Chapter 489: Risk
Kim felt relieved that the creature had been dealt with. While she mourned, a little, the loss of Owen, she considered it a small price to pay to have finally gotten the creature dealt with. She suspected Jonas would be of the same opinion, even though she had a feeling Elwin and Bart wouldn’t.
Kim could hear Elin and Heather coming over, even though she doubted that there was anything they could actually do. She wished she could see how bad it was herself, but without any real source of light, all she could do was see his motionless silhouette. It could be that he’d fallen unconscious, but she was pretty sure that he’d died. Though, she had to admit, the darkness probably protected Elin and Heather from seeing just how gruesome it was.
Elwin pulled the creature from out of Owen’s chest, dragged it over to a patch of moonlight that gave enough light to see it, and Kim followed, vaguely aware of Bart, Patrick, and Patricia following her. She was pretty sure that Jonas had already gotten a good look at it and she wasn’t sure where Elmo was, which might be for the best right at that moment. She didn’t notice him helping in the fight and she wasn’t in the mood to accept any reason or excuses he might have. Even if they were justified.
Kim saw the creature, and felt surprised at how long it was. Especially with how thick it was. She estimated that it was at least twenty feet long and about two feet wide. It’s entire head seemed to consist of a mouth filled with rings of teeth. Teeth that apparently weren’t very good at cutting through bone as it was soil, given how much of its body had clumps of soil attached to it.
"It looks like a giant earth worm," Elwin remarked, stating the obvious in a way that made it sound like it was a complete revelation to him. As far as Kim was concerned, at least.
Though, no one mentioned how that fact had been stated already. Kim wasn’t sure if it was because they were just too tired or were like her and didn’t care enough to say anything about it.
"Probably is," Patricia remarked. "I doubt it was meant to stop us from reaching the dungeon, and it probably was meant to attack us during the day rather than at night, but they’d rather us fight it instead of being able to pass it by without any trouble from that thing."
"Makes sense," Bart commented, nodding. As if he was a judge or something of this fight. Or debate about the fight.
Kim yawned, a feeling that they needed to take a risk and rest the rest of the night and continue on in the morning, no matter what risk to Stanley and his group and theirs running into each other before they could present the book to wherever it was that they were supposed to take it.
"Should we continue on and mourn Owen later," Patrick asked, pulling everyone’s attention away from the creature’s corpse. "I mean, we still need to get to the dungeon before dawn, right?"