Mercy and Wards

When Rook, a frightened boy carrying Guild trouble at his back, runs into the reach of the Flaming Fist, Rishi steps into the path of enraged justice and pays the price.

He takes the beating meant for Rook. Not cleanly. Not nobly from a distance. In the street, under fists and boots, until the boy is gone and Rishi is carried away. He wakes in a jail cell with bruised ribs, split skin, and nothing to show for it except that Rook is still alive.

Maeril, the Green Witch of Wyrm’s Crossing, sees the whole thing through her hawk. What begins as an act of mercy becomes care, witness, study, love, and the first threshold of a road that will lead them from Baldur’s Gate to Candlekeep, and beyond.