'Alright, I'm a f***ing idiot. Those slight vibrations from yesterday should have told me that something was wrong, but I thought nothing of it. Because of that...tch.
The reason why there wasn't any attacks yesterday...well, they were digging. The snakes, I mean. They dug down deep enough to minimize their chances of being detected, and when they managed to get through the foundations of the gate, bypassing the high walls completely---
Well, now I've seen tunneling monsters, for sure. Thing's mouth was thicker than a train carriage and smelled about fifty times worse. I'm told that the behemoth did it's work as quietly and slowly as possible, making it's way up to a certain point...and when that had been achieved, when the barest of layers remained between it and the other side of the gate, it rushed. Erupting right out of the ground with an entire horde following behind.
You can imagine how that might have caught the defenders off guard. Thankfully, it seemed that the dwarven lookout I had chatted with about the vibrations earlier had paid careful consideration to it, and he had managed to convince the rest to turn one catapult facing inwards. So when the thing collapsed half the floor, someone managed to score a lucky cluster of firebombs into it's maw, and the thing's corpse ended up blocking a good part of the very tunnel it dug.
Regardless, from what they tell me, the number of casualties was an all-time high. And I thought the night attack was dangerous; we had the walls to support us that time. This time, not really. An entire day's worth of snakes in one attack, bypassing the wall that usually helped create a choke point? Yeah, not happening. They barely held on long enough for reinforcements to reach.
And of course, I slept through the entire attack in one of the inns in the city. By the time I woke up and caught wind of this thing, it was obviously way too f***ing late to do anything except try to help out in the relief effort. And by that I mean wading through the field with three measly potions strapped to my hip, trying to save as many as I could. Only use it on still-salvageable wounds, they said.
F**k me.
The potions they gave me just replenished health or whatever. It doesn't remove effects like poison, which snakes are very fond of using. It doesn't regenerate lost body parts either. A whole field of dwarves suffering from blood loss or poison, and all I had to offer was 3 potions.
The first one went to a dwarf that I'm guessing tried to take out a spike shooter. The spike buried deeply, missed his heart by a couple inches, and he was bleeding out.
The second went to a burn case. I don't know what happened, but a good part of his body was charred black and still smoking. I could hear the flesh sizzling as I poured the potion over the wounds, and the dwarf fainted. But at least he survived.
I don't even remember who the third potion went to. I just know I carried back a third with all my bottles empty, and while he was missing both legs, he survived as well.
Then I helped with locating more injured dwarves and evacuating them. For the less severe cases, I tried to draw the poison out with my own powers, and after that ran dry I started trying to suck the poison out. And those dwarves, they made it longer.
...Maybe I shouldn't have bothered, because they ended up dying after all. And after I managed to get them to safety, too.
I'll have to apologise to my Medic colleagues after I return to the island. Their jobs aren't any easier than mine, after all.'
- Vicious, G. G.