Carrion Flame Bow of Water

Carrion Flame Bow of Water rests in a brass-latched case, its limbs carved from ash-dark wood that seems to drink the light. The grip is wrapped in pale eel-skin, worn smooth by countless hands, and the bowstring sings with a quiet, sinewy tension when you cradle it. The bow’s belly bears a weave of runes—embers and droplets pressed side by side—glowing softly in the lamplight, as if the weapon wears a shy tattoo. One sigil arches like a wave closing on a spark; the other twists into a flame that never quite dies. When you tilt the bow just so, the sheen of the wood shifts from coal-black to a coppery glow, a visible breath of heat and water that travels along the grain. It feels old and new at once, as if it were forged yesterday and by hands that remember every shoreline they’ve crossed. Lore threads into its texture, too. They say the Carrion Flame Bow of Water was born at a coastline where the ash hills meet tidal flats, a relic of a necromancer-smith who learned to bind flame spirits to a vessel that would not so easily betray a hunter. The weapon drinks the air and returns it as light, part heat, part mist. The shaft drinks up rain and tide—little rivers tracing the wood—and in dry rooms the aura grows thirstier, almost a pulse you can hear if you listen with your fingertips. A whisper of carrion shadows coils along the arrow flight, a reminder that the bow’s hunger is not for glory alone but for stories left in the wake of every shot. On the wrist, the bow’s balance feels like a promise you could keep for a long night. Its projectiles crackle with copper sparks, then river-cool the moment they strike, leaving a wet, shimmering wake that clings to enemies as a slow, burning memory. In a skirmish, a single arrow can kindle burning on a target and pour a chill of water into the air around it, softening nearby foes to your teammates’ follow-up blows. The weapon seems to insist that flame and tide are not enemies but partners, each bite of heat tempered by a swell of water, each pulse of water tempered by a flare of fire. It is a weapon meant for patient, deliberate mounting of pressure, for turning a frontline into a drawn-out conversation rather than a single loud sentence. The market hum around such relics is a river of its own, and I found the bow swaying in a stall at Saddlebag Exchange, where traders lay out relics like shells along a muddy beach. The tag talked of a price that felt fair, a few gold’s worth braided with river-blood memories and other small coins of exchange. A trader with salt on his beard and a map of river routes pressed the Carrion Flame Bow of Water into my palm, then leaned in to barter—an earned discount in exchange for a memory of a storm’s edge. The negotiation was a careful ballet: the market’s current tugged at us both, and we found a rhythm that let the bargain breathe. So it isn’t just a weapon. It’s a ledger of coastlines and campfires, a tale told in heat and spray, a reminder that in this world the line between flame and flood can be crossed with a steady hand and a well-timed release.