“Torture me all you want, human lord! I won’t scream a single word!”
Chief Shi Gang sat cross-legged on the heavy iron flatcar in the middle of the forge plaza, his thirty-foot metal body trembling with tragic heroism—and also because his left hip hinge was pinched so tight by volcanic rust that his whole leg was cramping.
His square iron head was still stuck facing forty-five degrees to the left from when he had glared at Pei Xuan two minutes earlier. Every time he tried to turn his chin back toward the center, a horrible GRIIIIIND—SQUEAK echoed from his collarbones, and a shower of red rust powder snowed down onto his yellow [DEBTOR #001] vest.
Out on the rocky slope, the ten thousand captured Star-Iron Golem warriors watched with tearful orange furnace-eyes.
“Look at the Chief! Even in chains, he refuses to look the enemy in the eye!” a young twenty-foot golem sniffled, wiping a drop of hot magma-oil from his cheek with a squeaky wrist.
“Wait... I don’t think the Chief is refusing to look at him,” an older golem whispered, squinting at Chief Shi Gang’s neck. “I think the Chief’s neck-bolt locked up again like it did during the Great Earthquake three hundred years ago! Last time it took six of us with stone wedges to pry his chin straight!”
