Berserker's Soft Wood Short Bow of Agony

Berserker's Soft Wood Short Bow of Agony rests on a sun-warmed counter, the pale wood gleaming like a blade of frost-etched bone. Its limbs are slim and supple, carved from soft ash that gives just enough yielding to respond to a practiced hand. The grip is wrapped in weathered leather, stained from rain and many long nights, the texture rough enough to anchor a steady grip yet smooth where fingers learn a dancer’s rhythm. Along the belly, thorn-black runes coil in a delicate spiral, as if the wood itself kept a whispered secret. The bowstring, a hair-thin line of sinew, holds a quiet tension that hums softly when plucked—a promise that bites the moment you draw. A raven’s head is etched at the riser, lacquered in midnight ink, its eye a small, faceted bead that seems to watch—and judge—every shot you take. The name itself has a weight: Berserker’s, as if the weapon carried some ancestral echo, and Agony, as though the bow carries the world’s pain in its grain, ready to spill it in a tenacious, luminous arc. The wood’s texture speaks of forests haunted by winter and the stubborn heat of expert hands who coaxed the bow into its final form. It is a tool born from a creed as much as a quarry: swift strings, quick takedowns, a hunter’s instinct sharpened by the belief that danger is a partner you learn to read. In lore, it is said to have been tempered by a berserker chieftain who carved his own name into the wood after a blood-wed victory, binding fear and force into a single draw. Some tell of a blade-dry dawn when the chieftain whispered a vow to channel agony into precision, to turn fury into focus. Whether myth or memory, the bow carries that weight with every nocked arrow, a conduit between the tremor in the hand and the crack of a well-placed shot. In the realm of play, it feels like an extension of the wielder’s will. The Berserker’s Soft Wood Short Bow is renowned for its balance: swift draw, clean release, and a cadence that rewards aggression without sacrificing control. Used by scouts and seasoned rangers alike, it thrives in skirmishes where distance narrows but the hunt remains dangerous. Its shots carve through gaps in a foe’s guard, punctuating flurries with decisive, piercing hits. The Agony label seems to invite a ruthless rhythm: quick strings, rapid hits, and the kind of sustained pressure that breaks a foe before they realize what’s happening. It’s a weapon for those who live on the edge, who count the beat of their breath and the pull of their bow as a single, unbroken line. Markets breathe around such pieces, and none more so than Saddlebag Exchange, where rumors travel on the rattle of gear and the ching of coin. I watched a trader haggle with a hunter for a bow that would sing in the right hands, the deal slipping from one pack to another as if the road itself opened and closed at the wagons’ wheels. Prices here aren’t fixed so much as earned—by stories, by scars, by the courage to test a shot against a hard target. A silver coin today, two tomorrow, or perhaps a trade for another relic with its own story to tell. The bow’s value rises and falls with confidence—the confidence of the one who will not flinch when the target changes, who trusts the Soft Wood to deliver both mercy and fury in equal measure.