Gabby went another outcrop, only to hear the sound of a loud crack. Next thing she knew, she saw the wall moving upwards and the wind quickly hitting her backside.
“Wha-nononononononono!” She yelled. Gabby quickly dug her talons onto the front of the wall for dear life. Her arms burned as rock was being scrapped in her very fast and dangerous decent. She didn’t know if she screamed the whole way, but she was pushing as hard as she could to slow herself down.
Thankfully it seemed the potion had done its work on every inch of her being as her fingers still managed to exert enough force to cut sufficiently deep into the rock to slow her fall. Even as her lungs burned for air, Gabby became aware she wasn’t plummeting with the same momentum as before, leading to her finally coming to a stop when several of her talons snagged on parts of the rock wall that were apparently too hard for her to slice through.
“Ahhhh!” She squawked upon feeling herself jerking to a halt. “Oh! Oh….oh praise be….”
The griffon hung by her talons for several seconds as she got her breathing under control again. She looked below herself, spying a tiny space that looked like it could hold one of her feet. She lowered her left foot onto it, taking some of the strain off her fingers and allowing her to then anchor the claws on her other foot onto the rock wall.
“Yikes!” She said while pulling her fingers free and seeing the damage done to her talons. They were chipped, but not completely broken. It was a wonder they survived the grinding she put them through. “Definitely gonna need a manicure after this.”
Gabby could not rest, unfortunately, as she heard the sounds of the walls cracking. She looked up to see the rocky cliff breaking apart from the emergency slide. Thinking quickly, she jumped away and onto a flat rocky surface on the other side. From there, she saw the entire area fall to pieces and plunge into the depths of the abyss.
“That… was dangerous.” Gabby said. She was starting to have second thoughts about this. Two times in a row she nearly got killed now, and not even halfway there. “I can see why no one wanted to get the idol. Can this night get any more difficult?”