The chittering multiplied .
Not because the number of sources had increased — the two dozen spiderlings were still two dozen . But the forest floor's root system architecture conducted the sound the way the Heart's night silence conducted everything that touched a surface and produced vibration — without the competing ambient register that Umbrath's active period provided to absorb and diffuse it . The chittering arriving from multiple directions simultaneously because multiple spiderlings had spread to multiple positions around the root tunnel's circumference , and each position's acoustic output arrived in the tunnel's interior at the specific register of something that was no longer distant .
Close .
Rapax looked at the root tunnel's interior .
