There was no climbing back up.
The severed mouth of the Throat hung three hundred feet above us, a jagged black ring of broken rock venting scalding breath into the open cavern. Below it, the bottom of the world ran out to every horizon I couldn't see. It was a sea, pitch-black and motionless except for a slow, planetary swell that had nothing to do with tides.
The only solid ground left was a slab of porous basalt that had sheared off the upper shelf and gone down into the abyss ahead of us. It floated directly beneath the chute, bobbing heavily in the dark surf like a raft made of crushed pumice.
'Of course. Of course the bottom of the world is wet.'
Kassie looked down at the slab once, then at me:
"We are jumping."
She didn't wait for a committee vote. Her iron gauntlet closed around the back of my dark mantle and lifted my boots clean off the lip of the tunnel.
