Mending Shiverpeak Arquebus of Debility

Mending Shiverpeak Arquebus of Debility rests in the crook of my forearm, its stock carved from weathered ash and lacquered with frost-blue runes that glow like ice under lamp-light. The barrel is a gleaming sliver of steel, etched with jagged veins of white metal that catch every spark and throw it back in pale-blue shards. A chill clings to the metal the moment you touch it, as if the gun remembers every winter it has survived. A leather strap rounds the stock, supple from years of practice, and a small notch in the butt bears the quiet mark of a hunter who learned to read wind and snow alike. Lore says it was tempered in a blizzard-wrapped pass, forged by dwarven hands that understood how to turn cold into weapon and weapon into promise. On the field, the Mending Shiverpeak speaks in breaths of ice. Its shots carry a shivering pulse that leaves foes briefly weaker—slower, perhaps a touch clumsy—while the bearer feels a warm thread of resolve run to the chest where the gun rests. In practice, you see a squad’s rhythm shift: a precise burst opens lanes that brute force would have smothered, and the debility gives healers a chance to reach the wounded before the next storm of arrows. Some say the arquebus drinks a fraction of a target’s life and returns a sliver of it to the shooter, a dangerous reciprocity that makes the weapon feel almost alive in the hands of someone who respects its cost. The weapon hums softly when a momentary advantage appears—a breath saved, a window for a comrade to rise again. That balance matters most when you’re crossing a ridge above a nameless river, fog pressing like wool and the wind reminding you that mercy is scarce. We found ourselves pinned by sharpshooters who did not know us, and I raised the arquebus, listening to the winter-tuned mechanism click into place. A measured burst slowed the ambushers enough for our healer to stitch a dozen wounds and for our scout to slip behind their lines. The debility bought patience, and patience saved lives that day. Later, the same weapon rode in a saddlebag during a caravan guard’s patrol, its cold mouth pressed against the warm flank of a mule as warmth and frost shared the same breath. Divinity’s Gate taught me to watch the market as closely as the horizon. Saddlebag Exchange is a maze of stalls and canvas, where traders haggle with sun-wilted faces and eyes that miss nothing. It was there I finally traded for the Shiverpeak arquebus, not for a king’s ransom but for a promise kept—the promise that winter’s teeth will have a defender who travels with caution and care. The vendor priced it with a patient smile, counting coins as if measuring the distance to another dawn. I walked away with frost on steel tucked into my coat, the weapon’s edge whispering that every shot carries a memory of the pass and a responsibility to those who stand under its shadow.