June 8th

It'd only taken a couple of days for the first reports of issues to crop up with roads missing or weirdness in a forest, but the first reports hadn't been anywhere near us. The Amazon Rainforest, the Black Forest in Germany, and the Congo all quickly had found locations where dozens of square miles were doing something unexpected.

According to Brent the local governments weren't doing anything with them. Instead, they were more focused on issues with keeping their portion of the world running rather than investigating anomalies. Officially at least.

I looked out the window as the Jeep drove along the service road in the Mark Twain National Forest towards our destination. We're probably not official government business either.

"Hey, looks like we're there. I see a couple of trucks up the road." Ash interrupted my musing.

Looking forward, I saw two military trucks pulled off the side of the road and a barricade across the road itself. Behind that what looked like a semi-circle taking a good bit out of the road. As we pulled up, I had to rub my eyes. "Wait a second. Did anyone else just see more of the road appear as we got closer?"

"Like we're going around a wall, but you can see through it to trees? I'm confused as all hell." Ash stopped and we all got out, Karen and Melissa stepping out of the backseats.

A couple of men got out of one of the convoy trucks. I noticed one more standing in the bed of the other truck with a machine gun. "You would be the group we're supposed to expect?" One of them asked, looking the four of us in askance.

They all felt about second breakthrough, and I thought I could vaguely feel another one further ahead but not? I could sense their energy cycle a little faster as they questioned us.

"I'm Nicole Firen. This is Ash Carson, Melissa Belle, and Karen Dubin with the Dantian Seekers. We've got base IDs from Leonard Wood if you want to see them?" I offered up my little base ID card, putting the weird feeling to the side for the moment.

"Can't really miss you, ma'am." The other said. "At least, I hope no one else around here feels nearly as strong as you do." He still took the card though and looked at it before handing it back to me.

"So, what is this?" Karen asked, looking at the edge of the road and trying to peer around to the other side.

"Unknown, really. The road outage was reported to a local ranger station yesterday along with someone disappearing while driving across it. We've currently got one person just on the other side of the edge in case the missing person shows up, but we've also got a few barricades halfway through so he knows how to get back."

"How to get back?" I asked and then looked closer at one of the barricades. Which looked cut in half with one side not propped up by anything. "What?"

"Easier to see than explain. Watch one moment." He turned and walked to the barrier, putting a hand on it and walked away. At the same edge of where the barricade was at, he vanished.

"Holy shit!"

I could still feel his energy though? Still in front of us, but not? I couldn't figure it out.

Abruptly, the soldier reappeared. "So yeah. Be careful on the other side. There's no roads or anything, so if you wander too far you might have issues getting back."

"Thanks." I smiled and looked at the others. "Well, let's see what we can… Well, I guess not see?"

As I walked up to the barricade, Ash spoke up behind me to the guard. "So, what all have you guys figured out about this so far?"

Picking up a stick, I pushed it through with no issues. The end of the stick was cut off exactly, no weird fuzzing or the whole thing disappearing even though I was holding part of it back. But the guard had vanished all at once.

Curious, I tossed the stick in and it vanished piecemeal as well. Then startled me a moment later by flying back out. "What the hell?"

"There's someone not eight feet inside there, you probably hit him with the stick." The guard called with a laugh.

"Sorry!" I called through.

"Yeah, can't hear past it either." I heard from behind me.

"Huh." I took a half step forward before my wrist was caught. Looking backwards I saw Karen and gave her a questioning look.

"I realize there doesn't seem to be any issue going through, but let's at least make a bit of a human chain in, just in case?" she asked me. "Melissa, come grab my other hand."

So chained, I stepped forward. I expected to maybe feel or sense something strange, but I didn't. Just that suddenly my view changed. There was a wide expanse of forest ahead of me, undergrowth here and there and oddly trampled straight ahead. Standing a bit off to the side was a man in uniform.

Before I could say anything, I felt a squeeze on my wrist and I turned, only to find no one behind me. No military trucks or anything. Another squeeze and I looked down, seeing an impression of Karen's hand on my wrist, but I couldn't actually see her. I squeezed my hand back lightly, feeling resistance but not pressure or actually seeing her myself.

Carefully, I reached out with my free hand and poked where Karen's arm should be, only for my finger to pass through it. "OK, that's creepy."

Even more creepy, I realized, was where the trucks should have been was no road. Just what looked liked miles of empty woods, with nothing more than the half of a barricade sticking through to mark where we came from.

"Welcome to the weird." The guard said, a very wan smile on his face.

There was a tugging on my wrist. "Yeah, be right back." And I was quite happy to follow the pull, slipping back past that demarcation point.

There were trucks again, and I could feel Karen holding my wrist. Funny how solidly she was holding me. Or was that me holding her.

"You OK?" I asked. "Did anything happen to you? Did you feel me try to poke your arm?"

"You literally vanished while I was holding you. That's a little freaky." Karen stepped back away from the edge more. "I could tell I was still holding you, but that's it. And no, no pokes. What the hell?"

"I'm fairly certain people aren't disappearing in California on the faults or Brent would have mentioned that." Melissa was staring at the edge. "What's over there?"

"Forest. Lots of forest. No road, no convoy trucks." I paused, then looked back to the guards watching us, Ash standing nearby. "There was forest past the barrier on that side, but how would you get to it? If you just walk there, you end up back here."

He shrugged. "Ma'am, we know as much as you do right now. Couldn't tell you. I'm just glad the barricades actually sit on both sides without issue, because otherwise you could seriously lose people there. Don't know if you saw where a car punched through the growth over there, but the driver could have been seriously lost because he didn't know where to go to get back out."

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"Let me grab the rope." Ash said, wandering back to the car and getting the several thousand foot spools of nylon rope we'd brought.

"You just happen to have that much rope just lying around?" The guard asked.

I shook my head. "No, we brought it because we figured we might need to tie a path back to the road if this expanded like it did in California. Now it's even more necessary to even know how to get back." I nodded to the others. "Come on, other than the really weird visual shift, you wouldn't know anything happened."

"Just a moment." The guard rummaged through the truck, coming back with a set of walkie talkies. "These don't work across that line, but hopefully they'll work while you're in there and with the guard on the other side."

"Thanks!" I said as Melissa grabbed them.

Passing back through, the guard on the other side just gave us all a look at the spools of rope and walkie talkies. "You going out there?" I nodded. "You're braver than I am. We're taking shifts being on this side listening in case the lost guy yells or something, but we're not going out there." He clicked a button on the mic on his shoulder and a beep came out of the walkie talkies. "Good, short range works. Keep me updated?"

"Nicole, this isn't right." Ash said, which immediately put me on guard and looking around.

"What isn't?"

"Where the hell did all this come from?" Ash waved a hand everywhere. "Seriously. This is like an untouched forest. It's not somehow lava pushing up and cooling, creating a rocky area that I could at least vaguely understand where the ground is coming from." Ash gave an aggravated snort at everything. "Where did we get a hundred years of forest growing in a week?"

"Teleportation? I don't know." I calmed a bit and looked around once more myself. "Huh. You can hear a few birds and stuff too. Air is cleaner too maybe?" At least he hadn't meant anything else.

"Can you not make those kinds of guesses, please?" The guard asked, whitefaced. "I'd much prefer to think I'm about thirty feet from the rest of my squad, just behind a wall."

"Sorry." Melissa replied to him. "And yeah, we'll keep in contact."

I pointed to the broken undergrowth. "Do you think that's where the car went through?"

"That's the only thing unnaturally disturbed here, ma'am." The guard offered.

Ash unspooled some of the rope, tying it off to the barricade.

"Anyone sense anything, first?" I asked, opening myself up and reaching outwards to the external energy around me. I still couldn't cycle it in, even after learning to pull in the geode energy, but I could still feel the flows. A whole lot of Wood in the mix along with a decent amount of Earth. Nearly nothing of Fire. Air and Water seemed about balanced with each other, but less than Earth. Next to me, I could feel the individual dantians of Ash, Melissa, Karen, and the guard, but nothing else hit me.

I could feel the guard react by cycling as I watched him take a step back.

"You know, that's the first time I've really felt you do that." Karen looked at me, slightly wide-eyed herself. "I know you do that back there," she motioned back towards the not there military trucks, "but here you seemed less repressed? Less held back?"

"Huh." I hadn't done anything differently. "Sorry man." I offered to the guard. "But seriously, anyone sense anything? I didn't."

I got to see what Karen meant as the three of them seemed to almost unveil something inside themselves into the energy around us. It lapped against me but even with all three of them doing it, it was more like a gentle wave of their energy against me. "I see what you mean."

"You're like a magnitude deeper than him." Melissa nodded to the guard. "And you still feel like you have way more depth than I do. Three more makes that much of a difference, huh? But yeah, nothing I can feel."

"Nope." "Nada." Were the answers from Ash and Karen.

"Let's do some exploring then."

We strung out the rope as we walked deeper into the woods following the breaks caused by what was hopefully the car that was reported to have crashed through here. About eight hundred yards worth of rope in, around a couple of trees that looked nearly sideswiped, we finally found a car crashed into a tree trunk nearly as thick as the car.

"Anyone alive over there?" Karen called as we cautiously approached.

I frowned, looking at the beatup white electric Prius. "That car looks familiar..."

"California tags." Ash noted, setting down the rope spool and coming around. "Airbags went off, nobody in it." He hit the walkie talkie. "Found the car, no one's here."

Copy. Came the tinny voice back.

"Hello, anyone out there?" Karen yelled a little louder.

It was Melissa who answered. "Get out of the way!" she yelled at her. I caught a glimpse of a huge spider dropping down onto Karen who ran as told instead of looking confused.

The spider fell onto the uncovered ground, almost knee high in size and with a sense of Wood flowing from it that almost faded into the background energy if I didn't pay attention.

"God don't let this be Mirkwood." I said, looking around to make sure there weren't more spiders. Ash ran up and managed a good punt of the spider with his full strength, gifting the arachnid with enough lift to send it sailing into a tree trunk. It slowly climbed the tree, leaving some green ichor behind.

There were a few webs well up in the trees above us, but nothing to say thousands of man-sized spiders like what flashed through my mind for a moment. Paying attention, I could feel Wood energy being cycled above us, split from the general energy flows. Multiple spots too.

"Keep an eye on the canopy." I cautioned, a little superfluous considering the scare. "Let's tie off to the car and then see if there's anything that can be used as a weapon in it." Maybe whoever owned the vehicle travelled with a full little league worth of baseball bats?

The front of the car was crumpled and both driver and passenger airbags had gone off. Junk food wrappers in the baseboards.

"There's a spare tire, but the lug wrench is missing." Ash groused from in the trunk. "Someone else probably already had this idea."

"You still have that lighter, right Ash?" Karen asked, looking up.

"Yessss," he drawled out, "but I'm not going to try to burn down the forest because of spiders. We can just run back."

Karen gave a tug on one of the backdoors, sending the car rocking slightly. "No, just help me cut off a door. I need something really big to squish spiders with."

"Dibs on the trunk lid." I called, coming around. Between Ash's lighter blowtorch and brute strength ripping, we managed to get the doors off just as half a dozen spiders started crawling down the trees.

After a frantic few minutes of slamming hundred pound doors onto the ground and trees, we managed to kill off the spiders.