Dear Dad,

  Today started out somewhere between yesterday and the day before. We all got up a little too early, were given food for lunch again, and were taken out of the castle nearly at sunrise. We were again told not to come back until we had slain the beast and to find out what happened or else. Reese thinks that as long as we come back with blood or something else on our swords, we could probably just stay here indefinitely. The girls probably wouldn't like that, and I wouldn't either. I prefer not to be launched out of bed before the sun's even up, but I guess this is when Reese has to be up anyway, so he enjoys it.

  We went out and looked around while Reese and Zunair argued about whether it was a good idea to keep putting off finding the beast. I'm firmly on not, and while I get it's a bad thing that the beast is here, I think just killing something cause it's causing you problems isn't the way to go. After a while, though, we found more stone animals, and this time, it wasn't just squirrels. A rabbit and two foxes were all made of the same stone material and, despite being all sturdy stone, had chunks missing. I told them what Alista had told me, and they asked why I hadn't told them earlier, but they'd been so busy arguing that, honestly, I hadn't thought about it till I saw the first fox.

  Zunair looked over the animals and pointed out that one of them had a little indent that def wasn't just broken stone around their middle. He thought it might have been whatever it was turned them to stone.

  I thought it just looked weird. Maybe the horn had magical properties, Zunair said, and I just shrugged. All the indents were pretty low to the ground, too, so maybe it had something to do with the creature, but if it were some kind of big predator, why would the mark left behind be so low?

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  We wandered around until we found the deer again and decided to sit down and eat our lunches while we watched them. I saw the little bunny sneaking up on them this time, so it was real! I didn't watch too much Bambi!

  It was albino and actually looked kinda big, like Suzie Smith's Norwegian giant rabbit. And while I was watching it, I realized it had a little pink horn on its head. I don't know why I thought it, but I thought that must be the monster that we were looking for!

  It would explain why the indents were all so low to the ground and why it was mostly small wild animals and small farm animals that had been turned to stone.

  I told the guys as I pointed it out, but neither of them believed me!

  The rabbit thing charged the deer, and they all scattered again. The rabbit thing ran off after one of them, but I didn't see where it or the deer went.

  We looked around for it, because I was sure it was the monster, but the guys didn't believe me. At the least, though, the rabbit thing was a better lead than anything else we'd seen, so we followed what we thought were its tracks for the rest of the day. It didn't pop up anywhere again, and when we went back to the castle, they welcomed us and our news of spotting the beast back happily.

  I finally got to take a bath, too, which was nice cause I knew I was smelly, and so were the guys, but it was getting to the point where we couldn't tell just how smelly we were, which is a terrible sign.

  Alista brought me clean clothes to change into along with dinner, which sucked cause I miss the girls, but she assured me they were fine. I told her about the rabbit thing, and she warned me not to speak of it until it was dead, or I might summon it to the castle. I thought that was crazy, but considering that it turned things to stone, maybe not as crazy as I thought.

  She wished me goodnight after that, though, so maybe it was just so I'd go to bed and not talk about the rabbit thing.

  I'm ready to go to bed, so I'm going to sign off.

  I hope I can write again soon,

  Love, Jack