding nothing. There were strings with no symbols that wove around the others, and after a few minutes of following them, she realised they were linked to the questions on the sides.
Shade watched her as she moved back and forth. The symbols wrapped around 'Light' were far beyond her interpretation, but she was starting to get the idea. The 'Life' symbol on the door was lit in halves by the two questions on the sides, but the door's 'Light' was yet to glow. So...
Leah sized up the room. She had a few seconds before the halves dimmed. She should be able to run from one side to the next in the time. There was only one way to find out.
"You look like you've figured something out," said Shade.
"Maybe," said Leah from one side of the room. "If not, this is going to look pretty stupid."
Before Shade could reply, she reached up for the 'Pride' crystal, lit it, and dashed across the room.
She made it to 'Sun' before 'Pride' dimmed, and with the the two halves of 'Life' gleaming on the door, she pushed off the wall and ran to the 'Light' symbol in the centre.
It didn't work.
The strips were fading crystal-end first. What had she forgotten?
Light. She was standing on Light, and Light needed to be lit, so what if she--
Leah didn't think about it. She let her heart crystal gleam.
The 'Light' symbol of the door pierced the shadows, bathing the entire room in brilliant white light as something in the walls began to move.
The door was opening.
"Ha!" said Leah, jumping on the spot. "Did it!"
Shade's posture said it all. "Nice job. Too bad I have to kill you now."
Leah froze mid-jump. Her bag was too far, she'd left her Hilt in it too, forgotten who she was with. He'd just saved her life, but--
Shade laughed. "I'm kidding. Come on, let's go see what was worth all the security."
Leah followed him. Cautiously, after grabbing her bag and pulling her Hilt from it.
Shade went first, the large sword that usually rested over his back now in his hands. Leah tried to keep to the side so her Light would reveal the space in front of him, but the corridor behind the door was narrow.
"Want me to go first?" she asked. "It'll be easier to see."
"You've almost died enough for tonight," said Shade. "Just because you have a weapon, I don't think that means you know how to use it."
Leah glanced at her Hilt. "I can sort of. I haven't used the crossbow form in a while, but I'm not terrible with the sword."
"Just stay behind me. If something's in here, I don't trust your reactions enough to rely on them to save us."
Leah wasn't going to argue with that.
The corridor opened up into a strange room that was sloped into the ground. The crystalite ceiling above them was opaque, the sand above them completely obscured from view. This was a secret area, one that the ancients didn't want outsiders seeing, and Leah's excitement to see it grew with every step.
Only once did she falter--she was bringing an outsider into these Radiant halls.
She shook it off, telling herself she was being stupid. Mostly human or not, Shade wanted the same thing she did: a cure. If he hadn't been there, she'd be down in the pit with the growling things woken by her presence.
The room itself was utterly pristine. Unlike the corridors which had sand hidden in the corners and inside the inscription, it was perfect. The crystalite walls held no colour, each one the pure white of unfilted Light, something that Leah knew took an absurd amount of Light. The minimal amount she'd learned of filtering was that it reduced the Light you used, but it took increased concentration. For these walls to be made of white Light...
Leah frowned as she saw the walls. The carvings, the murals--they were all almost non existent. Enough of them remained to suggest that they'd once been in here too, but they were rubbed away.
She touched two fingers to the walls, wiping away a layer of... was that ash?
She brushed it off. "This is strange."
"You're telling me," said Shade. "Look at the altar. Ever seen anything like that?"
The altar was in the centre of the room among five pillars, each topped with a crystal holder, though the crystals themselves were shattered across the floor, like they'd been blown off from a force originating on the altar. It was--
Leah's thought cut short as she saw the skeletons resting against the walls.
"Daylight save us," she whispered. "Are they--"
Shade walked over to one and nudged it with his boot. The skull fell off its shoulders, rattling across the floor. "Yep. They are."
Leah hissed. "Don't do--"
Something in the shadows growled.
A shambling shape, previously hunched in the corner, was standing up.
Shade lifted his sword. "Behind me, Leah!"
He didn't have to tell her twice. Leah retreated back to the neck of the corridor, well behind Shade as the backlit eyes of the Shattered went straight through him and latched onto her face.
The Shattered's growling grew louder. Leah's hair stood on ends as it completely ignored Shade and moved to barge straight past him.
Shade's sword caught it across the stomach, but its edge might as well have been blunt for all the damage it did. The Shattered's skin was as hard as crystal, and the weapon bounced straight off. Still, it did its job--the Shattered reconsidered its choice of target.
"Leah!" said Shade, keeping the Shattered at the end of his sword as it stalked him, a dull intelligence behind it, a gaping hole in its blackened chest where its Radiant's heart would have once been. "You mentioned your Hilt having a crossbow form. If I knock it down, can you land a bolt in its head?"
Leah fumbled with her Hilt, trying to remember how her fingers worked in the middle of her fear. "If you knock it down, why can't you just kill it?"
"You can't kill Shattered with regular weapons," replied Shade calmly. Light, how was he so composed? She wanted to do nothing but run away screaming, assuming her legs would move to begin with. "Only Light will pierce their hide."
"I--I can try," said Leah.
Shade stepped forward. "Then I'll work on the knocking-it-down thing."
Leah turned the Hilt so the usual guard of the sword covered part of her forearm and hand. She fed Light to the crossbow formed crystals. The two white-Light wings of the crossbow sprouted, giving her the hand-mounted weapon with its first bolt loaded and ready.
She placed her left hand under her right's forearm to steady it and turned her attention to Shade.
He moved like the wind. A very precise, agile wind--and he had too, because the Shattered was brutal. Every time its claws gouged the crystalite floor where Shade had been standing only a moment before, Leah's gut clenched. It sprang from side to side, kept at bay only by Shade's sword moving as a blur, constantly catching its limbs and torso mid-strike to push it back.
Leah had no idea what was going on, or who was winning. It seemed like it was an impasse, neither side able to get an advantage but only one able to win without assistance. It was all she could to do keep breathing, to keep her crossbow trained on the Shattered and her finger off the trigger lest her trembling finger squeeze it at the wrong time.
For almost a minute, Shade parried and blocked and danced around the Shattered, slowly driving it into the corner. The Shattered kept glancing at Leah, like it was checking she was still there, and it paid every time, right up until the moment its back hit the wall.
Shade struck.
He lunged forward, driving the tip of his sword straight into the hole in its chest. Though it didn't pierce anything, it pinned the Shattered against the wall. It thrashed and wriggled and lunged and screamed in that horrible pitched voice, but it couldn't get free.
"Now, Leah!"
Leah put her finger on the trigger of the crossbow, checked and double-checked it was pointed at the right thing and definitely not going to hit Shade, and squeezed.
The bolt of white Light pierced the side of the Shattered's head.
Shade kept the Shattered pinned even after it slumped. "Make a blade and cut off its head. I don't trust the bolt to keep it dead."
...Keep it dead?
Leah did as asked, pulling the Light from the crossbow's arms. They went dull and detached, clattering to the floor as she used new Light to form the blade and went about hacking off the Shattered's head.
It wasn't perfect. She almost threw up more than once when she made the mistake of glancing at its malformed, twisted face. She knew what Shattered were, had seen pictures before--but being this close to their crystallised skin, to the gouges in their skin where their crystal patterns had once been... it was completely different to seeing it in on the pages of a book. Those were illustrations.
This... this had been a Radiant, once upon a time.
Once she broke through the tough carapace of skin on the Shattered's neck, the Light of her blade went through easily, almost like it was hollow.
This time, she didn't resist the urge to throw up, leaving her blade halfway imbedded in the Shattered's neck as she turned and hurled her guts up in the corner.
When her stomach was empty, Leah turned back to see Shade having finished the job with her blade.
He nudged the Shattered's head away from its body, ensuring it was well out of reach.
"Just to be sure," he said.
"I don't even want to know why that's a habit," muttered Leah, guilt climbing her insides over the fact that she'd just thrown up in the ancient's temple, and in their secret room, nonetheless. At least it gave her something to focus on other than what they'd just done. "What do you think this room is?"
"No idea," said Shade. "Looks like some kind of ritual though. The inscriptions are all blasted away, and there's a skeleton for every pillar. Not to mention, I don't think the Shattered got in here by itself either. That Radiant Shattered after the others were already dead."
"How do you know that?"
"You see the way that Shattered was looking at you?" asked Shade. "Shattered are drawn to other Radiants. From what I've gathered, they're like a void of Light, but they still crave it, so they try to suck it out of other places, other Radiants included."
"So there would have been six Shattered in here if they'd been alive with it," murmured Leah, thinking it over. "What if they weren't Radiants?"
"Then their limbs would be all over the place, not sitting in nice little piles like they are now. Shattered don't take kindly to the other races."
"Oh."
They investigated the room, but whatever had blasted the inscriptions away had removed anything useful. Even so, Leah sketched every detail she could into her journal, going so far as to record the distance between each altar, as well as the dimensions of the altar itself.
Eventually, they'd learned all they could.
The door was closed behind them as they went to exit, but it was a simple fix. Two crystals on easily reached walls activated at the same time, and it opened once more. Shade guided them out with the same ease he'd displayed on the way here, and soon, they were back on the glider, headed towards the town.
Leah's Light was getting lower than she would have liked, but she'd get through the night with some to spare. She just hoped Kieran wouldn't ask why she was so low, or scold her for neglecting to recharge the earlier day.
They left the glider outside the wall, where Shade said he'd take care of it.
"Well, that was certainly an exciting night," said Shade. "But I believe you should probably get some sleep."
Leah didn't even want to think about how tired she was going to be. "What about my Displacer?"
"I'll return it tomorrow," said Shade. "It'll be in your bag when you come back tomorrow."
"It'd better be," said Leah. "If you sell it--"
"I wouldn't be able to buy your goodwill," said Shade. "There's other ruins, Leah, and I think you might be the one I need to help me figure out their secrets. Of course, I won't force you into anything, but--"
"Like you did tonight?"
"That was an exception," said Shade gracefully. "Do you regret that I brought you out to the ruins?"
Leah knew he had her there. "No."
"So would you be interested in joining me for others in the future?"
"Maybe," said Leah, folding her arms. Her pride wouldn't let her give the answer her burning curiosity, that need to learn more, wanted to give. "Maybe I don't need you to explore them."
"I'll be sure to let the Shattered know that when you come calling. The ruins are usually hotspots for them, since they're attracted to the residual Light in the crystalite." He touched two fingers to his forehead. Leah imagined a smile under the cloth. "Until next time, Leah. I'll be in touch."
Leah watched him disappear into the shadows, staring after him for a long minute before she turned and headed back to her room. Her improvised staircase was still lying there, waiting, and she made it inside without being noticed.
She was asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow, but her dreams relived the ruins over and over, always centered around the eyes of the boy whose face she didn't know.
*+*+*+*
A/N - Long-ass chapter, not sure if double update today but we'll see ^_^ WHAT DO WE THINK?
Vote! Comment! Cookies! (for you guys too, obv, I can't eat them all alone)
Wordcount: 30,949