Contagion

Contagion rests in a palm-sized vial of frost-clear glass, the liquid inside a living emerald that swirls like rain trapped in a bottle. The surface catches light and trembles, as if something inside is blinking awake. The stopper, carved bone wrapped in copper wire, sits askew, and the wire hums faintly when you tilt it. A torn parchment label clings to the neck, its runes half legible, vine-like and jittering, as if the script itself is coaxing the contagion to respond. It isn’t pretty; it’s the sort of artifact that feels older than the room you stand in, as though it absorbed every whispered bargain that ever crossed a plague-ridden market. The lore etched into its edges ties Contagion to those shadowed caravans that trailed sickness along dusty roads, to the plague-scribes who mapped out fear as if it were a star-chart. Some say the vial carried the breath of a long-dead healer who learned to bottle a fraction of disease the way farmers bottle rain: with intent, with guardianship, and with risk. In the telling, Contagion isn’t merely a danger to foes; it’s a memory, a pressure behind every quip and bargain of the market, a reminder that power in small jars can change the pace of a fight and the pace of a rumor. In practice, Contagion loosens that memory into the world of combat. When activated, it releases a shimmering plume that crawls outward in a widening ring, brushing enemies with a spreading disease that lingers and stacks with each new bite of contact. The first target feels the sting and passes it along to those who hurry to finish the job, while allies who pass through the cloud sometimes find themselves buoyed by a stubborn resolve that slows the worst of the chaos. It’s a tool for those who walk the line between damage and control, a way to weave an encounter into a slow, creeping narrative rather than a blunt, blunt-force surge. Wielders speak in hushed tones of synergy—necromancer tutors who coax the plague’s chain from one minion to the next, mesmers who guide foes into the spread like actors stepping into stage light, guardians who hold the line as the contagion does the work of division within a crowd. The cost, of course, is caution: Contagion can bite back if you hold it too close for too long, a philosopher’s stone that mutters that influence without restraint becomes a chain. Amid the bustle of a sun-warmed stall, the Saddlebag Exchange peddler lifts Contagion from a velvet-lined case and sets it on a rough wooden counter. He turns it over in his hand, letting the light stitch along the glass, then leans in to offer the rumor and the price in a single breath: roughly three gold coins, with a silver margin for the tattered label and the story that clings to it. Coins clink as a signature of trust, a promise that this vial has crossed more thresholds than most travelers could name. The stall’s chatter threads through the memory of the item, turning a deadly relic into a companion for the road—the kind of magic you carry not just for the next fight, but for the next tale you’ll tell. Contagion remains a relic as much as a weapon, a fragile chapter in the ongoing chronicle of risk, courage, and the slow, patient craft of survival. In the end, it’s not the glow or the bite that stays with you, but the way a single contained breath can bend a battlefield into a new, uncertain story.