Berserker's Soft Wood Longbow of Air

Berserker's Soft Wood Longbow of Air rested on a rough peg, its pale limbs catching the lantern light and throwing it back in a dozen little prisms. The wood, smooth as a peeled sapling, carried a honeyed grain that whispered when you brushed your fingers along it. The bow’s midsection curved with a quiet confidence, as if it knew the speed of the wind better than any man could. The grip was wrapped in worn leather that had softened into the exact grip of a hand tempered by long days and longer journeys, and the finish bore a dozen tiny nicks from belts and straps that had brushed past it on road and battlefield alike. Along the riser, runes curled in a serpentine pattern, stages of a storm told in wood, a reminder that this bow had once stood on the edge of a gale, listening to the old tales the air kept. Its lore threads through the surface as surely as its fibers thread the string. The Berserker’s name is not mere boasting: the weapon is said to have been forged under a storm’s eye, when the smiths learned to temper rage with breath and balance. Wind spirits, if you believe the old hunters, lent it a measure of their own patience—enough to draw a heartbeat into a single, decisive release. The Soft Wood, chosen for its resilience and forgiving bend, carries a faint echo of that tempest, a whisper you feel rather than hear when you draw back. The Air in its title isn’t only a whim of branding; it’s a promise that the shaft will bite with speed and vanish into the gusts before the enemy can blink. In the firelight you can almost see a trail of quick, pale sparks where the string leaves the nock, a small afterimage of the breeze that seems to temper each shot. In practical terms, the bow is a partner for the hunter who thrives on speed and precision. It rewards a hunter’s instinct: a draw that feels lighter than it should, a release that lands where you intended even as your opponent pivots to flee. The Berserker’s Flux—as some marksmen coined the temperament it inspires—lets arrows cut across short gaps, chat with the wind, and find the soft underbellies of armor with a hunter’s certainty. It’s the kind of weapon that makes a blade’s swift whisper feel slower by comparison: the bow becomes a conversation with the air, each shot a new sentence in a larger story about pursuit, weather, and waiting for the moment when the storm breaks in your favor. I learned the hard way that this longbow belongs not to a lone ranger but to the market’s memory, carried by a caravan of traders who move with the tides and the gusts. When I stepped into the bustle of Saddlebag Exchange, the scene smelled of tar, leather, dried herbs, and a hundred stories traded at the speed of a passing breeze. The bow rested again in a stall’s low lamplight, priced to reflect its rarity and its revenant’s grace—a fair sum that made the eyes of a hustler sharpen and the hands of a practiced hunter hover with temptation. It wasn’t merely equipment; it was a chapter that could turn another page in the world’s widening narrative, a weapon that could tilt momentum with a single, well-timed breath.