Ash Arrow

Item from acotar-frost-and-starlight by

An arrow fletched with crow feathers and tipped with ash wood, the only wood that can pierce fae flesh and kill an immortal.

The ash arrow is the mortal world's great equalizer, a weapon that can wound or kill any faerie, High Fae or lesser, regardless of their power or immortality. It is forged from the wood of the ash tree, the only substance in Prythian that can pierce fae flesh and sever the thread of their eternal lives. To be struck by one is to feel the cold bite of mortality, a reminder that even the oldest and strongest can be brought low by a simple shaft of wood.

Appearance

A slender shaft of pale, almost white wood, smooth as bone and unadorned save for three black crow feathers bound at the nock. The head is not metal but the same ash wood, sharpened to a needle point and stained dark with something that might be old blood or a preservative resin.

Also known as: Ash Shaft, Mortal's Mercy, Faebane Bolt, The Equalizer

What They Know

• Ash wood is the only natural substance that can kill a faerie; iron wounds but does not kill, and faebane only suppresses magic.
• The trees from which ash arrows are made grow only south of the Wall, in the mortal lands, and are carefully guarded by human woodcutters.
• A single ash arrow, properly fletched and tipped, can fetch a king's ransom in the fae markets of the continent, though trading them is punishable by death in most courts.
• The Illyrian war-camps have a legend that the first ash arrow was carved from the branch of a tree that grew from the grave of a faerie who betrayed his own kind to save a mortal lover.
• During the War five hundred years ago, entire forests of ash were burned by the fae to deny the mortals their greatest weapon.

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