A half dozen lizard monsters were clinging to the enormous trees in front of them. If they had walked any further, the monsters would be surrounding them. Each lizard was craggily brown and had independently operating eyes. Luke would call them iguanas, but they blended in like chameleons. They were at least ten feet long with enormous mouths.

  When the monsters saw that the humans had skidded to a stop outside their ambush site, they decided to attack anyway. The lizards unwrapped their tails and snapped them forward like a whip. Their long tails couldn’t reach the collection of mechs more than thirty feet away, but their magic did.

  An arc of fire formed from the tips of their tails and shot forward, one after another. The flame crescents flew forward like an arrow. Luke jumped out of the way, grabbing Bumblebee’s shoulder and pushing him out of the way as well. Shepard stood his ground while Green, Davis, and Barrow leapt to the side.

  Shepard swung his sword out to meet the flame crescent heading his way. The instant his sword touched the fire, the magic flipped around and headed directly back to the lizard it came from. That must be Retribution. The monster didn’t have time to move before it was hit with its own attack. The fire magic washed over it, singeing it and making it fall to the ground.

  The other flame attacks splashed onto the forest floor, but didn’t set anything alight. The dirt and wet loam were fire resistant.

  Luke had both arms up and shooting as soon as the first attack landed. He focused on the two monsters closest to him, hitting one with ice and the other with lightning. Both attacks hit their targets. The electric attack stunned that lizard and made it fall twitching twenty feet to the forest floor. The ice attack spread frost across the monster, but didn’t stop it from whipping its tail around again.

  Shepard jumped in front of this attack, knocking the crescent of fire back at the lizard that had been hit by the ice. The fire and ice magics canceled each other out and left the monster battered but still able to move.

  Luke shifted his focus to the other three monsters still in the trees. He stopped using ice because he didn’t want to take the time to yell at Shepard about the magics canceling each other out. Instead he took out the three monsters in the tree, one after another.

  By the time the last monster was falling, the first had shaken off Luke’s stunning attack. Bumblebee raced forward, stabbing the monster with his lightning sword. The stronger magical attack was enough to cook the monster from inside and kill it.

  Two mechs jumped forward to stab the fallen lizards. It was probably Green and Davis, but Luke had trouble remembering who was who normally, let alone now when their faces were covered by helmets. Luke finished off the final monster with an ice shot.

  Shepard shattered the frozen monster with a sword strike, just to be sure it was dead. The squad checked the area for targets, but the forest was quiet.

  “I think we need to have a conversation about leadership and fighting styles,” Luke said and turned to Shepard.

  Shepard tapped his gauntlet to his helmet. “Exactly. Why the hell didn’t you tell me you had ice and stun powers?”

  “Because I don’t. I inscribed spell rifles and integrated them into the power armor,” Luke said and tapped the barrel poking out of his gauntlet’s forearm.

  “Isn’t that illegal?” Green said. Or maybe it was Davis.

  Luke shook his head. “No, firearms are forbidden by the treaty. These aren’t guns, they don’t use gunpowder. They are pneumatic powered spell delivery systems. The elves could probably make one of these with their own tech if they wanted. They probably have, actually. They have a word in elvish for spell rifles already.”

  Shepard waved away the explanation. “Again, this is something you should have told me about before we got into a combat situation.”

  Luke paused for a bit. “I get the feeling you think you are in charge. You aren’t. I’m the boss now and I call the shots.”

  “No.” Shepard put his hands on his hips. “You might be my employer, but you can’t be the squad leader in the field. You don’t have the combat experience, let alone the trust of me and my men. You are the boss, you can decide on the objectives, but I am the one in charge while we are out here in the field.”

  Luke slowly blinked. His first instinct was to yell back that this was his company and he was in charge. But Shepard had a point. The man literally had years more experience than he did in this exact situation. He was a bit of a jerk, but that didn’t change the fact that he was competent.

  With a deep breath in and out, Luke made his decision. “Alright, fine. You are in charge today. I might change things up later, but you are the squad leader for today’s survey of the Crystal Golems. Just beware, we’ve been looking for the Hive Wolves for days and we haven’t seen them yet. They might be holed up in the golem’s caves.”

  “Understood. Let’s get to it then. Everyone, move out.”

  “Wait, let’s grab the monster cores first.”

  Shepard huffed in annoyance. “These are baby Fire Salamanders, they probably only have a tier one core, if that. Cormac doesn’t even count them towards a bonus. It’s like stopping to pick up pennies.”

  Pennies that are worth 4k each, Luke thought to himself. Out loud he said, “As the boss, I am giving you an extra objective, we need to collect every single monster core, no matter how small.”

  Shepard grumbled, but everyone else hopped to it. There were six humans and six monster corpses, so they were able to quickly collect the cores. Luke was pleased to find that the lizard he had frozen broke apart easily and left the core just sitting in the shards of frozen flesh. He collected the cores from everyone and stored them away. Shepard had been right, they were all tier one cores, but that was an extra 24k of company funds for a few minutes of work.

  They got going again, heading deeper into the forest. Shepard picked up the pace, probably because he was irritated with Luke. This actually made him happy though. His new set of power armor had long legs and springs that made jogging a breeze. Bumblebee kept his legs extended so he was literally strolling along to keep up with them. The only ones suffering from the pace were Shepard’s buddies.

  A short while later, they jogged down a small ravine and came upon a jagged crack in the bedrock. It was a good thing they knew where they were going, Luke would have never found this place otherwise.

  The cave was ten feet tall and had a narrow entrance. It was a bit claustrophobic for Luke in his bigger suit, but Shepard seemed to relax the moment he walked inside. Thankfully, the cave grew wider and taller the deeper they walked. They lost the light from outside with the first bend, but there were dozens of pinpricks of light scattered along the cave walls. Closer examination revealed tiny glowing crystals. They gave off more than enough light to navigate by.

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  Luke could tell that this was a newer cave system. There weren’t any stalactites or stalagmites. There were several places where it looked like someone had widened the corridors with sledgehammers, rough and brutal pounding.

  Shepard brought them to a halt five minutes later in a large room with five exits. He gestured for everyone to move closer and whispered, “You can tell by the glow that there are Crystal Golems in those four caves. This last one is dim. If the wolves are down here, they’ll be down that path. Skywalker, you are up front with me. Barrow, Davis, you two bring up the rear.”

  They rearranged themselves and started sneaking down the corridor two by two. Shepard pulled out a glowing crystal the size of his hand. He held it in his left hand with his sword on his right. Davis and Barrow joined him. Luke and Bumblebee belatedly followed their example.

  Luke realized that his spell rifle was useless in these tight quarters and pulled out his Ice Sledgehammer. It felt small in his armored hand. He made a mental note to craft a larger one for the future. And to add lights to his armor so he didn’t have to occupy a hand to be able to see.

  The deeper they walked into the caves, the more oppressive they felt. It was like the earth above was pressing down on him. Shepard clearly felt different. He stood up straighter and casually walked through the stone corridor. His Tremorsense probably gave him confidence that Luke lacked.

  Every surface of the cave in this section was pitted with fist sized divots. Luke was trying to be stealthy, but the uneven ground made it difficult. He stumbled and scraped the wall because of an unexpectedly large divot. He lowered his light so he could watch the floor and keep himself from stumbling again.

  That was the only thing that saved them.

  Luke’s focus on the floor allowed him to see a small metal spike sticking out from the wall on their left. Although less than an inch long, it clearly didn’t belong. He pointed his glowing crystal at it and said, “What’s that?”

  “What’s - oh shit,” Shepard said and threw up his hand to stop everyone. “That’s a tripwire. We have kobolds.”

  “Aw hell nah. I hate those little shits. Let’s get out of here,” Bumblebee said from the middle of their formation.

  “Agreed,” Shepard said. “Turn around everyone. We are heading back out. If there are kobolds down here, there is no way Hive Wolves are in the area.”

  The six of them turned in place and now Barrow and Davis were leading the way.

  “What’s up with kobolds anyway?” Luke asked as they walked back.

  “They are nasty little shits. About four foot high blind lizard people. They are like the rats of this world. They get into everything and mess things up.”

  “That was a trap back there, right? Does that mean they are sapient?” Luke asked.

  Shepard shook his head. “You mean like are they people? No, they are monsters, they have cores and everything. They are vile little things though, they hunt in a pack and hate humans with a passion. None of them ever have more than a tier one core, so even killing a bunch of them is a waste of time.”

  “The fact that they hate humans doesn’t make them monsters. How do we know-”

  Shepard cut him off. “Shut up, listen.”

  They all stopped listening and Luke strained his ears. He didn’t hear anything. Maybe the mics built into his suit needed tuning. Shepard placed a hand on the wall and lowered his head.

  “Shit. They are coming. Everyone double time it back to the central chamber. We’ll have to hold them off there. Go, Go, Go!”

  They broke into a run, almost immediately stumbling and scraping up against the cave walls. They didn’t let that stop them, rushing towards the cavern with five exits. They didn’t get far before Luke heard it.

  A screeching and scrabbling sound built up behind them. It was clearly a hoard of the beasts, overlapping sounds echoing through the hallway.

  Chirping sounds added to the cacophony.

  They were getting closer.

  The humans put on speed, racing to get a better battlefield for the inevitable conflict. Dim light ahead marked their destination. The floor evened out and they were able to run faster.

  Davis and Barrow were first into the large cavern. They split up and hugged the wall on either side of the corridor. Bumblebee kept running, but Green joined Davis near the wall. Shepard ran forward a few steps and spun. He was directly in front of the entrance, ready to draw their attention. Luke set himself up behind Shepard and dropped his hammer onto the magnets on his hip.

  He raised both arms and pointed them at the entrance as monsters flooded out. More than a dozen small lizard things scrambled out, most of them aiming for Shepard. They were ugly things, grotesquely long limbs with an equally long tail. Their head was huge for their bodies, with a mouth full of needle teeth. They didn’t have eyes, instead they had bulbous protrusions, like puss filled sacks. Luke would have doubted their sentience, if not for the fact that most of them were holding crude spears. They had wooden shafts and stone tips.

  Green, Davis, and Barrow moved as one, igniting their elemental swords and swinging them at the monsters as they barreled past. Flame, acid and icicles blossomed out and limbs went flying.

  Luke fired then, picking targets that hadn’t been hit. He intentionally chose every other monster to thin the herd. The two that were hit by the lightning magic went down immediately, but the two kobolds hit by his ice attack took longer to fall.

  The lead kobold didn’t notice his compatriots falling, it was laser focused on Shepard. It opened its mouth wide, unhinging it like a snake and snapped it down on his armored forearm. Retribution activated and shattered all of its teeth at once. The kobold stumbled back with an anguished cry and Shepard beheaded it, not even bothering to activate the sword’s elemental magic.

  Bumblebee had slid to a stop in the middle of the room and he shouted now. “Watch out! Monsters above.” He fumbled with his arm and shot out an ice spell. The magnet shattered against the cave wall.

  The wisps of white magic highlighted small holes in the cave wall, three of them about fifteen feet up. Spears were already poking out of the holes, waiting for the right moment to ambush.

  One of them was already in the air, headed for Shepard. He ducked out of the way and the stone tipped spear hit Luke in the shoulder. It shattered against the Stone Beetle exoskeleton he had used to make this new suit. The heavy spear barely even left a mark.

  Luke immediately switched targets, shooting his spells up through the holes. His lightning shot hit the unseen kobold, but his ice one missed, hitting the spear instead of the monster wielding it.

  The middle kobold realized their ambush had failed and threw his spear down at Davis. The monster’s long limbs lent the crude weapon greater piercing power. The stone tip hit his right hip and traveled down his leg, breaking pistons and runes. Davis cried out in pain and fell to the ground. He managed to keep his lightning sword, which was good because two kobolds immediately jumped on him.

  Shepard growled and dashed forward to rescue him. Green and Barrow were distracted by their own fights.

  Luke sent more lighting shots up into the hidden balcony, while sending ice shots down to the horde below. Often the monsters would twitch out of the way of a direct hit, but both magic spells had a larger field than they expected and they were still caught.

  Monsters fell twitching, or slowed to a stop, and Shepard and his men were there to dismember them. Bumblebee stayed in the middle of the room, firing ice balls and checking for other ambushes.

  The rest of the fight was a slog, but they got through it without serious injury. Even Davis wasn’t really hurt, his armor had absorbed the brunt of the impact. The problem was that he couldn’t walk anymore.

  “I’m not carrying your fat ass,” Green said and folded his arms.

  “The hell you aren’t,” Barrow said and got up in his face. “I carried you back last month, and that was farther than this is.”

  Shepard was watching the exchange, waiting to see how it played out. Luke frowned and stepped forward. “Whoa, whoa. Nobody has to carry Davis. I can just fix his leg. It’ll take a few minutes, but you can use that time to collect all the monster cores from the kobolds.”

  The collective groaning shifted from complaining about carrying to complaining about monster guts. Collecting cores was bloody work, particularly with kobolds, who stank terribly after they died. Luke shrugged and got to work fixing Davis’ suit.

  Today’s chapter title comes from Monsters, Inc (2001). Did anyone recognize the quote?

  9 to 5 Monster Hunter on social media. Maybe hire a skywriter, or sing about it on the subway. We can do it!