Cleric's Soft Wood Focus of Peril

Cleric's Soft Wood Focus of Peril rests on a faded velvet cloth, its pale wood smooth to the touch, the grain running like a river of light under a patient candle. The curve of the focus is gentle, almost affectionate, and a thin glaze of beeswax catches every glint, turning dull hallways into pale glimmers. Along the spine a line of tiny runes, worn by years of handling, pricks the eye with their quiet, patient hunger. The tip is fine, sharpened into a needle-point that pierces silence rather than air, while a speck of sapwood shows where the wood yielded to some late-afternoon prayer in a monastery courtyard. There is a fragility here, as if the wood remembers the day it learned to bend without breaking, and the carved figures along the band look back with patient, solemn faces. Some lore says it was hewn from a tree spared by a blessing during a nightbound vigil, then carved by hands that believed healing could be a danger, a careful, perilous art. Others insist the runes awoke too early, whispering of wards and warnings, of peril accepted so the bearer might walk forward. In the field, the focus glows with a soft, almost breathless light when a cleric breathes for power, shaping a shield of warmth around those who stand in the cold, the stress of march, the sudden storm. It is not simply a tool but a companion, a voice that steadies jittering hands, a conduit that gathers stray auras and folds them into a single, disciplined current. With it, healing feels deliberate, wards feel tangible, and every whispered line of prayer becomes a line you can touch. The peril in its name is not merely threat but a responsibility: the more it holds, the more the one who bears it must learn to give back, to protect the weak, to weigh risk against mercy in every decision. Markets know its scent as well as its sheen. Carpenter-sold, pilgrim-worn, the focus travels with rumors and recipes, traded along rivers and roadways as a symbol of faith kept safe in blood-stained gloves and cleanup cloths. In the hustle of a town square, I hear tell of Saddlebag Exchange where a clerk with ink-stained fingers logs its price: around three silver, a sum that draws merchants and clerics alike into a quiet negotiation about provenance, time, and trust. Some weeks a higher bid comes through, shaped by the tale of a monastery seedbed and the memory of a healer who once held it through a siege. So the Cleric's Soft Wood Focus of Peril continues its quiet pilgrimage. Brought from a distant grove, carried by those who believe, it waits for the next perilous moment that will demand calm, a soft touch, and a voice steady enough to bend fear into resolve. Some evenings, when the market quiets and the lanterns waver, I cradle it again, listening for the faint creak of the wood beneath the wax, as if the forest itself speaks through the bearer’s breath, urging courage for whatever peril lies ahead.