Carrion Steam Axe of Air

Carrion Steam Axe of Air rests on a damp leather pad, its blade a jagged shimmer of cold steel lacquered with a rot-dark sheen that hints at things not dead so much as sleeping. The edge is nicked with tiny crescent grooves, as if the weapon learned to breathe through rust and time. Along the torso of the head, vents cough pale mist, each one framed by brass petals that catch the light and throw it back in faint halos. The haft is wrapped in cracked leather, the grip pitted from rain and sweat, while slender gears peek from the base, ticking softly whenever the weapon is moved. A tangle of bone-white carrion scales, cured to a dull ivory, runs along the spine of the shaft, connecting head to handle like a stitched memory. On the hilt, etched runes coil in a language older than the wind, and a tiny turbine at the pommel hums with a lazy, patient promise. When you raise it, the weapon seems to inhale; a cold breath threads through your sleeve, and the room dulls to the hush of winter winds. It is as if the axe is listening to distant storms, waiting for a sign to release them. The carrion thread in its legend is not merely aesthetic. Artisans who mixed necromantic folklore with steam-tech believed that carrion could anchor restless air—spirits that prefer shadow and gust alike—giving the blade a readiness to whip across space with little effort from its owner. Those who claimed to hear the weapon speak swore that it remembers the roads it has cut and the storms it has seen. In battle, the Carrion Steam Axe of Air acts as both instrument and compass: a swing can scatter a phalanx with a gust so sharp it slices noise from the air, a backhanded slant that pushes foes off balance and breaks concentration. A higher, wind-laden strike can summon a cyclone of heated breath that disrupts spell-casters and shields, rewarding patience with a rare, momentary flight of speed. In markets, the trade is a quiet ceremony, a kind of ritual that mirrors the trade winds themselves. I met it once at Saddlebag Exchange, where a clerk with dust-darkened fingers weighed the axe against a ledger of other curiosities and offered a price that felt like a negotiation with the weather: a sum in gold, a handful of silver-etched coins, and a promise to deliver a map to a river cut by clever thieves years ago. The seller spoke softly of the hours he spent listening to the turbine’s tick, as if the weapon counted every mile walked and every oath kept. So the Carrion Steam Axe of Air continues its patient career, carried from market stalls to skirmishes, a relic that marries decay and invention, memory and prospect. It remains not merely a weapon but a witness to the road—the road where wind, bone, and steel keep slipping past the edge of dusk. It keeps walking, and the wind remembers.