Strong Soft Wood Warhorn of Serpent Slaying

Strong Soft Wood Warhorn of Serpent Slaying rests on a worn counter, its pale grain catching lamplight and revealing rings like river currents; the mouthpiece is carved from obsidian-black horn, and the edges are smoothed by years of careful use, a thin groove along the waist catching a bead of resin that smells faintly of pine. The surface glows with a honeyed warmth, as if the wood remembers hands that once traced its curves in the dusk, and along the rim tiny runes coil in silver thread, a map of old hunts whispered into the grain. The horn’s texture bears evidence of rain and river, a soft polish earned through patient handling, not showy polish but a lived-in sheen that speaks to real days spent in fields and floodplains. When you turn it over, you glimpse a faint sigil pressed into the wood—an open maw and a looping serpent—promising that purpose and danger have shared this craft from the start. Locals tell a story tied to the bend of a river where the sheep-fed towns once trembled at the approach of water-scaled shadows. A hunter, listening to the stream’s own pulse, felled a young soft-wood branch that grew where flood and lullaby met the bank, and tempered it with oil and patience until it could speak in breath and note rather than in force. The Serpent Slayers’ sigil—an oath bound to the wood—was stitched into the horn with fine silver thread, a reminder that the weapon’s power comes not from force alone, but from restraint, timing, and a listener’s ear. In the lore of river towns, the horn is less a weapon and more a chorus, a counter-song that steadies hearts, guides feet, and calls kinship to the front lines when the scales rise from the water like blackened brass. In practice, its true gift lies in how it shapes the moment. Blown softly, it lifts fear from the throat and tightens the shoulders of those who march beside you; blown with purpose, it cuts through the chase's noise and knits a plan from chaos. In the heat of pursuit, the note becomes a beacon, nudging archers to hold their shot, and prompting frontline fighters to close the distance with the serpent’s flank more bravely than before. It is said the horn can marshal a single, decisive surge: a moment when courage gathers as the coil of a krait tightens, and together you claim a common breath and a common end. The market’s din makes it easy to forget such loyalties, yet at the Saddlebag Exchange the horn’s price feels like a decision as old as water. A broker rolls the horn from its velvet cradle, weighs the coin, and speaks softly of a fair bargain—silver, copper, and a promise to guard the tale it carries. The seller’s eyes linger on the wood’s soft gleam, the silver thread catching light, the resin’s scent memory-tinged. In a village ledger and in a traveler’s diary, this horn travels on, not merely as stock in trade but as a living chapter—an artifact that binds river, hunter, and the unspoken vow to keep the serpents at bay, even as the world beyond the waterline keeps turning.