When they started out the next morning, nothing was said about the rocks that they'd encountered the next day. Even with Jonas having left to deal with the rocks, nothing was even mentioned about that.
While she was a little curious about it, she couldn't help but let the matter go. If no one else wanted to say anything about it, she didn't feel the need to do that either. She didn't doubt that Jonas had dealt with them, nor was she concerned that it might create problems later on.
She wasn't sure if Elmo or Elin were thinking much about them, but she couldn't figure out why she couldn't stop thinking about those rocks. All she could say was that there was something about them that caught her interest. Where she wouldn't have minded taking a few of those that looked more like gemstones. Although, she'd prefer them to not be interested in trying to eat her, she still would have liked to see what they might have looked if they could have been cut and made into various pieces of jewelry.
As they traveled along, the day seemed to promise to be much as it had been the past few days. Namely bright, sunny, and dull. Though, Kim hoped that whatever had caused the shadow from a couple days before wouldn't still be around. She still hadn't figured out what had cast the shadow, or even how they weren't able to see it. Or especially if it was hunting them or had merely been passing by at that particular moment.
While she had been thinking about those strange rocks, as the day continued on, Kim couldn't help but feel more relaxed. As with how the day was passing seemed to make all of the troubles and problems they'd encountered since this ridiculous competition started to melt away like they were small concerns that had passed and didn't need to be worried about anymore.
In a way it was a little liberating, but in other ways, Kim couldn't help but feeling a little concerned. As if they got too complacent here, then she was confident that they'd be courting disaster soon enough.
When the sun was reaching its zenith, they saw something ahead that immediately put them on guard, despite the fact that the area around them was still just as peaceful as at the start of the day.
The scene looked like scorch marks all across the stone. Aside from a large chunk that had broken away and had likely fallen into the river. They couldn't see anything as they approached the scorched rock, whatever had caused it was clearly nowhere nearby. Although, at the same time, it wasn't clear how long it had been since the stone had been burned in the first place.
"Think this might be the place Patrick and Patricia had fought the fire dragon?" Jonas asked as they looked at the burned stone.
"How would we be able to tell?" Elmo asked rhetorically as he ran a finger over the stone, without bringing any of the blackness on the stones with it.
"Just speculating."
"What if this happened years ago?" Kim asked, partly suspicious that examining the burned stone was a waste of their time. "How would we know the difference?"
"If there is something here that would tell us, then we won't find it if we don't look," Jonas assured them.
"Okay, assume we find something. Then what?" Kim asked, hoping to convince the others to let this place go and keep moving on.
"Well, that depends on what we find," Jonas answered. "If this is where Patrick and Patricia fought the fire dragon, then at least we'll know that it should be somewhere around here."
Kim sighed. Even if they knew it was n these mountains for a fact, rather than just speculation, it wasn't like it was where they could attack it right then. If anything, it would let them know where it was. Not where it currently was. Especially since it wasn't like they had any way to track it. As if it had been here, then it had to have arrived by flying in and then would have had to leave the same way.
Which meant that knowing it was here wouldn't really help them right then. She couldn't remember how long it had been since the announcer had stated that Patrick and Patricia had encountered the dragon and escaped alive, but hadn't been able to land the final glow on the dragon. Just that it had been a while ago and there was no telling where the dragon had gone, nor how far away it was from here now.
After at least an hour, Kim decided to stop searching. If the others wanted to continue looking for something she doubted they'd be able to even recognize if they saw it, she wasn't going to complain. She was just going to take this time to relax and rest. If the others didn't like it, she knew she wouldn't care. This search was a waste of time and energy.
However, if fate had a sense of irony, Kim was confident it was smiling at her right then, because as she moved to the side of the burned stone, she couldn't help but notice a pack that looked exactly like the ones they'd gotten in the room this whole competition had basically started in. The pack was under some rocks that had created a small shelter from where they had fallen who knew how long ago.
"Shit," was all she could think to say.
"What is it?" Jonas asked as apparently he was close enough to hear her expletive.
"I think I found what you guys were looking for," she replied dryly, partly wishing that this was merely a hallucination, even though she was confident that it wasn't.
"What is it?" Elmo asked, as he started jogging over.
"I'm not sure whose it is, but it is a pack like the ones we got when this competition started," Kim answered, turning away from it, not interested in spending any of her energy to learn more about it.
"Well, why not look inside it?" Elmo asked.
"Be my guest," Kim answered, wishing they could just continue on already. They'd already wasted enough time looking around this place in her opinion.
"Do you think we should take it with us if it's Patrick's or Patricia's?" Elin asked.
Kim paused at that question. The idea itself wasn't that bad. They weren't at odds with those two and it's not like they knew if their roles were reversed that they wouldn't do what Elin was suggesting. She was inclined to agree, but at the same time, didn't care to open her mouth. She just wanted to be done with this area.
"Might as well," Jonas answered, picking the pack up, not seeming like he was aware of Kim's indifference. "We can also look through it to see if we can verify if it is Patrick's or Patricia's later on."
"When will we look through it?" Elin asked, making Kim more annoyed.
While Elin's sheltered innocence was endearing to her most of the time, right then it wasn't one of those times. It merely added to her irritation of having spent so much time searching around these burned rocks for something that wasn't really going to offer them any real help anyway.
While the rest of the day was uneventful, Kim couldn't bring herself to enjoy it like she had the first part of the day. Not only was her mood soured from the waste of time at the burned rocks, but she also felt on edge from the essentially near misses from other things from the past couple of days.
She couldn't say why, but she was starting to feel they were going to encounter something sooner rather than later. That it wasn't going to be as simple as their previous encounters had been. Not that she could say why she was starting to feel this way.
Even as they found a camp as the sun started to go down past the horizon that was hidden by the canyon walls, Kim couldn't shake the sensation that something was going to happen soon. Whether that was based on all that she'd encountered so far in this world, she couldn't say. All that she could see around them was that ahead of them were different paths that they would need to choose from.
Some led to the top of the canyon while others crossed the river over natural stone bridges. A couple even moved down closer to the river. It was almost like a convention of diverging pats.
Kim wasn't sure which path to take, but she was content with letting the next day deal with that problem. Especially since it didn't look like it was something that they'd need to deal with right then.
As they settled down for the night, Jonas taking the first watch, Kim couldn't help but wonder what might happen along any of the paths that could be seen before the light failed completely, hiding all of the paths in darkness for the night.