Torren split sea of people with a firm, extended arm, and although of an average height and build, the masses gave way to his confidence. The auctioneer, in his elaborate, rich clothing and green fur hat appeared like a hellish minister on a pulpit of corruption.
How many golden thuds has he earned through the selling of human beings, Torren thought to himself, disgusted. In his grave, brown eyes, the slave-seller’s clothes were sewn with the red flesh and sinew of human children.
“Sixty thuds? Is that all you men can do for such a prize?” he leered from his position on the stand, the green vextiir hat swishing with his exaggerated movements.
A giant, burly man stood nearest to the platform, and his booming, thunderous voice rose into the air: “One-hundred thuds!”
The crowd was hushed, and the remaining bidders glanced at him with dismay, for they had lost their catch. The auctioneer, however, appeared to swell with satisfaction, feeling that his charge was sold. “One-hundred thuds! Did you hear that, gentlemen? Who can best such an offer?” His question was rhetorical. No member of the audience replied, and instead, they muttered amongst themselves.
The salesman was grinning as he scanned their crestfallen faces, and the highest bidder did the same. In the middle, between crook and brute, the chained girls stood very, very still—lifeless— her bare feet anchored into the ground.
Torren arrived at last to the platform.
“I bid two-hundred thuds.”
Silence befell the crowd. No one dared make a move, or mouth a word. Not even a mumble was heard, as they all turned to look to the figure that stood at the very front of the assembly. Torren could feel their curious and astonished faces on him, and he shrugged into his casual, civilian clothing, as if to hide. His body-language, however, was not mirrored in his face—his light brown eyes were daring and unafraid. He glanced at the girl, but her eyes were glued to the crowd, bearing a cold expression that Torren could not understand from a child so young and in such a terrifying position as she was.
The ex-highest-bidder was gradually acquiring a red tint of rage on his vicious face. He scanned Torren, the man that had so blatantly outbid him, from head to toe, and found him pitiful and worthless, save for the sigil he wore on his breast—a pendant made of copper that depicted the face of a man looking upwards at the Gods, with a splendid sword driven through the opening of his left eye. A silent scream was emanating from the small ornament—it was the symbol of the Royal Council.
The spectators, too, began to notice the copper token. For a moment, Torren wished he had taken it off, but then he would have risked a lawless fist-fight with the beefy monster of a man that stood before him, and that was an endeavor he could not have attempted, not even in the earlier years of his youth.
His sleeves rolled to the shoulders to reveal his inflated biceps, the vicious bidder strode forward on thick, muscular legs, until only a hairsbreadth separated his chest from Torren’s own. Torren noticed how his head hardly came to the man’s collarbone, and a whole neck and round, bald head extended like towers of steel above him.
Torren met his gaze, maintaining a calm composure. He met the gaze of the giant, and observed closely the tumbles and folds of his cruel face—the dead-set, piercing blue eyes, the hairless scalp that put emphasis on his feral expression, the thick lips, curled back into a bestial snarl.
They stared long and hard, the auctioneer hovering timidly behind them.
“Two-hundred and fifty thuds.” the brute grunted through his teeth, miraculously maintaining his snarl while forming the words.
