Carrion Destroyer Short Bow

The Carrion Destroyer Short Bow gleams with a bone-white patina, its limbs shaved from storm-black ash and bound with rawhide that pucks where weather has tested it. A hair-thin string, braided from horsehair and sinew, hums with tension when the bow is drawn, and along the grip runes inlaid like scavenger birds mid-flight. The belly bears a band of carved carrion beetle motifs, wings pressed into the wood as if memory itself had pressed them there. Its tips are knapped sharp, not for edge but for catching the eye of anyone who knows to read a weapon’s history. You can imagine a dawn-lit hunter stepping from a ruined caravan, air smelling of resin and iron, hands learning the wood’s rhythm as if the bow remembered the battles that kept it whole. In the world that shapes these tools, the Carrion Destroyer is less a badge of rank than a pact: it speaks to a hunter who walks the line between scavenger and mercy. Its arrows carry more than force; they carry a story. When wielded by a steady hand, shots come quick and precise, skimming between thorn and bramble, piercing light armor, and setting a chain of outcomes into motion: a tight puncture here, a flanking shot there, a moment of breathless pause before a closing bolt seals the pursuit. The sigils along the grip glow faintly under lantern light, as if the bow remembers the battles it overheard—the caravan masters, the field medics, the survivors who learned to trade fear for a little extra time. It’s valued not for ceremony but for the way it makes a hunter more decisive, more patient, more willing to risk the edge to save a comrade. Markets that cradle such instruments whisper their own legends. In the late-afternoon hum near the city gates, I watched a dealer pull the Carrion Destroyer from a saddlebag crammed with leather pouches and frayed maps—the kind of market scene the Saddlebag Exchange has become famous for. The price drifted with rumor and luck, moving between a few silver and something rarer—a trophy from a hunter’s trek or a heartwood charm traded for good measure. A ranger, boots worn to a patina of dirt and sun, studied the bow with the calm focus of someone who has learned to listen to wood. We spoke softly, trading memory for supply, and soon the weapon rested securely in her grasp, ready to sing with arrows again. That exchange felt less like a sale than a pact—between memory and future hunts, between quiet patience and the storm of pursuit. The Carrion Destroyer Short Bow isn’t merely a weapon to be stored or shown; it’s a conduit for a telltale kind of life: one foot in the ruin and one in the road, a hunter’s compromise between necessity and mercy, a tool that makes a person think twice before they pull the string, and then pull it again.