Three pixies and me: The darkness of Silin

Deep under the ground, there was a large cavern, 50ft under the hard skin of the earth. It was 50 metres in width and 30 metres in depth. The walls of it decorated with patterns that had come into being over hundreds of years, swirling like snowflakes. The bottom of it was flat with a sparkling lake in the middle of it. Small silver fish darted back and forth though the water, leaving little trails of bubbles behind them. Along the lake bottom lay a number of underwater plants like Northern Water milfoil, Dwarf Spikerush and Coontail, their colours clearly visible from above the water. Surrounding the vast water, flowers, clearly not grown by man or any other creature, grew, the beautiful sun tear, gold in colour and shaped like a tear drop, it’s covering a pale yellow colour which only opened when nothing was moving, the sturdy blue knights, blue flowers that if one looked close enough at, looked like a knights helm plus many more flowers. Surrounding then, trees upon trees grew, the root’s spreading like a giant maze, twisting and turning in every direction. Anyone stupid enough to run would soon trip and fall, probably resulting in a nasty bump on the head. The colour of the leaves on the tree’s varied, from a bird-eye’s view; you would be able to see that the tree rotated in a certain order. Each quarter had a different theme to it, the seasons.

In one corner, the colours of the trees and appearance of them, was that the leaves where a light green, them that had sprouted anyway. Little buds covered the branches, nearly breaking out of their shells, but not quite. Here and there, dots of pink appeared, sakura buds, randomly placed among the green. The leaves themselves where healthy, strong thick veins carrying the water from root to tip flowed through them like a calm river. This corner was spring. The next clockwise, was darker in colour. Upon the tree’s there where hundreds of ruby red apples. Ripe and full of delicious juice, ready to eat. This was possibly the only season where life was seen at every turn. Spiders where spinning their webs, Caterpillars munching on the luscious leaves. There was several bird nests settled in the trees, numerous colourful birds residing in them, Golden orioles, Crossbills, Ring-necked parakeets and far too many to name, summer. After that, it was beautiful. The three colours red, orange and yellow merging together, making it seem like the woods was on fire. The leaves licked at each other and rippled like a real inferno, attacking each other in a fight for more space. A few leaves had fallen in their failed attempt of marking their territory, slowly turning brown on the harden soil, marking the slow turn from autumn to winter. The last quarter, the trees where bare. No life was growing, just rough bark, knobbed branches and thin, weak twigs lying on the ground.

Heading towards the lake again, you would see a small island in the middle of about 1 by 2 metres. It was perfectly smooth, like an overly large pebble. Floating 15 metres about it was a glowing orb. About the size of a football and dazzling blue in colour. In several places the light from the blue orb stretched far beyond the rest of it. They disappeared down long tunnels, varying in size, in the walls of the carven... all but one.

This one was much smaller than the rest, the smallest being 10x10 metres in size. This one was only 5x5 metres and was clearly not meant to be there. It wasn’t perfectly round like the others and looked rough and quickly done. Suddenly, emerging out of the mouth of the tunnel, two people appeared, one was about 5.8ft tall and the other about 6.2ft. Both of them wore complete black. They wore baggy shirts that went ¾ down their arms and the rest of their arms and hands wore fingerless gloves, little skin was visible. They also wore baggy trousers that had chains loosely attached to them and black sandals. On their faces they wore a mask that covered their mouth, nose, ears and forehead, the only part of them you could see was their eyes and two horns out of the top of their head.

The taller of them turned his head to face the other and silently nodded. In one swift fluid motion, the shorter one pulled out a clear, see-though green bottle. Flicking open the lid, they muttered a small enchantment. Suddenly, the once cool and refreshing temperature dropped to freezing, striking a shattered piece of ice into the hearts of the animals below, all of them falling dead. The strange blue orb bobbed towards the ninja’s, for that was they clearly where, before shrinking to the size of a pea and disappearing into the bottle, which had now turned blue and was glowing dimly. Turning sharply on their heels, completely identically, they started to run, knowing that reinforcements would be along at any moment, but not before dropping a small cube that sealed up the tunnel behind them so they couldn’t be followed. They slowly went uphill until the tunnel reached the earth’s skin. Pausing for a moment, they looked behind them, saw that the tunnel was completely sealed up, and then turned to face the dark forest around them and set off with the glowing blue bottle into the night, jumping on tree’s to go faster, they could not hear anything around them apart from the patter of their feet and the ever do slight hardened breathing. Deciding it was safe to stop of a couple of minutes, they paused. The smaller one pulled out the bottle, a twinkle in his eye before tossing it in the air once and giving it to the taller ninja who put it in a hidden pocket and sealed it with his magic.

Several miles behind them, an entire city had gone pitch black dark.