If there was one thing about hunting Shawn understood the most, it was this: you don’t mess with things that can kill you ten times over if you miscalcuted. So far, every creature he’d witnessed thus far was monstrous, seemed to take a lot more injury before they colpsed, and seemed to give little regard to their self-preservation.

  A magical bear with spines? This was one he did not want to cross paths with. “Regardless, we need to find materials. We’ve already accounted for quicksilver, and I bet we could do many fun things once this pce is cleared out. Or at least, come back with a bigger team to deal with any major threats.” He rose from the ground, gd for the feathers insuting against the chilly air that was only getting colder, the further down they went.

  “Well, one thing in our favor. I haven’t seen any fecal matter. They’re usually…messy.” Garrett clicked his beak and furrowed his brow before they continued. More bones occasionally littered the dark tunnels, and one carcass was stripped down to nothing and left strewn about. Shawn did not feel like joining them.

  Rex. We’re fine. Our odds of survival go up when working with a team.

  You’ve been awfully quiet, Halsey. What’s up?

  Mostly just parsing this mine, its location, and theorizing why it was shut down. An infestation at the threat level we saw at the entrance, shouldn’t be enough to warrant its closure. I’m worried.

  There’s a phrase, back on Earth. You’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  That’s…a strange thing to say.

  Shawn chuckled softly at that, before quickly clearing his throat. “What do you find so funny?” Regia asked, now walking alongside him.

  “Me, exploring a dungeon. Well, a mine, but filled with monsters, fits the definition of a dungeon,” he added with a contented smile. He peered right, where Varrick and Cire were talking animatedly by an outcropping of rock. “Find something?”

  Varrick turned his head, beak creased into a hard-earned smile. “Mithril. This is a big find, just sitting out here,” he announced proudly. “Also some marbling of a few other goodies in this rock. We’ll have to crush it up, and smelt it down to use it, but this is a good start. Depending on the temperature of my smelter, we can weed out the various ores.”

  “I uh…need an equivalent for mithril,” Shawn sighed.

  “Steel is a good analog. But at a third of the weight, it’s corrosion-proof and much stronger,” Cire beamed as she tapped a sample and put it into a canister. They also marked it with a jar of paint she’d brought along, annotating the find and materials.

  "Textbook. Also straight from my notes," Varrick said proudly.

  Shawn waited patiently as they finished the work but took a moment to peer into the inky depths. His eyesight dipped slightly into the infrared spectrum: he could almost see a heat signature from where they stepped. The tradeoff was, that it seemed to give him a tension headache, and he rubbed the bridge of his beak gently.

  “I’ve seen that,” Varrick said calmly. “You don’t need to force your dark vision. Just let your eyes focus naturally.”

  “I thought it was just night vision,” he replied quietly. “It dips a bit into the infrared. I didn’t notice it before."

  Surprisingly, he could see something very faint. A trace of footsteps that glowed against the dark expanse. When he got closer, it was a damp section of muddy material in the mine. He heard a trickle of water nearby–possibly a spring creeping up through the rocks. Either way, it had pooled a small amount and soaked the ground. And this footprint was…disturbingly rge. Larger than his cwed foot.

  He motioned Garrett over. “Big animal. Possibly a predator. Wide-spread toes, heavy weight, judging by the depth of the imprint.”

  “Could be ursina. Not sold, though,” he whispered back. "Let’s keep moving down.”

  Their talons clicked against the hardened rock, and the occasional glimmer of a silvery vein of ore adorned the sloped walls. There were rger caverns ahead, With reinforcing metal struts bracing against the impossible weight of the earth. But this metal didn’t rust in the humid air. Shawn theorized it either wasn’t iron, or if it was, it must be corrosion-resistant. This suggested that whoever had constructed this, had more than basic metal working knowledge.

  All his engineering books and physics formus were a hundred million lightyears away minus his machinist manual. He hoped someone else had been transported here intact with those reference materials. At least they had some knowledge, and Varrick knew enough about metals.

  He hoped Regia had been joking about ‘the st guy’ she had summoned. She had a biting humor at times, and it was hard to read if she was being sarcastic. The facial expressions of the Aveeran were…different. He wasn’t surprised. Different world, different cultural advancement. He was slowly learning.

  “Look guys, more mithril.” He traced his hand across the spider web of silvery ore that seemed to give off its own light. “Varrick is this…” he breathed. “How much is this?”

  “An incredible amount. Those strewn rocks by the entry suggest they breached into this natural cavern by accident. They left in a hurry, they left the best fruit on the vine.” Varrick sounded less in awe, and more concerned, now. “There is enough here to armor everyone in town with a mithril pte set, and make a spsh in Valtiria Prime, or build firearms that can withstand the pressure loads Cire's new rounds are capable of. This stuff will stop a rifle round. You’ll need a hell of an enchantment to dampen out the impact, though.”

  “Anyone gets the feeling that they delved too greedily and too deep?” Cire asked anxiously. “Precious metals, giant caverns, lots of openings…and lots of questions about what happened.”

  This cavernous room had numerous rocky outcroppings, and no less than four branching paths at varying levels, where the natural cavern continued. Rickety pnks served as a means to get to some of the upper levels where scaffolding was partially completed to get to some of the ore veins

  He didn’t like it. Something felt off, He heard a scratchy sound in the distance, almost like scratchy cws were being dragged across the mine's floor. A rock clinked when Cire kicked it with a boot. Her eyes were dited, and her breathing was shallow and rapid. “Cire, you alright?”

  “I’m fine. Just a little nervous. I keep getting a bad vibe.” Shawn spotted a barrel filled with equipment that was sitting untouched. There were a few torches in there, and he could smell something that reminded him of oil. He grabbed one and felt that trickle of power in the palm of his free hand. He used his forge fme at a low intensity, and embers of fire trickled to the torch head, igniting it.

  Raine thrust a hand up. “Movement. Long distance,” he called out. “Can’t tell what though. Sounds like a lot of little things. Maybe more razor rats?”

  Garrett gnced around, green eyes gleaming in the torchlight. “No. Back it up now, the way we came. I’ve seen enough, this is worth the effort.”

  The illumination helped, but now Shawn had a problem–the gre cut his vision short. Cire was testing the air, sniffing intently, and recoiled at something. “Shawn, I’m picking up an acrid smell. Something organic.”

  “It’s not the oil,” he commented as he took a sniff. It smelled like cooking oil, almost. Something unfriendly and unfamiliar. He took the torch and tossed it into the darkness. Even as sensitive as his ear crests, he strained to hear something extremely faint–scratching and scraping

  “Lots of critters closing. Now behind us,” Raine called out. Everyone scrambled to form a circle by a cart sitting on the track and a few storage barrels nearby. Shawn quickly assessed the room: there were four distinct tunnels, one of which was the way they came in, and three more that branched off from around the circumference of the roughly oval-shaped cavern.

  “Glow sticks, now!” Cire threw them with all her might down the passages, throwing a golden glow in the surroundings. Even now, he could hear the scrabbling of cws against rock, skittering and screeching echoes getting louder. It was accompanied by another tremor that shook the cavern beneath their feet, and small pebbles clinked down. “Varrick, why’s this floating rock shaking?”

  “No idea, and it’s probably not a good thing!" He sighted down the passage and pced ammo on a roughly ft boulder, before shouldering the rifle. “What’s the py?!”

  “Hold out until we find an opening, then make a break for it!” Garrett spoke sharply and with an authoritative tone. “Regia, bst away anything that gets too close! Shawn, help me dump this barrel of oil!”

  He motioned to one of the other barrels that they must have dipped the torches in. It took a little effort, but they overturned the heavy barrel, and the viscous, oozy substance coated the ground, as the screeching got louder. “Light it up if they get too close!”

  “Looks like the training wheels are coming off fast! Cire, stay behind me!” Shawn barked out, shunting energy to his force barrier and keeping a golden glow to accent the bracers on his arms.

  Cwing their way through the dark were dozens of the creepy rat-like monsters with razor-sharp cws closing in, except bigger than the ones at the entrance. They also looked more ragged, with mangy bck fur. Once they were revealed, their crawl broke into a sprint, coming at them screeching and screaming. He leveled his firearm and aimed at the closest one, as everyone put their backs to each other. He snapped the lever action as fast as he could cycle it, rounds finding their mark in bloody sprays. They also seemed to keep running even after taking a shot to the chest–but a second one seemed to finish the job.

  “Focus on the closest ones, aim for the chest! Damn, skulls are thick enough that they have a hard time keeping their head up!” Garrett called out before he shouldered the scattershot rifle and let loose. A brilliant fireball emerged from the gun barrel.

  Shawn hadn’t seen the actual damage in real-time, but the spread of pellets utterly shredded the closest rats, with sptters of burning metal embedding in the rat-like creatures. They screamed and curled in on themselves in their death throes. Some of them were chewed on while dying by their ravenous kin, thinning the number of hostile creatures.

  Cire quickly got over her initial lockup of fear and fired her rifle. Her rapid, smooth motions of constant training were notable as she cycled the bolt in rapid succession, and more of the creatures fell. But the distance was rapidly closing, as the rats circled and tried to veer around their raised position.

  “Lighting the oil!” Shawn screamed out and threw out a burst of fire that instantly set the viscous oil afme, burning with an intensity that felt a little too close for comfort. But the infmmation gave them a reprieve as the rats roasted, those still slipping in now had to deal with being incinerated.

  The gunfire in these close confines was deafening as they fired in a controlled rhythm, each covering the other while one reloaded.

  “Reload!” Cire called out. Garrett stepped in to cover her, firing that deadly shrapnel bst. When he reloaded, Trask fired a series of shadowy darts that sheared through the targets and even diverted mid-flight to re-target others as the monsters fell. Garrett covered her with another volley of deadly shrapnel rounds. It was getting quite messy.

  Shawn raised his sights and fired again, nailing three lined up, stem to stern. The rounds were powerful, but he worried what would happen if the barrel burst. One crawly thing with razor-sharp cws leaped for his face, intending to tear into him.

  If only the not-rat got the memo, that he was never unprepared. A spark of energy went down his arm and he clenched his cw, waited for the right moment, and swung mightily with his force barrier like a blunt object. The shimmering golden shield made of that magical force certainly hit like a truck when he connected with the screaming rodent in a collision of golden, burning sparks. He heard bones buckle and crack from the impact, and the gold sparks ignited its fur and the shield turned molten orange for a split second. The smoldering creature skidded to the side, where Regia nailed it in the chest with a dedicated shot from her rifle. She nodded to him proudly with those sapphire-colored raptor eyes of hers.

  “Keep the fnk covered, right side!”

  The warning didn’t go to waste. Two other rodents fell before his might, and with the continuous fire, the thinning group of rodents skittered back into the dark. Some were bleeding, some were being chewed on and screaming as their kin ate them alive.

  Guess they didn't let anything go to waste down here he thought grimly. Shawn aimed a fire dart at one more for good measure and struck home with a deadly injury. With them on the retreat, he shoved rounds into the magazine tube of the rifle with rapid, smooth motions. He let out a squawk of victory, as did Cire, who also let out a roar of confidence. She looked mortified and quickly pretended it didn't happen. She stomped on one that tried to bite her. The distinct crack of the skull underneath her boot still made him wince at the visceral nature of this fighting.

  “Ugh. Next time, I want to try the experimental weapon,” she growled intensely. “Garrett, those shredder rounds are deadly, we can add that to a successful weapons test!”

  “Nah. Some of that was my gestalt. I can accelerate and decelerate objects for a split second, but they have to be small. Bullets and projectiles in particur,” he added proudly.

  “Ahem? I helped, too,” Trask growled, now wiping off blood from a rat that he’d smashed to paste with his fists. “Raine, any more?”

  “Keeping their distance, whatever’s left,” he heaved, now rubbing at a bite on his leg. “I hate this fighting in close quarters shit. Next time, let’s just flood the pce, or use choking gas, or, you know, anything else that doesn’t involve us being knee-deep in the dead!”

  Shawn let out a click as he felt a corpse twitch underneath his cw. He smashed down for emphasis, and the twitching stopped. “I’m gonna need a bath after this,” he grunted. “Monster sying was not on my resume, before st week.”

  Garrett cpped his shoulder lightly, and his scarred beak creased upward. “You know Shawn, when you're more vulnerable, life is more fun! Danger and adventure await you! I think we’re clear, finally.”

  “Until they breed again,” Cire growled. “These things don’t know fear, Fates.” She hastily reloaded her rifle, as did the others.

  A low growl emanated from the depths, and Shawn felt his feathers stand on end. Did birds get goosebumps? It felt like that, except way worse. He could hear the thud of massive footprints, heavy set, and echoing in the dark. Coming from the middle passage was a creature that walked on all fours–or sixes, as might be the case, and looked just like a bear.

  That is, If that bear was three meters tall, covered in javelin-like spines, and had the face of a Lovecraftian tentacle horror, complete with a gaping maw of razor-sharp teeth. Even Halsey was anxious.

  Just on the off-chance that you die, remind Cire to refrain from using your body for science, please!

  Welp, this is what I get for being cocky. Wait. Another pun, damn it, how do I keep doing that?! Shawn thought while raising his weapon.

  “Garrett, you jinxed us,” Cire said with a grimace as she shouldered her rifle.

  “What's a jinx?”

  “Know how I mentioned bears? This is way worse.”