Carrion Flame Pistol of Water

Carrion Flame Pistol of Water sits in the palm like a relic fished from a swamp’s edge. Its barrel is burnished bronze, pitted and streaked with ghostly green patina that makes it look spent soaking in mud and fog. A carrion skull, half-eroded by smoke, crowns the muzzle, while runes of water and flame coil along the receiver in a looping script that seems to swim when tilted toward the light. The grip is wrapped in eel-hide, cool to the touch and slick with sweat; a small chamber beneath the trigger holds a pale, swirling bubble that glints like a captive moon. The pistol hums with a damp heat, as if it remembers rain on hot stone and campfire hiss. The lore is older than the rust on the trigger, whispered by scavengers and riverward gossipmongers. They say it was forged where carrion birds circle over a ruined shrine that feeds on memory and flame—a weapon born of faultlines between necromantic rot and pyromantic spark, tempered by the restless current of water they loved and feared. When you fire it, the first shot breathes out a narrow beam of red-gold heat that beads on the air, then blooms into a spray of wet light that clings to targets like rain on leather. If you time it, the second shot coalesces into a thin veil of mist that slows and unsettles, while the third seals a small, cleansing flood over ally positions, washing away a lingering trace of fatigue. It is not merely a gun; it is a ledger of stories pressed into brass, a reminder that death, flame, and tide move along the same current. In the field, its significance grows from the way it threads into the larger tale of river markets and war-tired camps along the marsh borders. Carriers swear by it when raiders slip from fog-laden water; necromancers who crave control over rot dream of joining its aura with their minions; scouts value the pistol for the way its water-charm can cleanse a wounded ally, even as the flame keeps pursuers at bay. It becomes a rumor you can hold in your hands, one that changes value with the light of day and the weight of a trader’s coin. I found it not in a polished shop, but at Saddlebag Exchange, where a weathered clerk traded glances with a bread-crate traveler and slid the pistol across the counter with a careful promise to guard its story as you would guard a letter from home. The price was a brisk barter—half a crate of salted fish, a coil of river-silk, and a handful of copper—the kind of deal that makes you feel you are buying not merely metal but memory. The pistol now sits in my own pack, a pocket-sized chronicle of a contested border and a world where carrion, flame, and water still argue about which will govern the next hour. On calm nights the pistol’s metal cools, and you hear a faint rain-like hiss from its chamber, as if the river breathes through the weapon. Soldiers who carry it learn to read its temper—when the water-charm falls quiet, a shot may carry more weight, dampening chaos with less recoil in the wrist. In quiet dawns you’ll spot a hunter-chemist cradling it, believing rot and flame can be steered with discipline, turning its triad into a healing thread rather than a blade alone. The world keeps turning, and traders whisper that every buyer becomes part of the pistol’s history—another chapter, another mislaid map, another day when a small metal thing steers a larger current. If you listen in a river-town market, you’ll hear the splash of water around the puff of warmth when it fires, and you’ll know the Carrion Flame Pistol of Water is not merely a weapon but a conduit for stories—rot, renewal, and the stubborn flame that endures across the river.