Gerra, now Sultan of Annuakat, led an army consisting of many thousands of mounted Abtati Sand Elves, some hundreds of mercenaries and Annuakat conscripts, and dozens of scythed-chariots toward the city of Ragash. However, Shah Ragash, confident in his numbers, led an equal force out from the city, crossed the Baal-Asha, and encamped across from Gerra's host on the banks of the Ninagal tributary. By nightfall, however, the Shah's forces were joined by the cities of Thakath, Mamsis, and Tel-Madu, and his numbers far exceeded that of Gerra. Furthermore, he had cataphracts, elephants, and armored rhinoceroses at his disposal.

The two armies encamped, Gerra did not withdraw, and it appeared that battle would be given the next morning.

Just after midnight, Gerra, having gone in secret to make a deal with the great dragon Aivrid of the Seret Mountains, launched his attack. The black dragon flew about the camp of Shah Bardya, setting swathes of it aflame with streams of purple fire from his maw. Gerra's engineering corps, consisting mainly of Abtati whom he had instructed in ways of Molthal siege engineering, began firing their mangonel artillery, which rained large pots of burning naptha oil on the enemy camp. Gerra then led a chariot charge on the enemy as they sought to gather their forces in the chaos.

The chariot charge broke the front ranks of poorly organized Ragashan infantry, but foundered against a counter-charge of elephants and Thakathi rhinos. Traecon Maxwell, a mercenary, personally slew a number of the elephants by his own hand, while Gerra's General Telenar did battle with Vreilar the Necromancer. Abtati mounted archers harassed the Shah's camp from the flanks, eventually encircling it in its entirety. The Lugal of Tel-Madu, convinced by a sorceress named Djana, decided not to come to the Shah's aid, but pulled his forces back. Desperate, Shah Bardya had his magi summon a creature from the beyond known only as Zelx the Dreamer, but the capricious being chose only to consume the sorceress Djana, before disappearing from the battle.

Willis Reede: A Monster Hunter in the Shah's employ was so furious that the Shah had gone to such lengths, that he punched the Shah in the face. The blow was so forceful that Shah Bardya fell and struck his head against a tent peg, killing him instantly.

In the midst of the chaos, Gerra managed to break through the Shah's frontlines and reach the burning camp, where he found his old accomplice Maho Sparhawk and Sparhawk's apprentice Alistair Wren hiding in a stable. No sooner did he find them, however, than did a pot of naptha flung from one of the mangonels strike the stables and pour the burning oil everywhere. Maho was consumed by fire and Gerra carried him out of the collapsing stables, managing to get him to a chariot and back to a priest, who healed him of his burns.

However, as the independent cities realized that the Shah holding their coalition together was dead, they began to disintegrate and surrender en masse.

As the rays of dawn began to permeate the sky, they cast light upon a grim visage.

Bodies littered a burned and blackened plain, forming mounds of the dead where the fighting had been thickest. Corpses of elephants and rhinos rose above the rest, their great carcasses becoming a feast for fast descending carrion, whose number steadily grew as daylight progressed, a gathering storm of circling feathers overhead. The camp proper was a scene of absolute carnage, with most of it nothing more than scorched wreckage and still smoldering embers around victims so charred by flame that they crumbled at the touch like charcoal and were utterly unrecognizable. Many were curled in on themselves, huddled and alone when a dragon’s blast burnt them to cinders. Over all of this, there was a fine layer of gray ash like snow.

The majority of the dead perished in the camp from the fires of Aivrid and Gerra's mangonels, with only a few thousand dying in actual battle.

The Battle of Ninagal