The Knight of Mystic Fire
1: The Fisherman
The fisherman found Lorina Phelenfelen nearly dead, a hand’s grip slipping on an ice shard she held onto with a slipping grip of her fingers. Far beyond her in the waters was the visage of a capsizing ship, the hull shredded by the sheer wall of iceberg.
The fisherman searched in his fishing crate, and threw her a line of rope he fastened onto the edge of the ship. Her eyes swayed to it as it lurched out to her, and switched, slipping from the ice and into the water. The fisherman grabbed the line and rope and pulled with his strength. She surfaced with a gasp of breath, and landed gently over the side of the boat.
The fisherman Lorina hugged the blankets they provided her against herself. He offered her a change of clothes after they exchanged names. “Best you get into something dry.”
He left her in privacy to steer the boat back to the city. He didn’t hear from her for hours, and just when he thought to check on her, in case she had perished like the other he had on board, the gnome poked her head towards the front of the boat. She looked worried, fearful. The fisherman knew her question.
“Did you see anyone else out there?”
The fisherman asked her where she meant. The gnome swerved her head and pointed to the long gone capsized ship. He turned to the second body he had recovered laying on a cot, and thanked himself for covering the face, and that the gnome had never curiously looked through his things. Still, his fingers instinctively pulled another blanket over the body as she looked out to the waters.
The fisherman knew she was a gnome, though his encounters with them had been pleasantly rare. She was different to him, almost appearing as a child lost in an unfamiliar world. Cold. Vulnerable. Uncertain. For her race he estimated she had only just become an adult, one that had never known death.
He would not be the one to introduce her. “I didn’t see anyone else. But there were lots of fisherman about earlier.”
It wasn’t entirely false. A few of them drifted far from the shores this time of year for fishing. The chilled waters made less risks of running into hostile vessels.
“Where are we going, Lord Fisherman?”
“I’m no lord.” The fisherman grunted. The word bristled him, but by the gnome’s expression he could tell she meant nothing by it.
He couldn’t’ help but gaze to the cot her dead companion lay on. Who was he to her? But the less he knew, the better.
The Fisherman turned, and pointed to the barely visible shoreline of the city. “Cordor. Plenty of people go there. Plenty of places to resupply.”
“But my companions, sire. There are eight others. I can’t continue my mission without them.”
He didn’t like that word. People with agendas tended to cause problems. It began to dawn on him she was a knight of some sort.
“I’ll be going back out to the waters. Watch the docks for my ship.”
When he let her off the boat, though, he didn’t return to the site. He rowed home, letting the gnome fade into the distance. He found a tree, dug a hole, and buried the other body he had on board.
The city would distract her enough. Enough that next he saw her, he could tell her the truth. She’d be warm and strong enough to hear it, then.
But the fisherman never saw her again.
Lorina’s Journal, Entry #49
This isle I have ended up on is terrifying. A wild mage in the middle of a public area casted their spells and their magic was let loose on all the nearby denizens. It was by Mystra’s miracle that no one was harmed.
Most of my equipment was still on our ship, and with what I have heard infests the roads even during the day, I am wary of traveling without it, and have made do with what the local establishments have offered.
I’m so uncertain of what I am supposed to do. My current objective is to follow the suggested advice of locals and see if the local magi establishments have heard of any of my order traveling about, or if there is a priest or paladin of Mystra to help guide me and find my lost friends.
But I am on only one island. They could be on any other, or the seas, or worse. Yet I remain hopeful, I must! For I could not bear to know that I am alone.