We followed the edge of the lake to the fast-flowing river feeding in and headed upstream. Within a mile, the river had deepened and widened, the flow of water slowing as it got further from the shallow sections that caused the rapid movement.

Here and there in almost deeper sections of the river had been small colonies of fish and plant life, the likely source of the food the spiders had been feasting upon.

The river twisted further as we went, the land beginning to rise and fall in unequal measure, the languid river easing through the path of least resistance. All the while, the energy flowing with the water subtly got stronger, almost heavier.

It was as we went around one of those hills that we came upon the source of the river, nearly an hour's fast pace from the lake we'd left behind.

It was, to use an underwhelming term, beautiful. We all came to a sudden stop.

The earth gave way to a sunken grotto, spread out almost a thousand feet in front of and away from us. From walls of stone and crystal flowed tinkling water, soft crashes that misted and hid most of the shift from wall to water. Light reflected through the crystals as well, breaking into rainbows of flickering colors that dyed the air itself dozens of hues and shades.

The river we had followed to this source started here, from waters that flowed out of this grotto. Yet the waters here were lower than the river we followed, but the grotto did not flood, instead the water somehow seemed to languorously flow upwards to the rim of the grotto before making its way downstream, drawn up from the shallow lake.

In the center of the grotto was a singular tree growing out of the water. It seemed as if it should be taller than any other tree outside the grotto, towering over them all yet it instead fit perfectly inside the grotto, not reaching above the height of anything around it.

The massive trunk twisted upwards, almost flowering into it's various branches that spread into a vast portion of the sunken landscape. The branches were held up by nothing, yet for the hundreds of feet they extended from the main trunk they dropped not an inch, leaving the tree looking like a massive funnel tapering into its trunk. Hundreds of orbs of soft green light hovered in the branches and a good number floated just above the waters below as well, as if they had fallen.

Myriad energy types seemed to swirl and dance throughout the entire grotto. Water flowed everywhere and was drawn in by the tree, only for the tree itself to give off wood. The wood drifted before being drawn into the crystals and crackling as fire. Fire bloomed, burned, and then banked itself on the stone as earth.

The earth energy seeped into everything as it dug deeper into the walls and I could sense the energy shift to a metal that felt off, almost dissonant, before the dissonance faded as metal melted back to water, flowing outwards again into the grotto lake.

And around the whole thing danced air. Wood breathed air. Air fed the fire. Water and air bubbled together, and air whistled around and through earth in carefree manner. The only energy it didn't touch was the buried sense of metal.

Extraneous water energy flowed with the river out, while the other energies flowed outwards in their own fashion, creating a subtle pressure against the senses as they melded with and became part of the general energy of the area. If I wasn't standing here watching the shifting of energies I wouldn't have noticed, hadn't felt it until I saw it.

"Ho-ly shit."

"What is this place?" I whispered myself, looking around.

"It's...stronger." Hughes said quietly as I felt his cycling increase. The edges of the flows pulled into him. "The energy coming out of there isn't as thin as it is elsewhere. It's like my I level isn't higher than the planet's."

It didn't feel any stronger to me, but then again I didn't normally cycle externally. "Want to explore it then?"

"Yes." Was the quickly voiced consensus.

Hopping down the few feet into the grotto, I immediately noticed something as we did. Like throwing stones in a still pond, every one of us caused a ripple in the flow of energy as soon as we actually stepped into the grotto.

Karen and Ash were barely enough to be noticeable, their own overflow fading quickly into the other energy flows as they cycled. Hughes's energy, a breakthrough above them, took a bit more as his energy overflow took longer to settle.

Melissa's was a much bigger splash. Her electrical energy had no matching flow to fall into and bounced among the energy. It channeled through the water and air until it ground itself out in the walls, absorbed by the earth and metal there. The lack of cycling external energy in seemed to mean her energy pushed harder outwards as well.

But if Melissa's was a bigger splash, mine seemed more like cannonballing into it. In a wave as big as everyone else combined, my own overflow seemed to race forward, bounding among the other energies. Water flowed faster while the air sped up. Fire energy flickered and burned like an accelerant had been added even as the wood grew quicker in turn. Even the earth energy seemed to shift and shudder when my overflow reached it.

We froze just inside. I quickly began slowing my cycling, feeling as if I was taking tiny short breaths in doing so. But my overflow slowed from seven breakthroughs to six, to five, then down to four before I felt like any more would be to stop breathing at all.

"Slow your cycling if you can, guys." I said, sensing the energies start to shake off the effects of my stronger overflow.

After a long moment, everyone's energy overflow was much lower and the flows in the grotto were absorbing the ripples of our own power much easier.

"We didn't seem to be hurting it? Our overflows looked like they were feeding it." Melissa asked as we continued to look.

I shrugged. "No, but I want to mess with the energy here as little as possible at first. If we are feeding it, can we overfeed it? Is it like overcharging a battery until it explodes?"

"No fish in the water." Hughes noted before immediately wading in, the water only coming up to his thigh. "Barely a current. How is water flowing uphill out of this into the river?"

"Since you're now in there, can you grab one of those green orbs, if it's solid?" I asked.

Hughes nodded and started wading further out to the closest of the orbs.

"There's a little bit of grit he kicked up floating up the stream." Karen was kneeling at the edge of the flow where it starting moving up. She pulled off her shoes.

"Be careful." Ash warned, but didn't stop her.

We watched as Karen also waded in, but into the upward flowing water. She promptly fell over sideways into the water before splashing around and then getting back on her feet and looking down at the water. "It's not moving fast enough to go upwards. If anything, it feels like it's going downhill just a bit."

"Uhh, Karen. Are you purposely doing that?" Ash asked her as I stared a little shocked.

Karen was standing straight up, if straight up was lined up with the angle upwards the water was flowing.

Karen turned to look at us and her eyes went wide. "Whoa. What the hell?" She came back out of the water and almost ate dirt falling before Ash caught her. "That's a really screwy transition."

I started to unlace my own shoes before there was another splashing as Hughes came back, holding something small in his hand. "As soon as you touch them, the green glow dies. Then you just get this." He stepped out of the water, offering it to me.

It was a little crystal shell, shaped almost like a walnut. But what was even more interesting was it held all the energies of the grotto in it in a stable amount, not cycling itself. But in these, air seemed to wrap around the five other elements in an almost braid inside instead of being non-existent in the geodes. The metal energy seemed off from the others still though. Was metal going to be a breakthrough eventually, or was it just something off?

I sat looking at the crystal and then looked out over the grotto where probably hundreds of orbs dotted the branches of the tree and dozens were easily visible on the still waters.

I took a deep breath, trying to not also let my cycling kick back up yet. "Alright, we're going to need to actually spend some time figuring this one out. Hughes, grab a few more if they don't seem to be doing anything."

I stood up, getting into one of the bags and coming out with the cameras. "Let's get some pictures taken. I don't care if you can't actually see it, I want photos of everywhere it feels like energy is converting from one type to another here. Then we'll head back because we're going to need some more heads to discuss this."

~~~

June 29th​

Take a few days to get all your facts and I'll get a meeting of people that can make some major decisions to help support the needs of the DARPA project you're in charge of. Brent had said.

So, I had. I don't know why I hadn't expected the meeting to have nearly thirty attendees split half between people in military uniform and the rest in expensive looking suits. Every one of them had an active dantian, though, and ranged from one to three breakthroughs.

Unlike presentations I'd previously given in classes and even some more recently during Seeker training, we did appear to have everyone's rapt attention. Which was both nice and still a little frightening.

"Good morning. Today's meeting is to discuss a major finding under DARPA project Cultivation, what it means, and what is needed from the Department of Defense and other sections of the government." Brent addressed everyone. "Some of you have different levels of awareness of what has been going on in the local area recently and I know overview notes were sent out, however I have Ms. Nicole Firen here as the project leader to go more in depth. I'll turn it over to Nicole."

Brent stepped back and I stepped up. Behind me, the screen came to life showing a map cutout of Mark Twain National Forest with a section highlighted.

"There is an approximately two-mile circular area of the Mark Twain National Forest that has what we're calling a hidden forest. This hidden forest is an area where you can walk across the boundary between the Mark Twain and this forest and vanish from here and appear there."

A click and the screen changed, showing a video of the section of road. Someone purposely crossed back and forth several times, disappearing and reappearing as they did so.

"This hidden forest is larger on the inside than it is outside. Based on testing done in the last few days with the Seekers and assistance from onsite military, the scale of difference is almost one hundred times larger in circumference. So whereas it looks like from the outside to be less than a square mile, inside by square footage you could fit the entire states of Rhode Island and Delaware."

I paused for a moment to let that sink in. "The interior of the hidden forest is, as named, mostly forest. In general, the flora and fauna are the same as here, but there are a few differences we've discovered so far. To begin with, these-"

The screen changed again, showing multiple pictures of the huge spiders, mostly them dead. "-are the first examples we know of massive animals to have breakthroughs. You may be aware of other animals around the world and also brought here to Leonard Wood that cycle energy and have a dantian, but these spiders have two and three breakthroughs. I-2 and I-3."

I could see a general sense of ill ease hit a lot of people at these pictures. Then again, the spiders were technically stronger than over half the people here.

"These spiders weigh between fifteen and twenty-five pounds. Heavier and larger appear to tend to I-3. I-3 spiders have the ability to spit a web strong enough to nearly instantly bind anyone at I-1 or lower. Great strength or a sharp edge is required to break the thread otherwise."

Someone near the front spoke up, a middle aged man with his hair just turning grey. "Please don't tell me DARPA wants to collect these spiders for their webs or something insane."

I shook my head. "While their web does appear to have as great if not greater strength than normal spider silk, no. This is an overview of one of the major dangers of the hidden forest. And in saying that, we have been killing any spiders we come across, along with any we find that cross the line and end up back in the Mark Twain. Someone else can come up with a spider husbanding project if they want to try."

I paused, looking back at the screen for a moment. "No, part of the request today is a larger force presence in the Mark Twain to ensure nothing wanders out and into the local area. It's only about seven miles straight to two different nearby towns, and the city of Salem is only fifteen miles away. I don't think anyone wants an apex predator like these setting up webs like these." I clicked again, and the original spider dam nest appeared. "There were fifty to sixty of the spiders living in this dam, at least five of which were I-3."

I paused and waited, to see if anyone had further comments but no one spoke up.

"Not all of the news is doom and gloom, however. We were able to discover this." I clicked one more time, and a panorama of the grotto appeared. The picture got a few whistles as they looked at the details.

"No photoshop here. This tree has a canopy that fills nearly the entire grotto it's in, measuring in at nearly fourteen acres. If you look carefully, you can see someone about halfway to the tree trunk. The trunk itself is about ninety or a hundred feet in thickness. The orbs you see are a form of energy geode, similar to what I think you're all familiar with. The ones still in the tree are actively drawing in the energy of the local area, while the ones on the water are stable and usable."

"Between the semi-renewable formation of these geodes and the fact that external energy users seem to not feel a difference above I-3 here, I'd like to get additional people for protection of the area, testing of cultivation here, and also some people to search for additional things inside the hidden forest."

"This is a hell of a find, Ms. Firen. I can definitely see the need to keep this under wraps, just based off the spiders alone." An older man in military uniform spoke up. "Not to mention having a large resource of these geodes and a place to send our best soldiers to get stronger."

"This isn't the only hidden area, sir." I disagreed. "Keeping it under wraps isn't going to do any good when Florida has at least one in the Everglades. I've been talking to someone there already and they're actively searching for where they're getting thirty foot pythons from, to try to corral that. It's even possible we have more than one in the Mark Twain, but no one's found a second one here yet."

"Wait, who are you talking with in Florida? MacDill?" Another man spoke up, this one with light blue eyes and in a well pressed suit. His voice was sharp, and his second breakthrough energy churned.

"No, a local group down there. They're calling themselves the Guild of Extraordinary Floridamen, but they've got a good number of I-2 and some I-3 people. I don't know if they'll have something like the grotto in theirs, but I warned them so they could find where the snakes are coming from."

"Why are you not classifying any of this? Why is it not already classified as national defense secrets?" The same man demanded.

"I'm already letting you delay things I'd rather post up immediately for people. I'm not going to withhold information about dangerous places from people." I answered back. "What the hell do you want to classify as national defense anyways?"

"That entire grotto!" He bit out without yelling and I sighed.

"No."