The Isle Of The Griffins Chapter 19

Lolite followed the two griffins and dilo down a staircase of carved reddish rock. Occasionally he'd encounter nests of glowing beetles or fat black spiders, but they scurried away into hollow roots or cracks in the walls if they saw him.

Goldenbeak stopped at a dead end and reared onto her hind legs and tail to free her talons, moments later there was an echoing click and the seemingly solid wall swung inward with a quiet grinding of cogs.

They stepped through the doorway and Käärme knocked it shut with the tip of his black snout.

After walking a distance through the tunnel, they rounded a corner and emerged into a dappled greenish twilight behind several large pinkish rocks.

"We'd best not attract too much attention yet, and nothing's going to attract attention like a dragon on Erythala" Grappleclaw said,

Lolite responded by camouflaging himself, now only visible from a very slight shimmer in the air that could easily be missed.

Both griffins nodded to each other and continued past, with Käärme trotting after and Lolite slightly behind, he observed their surroundings properly for the first time, they were inside a gigantic crater in the ground, it was too big to see even a quarter of the way across, but the curve of the reddish stone wall was clearly visible. The reason for the dim light was several huge pillars spaced unevenly but always far apart- they looked like some sort of giant tree trunks- from the tops of which spread branches and massive almost perfectly circular leaves that must have been twice as big as an average wyvern's wings.

The ground had no grasses growing on it but was covered with soft, damp cerulean moss and mushrooms, some of them were the same species of large pink-and-white beelzebufo-stools that grew within Drake Mountain, while others were a kind of plump brown mushroom with yellowy bumps that Lolite had never seen before.

Lolite was dragged from his observations when three sandy coloured griffins walked nearby, a particularly small golden-brown dilo ran after them with a leather collar around it's thorny neck.

Lolite froze in place, hoping not to be spotted, as they went past, the smallest griffin, who had a dark stripe over one of their eyes, glanced in Lolite's direction, but shook their head as if to dislodge a wayward thought and continued on.

Not long after they passed the three griffins, Goldenbeak quietly looked about for anybody near and pushed down hard on a rounded stone with a silvery vein through it, and with a familiar click and grinding of gears, a thick stone door swung out of the wall behind them, starting to slowly unwind and close soon after. All of them quickly scuttled through as it closed with a thump and another click, arriving in a house carved out from the rock with a carpet made from the fur of mammoths, there was a darkly coloured griffin with a white stripe down the middle of his face from the base of his beak to his shoulders was sitting in what appeared to be a chair made of cultivated mushrooms behind a carved table, apparently playing a game of chess with a glowtail.