Soldier's Benthic Hydrobreather of the Afflicted

Soldier's Benthic Hydrobreather of the Afflicted sits on the desk like a small, stubborn bellows, its brass shell pitted from salt and time. A glass bubble crowns the unit, clouded with years of exhaled air and tiny imperfections that catch the light the way a harbor does at dawn. The body is a compact cylinder, riveted joints running along its length, a coil of copper tube spiraling from base to crown. Around the seam, a ring of barnacles clings as if to remind you that this device spent more hours under pressure than on a shelf. A worn strap of dark leather threads through two iron loops, the buckle showing the wear of many dives and a dozen quick scrambles through wreckage. A shallow glow pulses from the vent at the top, a soft blue that seems to carry its own whisper of currents and depth. Texture tells the story as surely as any engraving: the brass is warm to the touch, a stubborn roughness where corrosion has eaten at the edges; the glass bears micro-scratches, like a window into a long, briny memory. The hydrobreather’s surface is etched with a faded motif—an emblem that looks like a half-sunken shield, interwoven with tentacle-curves—that some say marks it as a relic of the Afflicted’s own field trials, salvaged from the drowned trenches where soldiers once pressed forward against unseen pressures and even more unseen foes. The device feels heavier with the weight of history than with its iron and glass. Yet there’s a precise, almost artisanal calm to its weight—the certainty that when the valve is opened, air will flow as if from a well in the sea’s soft belly. In the field, its significance unfurls like a map. This hydrobreather doesn’t merely let you breathe; it steadies your breath, extends your time beneath the surface, and protects you from the sudden urgency of a rising pressure or a silty current. Divers who chart sunken outposts, hunt for long-lost chests, or follow the river of wreckage into the heart of a brackish veil know this is the kind of companion that keeps the mind clear and the hands sure. With it, the kelp forests become corridors; the ruined hulls become archives. You move as if you’ve learned the water’s language, gliding through shoals and shadow with far less thought given to the air you draw. Market whispers arrive in the same breath as the sea: Saddlebag Exchange, that wandering stall of trader’s tales, had a stack of these once, the quicksilver eyes of their ledger glinting as they weighed what a life under salt and bite would cost. The tag spoke in coins and courage, and I traded a few sea-glass trinkets and a weathered map for a piece of that blue-lit calm. The price drifted with tide and demand, but the exchange always felt like a harbor for stories as well as gear. And so the Soldier’s Benthic Hydrobreather of the Afflicted rests not just on a shelf, but in the ongoing story of those who walk between air and water, between memory and current, between danger and the stubborn will to endure.