Running From Darkness

Burn

As soon as James jumped into the hole everything went black. He couldn't see a thing but could feel the rough sort walls scraping against his back through his jacket as he slid down them. Any sound was muted by the thick walls surrounding him so all he could hear was the sound of his own panting breath and the beating of his racing heart. Suddenly, without any kind of warning, a circle of light appeared below him and he dropped onto the hard ground in an unceremonious heap. His friends followed, all landing a couple of metres away from him in a round semi-circle. All of the boys crumpled onto the floor like James but Emily used the walls of the tunnel to jump off of and flip, landing gracefully near Joseph and Lexi slowly descended until her feet lightly touched the ground.
"Uh, where are we?" Sam asked as he heave himself up and rubbed his bruises.
"We're on the outskirts of Aliramae, the home of the elves," Lexi said dreamily, "I haven't been back in years."
"Why are we here?" Nathan asked, looking around the place they had landed. It was a wide expanse of lush, green grass that looked as if it had been freshly cut. In the distance trees lined the outskirts of the field and about 2 km ahead of them tapered spires made of glistening white marble and a brownish green material soared up into the ceiling of the caverns. The whole place was lit by thousands and thousands of glowing creatures and it provided an almost perfect representation of the sun above ground.
"Elf time cycles are 12 hours different to Human time," Lexi explained as they began walking towards the city, "it's kind of like the time difference from Australi-" she cut off and the others turned to look at her. She was staring straight ahead at the great city before them and as the group turned to see what was wrong they saw a great plume of smoke rose from the buildings of Aliramae.
"Oh no," Lexi muttered under her breath and took off at a run, al ready drawing a rune onto her arm. The other chased after her but she sped up and they quickly lost her. They carried on running until they reached the gates and saw Lexi standing by a gate. Once upon a time, the gates would have been beautiful but soot had dampened the bright white of the marble and there were great holes blown sporadically through the wall. They passed through the wrought iron gate, half of which had been blown off of its hinges, and hurried through the city, following Lexi. As they got into the city James could see that what he thought had been marble mixed with another material was actually huge trees the size of skyscrapers with once shining marble buildings built into the trunk and branches. They emerged into a large plaza-looking space with half destroyed statues and marble busts (they really liked marble in this city) littered around. They carefully stepped around the rubble until they came to the latest house they'd seen yet. It was a huge villa with columns and intricate design work along the front.
"This is my house, my father is the mayor of Aliramae and one of the most influential figures of our generation. I hope they got away safely,"
"I'm sure they will have," Emily said, laying a supporting hand on her friends shoulder, "if your dad was the mayor they would have been evacuated fir-" She was cut off my a loud, high-pitched scream coming from the mansion.
"ALEX!" Lexi screamed, already trying to run at the crumbling building where she used to live.
"No! Lexi! You'll die if you go in there!" Joseph shouted and along with the others helped to restrain Lexi from commuting unintentional suicide.
"I'll go," Emily said confidently, "I can calm Alex down with my illusions and get her out the house."
"I'll come too," James told her, "my energy blasts could come in handy!"
"Ok, make sure you keep up," she said, and with that she turned on her heel and sprinted towards the tree where the house was built. They quickly scaled the tree with the large, convenient hand and foot holds (luckily they'd done some climbing in the Institute) and came to the front of the large house.
"Ok," Emily said to James whilst coughing furiously from the smoke, "I want you to stay behind me and if you see anything falling then smash it, ok?"
"Ok, let's do this," James said and they both ran into the house.