General Hammond dismisses you all with a final "Good luck" and you all are escorted to the gate room. Once you are inside, the artificers on duty activate the portal, showing you precisely the same scene you saw before. The artificers' precise targeting seems to fill the guards and magewrights in the room with confidence--until one artificer says under his breath to another "That's a relief; after the homunculus didn't make it back, I thought..." and then breaks off when he notices people are listening in. "Well, I, um...never mind," he stammers with embarrassment. "Everything's fine. We have this under control. Off you go."

The team leader glares at him, then turns to you four with a conciliatory smile. "While it is true that we're still working out some kinks, and despite Artificer Lorrenth's appraisal of the situation, you're in no danger from the portal, don't worry. If you run into any trouble on the other side, just let us know and we'll bring you back." She motions for you to continue, and you all step through the softly-humming metal ring into what appears to be a perfectly normal cavern of some sort.

You all feel a sensation of intense pain for an instant as you step through, as if your body is trying to tear itself into a thousand pieces. The pain ends when your feet make contact with the ground on the other side of the portal, but confusion begins, as your feet suddenly lift off the ground and you feel yourselves falling up. One quick bump on the head later, you find yourselves lying tangled in a pile on the ceiling--in a clear space, fortunately, there are no stalactites around here. From your new vantage point you can see that the gate is flush with the wall of the cavern and there is a foot or so of stone between the top of the gate and the ceiling. A small homunculus is standing a few feet away from you near that gap, feebly jumping as high as it can every few seconds--which isn't really that high, only a few inches or so--in an attempt to get back through the portal.

Despite the dim light and near-silence, you can make out a few interesting details. First, the portal you came through isn't just a portal, it appears to have the same kind of ring around it that your home portal did. Second, the gap around the portal is perfectly spherical, as if it was carved out when the gate ring started gyrating upon activation; aside from that carved-out volume, the cavern ends right at the portal. Third, there is a small reddish-orange glimmer of something reflective below the portal, or rather above it from your new perspective. Fourth and finally, the area you are currently in narrows into a small, curvy tunnel a short distance from you on the opposite side from the portal, and through that tunnel you can hear the sound of very strong winds and small objects being pelted against stone. That tunnel is the only exit from this area.

"The portal will stay open for five minutes to allow for recon and communications," echoes a voice from the portal, but the sound is distorted enough that you can't tell whether the speaker is young or old, male or female, human or demihuman. "After that, you're on your own for twelve hours." There is a short pause, then, "We, uh, we can't see or hear you right now. If you're still there, could you give us some sort of signal?"