[color=gray][quote=Gharlyc]"Wink, I'm sorry this happened.  I know you don't like me, but I love Busker like a brother.  I would never purposefully do this to him.  You probably won't take much stock in my words, but I promise you, I will not rest until I have found a cure for your father"[/quote][/color]

Wink's expression shifted from something like hate to something like resignation, and everything in-between. A part of her wished her father had simply died of his injury. This fate that had been so negligently forced upon him was so much worse than death. She looked almost worse than Busker did -- covered in blood and soot and beer and wood dust, her hair in flyaway scraggles. She stared at Gharlyc with an unreadable glare. She in no way believed there [i]was[/i] a cure, except to cut off her father's head and burn the body, but she wasn't about to stop the dwarf from doing what he wished.

[color=gray][quote=Dirion]"Someone put out that fire and help get the injured out of here! This place is going to fall on us, and we are going to die!!"[/quote]
[quote=Fate]Grabbing Milo she flipped her up on one shoulder, snagging both hammers with her other paw and kicking the mangled body into the fire. Flicking the second body in alongside the first Fate spun away from the blaze, working her way around the edge of the room to the bar.[/quote]
[quote=Pallas]She turned to Edward and pulled him into a hug. "I'm glad we both survived that." She quickly stepped back and began to search for Seloria, her old friend. Scavenging through the rummages, she called out for her, "Seloria? Seloria?"[/quote][/color]

As the two Salvager corpses burned, the growing inferno roared and popped and turned sick bruised shades of green and yellow. Billows of black smoke filled the room with thick ash and an overpowering, nauseating stench.

Fire snaked up the weakened walls. The beams in the ceiling snapped and cracked audibly; dust and bits of wood and a few loosened nails rained down on their heads as the whole building creaked and groaned all around them. Soon, there was nothing to see but fiery glowing smoke and dust.

Wink covered her nose and mouth with both hands as toxic smoke scraped her throat and burned in her lungs; she grabbed the bar, gagging and trembling; she could no longer see Gharlyc -- or anything at all -- through the thick billowing smoke. Wink dropped to her hands and knees and crawled along the beer-sticky floor, desperately trying not to vomit at the stench that permeated the room, praying to whatever gods would listen that the fire wasn't coming closer.

The wall with the hole in it finally buckled, but the smoke was too thick to see what was happening. There was a great cracking and crashing above; the fire surged brightly; the smoke swirled; everywhere there was the sound of coughing and stumbling and cracking and splintering. Wink blindly groped her way along the floor, tears streaming from her burning eyes -- and then, just as she began to lose consciousness, she felt herself being lifted up.

Busker laid Wink in the grass outside, then trundled back into the collapsing, burning tavern. Busker -- blind and no longer breathing -- stepped through the debris and stopped beside Pallas. He bent down, wrapped a strong arm around her waist, and carried her through the thick smoke and raining dust; at the same time he dragged Edward behind him by the arm. He took them both through the door and into the open air where he deposited them in the grass beside Wink, who was blackened with soot and coughing raggedly on the ground.

In another five seconds, the roof cracked and crumbled; the Bawdy Dog Tavern collapsed into a burning, smoking heap of splintered wood. The flames soon engulfed it all and blazed brightly throughout the wreckage.

Down the night-dark road, people were screaming. A fiery flickering glow reflected on the trees that separated the tavern from the town.

The entire town was on fire.

There were more Salvagers. Many more. They had swarmed the town, sacked everything dangerous or valuable, and killed every living soul.

Corpses littered the street. They also walked, bloody and broken, toward the tavern.

Around the side of the burning tavern, horses screeched and whinnied in the stable.

There was an empty cart sitting near the road.

A dozen walking corpses -- once familiar faces of the town -- crowded on the road in front of the tavern, their staring eyes vacant and their bloody mouths gaping. In less than a minute they would descend upon those who had escaped the Bawdy Dog.

On the opposite end of the road -- at the top of a hill, silhouetted by the setting moon -- stood Jargo. His sharp grin flashed white, and he scampered off into the wilderness.