The Elementals: The Last Crimson (1st in the Elementals Series)

Chapter Three: Up In Flames

He steps over rubble and past burning furniture to try and find the brunette. "Lyria! Make a noise if you can hear me," he calls out and he listens for a moment before hearing her groan softly. He heads towards the noise and finds her entire bedroom has come down into the dining room. She's underneath some rubble and a small piece of her roof.

"At least the roof is a metal one," he mutters before stretching his hand out and using his control over metal to lift it off of the girl. He rushes to help her and finds she's unconscious, completely out of it. He turns her over when he notices it; the distinct Fire Mark on her shoulder blade.

Her eyelids flutter as he lifts her up and carries her through the rubble. "Dartanian! Hurry!" Bastion shouts.

"I found her!" He shouts, making his way through the living room and out of the hole in the wall. "She's unconscious, let's get her to the house," Dartanian says, carrying her to the car. Shaye opens the back and helps Dartanian get the pale girl into the back with him.

"Call Delilah," Bastion orders Fleur to do it and she does.

They make their way to the large house, needing to get there quickly. "How can we explain this?" Shaye asks and D'artagnan provides an answer for them.

"We won't need to," he assures them, "she has a Mark."

"Fire," Bastion says, "right?" He asks and Dartanian nods in response, knowing they'll be at their house soon. Lyria is struggling to breathe, her breaths coming in shallow pants.

"Can't you drive any faster?" He asks through gritted teeth not speaking in anger, but in anxiousness.

"Almost there," Bastion says, then pulls into the driveway quickly, almost hitting the mailbox. Shaye gets out immediately and grabs Lyria's legs while Dartanian cradles her head.

"Inside," Delilah instructs as she opens the garage door. The teenagers run inside, Dartanian lagging behind since he's carrying the unconscious girl in his arms.

When they enter the medical room, Dartanian immediately places her in a bed. "She's inhaled a lot of smoke." Two nurses rush to help them, placing a mask over Lyria's nose and mouth to help her breathe. Lyria coughs and inhales sharply as she starts to breathe normally again, Dartanian watching as a nurse gives her an IV with fluids.

"She'll be fine," Delilah says, "go to bed."

"I'm staying here," Dartanian argues, "she'll need to see a familiar face when she wakes," he reasons before watching his friends leave with Delilah. He pulls a chair up and sits beside the bed Lyria is sleeping in, noticing her red pendant is still around her neck. "One of the last," Dartanian murmurs quietly as he stares at her pendant.

Dartanian holds his head in his hands, unable to block out the images of Lyria's house aflame in his mind. He doesn't know how she'll take her parents' death...her adoptive and biological parents' deaths.

The sixteen year old boy raises his head when he hears Lyria moving in her hospital bed. He watches with his silver gaze, needing to know that she's going to wake. When she doesn't open her eyes he looks down at his lap. He remembers when he turned sixteen.

~

A young boy tosses and turns in his bed, the pain unbearable as a black Mark is painfully carved into his skin. His screams echo in the tiny bedroom, his head feeling like it's going to explode.

Screws come flying out of the desk and the lamp next to his door as the doorknob crumples in on itself. The window above his bed shatters as the metal holdings give way, his physical and mental pain giving way to his powers.