Cleric's Soft Wood Short Bow of Peril

Cleric's Soft Wood Short Bow of Peril gleams under a flickering lamp, its limbs pale ash and satin-smooth to the touch, the grain curling like a map of rivers under moonlight. The grip wears a patina of worn leather, stitched with careful, almost prayerful knots, and the string—amber-tinted sinew—snaps taut with a quiet promise. Along the riser, sigils etched in a slow, patient hand tell of the Clerics of Peril, healers who weather storms by keeping their faith and their aim steady, and at the tips a faint shimmer hints at a hidden enchantment that thrums when danger nears. It found me in a narrow market alley, where a vendor spoke in soft implorations rather than metered coin. He spoke of the bow as if it had a pulse, a memory of a mission that saved a village from a creeping gloom. In its case, the wood had taken the shape of the archer who once carried it—the first cleric who stood between a plague and a child, letting the peril of the world pass through the notch at the tip and be turned toward the world’s enemies. I learned that the bow's wood is unusually flexible—soft enough to fold the air around a shot, yet strong enough to bite into chain and hide with equal ease. The arrowheads are lightly lacquered with a resin that glows when drawn near shadow-cursed foes. On the table, the bow felt alive, not a weapon but a witness. In battle, it is swift—an agile partner for close skirmishes where longer weapons falter—and it loves to dance just inside the reach of a spear thrust, letting a drawn breath and a precise release turn peril into a clean, almost surgical, strike. The cleric's aura—soothing, protective—seems to ride the shaft, curbing the worst of fear in the archer who chooses to fire. Arrows bound with the same soft wood carve small ripples in the air, each shot an argument against chaos, a polite admonition to the frontal assault that would overwhelm a healer’s sanctuary. It’s not just a weapon; it’s a talisman that makes restraint feel like courage, and courage feel like a choice, not a reflex. Market days brought the traveler’s chorus to the stall where this bow rested. Posters told of the Saddlebag Exchange, a caravan-hub where old mercants trade in rare wares and whispers. There, a silver-turred clerk named Mara quoted the price—nine silver and seven copper, a sum that could feed a family for a week if luck was kind and the coin was measured. She warned that none buy-and-sell story ends there; the bow’s risk and reward are always in motion, shifting with rumor and the patience of the buyer. Still, for those who crave a weapon with a conscience—the soft wood bending toward mercy—this short bow remains a steady companion, ready to turn peril away and offer whoever bears it a path through the world’s ruin toward a safer dawn. By dawn, the bow wears a thin veil of dew, not just a weapon but a compact of trust carried by whoever chooses mercy over noise. And in every village it passes through, a rumor lingers: peril can be faced without losing one’s heart, when a cleric’s soft wood is held true, within reach of a healer. It stays in memory long after the leather has dried.