Chapter 5: What the Jungle Hides

Admiral whirls around at the sound of the boy’s scream, just barely catching sight of the eye before it vanishes. "Seems we’re being watched," he says, glancing around at the other portals.

He approaches the little portal where the eye appeared and crouches down to its level, trying to see what lies on the other side.

Without words Regan and Cordey simultaneously head to nearby portals, their weapons ready. Regan heads to the nearest past portal and Cordey to the nearest ahead.

Crouching down to its level, Admiral sees a dim glow beyond the small aperture he peers into. No bulbous eye.

What he can make out looks like a hollow underground cavity—despite the fact that he is not actually looking downward. The cavity is made of soil walls and impressive thick hanging roots that glow a dim blue. After he makes out the luminescent roots beyond the aperture, he notices across the underground cavity a portal similar to those they have been seeing.

The aperture Admiral looks through is less than a foot wide. This and the disorienting view makes depth hard to calculate, but Admiral thinks the portal he sees across the cavity is much bigger than the one he looks through. 
His suspicion is confirmed when he suddenly sees Cordey’s broad shoulders step into view in the larger portal across the cavity. The portal is as large as Cordey’s shoulders down to his waist, something like four feet.

The fighter points his rapier through the portal, partially into the cavity. Admiral simultaneously hears Cordey's voice in the root corridor while he sees—through the portal across the cavity—the fighter's non-weapon hand wave in time with his words as the half sea elf calls, "There’s something glowing beyond this one!"

Admiral feels something about the energy those roots emit.

Admiral can feel energy radiating from the roots in the cavity. Perhaps they are somehow part of the network his party has been carefully stepping through. But these glowing ones, which are presumably underground somewhere nearby, are unexposed to the surface and Admiral feels that their energy could be the source of and reason why the roots above seem to react and coordinate in a living, breathing way.

Further, Admiral knows well how he feels when he takes a Misty Step to a nearby location in his sight. At this very moment he is aware that his control over that feeling grows in him as he looks at the blue glowing roots in the cavity. He feels as if he could summon that control at will.

Wanting to get a better look around this underground cavity, Admiral reaches for old, familiar magic – one of the first tricks Reaver taught him—and finds it ready and waiting. He dissolves into sea-mist, almost effortlessly, and rematerializes on the other side of the portal, amid the strange glowing roots. He immediately spins around, scanning the space for any sign of the creature that was spying on them.

Admiral's dissolve into sea mist is accompanied by a shocked gasp of the boy, which disappears as he reforms in the cavity.

The cavity is roughly spherical and no more than 30 feet wide. The walls are formed from rich soil with many glowing roots poking through them from all directions. Some hang from above. Some enter from the sides. Some continue through to the bottom. Many intertwine, forming a mass in the center of the cavity. The root clump mass provides a center platform, which looked like the cavity's floor to Admiral from his view through the small portal (and is where he Misty Stepped too). But now he sees that the spherical space drops below him as well.

There is a portal ahead--the one Cordey is visible in. There is a portal above him. Behind him is the small portal he stepped through. And below him there is a portal under the tangled root platform he stands on.

There is no sign here of the creature that was spying. But Admiral can see Cordey through the portal ahead bending over and pointing at Admiral while shouting and waving the others over emphatically. He cannot hear the commotion on the other side of the portal.

Admiral dissolves into mist again and reappears behind Cordey.

"No sign of whoever – or whatever – was spying on us, but those roots are imbued with some sort of magic that makes it easier to teleport around," he says.

Cordey swings around abruptly at the sound of Admiral's voice behind him. "How!?..." is all his puzzled face can spit out.

The others slow their hurried pace toward Cordey when they realize it's Admiral that materializes next to him.

"Did I see you in there?" asks Cordey pointing at the portal. From his look, Admiral can tell the fighter asks mostly to make sure this jungle isn't making him crazy.

"Oh! Yes, it’s one of the tricks that came with the sword," Admiral explains, waving Reaver in the air demonstratively. "It’s come in pretty handy once or twice. Here, I’ll show you." Emboldened and invigorated by the power emanating from the roots, he places a hand on Cordey’s shoulder and, together, the two of them vanish and reappear on top of the platform in the centre of the underground cavity.

Cordey instinctively grabs onto the nearest thick hanging root as the pair materializes in the cavity.

"Whoa..." he says steadying himself. The half sea elf looks around. When he regains his balance and clarity of mind he concludes, "So you can teleport into any of those portals, and take others with you?"

"Well, only one at a time, I think— I can’t normally take other people at all but the roots seem to be amplifying the magic," says Admiral. "But that’s an interesting idea…" He peers over the edge of the platform into the portal below and then looks up at the one above. "I wonder if any of these portals would take us closer to the antler tree…"

Cordey follows Admiral's gazes. "Well, where are we anyway? Where is this?"

Cordey's question is accompanied by Regan pushing a foot through the portal (the one through which Cordey and Admiral teleported). The knight pulls his whole frame through, secures his armored footing on two wider horizontal roots, and starts awkwardly making his way toward Admiral and Cordey as one would who's unaccustomed to walking a tightrope or ship rigging in heavy armor. Looking around, Regan reiterates Cordey's question, "What is this place?"

"I think we’re underground," says Admiral, gesturing to the roots hanging down from the ceiling. "It seems like some sort of central hub between all these different portals."

He's no expert on plants but he takes a closer look at one of the glowing roots, curious about this energy they're emitting.

From his inspection Admiral can discern that the glowing roots here—beyond their obvious glowing nature—do look different than the roots on the path above in shape and texture. But there is nothing else he can determine.

Admiral looks up at the portal above them, puts his hands on his hips, and says, "Well, I suppose there’s only one way to find out where these other ones lead! Cordey, stand still, would you?"

Without waiting for an answer, Admiral climbs up onto Cordey’s shoulders and, balancing precariously, pokes his head through the portal on the ceiling.

As Admiral suddenly and unexpectedly climbs up Cordey, the large half sea-elf responds,

"Whoa!...wait...give me a sec..."

Luckily the root platform is stable enough and the fighter is broad enough to support Admiral easily. Cordey stands close to 7 feet tall, so once on his shoulders, Admiral is able to poke his head just into the portal. Even though the edge of the portal's aperture is smelly and oily--just like the others--it provides some handholds for Admiral to stabilize as he peeks through.

...

It's one of the strangest sensations Admiral has ever experienced. Split gravity. Blood rushes to his head where it pokes though the portal, while at the same time he can feel the blood in the rest of his body--the part balancing on Cordey's shoulders--flowing under an opposite gravity's influence.

What Admiral peers into is another, even larger, cavity. This one must be 100 ft wide. It's also roughly spherical.

Due to the blood rushing to the crown of his head, Admiral feels like he is upside down--well at least his head feels that way--and he feels like he's looking down from a ceiling into the large cavity.

This cavity also is tangled with glowing roots, and here the glow is even brighter than in the smaller cavity. The roots have the same texture and shape as the ones in the other cavity but most are larger. In fact, there's a large one nearby. Admiral could easily pull himself up through the portal (or down depending how one thinks of it) and grab the nearby root that is the size of a small tree trunk. It juts through the soil wall and is near his head. This thick root twists a bit before it tangles with many other roots, providing many foot holds. To Admiral it looks like an easy climb. Although, he's not sure how the sudden odd shift in gravity would work out if he were to pull himself into the larger cavity.

This cavity is a greater volume to visually scan, but by the light of the roots Admiral thinks he can spot three other portals beside the one he pokes through. They are in located similarly as the ones in the smaller cavity.

Further, with his head here he can feel his control over Reaver's teleportation gift growing; he feels like he could Misty Step across this entire 100' cavity in one shot.

As he's making this realization, a boggle suddenly appears through another portal halfway down the cavity, grabbing and hanging on to a root just inside the portal. The creature doesn't look up (where Admiral's head pokes). Instead, the boggle gives a quick fixed glance across the cavity at the portal on the opposing wall...and suddenly the same creature is hanging on a root directly in front of that portal.

Looking around the larger cavity, Admiral is conflicted. On the one hand, it would be very easy to get lost in here, with nothing to anchor one’s sense of direction. They could wander through this network of portals for hours without ever getting any closer to their destination. Better to stick to the path where at least they can rely on the compass and their wits to keep them headed in the right direction.

On the other… the antler tree could be just on the other side of any one of these portals, for all he knows. Isn’t it worth looking? Or is he letting himself get distracted? Jin is in trouble – they can’t afford to waste any time aimlessly wandering through portals in search of shortcut… right?

When the boggle suddenly appears through the portal, he instinctively freezes, trying not to be seen, but then an idea strikes him and his eyes widen with excitement. Without a second to waste, he digs his claws into the roots around the opening and scrambles up (down?) through the portal. Clinging to the large, tree-trunk-sized root, he allows his legs to swing down so that he is right-side up, relative to the gravity in this space, and then vanishes, dissipating into sea-mist.

He reappears directly behind the creature, Reaver pointed at the small of the creature’s back. "My friends and I are looking for a tree shaped like a pair of antlers," he growls, as the gem in Reaver’s pommel swirls with power. "Would you be so kind as to show us the quickest way?"

The transfer of his full body was a bit disorienting, and when Admiral dissipates and reappears he feels some dizziness. But the task at hand requires a clean focused mind and concentration on the enchantment.

As he focuses, Admiral notices that this boggle wears a similar tattered burlap robe as did the boggle on Etrivel's shoulder during the fey noble river encounter (unlike the boggles the party fought at the cliff, who were bare skinned) and further, on this its chest, under its open robe, this boggle has a tattoo--or branding perhaps--in the shape of the Antler Tree.

The creature, taken completely by surprise, gives a panicked look at the portal about to teleport quickly through it. But Admiral's immediate enchanting words cause it to pause involuntarily.

The creature hesitates only a moment and then jumps though the portal, vanishing.

Admiral curses and lunges through the portal after the boggle, intent on catching the creature.