Hard Light (NaNoWriMo15)

Chapter 10 - Behind the Door

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'."