A Battle Fought Long and Hard( Siege of Winterfell )

                                               A Battle Fought Long and Hard

                                                     ( Siege of Winterfell )

    On a seemingly quiet winter mid afternoon, white snow began to fall softly onto the ground, the sun shone its abundant rays of warm light above a clear blue sky as I rode my mount alongside my allies towards our destination.

It seemed like the perfect day of the month to go riding on horseback with pleasant company. Well it would have been except for the fact that this was a day filled with tension and unease. As today was not an ordinary occurrence. We were fighting in our second battle of an event called the Siege of Winterfell. 

  Myself and my alliance,TQL, were actually racing as fast as our steeds could carry us so we could reach Armory first before our adversaries could get there. This was undoubtedly the most difficult task to achieve. The forces of TQL were doing their best to arrive there and gain the upper hand at the start of this battle. 

   Like the past battles we were split into two main groups. One group led by Nelt and Elrik was to arrive and either capture or fight their way through Hot Springs and the other was led by Queen Bella and King Solter to capture the Armory. I was reassigned to journey with my comrades to the Armory.

   While both groups were ahead and close to reaching their goals, I struggled to catch up to my allies and meet them there. Unfortunately the constant fall of snow and cold climate caused the ground to freeze up making the path that lay before me to become difficult to pass through. As a result my horse  became restless after having to gallop and trot for a long period of time on uneven terrain. This almost made me give up and return back to our encampment as I was beginning to find arriving there nearly impossible. However something in my heart urged me to press forward knowing I couldn't leave my allies to fight alone nor weaken our odds of this battle.  With sheer determination and being inspired by the courage that my alliance always displayed I took the reins of my horse and directed it to the Armory until it had calmed down and I had finally arrived. At that moment I realized the worst was yet to unfold.

     I saw the forces of alliance who had arrived several minutes before I got there, fighting to get hold of the base against our adversaries who The Seven had not been kind to us in pairing us against them. We were against a very powerful alliance called NWB whose numbers of forces had clearly outnumbered our own. I had just walked into a bloody battle zone, but this time I wasn’t going to back out. 

   The air was thick with death and despair as the ferocious soldiers of NWB fought against our alliance without mercy or remorse. They flung their weapons at our troops landing in fatal blows. Blood splattered throughout the battle the loud cries of both alliances could be heard as they tried to assert dominance over the Armory. Though it looked like this battle was over, TQL would not accept defeat. In response the armies of the warriors of TQL charged towards their enemies, colliding their weapons against those of their foes, knocking some of them to the ground. They fought against them with fury to avenge their fallen comrades. 

   Both alliances fought evenly for the Armory but at last only one could capture the Armory and despite TQL’s unwavering resolve our forces had dramatically been thinned out. Given no other choice the Queen had commanded us to depart from the Armory in favor of trying to conquer GreyJoy Stronghold 1.

With our new orders given we gathered our remaining forces and headed to GreyJoy  Stronghold 1, but the enemy quickly followed my path. They relentlessly pursued me and tried to take down my remaining forces before I could arrive at the Stronghold with my allies. Luckily I had barely managed to escape and joined my allies in their fight for the Stronghold.

    I arrived at the Stronghold and found Bella and a few other soldiers trying to fend off the multitudes of UTB’s forces that kept flooding in. They had surrounded and outnumbered us once again but we were not going to give up and fought them until they had defeated us and captured the Stronghold. We fell back and regrouped hoping to have some luck with trying to capture our next bases.

    Though it was still too early to determine our fate in this battle, the chances of us winning were looking very grim. We had lost both fights in the Armory and Stronghold in addition to the HotSprings.

  I felt a heavy weight that filled my heart, I felt there were no chances of winning this second match especially with the fact that we barely made 4 thousand points while they earned over 20 thousand. While our opponents had ownership of most of the bases our alliance had only held over two.

The first and second GreyJoy Outpost. I was greatly dismayed and discouraged at this result but once again I was not going to resign. Instead I joined my allies to fight for Grey Joy Outpost 2 when we heard it was under attack .

   On the way there I reminisced about our previous battle. This was our first match where we were paired against tBs who despite their power and size surprised me by their outstanding performance. As we fought against them throughout half of the battle we were on the brink of losing this match as they were in the lead by a good number of points ahead of us. I remembered how at one point, Bella and her commanders  had us all unite and as an alliance we worked together to defeat our opponents until we triumphed and won our first match. That was how we had remarkably won our first match despite originally being almost close to being defeated and I hoped that we would somehow share that same victory.

    With those past memories, I carried that hope with me as I had finally arrived at the outpost. That small spark of hope and determination was what allowed me to brace myself and carry through the thick of the battle as I joined my allies in the fight at GreyJoy Outpost 2.

  The fight at GreyJoy Outpost 2 was different in comparison to our previous fights. The number of our troops that fought for the integrity of GreyJoy  rivaled those of our enemies. Some of our most powerful warriors such as Nelt, Sotler, Spartan, and many others fought relentlessly to defend our Outpost. Under their leadership the warriors of TQL were fearless and fought with pure confidence as they swept into battle like a raging bolt of thunder that struck down upon their unfortunate opponents. Everyone fought as if we had conquered the whole battlefield and were on the path to victory. That may have not been the case but at this moment our enemies' resolve seemed to be weakening as no one stood a chance against these great warriors.  Seeing their bravery greatly motivated me and I gladly lent them my aid during this battle.

   Just as things started to take a turning point for our alliance it all began to crash downwards as I started to notice the increasing number of enemy forces arriving at our base.

NWB’s Forces started to slowly overwhelm us until finally most of our troops had been wiped out.

   I then knew for certain that there was no longer anything that we could do to secure our victory. Though today our defeat was evident we all knew that the future would bring opportunities for us to succeed in the next matches. With that thought in mind we had all decided to return safely to our encampment and wait til the battle was over to avoid squandering our resources and be left with nothing in our next battles.

      Soon NWB had taken over every base in the entire battlegrounds, sealing their victory. It was not long before the battle was over and they were crowned the winners of this battle but no one for our alliance was distraught as we all knew that this would most likely happen. 

   The frosty gates that had confided us inside the Battle at Winterfell had opened and both alliances had departed to return back to their respective kingdoms. We made our journey back to King’s Landing with our heads held high and not the slightest sign of defeat as we knew that the Siege of Winterfell was not over yet. There were only 4 more matches remaining and we would be ready to fight and win them as an alliance.