Potion of Destroyer Slaying

The Potion of Destroyer Slaying sits in a vial of obsidian glass, the liquid inside the color of midnight honey, slow-wildly swirling with copper freckles that catch the lamplight. Its texture is thick and resinous, a syrup that clings to the glass and leaves a faint, warm thread on the lip when you lift it. The stopper is a stub of bone etched with a spiral of runes; a thin seam of wax seals the cap, stamped with the sigil of a serrated blade meeting a coiled serpent. The label is a scrap of parchment, hand-painted in silver ink, curling script declaring its name while a tiny watermark—three wavelets crossed by a dagger—tests the imagination. The glass, cool to the touch, feels almost alive, as if the potion itself listens to your breath and waits for the moment you draw steel. Lore speaks of the brew’s origin: a line of apothecaries who once stood on a cliff where the sea ironed itself into wind. They learned to coax “Destroyer” energy into a bottle, to bind terror into a tincture and release it in a roar of focus. Some say it is a legacy of the old war against the sinuous slayers, a ritual kept alive by caravaners who barter its power for courage. When poured, the liquid seems to hold a spark that quickens the pulse, as if you could hear the distant drums of a marching host under your ribs. Used at moments when the ground shakes and a colossal throat belches steam, it smells of resin and iron and something like autumn rain. For a breath or two you feel your joints loosen their fear, your eyes sharpen, and your hammer-hand find its place again. In a skirmish against a Destroyer, its bite is not merely physical; it is a call to arms that makes every strike feel smaller, every carapace a little more brittle. The potion does not vanish the danger; it blacksmiths your resolve, turning hesitation into a spark that lands where it counts. It is not a cure-all but a fuse—an ignition for the brave who know their way through sea-slick decks and cavern-stone alleys to press a chosen blade where the world seems thickest. Market days roll like the wheels of a caravan, and the same bottle changes hands with the tide. I pressed a vendor at Saddlebag Exchange for a bottle, watching the price flicker as if a lantern in a windstorm: two silver and a splash of copper if you catch the stall keeper with the right story; a handful more if supply is thin and rumor runs ahead of you. The exchange is a living ledger—the visible surface of a deeper trade—where notes flutter, stories swap hands, and a single bottle can tilt a town’s fate when a Destroyer finally appears in the harbor’s mouth. Tonight I carry one more drop and a memory of maps stained with rain, knowing that some promises are kept not by swords alone but by the patient art of turning fear into heat, one small potion at a time.