1 1. Battle Of Qodegh

The conflict between the humans and the dark elves rages on for several days and nights, neither race was on the brink of giving up. The dark elves had put up a such an intense frontal resistance and kept up their stubborn yet defensive stronghold miles before the entrance of their city.

Traps were set on the ground, leading to the path of the dark elven city, threatening to blow up upon close proximity of the advancing humans. Their traps were like 'Bouncing Betty', concealed just a few inches in the ground and covered with a thin layer of sand.

Upon detecting vibrations around it, it would be initiated by bouncing off 10 feet in the air before it explodes. The shrapnel that was made of either minnie balls, rods or spikes would be disseminated in a downward angle, raining down on unsuspecting advancing forces.

These violent force would puncture their weak or non-armoured clothing and would inevitably wound, blind or decapitate their arms or their heads off the shoulders. These 'Bouncing Betty' would form a chain reaction within a radius of 5 to 10 meters apart. Once these traps were airborne, no humans can escape from them.

The dark elven city was situated deep within a ravine, with two towering walls on each side, thousands of feet high. No Arrows could reach that dark elven city and the only offensive manoeuvre that the human race could afford now is to use brute force and physical capabilities.

There were a few classes of the human races that had been recruited just in time for the battle of 'Battle of Qodegh', the ultimatum for the human race if they could squash this dark elven race to oblivion.

The path towards the dark elven city was narrow and siege weapon such as a trebuchet, a catapult or even a ballista could manoeuvre towards the path. Without these siege weapons, the human race had to depend on their foot armies and during that time, there were only 3 classes available.

The warriors, rangers and healers were the only ones left and the healers could only stay back a short distance away as they continually bombard their allies with spells to heal but had no ability other than that. No smiting, no chants to break down the will of their foes or even to strike fear into their hearts.

It had been like this for many months, as battalions of human armies were brought in to suppress, trying to take control of the dark elven city, the last known demon establishment that mankind had ever known.

The search for reliable and able-bodied manpower had brought the Ruler of Aermagh to source out far and wide for every single willing combatant and non-combatant personnel who are willing to fight for credits, glory and honour.

In the end, all the men that had been deployed on the 'Battle of Qodegh' slowly vanquished and left only a scattering of men available on the front line. Even it looked futile, but the desire to fight the battle and win over it prevails.

With no way of knowing whether they're winning or losing, the other side does whatever it can in order to try to defeat their enemies. Some have succumbed to rage and are recklessly charging towards the enemy with only the aim to kill, while others fight by only focusing on their enemy and not the carnage around them.

The ravine is littered with destruction, weapons and suits. Red, black and khaki are the new colours of what was once a desolate, dry and worthless ravine, which has now become the stage of a large scale assault.

The air which would normally be rich in sound from a nearby forest full of wildlife is now a barrage of sounds of war cries and the screams of the wounded and dying, for there's no coming back from this.

The last defensive hold by the dark elven had been broken through. A stream of Arrows was raining down on the warriors as they held their shields high to protect their onslaught as they inched their way forward. Those unlucky ones were shot with those arrows with deadly accuracy in their exposed parts of their bodies.

Screams of agony and anguished were heard throughout the Battlefield as only a handful of warriors were left and only a few healers were left stranded, away from the harmful effective range of the arrows. The human archers were left with several arrows protruding from their cloth armour.

On the defensive side of the dark elven, things don't seem to good either. 5 elven archers were left flanking on both sides at a high elevation and were troubling the human warriors with 15 arrows unleashed per minute as the human warrior relentlessly inched their way.

..... 4

..... 2

..... 1 elven archer was left when the human warriors had finally closed in as the lone elven archer engaged in futile melee combat, with nothing but mere arrows in its hands.

Suddenly, there was a deafening silence that enveloped the whole dark elven city. It was not a silent type of silence, but a type of silence when the air was suddenly sucked up to the heavens just like in a vacuum space.

The air was suddenly stifling and it was hard to breathe. There was no sound, no cries, nothing... After a moment, a bright shimmering white light shot down from the heavens and *BOOM*, suddenly everything starts falling apart with the sudden powerful downforce unseen current of energy of destruction.

The concrete columns that were the main support for the dark elven city began to shake and break apart as it began toppling down, the walls and the ground began to form enormous cracks like it was experiencing a mighty earthquake. Everything felt like hell had broken loose as debris and dust began to fill that dark elven city.

The place shook incessantly as if a giant underneath was trying to rise from the ground or simply waking up from a deep slumber and awaiting to let go a huge earth-shattering fart.

The dark elven ran out from their city but was crushed immediately by the falling concrete columns that were several dozen feet high and weigh many tons.

At last... When the dust settled, none was left standing and the majestic dark elven city had totally collapsed and demolished by that unseen forces. Numerous numbers of dark elven warriors, archers, sorcerers and other elven civilian bodies were scattered around bleeding from their orifices, causing crushed from the total wreckage and their bodies were coated with a white greyish layer of dust.

Every living there perished, the plants were not spared either, except for a lone human warrior who was discovered by a search party organised by the Ruler of Aermagh to determine the fate between the humans and the dark elven.

That human warrior was knocked silly by the enormous, overbearing force from heavens that had destroyed nearly every living thing within a radius of 10 kilometres of the dark elven city. He was soon brought back on the direction towards the City of Aermagh by a horse-drawn carriage, unconscious but barely alive.

"Hang in there, boy. We are going to get you out of here and back to the City of Aermagh. But by looking at your extensive internal injuries, we might not get there in time but we'd head out to another direction, a small settlement just south of here." a search and rescue personnel informed the human warrior.

"Look, his body armour was crushed in by that unseen force from heavens. We might not be able to know how badly injured he is right now. We don't even the tools to extricate the crushed body armour off him at all." said another search and rescue personnel.

"Yeah, if that's the case, we would leave him at the hands of the experts in Ingmery Community Infirmary at Ingmery then. We will report that no one is alive at the Battle of Qodegh then, at least we would be able to avoid filling in the forms for the report and so on."

"Yes, let's do it then. Off to Ingmery then. Hide our arms and our insignia. Just pretend we found this poor fellow along the entrance of this ravine." suggested another search and rescue personnel.

By noon, they had reached Ingmery and had asked the assistant for the Ingmery Community Infirmary to look into this matter instead and hurriedly left the settlement and heads back to the City of Aermagh.

A couple of Blacksmiths were called in to extricate the crushed body armour of the young warrior as he lay unconscious on a makeshift table, enabling the blacksmiths to use their tools to pry the crushed armour off the warrior.

"This lad's been very lucky. If not for the armour to absorb all blunt trauma force of his foes, he would have done for a long time ago. The only thing that died is this bronze breastplate that he is wearing right now." a Blacksmith tried to make light of the situation as he used a huge cutter to cut open through a small opening after using the Jaws of Life to pry and alleviate the pressure of the crushed armour in the warrior's chest.

Little did the blacksmiths and the infirmary staffs realised that the warrior's body was excruciatingly deliberately self-generating in health as broken bones started to fuse back, a single bone at a time.