When his eyes opened, Marcus was already in chains. Silas and Warren were beside him, still unconscious.
When he finally laid eyes on the massive, ugly, metallic, and monstrous hybrid abomination of nature and magic from close, he could not believe his eyes. The trinkets the empire had used all these years were nothing compared to what they had unleashed the night before with these. The runic tools that could burn so bright they could turn the night into day—this would be the end of all of them.
That's what he thought, and so did all the others captured alive with him. His people, commoner soldiers or noble prisoners, the empire cared nothing for them and just forced them all to pull the giant abominations towards their own home under the torture of their enforcers and barely enough food to survive a day.