Rhazala was being chased. This wasn't a rare occurence, she was always getting into some kind of trouble, but this time was different. These weren't other, bigger kids on her heels, she could handle that, she was crafty.
But she'd lifted the purse from a Boromar, and they'd seen her scurrying away. She hadn't known who they were, that they'd send gangsters after her with knives and cudgels. They even had a couple of crossbows, and she'd only narrowly avoided being skewered by a bolt. She wasn't used to this kind of response, to those she'd stolen from actively trying to kill her, rather than simply recovering their money.
She was in a part of the city that she didn't know well yet, she didn't know the escape routes. It had been a stupid risk to take that purse, but they hadn't been watching closely enough and it was right there, and five year olds, even five year olds that had needed to grow up far too quickly, didn't think things through. She took a gamble on an alleyway, scraping her leg on some rubbish and stumbling, but she was small and scrappy and she kept her feet, kept running.
Until she hit the gate at the end of the alley and bounced off of it. It was locked. She turned on her heels and went to run back the way she came, but the Boromars had caught up.
"Nowhere to run now, you little shit" taunted a particularly burly halfling dressed in a shirt and waistcoat, with the sleeves rolled up. They cracked their knuckles as they slid a pair of dusters on and spat on the ground. They were flanked by their cronies, five of them in total. All to chase down one goblin child.
Rhazala did the only thing she could think to do, and pulled the shiv from under her shirt. She didn't really know how to use a knife, had preferred to rely on running, slipping away in crowds. She held it out in front of her with both hands, point towards the gangster, and swallowed.
"Stay away! You can have the money back, I'm sorry!" she called out, but the bastard laughed at her. "I don't care about the money, but you can't be seen to get away with stealing from the Boromar clan. Sorry kid, I'd like to say it's not personal, but you've led us on quite a goose chase and I think I'm going to enjoy this."
Something else had caught Rhazala's attention as he was speaking, though. A pair of white lights had appeared behind the gangsters, more than ten feet off the ground. As she made eye contact with them, a bizarre shape formed out of thin air. Were those teeth!?
One of the halflings at the back was lifted into the air by something that Rhazala couldn't see, and then thrown so hard against the alley wall that Rhazala got splattered by the red. She didn't know what to do, the Boromars were turning to face whatever had just crept up behind them, she should've tried to run but that would mean approaching the danger and fear had frozen her in place. She did the only thing she could think to do, and shut her eyes as hard as she could and pointed the knife towards the end of the alley.
She whimpered as the sounds continued, as the men screamed and something wet and hot hit her in the face. She didn't dare open her eyes, didn't dare look at what was happening. If she couldn't see it, maybe it wouldn't materialize.
15 seconds later, the sounds had stopped and the alleyway was eerily silent. Rhazala couldn't hear the beast, there were no footsteps, no claws scraping the walls of the alley. She opened her eyes, just a little, saw the flash of white and slammed them shut again with a whimper.
"Shh..." came a soothing voice, deep and resonant but feminine, with an accent Rhazala had never heard before. "It's okay, little one. I am not going to hurt you."
Rhazala tentatively opened her eyes again, and made eye contact with the largest woman she'd ever seen, even squatting down in front of her, she must've been eight feet tall. She had blue skin, horns, and those teeth. The woman gently reached out a hand in Rhazala's direction, and Rhazala flinched and brandished the knife. The woman waited a second before continuing, ignoring the threat and wiping some of the blood away from Rhazala's eyes.
Those eyes began to wander, and the giant gently cupped Rhazala's face and forced her to look into the giant's eyes. "No, little one, look at me. Don't look at them, they aren't your concern. I'm going to pick you up, and I need you to look at me until we're back onto the street, okay? Do that, and I'll buy you a treat. Can you do that for me?"
Rhazala, terrified, nodded. The woman scooped her up as if she weighed a quarter of nothing, and then stood to her full fourteen foot height. "Good, now let's get you fed and warm, and back to your parents, shall we? My name is Cavallah, what do they call you?"
Rhazala swallowed her fear. "Rhazala."
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Rhazala."