Awlrek ran into the inn and saw the blaze. He knew that it was too late for his inn, but there was no reason for anyone to die. He bellowed at from the depths of his belly, “What ye doin. Ye lit the place on fire. Git out ‘fore ye die.” He thought that would be enough, but the mob mindset had set in. They wouldn’t listen. They didn’t even hear his bellows. All that they had on their minds was too to get to Rina, and then what, they didn’t know themselves. More than likely, it would not be good. Awlrek didn’t even know what they were doing. All that he saw was a crowd of people attacking Dork and him, standing in the entrance to the back of the house and removing to move, taking all of their abuse. “Dork! What ye doin?” He shouted over the crowd.

The Orc, Dork, just barely heard over the throng of aliens Awlrek calling to him and called back, “Rina came back. People attack her!” He spoke over the shouts of the crowd as he took multiple punches to his body. Some of the crowd tried biting him, but they found that his skin gave no give to their teeth.Some even came away with a few less teeth.

Worried by what he was seeing, Awlrek took action, beginning by picking up people and tossing them towards the door. At first, when they crashed against floor, they first thought to stand and charge back into the mob, but the suddenness that they were thrown at and then seeing Awlrek, followed by the ever growing flames beginning to engulf more of the inn, they regained enough of their senses and decided to book it out of there before they died a terrible death, burned alive. Not having time to ensure everyone’s safety, Awlrek pitched his patrons right and left, without paying too much attention to their safety. Some of them crashed into others in various stages of realization and fleeing from the inn. It didn’t take long for him to go through all of the crowd and reach Dork who hadn’t budged a single inch. It seemed he was willing to let himself die if it meant keeping the lunatics from getting to Rina, who had complete control over him, but never issued an order, let alone forced him to follow a single one. The moment the last one was cleared out, however, both he and Awlrek rushed to Rina room and burst into her room. Dorked grabbed her and her belongings before charging back out.

“Git out o’ here,” Awlrek told them while he hurried to his and his wife’s room. He took everything that he could get his hands on, scouring the place for every last thing that he could think of that may be important. All while the fire outside the door to the part of the building that served as his home raged on, growing every second while he was trying to preserve what little he could of his and his wife’s life. They had spent their whole lives striving to get to where they were and now it was all being consumed by an uncaring and unfeeling flame. He had lost himself to trying to save his belongings, his world, forgetting that it would all be for nothing if his life was taken in this catastrophe caused by a mob of angry drunkards pushed to the brink of tolerance by an unfortunate set of conditions that were neither their fault nor the Humans who were at the center of the problem.

Outside, yet another crowd, larger, was forming, watching the inn burn. With every passing moment the flames grew and Sú-Sheh’s hope faded. Dork had gotten Rina out, but Awlrek, he had yet to make it out of the blaze and with every moment it seemed like there was less and less of a chance that he would make it out. Of course, the last thing that the crowd saw come out was Rina and Dork which they quickly latched onto the idea that she was the one that started the fire through a game of telephone. It started as she was attacked and fire was accidentally knocked over to she was the cause of the fire, then that she was somewhere that she should have been and accidentally knocked something over lighting the blaze. And finally, that she did it on purpose, maliciously, because that’s what those dirty, smelly, useless Humans do. This was the final straw for most of them. The mob started reforming, first with shouts of anger towards Rina, but it really began snowballing when someone got the bright idea to throw a rock. It bounced uselessly off dork, but soon it was a rain of stones. Dork pulled her into him and fled. There was nothing else that he could do. That didn’t deter them. On contrary, more people started calling for the head of the little girl and throwing rocks at them.

In the shadows of a nearby residence a Human made was taking a nap. He was woken by the rioters’ shouts of anger. He saw what was going on and quietly snuck around them, making way for the Human settlement outside the walls of the town. At first he moved slowly and stealthily, but as soon as he got far enough away that he thought there was no chance of them catching him he broke into a full tilt run. By the time he got there he was completely exhausted, but that did not stop him from relaying the scene that was transpiring, that a little girl was being attacked by the aliens. The news spread throughout the mud huts and soon a ragged, muddy mess of Humans gathered angered by what they were being told. Some of them could barely stand, many looked like skeletons with flesh hanging off their bones, emaciated by the months with little or no food. Despite their stomachs growling a deafening roar of hunger their instincts told them that hurting a child could not go unpunished. It was one thing to starve while good, but different, people ate healthily. It was another thing altogether when those people mistreated a child. In a blink of the eye, they went from being weird humanoid aliens to monsters that needed to be vanquished from this world in the minds of almost every Human. They would no longer tolerate the way they had been treated and they would put an end to Rina’s torment. They gathered together with any weapons they could find and marched, disheveled, through the gates and towards the center of the town where they would likely find Dork and Rina running for safety.

Meanwhile, Jason was in the town square with Xev. They approached the cages of the slave trader and searched for Gael through the other slaves, the majority of which were Thesin, reptile like humanoids. There were few Humans that they could find. Fewer than Jason remembered there were when he had last seen the slaves that the trader had, but after a few minutes they found her. She and the other Humans were in the corner separated from the other slaves. At the moment he saw her, she saw him at the exact same time. She called out for him weakly, hoping that it was him. The glasses that she once wore were no longer in sight and all that she could see was a blurry haze. Jason could not have known it, but every time she saw a Human, she would call out to them, thinking that it was him. After all this time her will had not been broken, but when Jason responded to her she began to cry. He had not forgotten her she thought.

When Jason got closer to her, he saw that saw that she had lost weight, less than the Humans outside the settlement, but it would have taken quite the extreme diet regimen to produce the results of how much weight she had lost since last he saw her. Worse however was that he could see marks across her body, some freshly made, others weeks old. It was clear that she had been whipped with something. Jason had expected that it might happen, but hoped it would not. He tried to ease his mind by telling himself that it could have been worse, that the marks he saw were not excessive and if nothing else he could say that the slave trader was not brutal. Those thoughts ended when he saw her back. Her pale skin showed the scars of being lashed violently. Whatever they had done it ripped open her flesh and left permanent marks. He realized then that what he had seen before were from those times that the whipper would hit too softly or the angle was just right to hit another part of her body, but because it was not the primary stroke it was not as heavy a blow. When Jason saw this, all the emotion went out of his face. Instead of joyously reconnecting with Gael his mind went right to getting her out as soon as possible, even if that meant acting cold to her in the moment.

Jason turned away from Gael, and made his way into the building just behind the cages to look for the slave trader. It wasn’t hard to find him. If it was then he’d have had a very inefficient business, but given how expensive slaves were to buy it wouldn’t be much of a problem. If someone wanted a slave they’d find him. Jason approached the fat, grease coated, black furred Sil`phane bruskly, “Slaver, I’m here to buy a slave.”

The slaver looked Jason over. He had an inkly of remembrance of who he was. It took him a moment to search his mind for who exactly this Human was and then it came to him, “Oh yes, you. I do not do business with Humans,” he said, continuing under his breath, “Such filthy things, always looking for a hand out,” before turning away from Jason continuing to do with what he was before he was interrupted.

Jason felt his temperature rise. He already didn’t like dealing with a slaver, but now he was being told that this slaver wouldn’t do business with him. In this world where it seemed that there was no or very little bigotry between the species it surprised him, but more than that it angered him and this was not something that he would - that he could - let abide if he ever wanted to free his friend. He reached out to grab the fat cat by the shoulder. “Sir, I have the money right here with me. I really do just want to buy a slave and be out of your hair,” he said while trying to hold his rage back.

Turning back to Jason, “Get your disgusting furless hand off me Human.”

“Do business.”

“If you do not leave me alone right this moment I will have you dealt with.”

That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Jason pulled the slaver by his shoulder, turning him around. The greasy cat swung at Jason furiously, but Jason was expecting it. He moved to grab him by his arm and tossed him using the slaver’s very own momentum. The slaver flew through the air, crashing through doors and now the steps. Jason was not expecting that. He hasn’t realized how strong he had grown in the last few months, but now was not the time to be admiring himself. Anger flowed through Jason’s body, only the thought of teaching this scumbag a lesson was on Jason’s mind. He stalked forward, focused only on that one goal. He had lost sight of the obese feline as he crossed out of the door, the mass of the slaver’s body and the doors crashing to ground kicked up a dirt cloud that obscured his vision, but it didn’t matter. Jason could predict where the lump of fat had landed.