(This is an alternate version of this picture with some more dramatic lighting: www.deviantart.com/achast/art/…)

For three hundred years, the Elven city of Takarus had watched the rise of the Sorcer-King of Agrar with growing alarm as, one by one, the other free kingdoms of the South fell before his legions, until they alone remained defiant. But they did not watch only, but prepared, as best they could, to fortify their frontiers for the inevitable invasion. North, South and West-ward, they built fortresses and watch-towers and prepared garrisons to withstand the assault of the sorcerer-king's legions. Only the Eastern approaches were ignored, for it was well known the Reiwaard Desert, and endless expand of shifting sand dunes and rocky crags was impossible to cross by any army.
But they did not reckon on the ruthlessness and drive of the Sorcerer-King. While they had busied fortifying all other frontiers, his eyes had been fixed Eastward. Hundreds of lives were spent scouting the trackless wastes for a safe rout through, thousands in building and stocking the hidden caches of food and water to enable an army to traverse it.
In 892 of the 4th Age, the Sorcerer-King declared war on Takarus, causing concern, but no great alarm in the city. They had been expecting this day for three centuries now. With grim determination, Takarus mobilized its armies and marched to defend the western frontiers, where their scouts reported the Sorcerer-King's Legions were amassing, leaving a token militia to defend the city and the women and children left behind.
But those legions were deployed merely as a diversion. While they kept the attention of Takarus' armies, a small force of elite troops, only a few hundred strong, secretly crossed the deserts, marching by night. They took the city completely by surprise. Before messengers could be dispatched, recalling the armies, the enemy was at the gates, demanding their surrender.
Driven into a panic by this sudden attack and not knowing the weakness of their enemy, for the invaders were careful to conceal the smallness of their force, the defenders were persuaded to open the gates and surrender, on the condition that their lives and liberty would be preserved. But as soon as they had gained entry into the city, the Sorcerer-King's men broke this promise. Those few defenders in the city were put to the sword and the rest of the population rounded up and marched out of the city in bondage, back to Agrar. There was a glut of elven maids in the city's slave markets where the auctions went night and day for months before all the captives were sold into slavery. Takarus' armies, meanwhile, marched home to find their city naught but burnt, empty ruins...