Somewhere between the time she fell asleep to the point where she woke up, Leah made a decision that she felt strangely optimistic about.

She wanted to stay on Kieran's expedition team. 

She got dressed into her usual clothes and left her notebooks and journals on the desk as she left for breakfast. For the first time, there was spring in her step, a certainty to her direction. She could do something no one else could on the expedition team--she could read the symbols, uncover the secrets they hid. She could do her own study, her own research, forge her own path--and that, more than anything, was something she was realising she craved. The research lab had been the dream of the girl in Teridia, but it didn't mean she couldn't change her path to the answer she craved.

Maybe she could even convince Shade to work with the League in the open. She'd have to ask about that the next time she saw him.

The breakfast hall was full when she arrived and took her place in the line, quickly selecting her learned favourites as she scanned the room. Illiya caught her eye, but as usual, their table was in their own little bubble in the centre of the room, oblivious to the world around them.

Instead, Leah walked over to where Sef was waving at her.

"Morning, Sef," she said, touching her palm to his as she walked past him and headed to the other end of the table where Kieran sat.

Kieran glanced up at her from his mug. "Decided yet?"

Leah nodded. "I want you to train me."

"Good," said Kieran, pulling out the chair beside him. "We can start right after breakfast, so don't bloat yourself too much."

Feeling strangely honoured, Leah accepted the seat and went about eating her food despite her stomach being twisted into knots. The girl opposite Kieran, Mira, even went so far as to make smalltalk with Leah across the table, asking her how her muscles had been after training the previous day.

"I almost died," said Leah. "I was pretty sure I was never going to be able to move again when I woke up."

Mira smirked. "Just imagine what it was like for the rest of us who didn't use their heads and made it across the unstable floor obstacle the hard way. Pretty sure I had more bruises from that one day than my entire life put together. I think we forget about our Light most of the time."

Leah's smile was genuine by the time Kieran stood up and glanced at her. "Ready?"

"Nope, but let's go!" said Leah, taking his plate and mug back to the return for him.

On the way to the training grounds, Leah had a thought. "Should I grab my Hilt from my room?"

"You won't need it," said Kieran. "Any combat practice we do with weapons is going to be with sticks so the worst you'll get is a bruise."

Leah raised an eyebrow. "Surely you'd have enough control to stop your weapon from hitting me?"

Kieran's smirk was more than a little obnoxious. "I meant the injuries you'd give yourself from the way you flail around."

Leah huffed and folded her arms. She didn't exactly have an argument for that.

Kieran put his bag down as they reached the training arena. "I put in the expedition report yesterday, and I made sure to include a note to Emrys about your potential value to the cure's research team."

Leah hesitated at that. She'd forgotten. "I... I'm not sure I want to join the research team anymore. I've been thinking about it, and I don't think I gave the expedition team enough of a chance so--well, if you'll still have me..."

She trailed off awkwardly as Kieran stretched out his arms. With his back to her, she couldn't see his face. "You probably should have told me that after training was over."

"Why?"

"I was going to let you off a little easy, given you were likely to be on the research team within two weeks," said Kieran. He turned, and his smile told Leah she was about to die in the next hour. Possibly half. "But if you're wanting to stay on my team, I'm going to push you to your absolute limit to get you up to scratch as soon as possible. Five laps, let's go!"

Her muscles were already groaning as she turned and took those first steps, pushing herself into the run.

Kieran stayed beside her as her breaths turned ragged, constantly critiquing and correcting her technique. At first she was going too fast, then too slow, and when she found a middle ground that matched Kieran's rhythm, her elbows were apparently bent at the wrong angle and she was pushing off the ground weirdly.

By the fourth lap, she knew that if she stopped, she was going to collapse on the ground and never get back up again. Leah dug deep, finding some scrap of energy that kept one foot in front of the other, eyes ahead, telling herself just a little further. A little further, and that was five.

"At the end of the laps," said Kieran. "Don't sit down. Stay standing. Stretch yourself out, catch your breath, but do not sit down."

Leah didn't have the focus to nod or the breath to acknowledge it. She just kept running, right up until the point where Kieran stopped in front of his bag. Her legs trembled, but she stayed up. She was not going to fall over, damn it all. She'd made it through the early years with the other Teridian kids, and she was damned well going to make it through this too unless she passed out first.

She followed Kieran's lead with the stretches. When her breathing was even and her muscles a little less like jelly, he grabbed two practice sticks from the wall and tossed her one. She missed it, and it hit the sandy floor with a dull thud.

As Leah retrieved her stick, fighting the urge to sit down beside it, Kieran talked her through the exercise.

"Pretend this is your Hilt's sword form," he said. "We're going to run through a few basic stances and moves that focus on defense. They aren't fancy, but they're necessary, and in a pinch they'll hopefully keep you alive against a Shattered long enough for someone comes to help. Now, first, hold your stick like this..."

The next half an hour was spent running through exactly what Kieran had promised. He taught her a basic block, how she could hold her Hilt without injuring herself, the most likely way a Shattered would move and the best ways to counter it.

"They're always going to go for your heart," said Kieran, tapping the centre of his chest. "If you remember that they're after your Light, you can use that to your advantage. Position yourself and position your sword to stop that, but keep in mind that after a while, they'll get frustrated. They'll re-prioritise, and they'll try to disable you in other ways."

"Other ways?"

"Legs, arms, or simply just disarming you," said Kieran. "The Shattered are dangerous because their skin is literally crystal and they have very little sense of self-preservation. They'll be stronger than you, but not exceptionally so, but you especially shouldn't try to out-muscle them. Light pierces their skin but they'll only die every time to beheading. Out-think them, and you might survive an encounter with it."

Shade's words echoed in her head. Keep it dead. "What do you mean 'only die every time'?"

"Shattered are... persistent," said Kieran. "It varies between them, and some, especially those who have been around a longer time, can be especially crafty. They play dead, and when you aren't expecting it, they strike. Others can regenerate if given enough time. I've seen a Shattered in the League's research heal from having a hole the size of its head in its chest, but they never come back once their head is removed."

Leah nodded, taking note of everything. This time, Kieran had her practice the blocks on his own, slowed attacks as he did his best imitation of a Lightless. She managed to get most of them, but she was aware that if he'd have been going faster, she wouldn't have kept up.

Still, Kieran seemed to be wanting her to keep her confidence and built up the difficulty slowly. When he reached the point of 'if I have to correct the same point three times, you do ten pushups multiplied by how many times I've told you', Leah started paying extra detail to her stance and technique.

The combat was broken up by drills, whether it was running with her stick or running while Kieran chased her with his stick, whacking at her legs whenever she was too slow to dodge it, or simply standing in position, following instructions. Strike. Duck. Dodge. Roll. Sidestep.

By the end of it, Leah's clothes were drenched in sweat. 

Kieran looked no worse for wear. "Good. I have a feeling you might pass out soon if I keep pushing it, so we'll leave it there for today." Leah sighed in relief as he added, "After another five laps for cooldown, of course."

Leah's legs nearly gave way at the thought.

Kieran grinned. "Just kidding. Two should be enough. Let's go."

Leah groaned, but somehow, her legs moved.

"We'll try and train every second day," said Kieran two laps later when they stopped. "I'll get a note to you if I have to cancel or move it, but otherwise I should be at breakfast or dinner if you need to reorganise it. Feel free to come down to the training area and work by yourself whenever you feel like it. Building up strength or endurance is never going to be a bad thing if you have the mentality to get it done alone. When you're up to par on those areas, we'll work on how to filter Light. Deal?"

Leah nodded, and with that, training was over.

*+*+*+*

Several hours later when she'd showered and changed clothes, Leah met Shade in the basement rooms.

"Someone looks tired," he said as she dropped her bag of books on the floor. "Didn't get much sleep?"

Leah groaned. Daylight above, she hurt. "Training. Kieran, the expedition team's leader, he's giving me combat lesson things so I don't make too much of an idiot of myself with the others."

"Didn't you want to be on the cure team?" asked Shade. "Why the change of heart?"

Leah just shrugged. She didn't feel like admitting their time together in the ruins had played a part in it. "I don't think I gave the team a fair chance, and I do enjoy this. Seeing the raw source material, figuring it out. It's almost fun, even when pits open up beneath my feet and almost drop me to my death."

Shade's cloth moved like he was smiling. "So I'm guessing you didn't get much decoding done, then?"

Leah laid out the books. "Nope!"

Shade leant over and grabbed the reference book. "Well I hope you've got this memorised, because I definitely haven't."

"Then it's a good thing I made another one, isn't it?" said Leah, presenting it to him. "You won't have to steal mine anymore."

"But that's half the fun."

Leah clipped him on the shoulder with her fingers and set about organising their work. Just as fighting the Shattered had been Shade's domain of expertise, this was hers. She explained the most efficient way to go about it, the best ways she'd found to write down the code and record it and figure out the context of each symbol. Soon enough, they were moving along at a decent pace, with more murals and borders and pages that they could keep track of stretched before them across the floor.

"Look at this," said Leah after she'd laid out the murals in their correct order and noticed the strange way they seemed to flow together. There were four major segments, but they were, without a doubt, linked. "What does this remind you of?"

Shade glanced up. "It looks like a history. They're too... interlinked to be entirely separate from each other."

"Exactly," said Leah, leaning forward on her hands to get a closer look.

The first section were scenes from the war of the three races. Fighting over territory, the scenes depicted the humans encroachment into Radiant lands, pushing them further and further back, capturing others and holding them with unlucky Teridians for experiments, trying to learn how they themselves could harness their powers. The Radiants were easy targets. Block out the sunlight for long enough, and the those that Shattered would wipe out the rest of them.

The transition to the second section was a glorious scene, one Leah had seen pieces of before. Priests in their temples, begging the sun, the life-giver itself to save their people from a life of slavery, until one day, the sun answered.

There was one scene at the beginning of the second that struck Leah as particularly important. The image showed the priests with glowing orbs of light, almost like a tangible spirit, that they seemed to be pulling from their hearts. She knew she'd seen those orbs before in murals, but they were always in the background--never shown with a tether to a specific individual's heart like these were.

She picked up the sketch and grabbed her reference journal.

"What is it?" asked Shade.

"I think it's instructions," murmured Leah in between scribbles. "Look, the 'Life in Light' symbol again--do you think this is what they're talking about?"

Shade leaned over, his breath gentle against her fingers on the page as she held it up to him. "Life from Light... you think those orbs could be the Life they're talking about?"

"Maybe," said Leah. She ran her finger over certain symbols in the background of the image. "See? This one is like... 'Sun Life'. I think it's talking about the orbs." She swapped sketches, finding it again in another featuring the orbs. "It's there again."

Shade tilted his head. "So if these orbs are the Life in Light, what do they have to do with anything?"

"The orbs disappear by the fourth section," said Leah, glancing them over. The third section focused on the Radiant's era where they'd spread their reach and wisdom to the other lands. The orbs were still present, right up until the fourth section, a sobering sight that Leah knew well. "When the Shattering happened, the orbs completely disappear. Like the Radiants lost that Life."

"That could explain the Shattered we found in the chamber," said Shade slowly. "Maybe they took it out, and it Shattered the Radiant."

Leah shook her head. "That doesn't explain why the other five in the room were dead without Shattering. What if they were trying to heal it, to put that Life back in, and it backfired?"

"Do you know many of the legends about the ancients?" asked Shade.

"A few," said Leah. "Why?"

Shade tapped his pencil. "There's one that says before the sun blessed the Radiants that only those strongest of will could harden Light because it was one of the most painful experiences possible to survive."

Leah glanced down at her own heart. "It doesn't hurt me at all. It's the complete opposite--drawing Light makes me feel warm and tingly all over."

"Exactly," said Shade. "So what changed? Some say that the sun's blessing took away the pain so the Radiants could fulfill their divine duty."

"I'm not sure where you're going with this."

"Well, from what we know, Shattered were named because of what happened to their mind--they completely shatter mentally. The League's found evidence in ancient human war documents stating the various ways they'd figured possible to Shatter a Radiant. It mentions that if you can get them to drain themselves of Light, they'd Shatter."

Leah interrupted him. "You mean keep them in the dark, right? The Light drains out by itself."

"Not according to these documents," said Shade. "The war documents claim a Radiant could be kept from sunlight for days with no result. It was only when they actively used their Light that they could run out, but that's not the point. The point is, it was apparently possible to torture a Radiant into Shattering."

"Torture?" said Leah, eyes wide. "How--"

"Like I said, Shattering of the mind," said Shade. "They literally went insane. But what if there were other ways to make them hit that insanity?"

"This is assuming those documents are correct at all."

Shade shrugged. "The humans were beating them pretty decisively until the Radiants started winning. Something changed, and it's always bugged me that exactly what was never explained. I don't exactly buy that the sun 'blessed them for their divine duty', if you'll excuse my scepticism."

They looked over the murals, particularly the point between section one and two for several minutes before Leah tapped the mural of the priests with the orbs for the first time. "Whatever changed, it had to do with those. If we can figure those out, we might be able to figure out what happened around it. What are we going to call them?"

Shade blinked. "What do you mean what are we going to call them?"

"Well, we need a name for them, don't we?" said Leah. "I mean, we're the ones rediscovering them and people who discover ruins get to name those, so why not?"

Shade watched her, a curious look in his eyes. "You can name them. You're the one who's doing most of the work, I'm just the bodyguard as you've previously stated."

Leah stared at the orb for a long minute before shaking her head. "I'll come up with something later. Maybe inspiration will strike." She stared at the murals for another few, long minutes, excited by the answers they held but dreading how long it was going to take to find them. "I think we should go back down when we get another chance. I feel like we've missed something."

"Well, we've still got that door to open," said Shade. "I'm busy for the next few nights though, so I can't promise I'll be around. I'll get you a note when I can to let you know."

"And in the meantime," said Leah, suppressing her sigh. "I'll figure out as much of this as I can."

"Does that mean I can give you my book and hope you get it all done?"

Leah flicked him in the arm. "Not a chance, buddy."

*+*+*+*

A/N - Backstory and shiiiiiz and Leah getting her butt kicked in training weeeeew xD 

Comment for free, imaginary cookies ;D 

Wordcount: 42,627 [Home stretch!]