We thought we were digging into the side of a mountain.
We thought there was oil.
We thought wrong.
As soon as we breached the surface there was an earthquake and the ground rose up under our feet. A new shoreline was revealed and a great crack cut the coastal cliffside in half... horizontally. We'd barely begun to survey the newly exposed terrain when the crack slowly started to widen.
It took us a few days to notice but by the time we had, it was open enough that we could see its eye gazing back at us as it started waking up. We guessed it was reptilian by the slit-pupil and how it was perched right at the meeting point of two major tectonic plates.
Whatever it was, the thought of it waking up hurting and angry and hungry forced our hand. It might have been the last of its kind for all we knew and we were too busy worrying about our own kind to even consider letting it live so we did what people do best - we killed it.
With permission from our bosses we started up the drills an anchored ourselves in case it took a while to die. When we hit blood, and there was no way of confusing that dark red metallic-scented liquid for anything else, we loaded the drill pipe with enough firepower to take out a small town.
We hoped it would be enough to take out an island-sized reptile. Of all the outcomes we predicted, we didn't think it would just deflate and die so easily. I mean most creatures would react in some way, maybe yell out in pain or writhe or do anything other than just... die.
I honestly don't think it was ever awake and that makes this feel so much worse.
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