Clentine:
As the awkward silence dragged on, I decided to pull the attention away from Ian refusing to tell us about this place, even though it could literally help us in so many ways.
Instead, I shifted to sothing else that had just hit hard.
"I’d seen another monster in the north."
As soon as I said that, heads snapped toward . Ian only folded his arms and raised an eyebrow.
"I guess that the area we were lost in was crawling with these things, but they never ca near because they were afraid of the Wendigers," I explained what I thought, at least. That was all I had to offer, to be honest.
Wendigos were terrifying. Even the Fleshmingos stayed away from them. So maybe that was why these things never ca out.
"What kind of a monster?" Haiden asked, setting down the knife on the side table.
He slid his hands into his pockets, walking past Ian and giving him a brief glance, just to remind him their conversation wasn’t over.
That he’d hold a grudge if Ian didn’t tell us about the man and his so-called basent where all the answers might be.
"It looked like a snake, but it wasn’t," I explained. "It had six legs, its body was only a few feet tall, but its face and tail were thick and heavy. It had a wooden stick jamd in its mouth, which I’m pretty sure was what killed it." I watched Haiden pacing past Ian again.
Now he was just wandering from one side of the room to the other, right in front of him.
"Where did you see this thing?" Troy asked, his face showing how badly he wanted to know.
It could be a huge lead for us. If we already knew about the monster, next ti we went in, we’d be prepared.
"In one of the houses, when we were looking for a safe place," I replied, rembering the small house and its basent.
"There was a basent we wanted to use, but it had a big lock on it. And there was sothing behind it, behind that basent door." I added it quickly before I forgot, because it might turn out to be vital.
"Wait, sothing was there?" Yorick asked and I quickly nodded.
"I heard sothing run upstairs and slam into the door, but then we just left, so I can’t be sure what it was." I tried to recall everything as clearly as possible, every detail etched in my mory.
"So are you going to tell us what this might be? Or do you want us to go in blind and get killed? Maybe it’s nothing to you since you don’t give a fuck," Haiden snapped at Ian, angry over his silence about the old man’s basent full of answers.
The truth was, all of us were terrified of going back into the North.
After what happened there, it felt like death was waiting right outside our doors. The ringleaders knew the last task was brutal.
No wonder they’d given us so many weapons, food, everything. But why give us so much? Did they not care if we killed each other this ti?
I had too many questions.
"Be a man and talk normally. Conversations like that only sound good coming from those gossiping aunties in the Packs." Ian was sharp and sassy too. Of course he wasn’t going to let Haiden’s comnt slide.
He snapped back instantly, then turned around and pulled another locked diary from his trunk.
They all had those strange locks, like you couldn’t open them unless he did it himself.
The covers were tal, with pages inside covered in ssy scribbles.
"No need to chase after the old man. I’ve written down everything about the monsters he ntioned in his novels. I got too fascinated when he used to tell stories about them," Ian explained, holding the diary steady with one giant hand while flipping through pages with the other.
Then he raised his head suddenly, like sothing had just shocked him.
"What is it?" Haiden, who had been taunting him for a while, suddenly changed his tone.
I guess he could tell too that whatever this was, it was dangerous.
Honestly, just the look Ian gave us was enough to cover our bodies in goosebumps.
"What are those things?" I asked quietly.
"They’re called earth eaters," Ian muttered, staring straight into my eyes.
Then he turned the page toward . There was a rough drawing he’d made of the creatures, and it looked exactly like what I’d seen.
"Yes, this is it," I said. Ian shook his head slowly while sucking his lips inside.
"It’s a crocodile-snake-looking thing." He turned the book back to himself, reading again.
"When it slams its tail on the ground, it shakes everything around it. The vibration makes people dizzy, making it easy for the monster to attack and kill them."
A loud gasp slipped from my lips.
"And to kill those things, we have to drive a wooden stake through their mouth, pushing it deep enough to reach the heart," Ian said, showing us a diagram of the transparent earth eater he’d drawn.
It looks like the heart sits right after the head, a big mass at the entrance to the body.
"Can’t we attack it through the skin? Do we have to shove the stake through its mouth? Could there be another way?" Troy fired off questions, all the right ones. Ian just shook his head.
"These magical creatures have their own weaknesses. The skin is insanely hard. I don’t think anything can pierce it. You have to use the mouth to kill it. And yes, a wooden weapon only." Ian slamd the book shut and sighed.
"How dangerous is this thing?" I asked. Ian stared at , then muttered,
"Worse. Probably worse than Wendigos."
That was all he said, and I already knew, if not before, we were going to die this ti.
"It’s okay. If we fought the Wendigos, we can fight these things too. But this ti, we won’t let the other crusaders ss it up."
Troy must have seen the look on my face, because he quickly got up from the bed, waving his hands around as he tried to explain, to calm us down, to give us strength. But Ian clearly had more to say.
"The thing is, this doesn’t co alone. It cos with the shadows," Ian finished.
We all turned to look at him, our bodies showing just how drained we were of these monsters by now.
"Now what the fuck are these shadows?" Troy, who had just been trying to calm us down, lost all his strength as he threw the question at Ian.
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