In the middle of the night Bilbo, Elbolin, and Barry are awakened by the sound of an explosion somewhere on the other side of the roadhouse. They wake the others in their group: Elfo, Bilbo, Nars, Leosin, Hooflepoof and Karat in the upstairs room, and Elbolin, Barry, and Gourbain sleeping downstairs.

Elbolin is the first to react, listening at the closed door of their downstairs room. He hears a lot of chaos - footsteps rushing around, shouting of unintelligible commands, the splashing of water, and crackling of fire. He feels the door, which isn't hot, so he opens it just a crack and peeks out. The open area of the roadhouse is a rush of people clamoring this way and that, lit by distant flickering flames. "Hey guys," he says to his roommates, "I think we better grab our stuff and get out of here."

Hooflepoof, in the upstairs room, also opens the door a crack, and sees much of the same. He tells the others that there seems to be some sort of fire in the kitchen, without letting on that he very well might have been the cause of it.

There is a single window in each of the bunk rooms, and Elfo looks out his window, and sees only darkness. So he steps out the door of his room onto the balcony. From there he has a clear view of the stairway to the cafeteria, where flames flicker. Several humans and dwarfs are carrying a badly burned human down the stairs, shouting "Injured! make way! Make way!" while the man, burned too badly to be recognizable, moans in pain.

Elfo throws a fireball directly across the hall into the open door of the cafeteria, where it lands among those attempting to put out the fire and rescue the wounded, followed by a volley of screams and yells, many of pain and surprise, but some of which can be heard to yell from the bottom floor "I saw, it came from there, it came from there!"

Barry grabs his pack, and suspecting one of his buddies, heads up the stairs to confront them.

Elbolin and Gourbain also grab their packs, but they make a beeline toward the main door of the roadhouse. They find it securely locked with padlocks and chains.

Bilbo gathers her belongings and starts down the stairs, but finds her way blocked at the bottom of the stairs by a human holding up a scimitar.

Hooflepoof puts on him Boots of Striding and Springing, in preparation to jump out the second-story window, but Elfo makes no such preparations, taking some minor damage as he hits the ground below. Not sure what else to do, Nars follows. Leosin, thinking that everyone has made a plan of which he's not been made aware, asks confusedly "what's going on?", but the only one remaining to answer is Karat, who just shrugs her shoulders as though she has no idea.