The details of the battle itself, I'm sure were recorded elsewhere. Better histories and strategies have been written since then. Just know that it was terrible. This was the first widespread violence many had seen since the Shattering.
We marched on the Lord's kiln well enough. The Prince set a cloud of Deathblight before us to remove the first wall of defenders. His skeletons walked through the fog without care and took battle to those who managed to survive.
Only, we were facing pygmies. They knew not to confront foes stronger than themselves in direct battle. Soon, formation crumbled as ambushes popped up from crevices or beneath the very ash on which we walked. There were mechanical traps and individuals so afflicted by Frenzy that they were walking bombs of madness.
Their knights were strong and many, but each fought alone. They could be surrounded or picked off by archers. Our wounded or exhausted could fall back to waiting priests.
All in all, it first seemed we had worried for naught. Then the Beast arose.
It was a fragment of the cold void limned with yellow-gold madness. It climbed from the kiln, a misshapen thing like a tailed ape. Only its left hand was physical, a bloated lump of flesh. A festering wound ran down its middle, and the hand was held together only by clumsy stitching with golden thread.
The Beast howled and lashed out at all around it. Its tail kept it bound to the tower, but it swung from the edges and wiped out swathes of both sides in mindless fury.
I was in the middle of the battlefield when it happened, screaming my head off to retreat together. My wife was at my side. She lowered her staff, and I called to our son. We held each other briefly, and then she pushed to the front.
She opened a jar which held bloody, stringy meat. She shed her human form and swallowed it whole. I winced as I heard her bones crack. She choked and clutched at her throat, drawing something from her widening maw.
She loomed over the battlefield, equal to the Beast. In her hand now was her father's sword of half-devoured human flesh. We all stopped and held our breath.
After a moment, she turned and smiled, raising the horrid weapon with a battlecry: "Together!"