Chapter 5: What the Jungle Hides

"I'm good. Let's follow him," says Cordey with a thankful nod.

Admiral, with Regan and Cordey close on his heels, rushes down old stairs and over crumbling stone walls into the jungle beyond the ruins. Pushing through dense ferns and vines the three quickly follow the sound to a dim glade where sunbeams cut through the canopy like columns. In the middle of it Khyree squares up in a fighter’s stance, her big shoulders coiled, breath coming in sharp with angry bursts. Luminous, swirling, orbs wheel around her in blue-green spirals, shedding foxfire that paints her knuckles and cheekbones in ghost-light. Each time she snaps a punch or backfist, the lights smear into comet tails and dart just out of reach. Khyree continues to swat furiously, though her movement is noticeable slowing as they approach. Her swings start to include a swagger as if she is getting tired or intoxicated.

"Khyree! Are you alright? Where…" Admiral pauses, distracted, as one of the orbs floats near. He swats at it, then shakes his head, forcing himself to focus. "Where is everyone?"

Khyree glances up mid-swing, sweat streaking her face, breath ragged. "Admiral. There you are. And Regan… Cordey..." Her strikes come slower now, wide and winded. One of the lights zips low, nipping the back of her knee. She drops to one knee with a grunt.

"I'm getting real tired of this," she growls, voice hoarse. She rises halfway, swaying. Her eyes search the hovering lights. "Where’s the kid?" she slurs. "And Rowan...what did you..."

She doesn’t finish. Her body sinks, knees hitting the ground, then her chest, then stillness.

The orb Admiral instinctively swatted away turns spirals around his shoulders. Two more join it, drifting in mesmerizing loops. The rakasta's tail twitches. A drowsy calm blooms behind his eyes that feels like warm sun on fur, like a good nap waiting just on the other side of play. Just for a moment...

Beyond the clearing, deeper in the trees, new lights stir, cool and soft as foxfire. They shift, shimmer, beckon. They do not speak, but Regan feels the nudge all the same: Come look. Just a bit further. There's something you missed...

They have to be here... maybe they kept going?

The lights in the distance are intriguing to Regan. He believes they may hold a clue. Feeling uncontrollably compelled to head toward them and believing Admiral and Cordey will take care of Khyree, he starts heading in their direction, slowly.

Admiral, snapping out of his short-lived calmness stupor, sees Cordey rushing to the aid of the unconscious Khyree as the nearby orbs continue to circle him. They tauntingly begin to knock into him as they circle around. While the orbs annoyingly surround him, he notices Regan slowly wandering off.

Admiral bats some of the orbs away with a growl and then, seeing that Cordey is helping Khyree, hurries to catch Regan before he wanders too far. "Where are you going? Snap out of it, mate!" he says, shaking Regan by the armored shoulders.

In response, The orbs swirl, blocking Admiral's path toward Regan. When he hurries in Regan's direction nonetheless, the orbs bump and push him as he goes, their nuisance causing anger to build in him. They continue to do so when he shakes Regan.Regan, focused on and following toward the lights off in the undergrowth, hears Admiral's voice and feels his companion shake him. The captain's request makes little sense to the knight. He thinks...Isn't it obvious that the only logical place to go is toward the lights?

Still Admiral's oblivious confusion is odd to Regan and is enough to cause him to halt, either to consider why Admiral is so worried, or to help the poor soul understand the obvious.

"The others might be this way. The lights were around Khyree, and there are more lights are this way. We have to help them, Captain."

"We’ll look for the others together," Admiral argues, trying to drag Regan back to Cordey and Khyree. "Don’t wander off. That’s what the little buggers want."

Regan can't understand for the life of him why Admiral is being so foolish about this and feels it important to continue his route to the lights to prove to Admiral that it IS the best plan the situation warrants.

Admiral on the other hand is still being bombarded by the orbs that continue to fly inches from his face and knock into his back and sides. His annoyance is boiling up again.

"She is out cold!" yells an exasperated Cordey as he is crouched over Khyree. "I can't wake her. Regan! There is no way we should leave her here! Stay put already!" he commands in a booming tone.

Regan just doesn't care what his companions, who are proving to be less-than-intelligent, have to say; he just ignores their ridiculous protests and marches forcefully toward the lights.

Fine. I'll help the others without those two.

Admiral is overwhelmed. The orbs are a nuisance, Regan won't listen, he is still chasing them like a cat after string, Khyree lies unconscious, and the others remain missing. It is enough to fray his nerves, but Admiral manages to keep his cool even as the lights flit closer, taunting him with silent, teasing spirals, bumps, and knocks.

He scans the glade and the undergrowth beyond, looking not at the lights, but around them, which helps to ground him. And that’s when he notices it: none of the lights, the ones annoying him nor the ones Regan chases after, enter the columns of sunlight spearing through the forest canopy.

A memory surfaces in his mind. An old lesson.

He was young then, just a kit, bounding at Dharzal’s heels through the busy galley of the Whisper. The orc cook would often teach him about herbs and roots, which were safe and which could end a man faster than steel. And every now and then, when they docked close to forest, Dharzal would take him foraging.

Once, they’d planned just such an outing; Admiral had even packed his own little satchel. But when locals warned Dharzal the woods were touched by fey, the orc’s face grew grim. Admiral was disappointed; no trip that day. Instead, they sat on overturned crates while Dharzal smoked fish and told stories he had heard in his days about fey woods.

Admiral recalls the part of Dharzal's stories that his current situation triggers.

"Don’t chase lights in fey woods," the orc had said. "They laugh as they lead strong men to their knees. They don’t kill you—they let you wander ‘til you’re nothing." The orc had taken a long drag from his pipe. "Some fey keep the lights as pets, y’know. Little things full o’ mischief and malice."

But what is important most right now is what Dharzal said next:
"They’ll never dance in full light. That’s your anchor, boy. Stay where the sun touches."

Back in the present, Admiral sees every orb here keeping to the shadows. Even the ones tormenting him avoid the shafts of sunlight slanting through the trees. There is one such shaft only feet away.

...

Regan pushes past the glade into the undergrowth, columns of sunlight pierce the canopy in spots shooting to the forest floor. Otherwise the forest is a dense lush dim green. Avoiding the spears of sunlight, the feywild lights just outside the glade swirl to meet Regan. Soon many swirl around him. He feels peaceful in their presence. They are intriguing.