Chapter 5: What the Jungle Hides

"Right! The sun!" cries Admiral, as the warm memory comes back to him. He leaps into the shaft of sunlight and whirls around to shout to Cordey. "Cordey! They’re afraid of the sun! Bring Khyree over here, into the light."

Turning around, he sees that Regan is getting away and so chases after him, darting between patches of sunlight so as not to linger longer than necessary in the dappled shade. Once he catches up with Regan, he braves the shadows and charges at him, attempting to shove him into a nearby beam of sunlight.

The orbs do not follow Admiral into the shaft of light. Instead they skirt around the sunbeam and depart from Admiral, heading toward Cordey.

Cordey locks eyes with Admiral, quickly assessing the situation. Without hesitation, the big half-sea-elf hoists Khyree over his shoulder and strides toward the nearest column of sunlight. The orbs swirl around him as he does, but as soon as he breaches the sunlit patch, they scatter once more.

By the time Admiral catches up to Regan, attempting to charge into him and shove him into the sunlight, Regan is stationary, wholly focused on many orbs swirling around him, mesmerized and feeling peaceful, forgetting why he sought after them in the first place.

Just as Admiral makes an athletic thrust at Regan, the orbs very suddenly quickly dart away from Regan deeper into the undergrowth, taunting him to follow. The man is overwhelmed with the desire to stay with the orbs. Oblivious of Admiral's lunge, Regan dashes just at the moment Admiral closes, moving a step beyond where Admiral calculated the man would be. Instead of connecting squarely and heaving Regan toward the nearest shaft of sunlight, Admiral's thrust just clips Regan's leg with his own. This causes Admiral to go tumbling past the knight into vines, rocks, and brush. But it also causes the knight to stumble and lose his footing, falling to the ground as well.

The strip that Admiral fashioned as a necklace to wear his celestite crystal shard gets caught on a spiky vine in his tumble. The shard is pulled out from under his shirt. When it no longer contacts Admiral's skin it begins to hum, like Admiral once heard in the Nightmare's lair.

Regan, is at first confused, and then as he sees the lights continue flying off into the distance and Admiral tumble nearby he...

Regan stumbles a bit, turning to see Admiral sprawled out on the ground and vines like a drunk who lost a fight with the very concept of walking, an odd and persistant humming coming from... his person.

"Captain, if the lights had swarmed Khyree it only makes sense more lights would have swarmed the others. They all need our help, and I don't understand why you're so determined to stop me," the man explains as he reaches down, offering a hand to the feline factotum. Once the Captain is back on his feet, he continues, "Get Cordey and Khyree so we can keep moving, yeah?"

Admiral scowls and brushes the leaves from his fur in a huff. "The lights are trying to separate us! They’re not going to lead us to our friends," he argues, exasperated. He pulls the humming crystal shard from around his neck and presses it into Regan’s hand, hoping it will help to clear his head. "Here, take this and step into the sunlight. These fey-lights have got you mesmerized or something, but they don’t like the sun." He takes a few steps back into a patch of sunlight himself and looks around the glade, particularly at the snapped twigs and crumpled ferns where he fell. He looks around for other signs of recent disturbance, hoping that if the rest of their friends were ensorcelled like Regan, they might not have been moving very carefully and, thus, might have left some obvious tracks.

The event of being clipped by Admiral and the hum had already snapped Regan back to his own senses, but with the celestite crystal pressed against his bare hand, the humming stops and any lingering haze in his mind clears.

As Admiral suspected a focused scan of the visible underbrush reveals signs of recent disturbance in the dense jungle. He spots a path of disturbed ferns that could have been made by one of the other ensorcelled party members. The path cuts through Admiral and Regan's current location. It looks as if it may originate from the direction of the temple and heads in the direction that the lights just flitted off to.

"Well, alright, maybe they are leading us to our friends," Admiral begrudgingly admits, still a bit miffed from falling on his face. "But stick to the sunlight, aye?"

"Aye aye, Captain," Regan replies with a distinct lack of "I told you so" in his voice as he helps Cordey with Khyree's body.

Making sure that their path doesn't keep them out of direct sunlight for too long, Regan and Admiral make it back to Cordey and Khyree to find that Khyree has regained consciousness. Cordey praises Admiral for his discovery and explains that after a few minutes in direct sunlight Khyree woke up and started cursing herself for letting the lights dupe her into draining her own energy.

With the four of them now alert and ready, they head back to follow the trail of disturbed jungle presumably made by one of their companions. They do their best to track the path while staying near--or in--various shafts of sunlight that poke into the jungle. After a short while, a similar disturbance cuts a diagonal path through the one they initially followed.

Peering through trees and thick brush in the general direction that both paths lead, Admiral and Regan can see fey lights flitting around in the distant darker area of undergrowth.

Admiral continues to follow the original trail of broken twigs and crushed leaves through the jungle, but takes care to remember where it branches off so that they can retrace their steps later. When the path ahead darkens and the patches of sunlight become fewer, Admiral stops and looks back at Khyree. "Do you think you should wait here, in the sun, or are you up to dealing with these lights again?"

"There is no shame in staying your hand," the older man offers. "A good warrior is self-aware enough to know when a challenge poses too much of a risk. Don't let hubris make the situation worse."

In response to Admiral and Regan, Khyree exhales a long breath. "When I first became an apprentice to my master, Grekkor, I was awed by his ability to unleash a storm of blows using nothing but his body." Her gaze drops to her fists, curling unconsciously. "I believed that walking the path of the Ascendant Dragon meant I could crush bullies and enemies without ever lifting a blade."

She shakes her head slowly, her voice softer now. "But Grekkor taught me more than strikes and stances. He taught me restraint. He taught me how to quiet the fire in my blood, how to keep the barbarian inside me focused, even in the storm of battle."

She laughs, low and self-mocking. "Still, I often feel like I’m two people trying to walk the same path. And those lights…" Her eyes harden. "They didn’t fool the monk. They preyed on the barbarian. I won’t let it happen again."

Just as her words settle in the air, a blood-chilling howl ends the silence.

It echoes from the deepening shadows ahead, where the sunlight thins and the jungle tightens. This is no eel-hound’s cry. The sound is larger, older. It booms with deep, beastly power, but it includes a high-pitched shriek that pierces straight into the mind like a blade, causing their hairs to stand on end.

Even without seeing it, every instinct screams the warning: something unnatural hunts the dark...in the same direction that the jungle has been disturbed by an enthralled member of the party following the lights.

"Alright then. Make sure to hold to that. Because we're about to go start some problems," Regan says with a smile, tossing the considerably more imposing hammer over his shoulder and heading towards the shrieks and roars.

Frost begins to form over Admiral’s body, turning his ginger fur white, as he dashes into the depths of the jungle, following the trail left by their lost friend with renewed urgency.

As he makes his way towards the commotion, Regan draws the power of the divine around himself like a blanket, to keep himself safe in the trouble they're about to start.

Regan and Admiral, followed by Cordey and Khyree, move hastily in the direction of the ghastly howl. They basically follow the path of disturbed undergrowth. The canopy gets denser and darker as they move with little daylight illuminating the thick jungle and virtually no direct sunlight making its way to the forest floor. The fey wisp lights still flit in the distance where the jungle is the darkest. At the moment the lights seem to be keeping their distance from the group, but the group is keenly aware of their ominous presence.

Then without warning shadows ripple directly in front of Regan's path.

Darkness bends between patches of shadows. Regan sees the dark shape of the monk...Taresh. He doesn’t emerge from the forest, but instead suddenly arrives, at first a shadow, and then in his recognizable form. The shadows peel from his shape like smoke. For a moment, his outline flickers between presence and absence. And then he’s there. Right in front of Regan. No rustle, no warning. Just the monk, standing where there was only dark jungle ahead a moment ago.

"Quickly!" the monk quietly exclaims with a sharp urgency. "Follow me. We must climb. The beast hunts me. I can hide us in a shadow veil and explain."

Without waiting, he darts toward a thicket of large trees, vaulting onto a low branch and scaling upward with practiced speed, vanishing into the canopy above.

Another blood chilling howl can be heard echoing through the forest.

Admiral hesitates for a heartbeat, before scrambling up the tree after Taresh. He wants to fight this thing, but he trusts the monk’s judgement. If Taresh thinks they should hide, they should probably hide.

It occurs to Regan that so far, both of their scattered teammates have been put in situations where they were pushed to do what comes naturally to them, and it's (seemingly) a losing prospect. Khyree resorted to punching a foe she couldn't truly punch... Taresh is hiding from a hunting beast.

Two examples isn't much to go on, but so far it seems like whatever is plaguing a given companion is designed to sort of... counteract... that companion.

Regan was curious if the burgeoning pattern would hold true.

He stands watch as the others scramble up a tree, and once Admiral, Cordey, and Khyree are up only then does he himself climb up to join them.