SQUEEEEEAK—CRUNCH!
An awkward silence fell over the northern ridge of the No. 1 Planetary Volcano Forge.
Three thousand human martial soldiers stopped swinging their hammers and stared up at the thirty-foot-tall metal giant standing at the head of ten thousand Star-Iron Golems.
Chief Shi Gang’s glowing orange furnace-eyes flickered with embarrassment. His massive right arm was stuck halfway in the air at a forty-five-degree angle, frozen by a thick crust of dark-red volcanic rust wedged right inside his elbow hinge. Every time he tried to lower his club, his shoulder joint let out a painful screech-clank like an ungreased dungeon door that hadn’t been opened in three thousand years.
Behind him, two younger twenty-foot golems hurriedly stepped forward with flat rocks and banged on their chief’s elbow until—BANG!—a chunk of baked red rust the size of a washbasin fell off, allowing Chief Shi Gang’s arm to drop back down with a loud THUD.
“What are you looking at, you squishy pink worms?!” Chief Shi Gang bellowed, his metal jaw clanking up and down as puffs of black smoke shot out of his ears. “That sound was my Ancient Iron-Bone War Cry! Our Star-Iron Golem Clan was born from the heart of this moon ten thousand years ago! We eat raw magnet stones, drink boiling magma, and sleep on beds of jagged iron spikes!”
