Hard Light (NaNoWriMo15)

Chapter 1 - Leah

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Dedicated to @Prisim for the amazing cover <3

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Leah probably shouldn't have been out in the ruins so late, but this tunnel was just too good to miss.

Something about the way the trees had grown caught her eye, and after a careful investigation, she'd found the dull crystalite of ancient Radiant walls. The tunnel itself was overgrown, just like everything else in these ruins. Teridian trees were tough, just like their people. They grew over everything and anything, and it made Leah's job a whole lot harder than it needed to be.

Still, she had the tool to deal with it.

Sort of.

Leah drew her Hilt and hardened some of her stored Light into the sword's usual curve. It wasn't ideal for hacking away at plants, but the shards of crystalite in the Hilt made sure the Light would stay hard until she was done with it.

The blade cast strange shadows around her in the twilight air as she cut herself a path into the tunnel, which was surprisingly stable. Squeezing through the plants, Hilt up high to illuminate the space, she allowed herself a moment to take it in.

It looked like some kind of room, to what, she didn't know. After months of excavating them piece by piece, she was starting to suspect these ruins were a temple from a time before the parasite had ravaged the Radiants and they were still trying to 'convert' the Teridians. Though most of the corridors and walls were covered in thick roots that would take her days to get through, there was a mural on the wall she could get to--one that was mostly still intact, its surface protected from the weather.

Telling herself she still had time, Leah carefully made her way over to it, barely able to resist bouncing from excitement. Bouncing was bad, she told herself. Bouncing had brought down the last tunnel she'd found intact, almost over her ears.

The mural itself wasn't anything special, not like the last one she'd found and spent three weeks piecing back together. That one had shown pictures of Radiants, clearly identifiable with their brightly coloured hair and crystal-imbedded skin, performing some kind of ritual on what could have been a Human or a Teridian, she didn't know. The Radiants of old hadn't bothered distinguishing between the two races for a long, long time, which only dated these ruins back even further.

Still, Leah hardened a tablet, well aware of her dwindling Light, and quickly etched the purely decorative scene into its surface. She'd found that even the smallest details could help give context, help understand the ways of the old Radiants, and maybe, just maybe, somewhere in their depths, she'd find the answers she was after.

A cure for the parasite that was slowly killing her race.

Speaking of which, her father was going to murder her for getting back this late with so little Light left. With the tablet tucked protectively under her arm, Leah made her way back up the tunnel with her Hilt held high, stumbling over more than one stone and stick in her haste.

Night had conquered the twilight when she reached the surface, and Leah threw her hands to the sky.

"I was not down there that long!" she told no one in particular. A familiar chill ran up her arms. The chill didn't feel like a frost, but unless you were a full-blooded Teridian, you didn't risk it. When you had as much Radiant blood as Leah did, you were inside an insulated house before the sun went down if there was even the slightest chance the frost could hit, which she wasn't. "Don't you dare drop the frost on me this early in the cycle, Teridia!"

Leah released the Light from her blade, leaving only the smooth metal of her Hilt once more. With so little Light left in her heart, she needed to preserve it for emergencies. Instead, she called on the Light stored in the smaller crystals imbedded into her skin, good for nothing but illumination thus perfect for her situation, and ran.