His voice broke. "I escaped with forty-three others. That's all that survived from three hundred."
An orc in the refugee group stepped forward—female, tall even for an orc, with massive burn scars across her arms.
"I'm Urgla. Chief of Riverside Camp. One hundred nineteen orcs before the humans came. We'd heard about Thornwood, tried to evacuate. They caught us on the march. Cavalry charge. We lost seventy-three in the first ten minutes. I got these burns from fire mages." She gestured at her scarred arms. "Twenty-six of us escaped."
A serpentfolk male slithered forward, his scales showing patches where they'd been torn away, slowly healing.
"Sss'thek of Eastern Hollows. Sixty-four serpentfolk. We tried to hide in the caverns below our settlement. They found us. Using explosion magic to force us out. Twenty-one escaped. The rest... we heard screams from the caverns for hours."
