Below him, the snake horde had realized their prey was escaping. They couldn't climb the smooth sides of the gorge, but they could climb each other.

A writhing pillar of scales began to rise from the mud. Snakes coiled around snakes, forming a grotesque, living ladder that stretched upward, hissing and snapping at his ankles.

A green viper launched itself from the pile, sailing through the air.

Sol didn't stop. He swung his elbow backward without looking.

THWACK.

He caught the viper mid-air, batting it away like a nuisance fly.

"No ticket!" he roared, adrenaline overriding his exhaustion, and continued forward

He reached up, grabbing a protruding rock to pull himself up.

But the rock fucking blinked.

Sol froze. His hand was wrapped around a cold, rough surface that felt like stone... but pulsated with a slow, heavy heartbeat.

A vertical slit opened in the "rock," revealing a bright yellow eye the size of a dinner plate.

The Granite-Scale Monitor.

It wasn't a rock wall. It was a lizard. A massive, camouflaged ambush predator that clung to the cliff face, waiting for anything fleeing the gorge to land right in its lap.

"God! Are you fucking serious?" Sol whispered, his voice cracking at the end, due to overwhelming emotions, that threatened to pour out a stream of tears. "I-is there really anything in this hole that isn't trying to kill me?"

The Monitor didn't roar or hiss. It just opened its mouth, revealing a blue muscular tongue and rows of serrated teeth, and snapped at Sol's face.

Sol released his grip and dropped flat. The jaws clamped shut on the air where his nose had been.

CLACK.

The lizard detached itself from the wall, landing on the narrow shelf with a heavy thud that shook the stone. It blocked the path forward. It was six feet long, heavy, and armored in scales that looked exactly like the cliff face so perfectly it looked like the stone itself had come alive to kill him.

It swiped with a clawed hand, the obsidian nails sparking against the rock.

Sol rolled backward, the claws missing his stomach by a fraction of an inch, barely avoiding being disemboweled.

He scrambled up, his back hitting the cold edge of the drop.

He was trapped. Behind him, the abyss and the snake pit. In front of him, a living tank.

He was tired. Really tired. His lungs burned, his legs trembled, and his Charcoal energy was flickering like a dying ember in a gale. For a seductive, dangerous moment, he considered just staying still. Just letting it happen. It would be quick.

But no.

A spark of anger ignited in his gut. It wasn't the cold rage he felt for Vurok; it was the hot, stubborn refusal of a man who had already died once and refused to do it again so soon.

"Move," Sol snarled, standing up unsteadily.

The Monitor obviously didn't listen. It lowered its head and charged. It was low and fast, a battering ram of stone and muscle aiming to smash him into pulp against the cliff.

Sol didn't try to overpower it. He didn't have the strength left for heroics. So, he waited.

He reached up and adjusted the Obsidian-Cobra cloak. The hide hadn't fooled the heat-sensing vipers below, but against a lizard that relied on sight?

In the shadows of the ravine, the matte-black hide did its work, blurring his outline, making his distance hard to judge.

The lizard lunged for his chest.

Sol didn't dodge away; he stepped in. He pivoted on his good leg, spinning like a matador. The lizard passed within an inch of his ribs, snapping at a shadow that wasn't there.

As the heavy tail whipped by, Sol didn't retreat. He jumped.

He leaped onto the lizard's back.

It was a suicidal move. The Granite-Scale Monitor wasn't a horse; it was a tank made of muscle and hate. It bucked like a bronco, shrieking in confusion, twisting its spine to throw the parasite off into the pit below.

Sol grit his teeth, wrapping his legs around its thick torso. He dug his heels brutally into the soft, pale skin under its armpits—the only vulnerable spot on its armored body.

"Stay still!" he roared.

He lunged forward with his left hand, his fingers hooking like talons. He didn't aim for the neck. He slammed his fingers directly into the lizard's eye sockets.

SQUELCH.

He pierced the eyes. The beast screamed… a high-pitched, vibrating sound that echoed off the rock walls. It thrashed blindly, slamming Sol against the rock face, trying to crush him.

Sol ignored the pain in his shoulder. He used the grip on the creature's skull to wrench its head back, exposing the throat, forcing its center of gravity to shift.

"Down!" Sol screamed, pouring his remaining strength into the heave.

He raised his boot and kicked out, shoving the heavy lizard toward the edge.

The beast's claws scrabbled uselessly on the wet stone. It slid.

The heavy tail went over the edge first, dragging the rest of the body with it. Gravity took hold. The lizard tipped backward into the void.

Sol let go, panting, ready to collapse against the wall.

But the universe had one last joke to play.

As the beast tipped over, falling backward into the dark, a final, spasmodic nerve impulse fired in its dying brain. Its jaw, hanging slack, snapped shut with the force of a hydraulic press.

CRUNCH.

The serrated teeth didn't catch flesh. They caught the hem of the Obsid-Cobra cloak swirling around Sol's legs. The hide was tough… too tough to tear.

Sol felt a sudden, massive jerk at his waist.

"Oh uh, you fucke—"

He didn't even have time to finish the curse. The weight of the falling six-hundred-pound lizard yanked him off his feet like a ragdoll.

The world flipped once again. The stone ledge vanished upward, and the sky became the floor.

And Sol fell.

He plummeted twenty feet down into the dark, writhing pit he had just escaped. The wind rushed past his ears, smelling of rot and snake musk.

WHAM.

He didn't hit rock or snakes below, instead he hit meat.

More specifically, he had landed squarely on top of the upside-down lizard, which in turn had slammed into the carpet of snakes with the force of a falling anvil. The impact drove the air from Sol's lungs in a violent whoosh. His head whipped back, cracking against the lizard's armored scales.

And Darkness took him.

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