The bidding went higher and higher as Krista silently begged within her soul for her promised freedom and joy to hurry up so that she could leave this awful place and the even worse assortment of human trash that gestured and called out to her crudely. She scanned the crowd gathered in the slave auction house, where would her freedom come from in such a place as this? Her gaze slipped over the hungry eyes of the soulless mongrels that inhabited the place looking for a potential savior in their masses.
She had all but given up hope of finding any such savior, when something prompted her to look back over a section again that she had just scanned through. Something caught her eye in the back of the room.
The something she had more sensed then seen was a man, who was standing in the shadows at the back of the room. He was a warrior by his build and the stance of his outline in the shadows, and somehow she knew who it was. Being honest with herself she admitted that it had been him and him alone that she had searched the crowd in search of a savior for.
He had come back for her! Fresh tears ran down her cheeks, but they weren't tears of embarrassment. If the people in this place found out who he was they would rip him apart and yet he had risked just that to come for her. She continued to stare intently with her heart in her eyes at the shadowy outline of the man in the shadows praying that he would step forward and buy her.
The auctioneer began to wind down his sales spiel as Krista had already brought more than any slave girl had in a very long time.
"I have a bid of five thousand tarsas for the beautiful slave standing behind me. Going once?"
Krista stepped forward toward the man in the shadows at the back of the crowd as far as her short ankle chain would allow her and lifted her hand and pointed at the man in the shadows.
"Going twice?"
The muttering of the crowd must have alerted the auctioneer as to there being something going on behind him, as he turned to view what was going on. His gaze followed the direction of Krista's pointing finger.
The shadowy figure of a man was striding down through the crowd toward the stage. The crowd parted before him somehow sensing that his bark would drown out any strangled yelp they could ever make. His face was still covered by the hooded cape he wore, but the meaning of his six raised fingers was clear.