Carrion Verdant Torch of Water

Carrion Verdant Torch of Water sits in my palm like a relic from a rain-soaked reliquary: a carved driftwood handle pale as bone, wrapped in strands of eelgrass and damp linen. The shaft bears sigils, shallow and green-tinged, that glow with a pale sap-green flame. It does not hiss or waver with the gusts; the flame seems to lean toward the moisture in the air, as if the torch itself is thirsting for dew. The light it casts is cool, almost aquatic, throwing green halos on stone surfaces and turning dust motes into floating emerald specks. Touch it and the surface feels slick with river mist, the texture of something that has seen both rot and rainfall and somehow learned to survive both. Lore whispers tell of a forged lineage that binds life and decay to water’s memory. They say the Carrion Verdant Torch of Water was birthed at a crossroads where a carrion cult met a river shrine, where necromantic intents brushed against the hydromantic arts. The flame does not burn so much as it metabolizes air and moisture, drawing vitality from the surrounding damp and exhaling a chill that makes you pull your sleeve closer. In taverns and river towns, old hands trade rumors about the torch’s origin: a tool of scavengers who learned to coax rain from bone-black ruins, a beacon for lantern-bearers who walk the corridors beneath floodplains. I have met those who swear the Verdant Torch can pluck a hidden sigil from a waterlogged wall, if you keep your breath steady and your steps quiet. In the field, its significance goes deeper than its beauty. It is a companion for explorers who chase damp caverns, sunken aqueducts, and kidney-shaped pools that hide pressure plates and drainage puzzles. When you hold it up to a dark tunnel, the green glow reveals water-etched runes that would otherwise slumber in the damp. It can illuminate mossy tiles that only react to hydro-aligned magic, guiding you through passages that flood in rainstorms or siphon away when the river swells. Some say it dampens fear as well—an old superstition, perhaps, but a useful one when your boots ache with the weight of a long route and the cave walls drip in time with your pulse. Pricing and market life drift around it as naturally as current around rock. I found mine not on a shelf in a grand bazaar, but tucked into an inconspicuous stall at the Saddlebag Exchange, where traders lay out trinkets like weathered maps and half-remembered legends. The clerk’s fingers traced the lantern’s glow across the brass price-tag and he told me the torch had found a good home with those who walk riverbeds in search of treasure and trouble alike. A few silver, a couple of coin’s worth of tales, and the torch passed from his hands into mine, its verdant flame flickering with a promise of rain and revival. So I carry it, not as a mere light, but as a corridor between life and decay, between wet stone and dry breath. The Carrion Verdant Torch of Water is more than an object; it is a story you light in the dark, a beacon for those who know that every corridor, every flood-deadened chamber, holds both rot and renewal in equal measure.