The moment the sound echoed out, Sol didn't stand around to admire his throw.
He leaped straight up, his boots catching the vertical slate wall, and pressed his back flat against the pitch-black ceiling of the archway, thirty feet above the ground.
He dug his fingers into the small, calcified cracks of the ceiling slate, hanging suspended like a mountain bat, his breath held, his heartbeat slowed to a barely audible thrum, and his aura completely buried beneath his skin.
Down in the outer rim of the sinkhole, three of the nearest juvenile centipedes… thirty-foot, Layer 2 equivalents patrolling the upper rock ledges… instantly froze.
Their long, crimson antennae twitched violently, sweeping the humid air as they registered the distant vibration.
One of them, slightly larger than its two brood-mates, let out a low, dry hiss.
