The day of the battle dawned clear, and a bit chilly. I woke up late, and by the time I stumbled out on City Square, people were already rushing about making last minute preparations. Everywhere, people were checking that their backpacks had spaces, that their belts were full, that they had enough wraiths, and a million other little things that could go wrong at the most critical time.
Not long after greeting my friends I was approached with several reservations for blessings, and a request to stay on City Square until they came for those blessings. 

I agreed, and they left, to prepare for the upcoming battle. 

Soon, they arrived, asked for their blessings, thanked me and left. I stayed, waiting until everyone had their blessing. 

I do not know exactly when the battle started, but maybe after a half of an hour, I decided to check on its proceedings. There was but an Exile and a gungl left, and the exile was down to three quarters life already. I grabbed my knuckleduster, checked that I had my elixir of giant and ran. I had no wish to miss the fight, and there was still some Exile left for me. 

I ran through Hell's Pass, as if Demon Hounds were on my trail, and arrived on the Plateau of Silence out of breath. There wasn't much left to the poor Exile, maybe half life, although that still wasn't close enough to death for peace of mind, and the gungl died just as I joined the fight.
People started to grow bored, waiting for their turn at the Exile, and several Zigreds and Atshi Bats were thrown, to provide entertainment. 

Then everything went to hell. 

Just as people were getting comfortable, waiting for the Exile to die, a wave of gungls suddenly joined the fight, one after the other, almost too fast for the eye to see each new one. These weren't the comparatively low level gungls of before; these were level 10s, with weapons almost as large as their appetites for our demise. Then came the elementals, ones which I had only seen once before, when my father had been making his way through the Domain of the Fallen King Magish. And then we saw the Shamans. Tall, gangly and confident in themselves, their magic quite literally made them untouchable. 

There were exclamations of horror all around. Where had they come from? How were we going to beat them? And, most importantly, what must this fight look like on the map? 

There seemed to be no end to them, whereas before we had been outnumbering them, they now outnumbered us, by almost two hundred. We were in a tactical disadvantage, there were more of them, they were bigger, hit harder, and, as we learned later, they were able to duplicate themselves through a spell when their life got low. 

We fought bravely, called friends, and unbelievably, somehow got their number down to where they were outnumbering us by maybe one hundred, maybe a little less. 

By then, our dragon was dying, enemy swords sticking out of his wings, the air filled with charred flesh of alien monsters. Striagorn looked around, and seeing as there was no hope at all for us, as even though we had lowered their number, our had been almost wiped out as well, and called to his sister, Erifarius, to come help. He died soon after. 

We fought, for what else could we do? We would die, yes, but we would take our enemies with us. 

We fought on, grimly, hoping against hope that someone might save us. More and more of us were dying, our friends and clan mates dying along with us, and the monsters still kept coming, sometimes one, sometimes three, threatening to overwhelm us in a sea of green and bad body odor. 

All sense of time was lost to us, all we saw were the monsters and an ever-looming death. 

Erifarius came at some point, snapped up two monsters in her huge jaws and tossed them against the cliffs. A few more were burned, and several were used as a nail file. 

I remember seeing Bacik, Nosf, and Reggie there as well, but they were gone almost as soon as they came, making us unsure if they had been there at all, or if we had blinked. 

After their deaths, came a huge wave of fresh fighters, from Magmar and Human lands alike, fighters that we had thought were inexistent, that everyone available had already come and gone. But, we were thankful for their help nonetheless, we were beating them back, slowly but surely, but at great costs to ourselves.
I know not when we started really winning, but at some point I looked up and saw only a few monsters left. The Shamans, once you got past their magic shields were not that tough to kill, though they were stubborn as mules, not willing to give us victory until they had breathed their last breath. 

Soon, only three gungls were left. All on the Plateau waited with bated breaths. Too late, they became five. They were finally killed, one stubborn, or stupid, one left, with maybe half of his life. All were yelling encouragements. Kill it! Kill it, quickly, before it replicates!! Unbelievably, the fighter waited till the last possible second, till we were all nearly groaning at the prospect of three more gungls, when, suddenly, there was no one there. We had, unbelievably, won, destroyed the toughest invasion thus far!!

Author: Amdis