POV Mantis, shortly before seeing the first door...
The hole was vast.
Bigger than any natural structure should be. The walls descended in an irregular spiral, perhaps formed by that enormous flow of mutant beasts.
Carved by their corruption, shaped by their violence.
Between those walls, emerging like deadly tentacles... The roots of the golden sprouts.
Hundreds of them, maybe thousands, interwoven in a network so dense that light from above barely penetrated beyond the first dozen meters.
Like a web waiting for prey.
The Mantis knew it couldn't truly die, so without fear it deployed its wings completely and let itself fall.
Confidence was easy to have when being a projection, not a life.
Controlling its descent with minimal adjustments, its mirror surfaces reflected the surrounding roots until it became indistinguishable from them.
The nearest roots soon seemed to notice something.
Air displacement… An anomaly in the pattern.
But then it activated Mimic.
