They were choking on smoke. It stung the eyes and burned the throat; walking through fire which roared high as forests, a hellish, scorched landscape.

Something in the distance roared, and they knew to fear it. Began to race and run, batting the air to help to clear it.

But the sound hadn't been an animal one. Nor a thing a human throat could mate. It sounded like steel and iron rent to breaking. Like great gears grinding.

They burst from the maze of fire to a windswept ledge, and tasted sea-salt air; a landward breeze buffet the fire and smoke back enough that it pressed like cool kisses against their faces, and stretched before them was a great vision of ruin.

Giant hulking monsters made of metal rampaged. Great cog-and-gear machines with dragonlike maws that spanned stories tall trod upon the village, worked in tandem to roar and slam their bodies against a falling spire to knock it to ruin. Their eyes gleamed with the light of Shards, winked like coals in the night.

They spread the fire and the fear and could not be stopped.