The young elf ran as fast as he could, straight into a rock wall. It was good that he wasn’t going that fast, and that technically his hands and then one shoulder hit the stone first. Still, the impact was enough to knock him to the ground, his wind and senses briefly removed.
After moments that seemed like eternities, he took a choking ragged breath and sprang to his feet. He could see again. That was good. There was a lot that wasn’t good. For example, he could see very very little. Aelbia had been holding his cellphone because hers was only at 5%. Then the darkness had come. Hawn suddenly felt very bad inside. In his fear he had thought only of himself. What of the others?
And why had he been so scared? It was somehow more terrifying than normal darkness. He’d been outside at night many times, even in the woods. This was nothing like that. It had been an active thing, obscuring the light in an unsettling, unnatural manner. Hawn took more breaths, felt his heart steady. His eyes were adjusting somewhat to the barest lumens glinting from the damp rock. There was the faintest light, he could see it now, shining far on the other side of the cavern.
He made his was slowly and carefully now, as the path was a jumble of jagged stone and loose gravel, with slick damp patches of cave moss here and there, and every so often a stagnant puddle of murky water. He could swear there were faint sounds in the distance, but they echoed from every direction at once, and never repeated. Sometimes they sounded like voices, other times it sounded like crashes or thumps. Sometimes they sounded like things he’d never heard before, and would very much like never to hear again.
The light proved to be much further off than it had seemed. The path wound higher and higher though, making steady progress through the darkness. Sounds grew fainter and fainter, but he chose to keep heading towards the beckoning light. What good would it be to find the others, if he had found a way out and then lost it?
It might have been hours the young elf walked, making his way further and further into the winding cavern. He had really thought, at first, that he was returning to where he started; but this seemed much too far. He was going forward now, to whatever lay on the other side of this tunnel.
Eventually a soft sort of humming started. Hawn realized then that the cave had been completely quiet save for the sounds of himself. He must be quite alone at this point.
The humming grew louder as he progressed, and the sound split as he neared its source, becoming several sounds at once woven and spliced together. Whirring, grinding, hammering, sawing, sanding, gears, steam, chains, belts, and pistons- sound kind of underground factory?
As the sounds increased to deafening cacophony reverberating long the stone hallways, Hawn soon came to a sight so beyond his expectations, it quite literally took his breath away for a nearly fatal breadth of time. His body crumpled to the ground, all sense gone; he simply had no way to comprehend the sight that lay before him, and after the exertions of the chase and the tunnel, his exhaustion was complete.
Before him lay a sprawling city of some industrious people, the houses made from the living stone of the cavern. Intertwined at a variety of levels were various ramps and elevators, cables and pipes, scaffolding and ladders. Smokestacks were evident only from tiny puffs that leaked through the edges; the tops ran clear to the ceiling of the cave. Below, along the streets, hundreds of people of some sort ran here and there, carrying armloads and cartloads and putting in a terrific effort at some sort of industry.
