Berserker's Iron Rifle of Hobbling

Berserker's Iron Rifle of Hobbling rests heavy in my hands, its iron skin cool and unforgiving, the barrel a thick, stubborn cylinder that hums with a faint, frost-blue glow when charged. The stock is of dark, oily walnut, satin-slick to the touch, with a dozen years’ worth of stories carved into its grain: a snarling berserker’s head inlaid in brass near the grip, runes etched along the barrel like a whispered oath, and a pivoting sight that sits a touch askew as if it stubbornly refuses to align with any given day’s luck. The rifle’s iron plates are riveted in haphazard, almost reckless patterns, as though a smith laid the first spark and then left the rest to the muscle memory of a life spent swinging iron. A tight leather wrap coils around the fore-end, and a dried red thread is knotted through a small brass ring—talisman and reminder that this weapon thrums with more than metal; it borrows courage from the old battles that carved its name into the hillside. There is a lore to its weight, too, a whisper of a pact between hunter and prey. They called it Berserker’s for the fury it once carried in battle—the rumble of a charge, the leader’s roar, the way the air tasted of iron and rain. Hobbling, the engraver had inscribed along the breech not merely a word but a warning: a weapon that curbs a foe’s quickness, not by brute force alone but by bending the march of a moment. When the hammer falls, a crackle threads through the air, and the enemy’s stride tightens as if the world itself had drawn a breath and held it, forcing the legs toward a cautious, stuttering halt. It is a weapon that makes geography matter—gateways become choke points, bridges become judgments, a hunter’s path narrowed to a corridor of intent. In the trenches of skirmish work, its true value shows not on the stat sheet but in the choreography of a fight. A well-placed shot does more than wound; it unsettles a line, slows a charge, and buys a heartbeat for a team to reorganize. The rifle’s power lies in control: it turns a battlefield into a puzzle where speed can be weaponized, where the press of a trigger can tilt the rhythm of a siege. You learn to time the next shot with care, to anticipate the breath before it escapes a foe’s lungs, to let the Hobbling rune do its quiet work while you reload and listen for the drum of approaching reinforcements. I heard the tale in a market lane, amid the bustle and the warm stink of leather and oil, when a friend nudged me toward Saddlebag Exchange. There, under a striped canvas awning, a clerk spread out two rifles in a row, their barrels glinting like winter knives. The price tags swung with the breeze, fresh rumors of what the old smiths still demanded for a weapon with history. The Berserker’s Iron Rifle of Hobbling wore its reputation lightly but unafraid, and the asking price rose and fell with the crowd’s appetite: a coin’s whisper, a careful coin’s whisper back, a negotiation between memory and value. The exchange isn’t merely commerce; it’s a shared ledger of battles fought and futures desired, and this rifle sits there as if ready to script the next page. So it stays with me, not just a weapon but a chapter of counterpoints—the fury of a berserker tempered by the quiet cunning of a trap laid in the name of patience. A piece that reminds us how power travels: through iron, through oath, through a moment’s decisive restraint.