Victor sharpened the blade on his makeshift hatchet and wondered if the weapons felt heavier in his hands somehow. The Rukh was up there waiting for them. Butterflies churned in his stomach and he felt nauseous. He wasn’t sure he truly wanted to encounter such a beast.
Hansel took up his spear. “It’s time,” he said.
The mountain was a tiring and perilous climb, and Victor’s armed burned and his hands bled by the time they reached the top. There the Rukh lay in sleep, it’s long snake-like neck curled against its silvery plumage. The sound of it breathing could be heard from afar. Victor trembled. Everyone was deathly quiet, and they moved slowly, knowing that a single sound could wake the beast and all its wrath. It slept so peacefully, though, and Victor wondered how Rodrick could ever claim it was evil.
Hansel moved in with his spear at the ready, but then he hesitated and turned back to them, daring to whisper: “Please tell me you feel it too?”
Sam paled and her eyes filled with worry. “What are we doing? How can we kill something while it’s sleeping so peacefully?”
Victor lowered his spear. “I agree, something still isn’t right about this – about any of this.”
“Are you guys mad?” Gretel whispered, coarsely. “It’s right there! Sleeping!”
“Why should we kill it?” Sam argued.
“Because my father told us to! Are you going to tell me we trekked a week through the desert for nothing?”
“Not for nothing,” said Victor, who was now absolutely sure of what he was meant to do now. “You said it yourself: we shouldn’t believe every word he tells us. Think about what we were taught. Remember how Mr. Silver defined a monster? Any non-human being that poses a direct threat to our safety or to our way of life. A human cannot coexist with a monster. We are leagues away from any human settlements! Rodrick sent us here to go out of our way to kill a beast for no reason – is that not the very definition of evil?”
“It was a trick,” Hansel went on. “If Rodrick sent us here to see if we would blindly follow orders, then he told us a lie about one of the monsters being evil…”
Gretel raised her finger to silence him. “That is a big if.”
“If we kill that beast we may fail in our task,” Hansel finished. Astrid stood back and remained quiet. Sam stood close to Victor. Hansel turned away from Gretel. “It sounds just like him to pull a trick like that; you should know. I’m not going to slay the Rukh; nor will I try and stop you. You can make up your own mind.”
As he descended the mountain, Victor could not stop his hands from shaking. His mind was plagued by the same thought, playing over and over again: What if I’m wrong? They did not see Gretel again for some time.
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