Ash Arrow

Item from acotar-mist-and-fury by

A weapon tipped with ash wood, one of the few things that can wound or kill a faerie.

An arrow whose head is fashioned from ash wood rather than iron or stone, designed specifically to pierce faerie flesh. While iron burns and weakens the fae, ash wood cuts and kills, making these arrows the most feared projectile in the mortal arsenal. They are simple in construction but devastating in effect, and a single well-placed ash arrow can bring down even a High Fae if it finds a vital spot.

Appearance

Slender and elegant, the shaft is typically carved from yew or birch, but the arrowhead is a sharpened splinter of pale ash wood, often bound with leather or sinew. The wood itself is unremarkable to mortal eyes—pale, straight-grained, and hard—but to a faerie it carries the scent of old death and the cold promise of the Wall.

Also known as: ash-tipped arrow, faerie-killer, woodbane shaft, mortal's mercy

What They Know

• Ash wood is one of the three substances (along with iron and faebane) that can harm a faerie; it is the only one that can kill outright without the need for prolonged contact.
• The Treaty after the War forbade the fae from teaching mortals how to forge iron weapons, but ash arrows were never mentioned—a loophole the human realms have exploited for centuries.
• Ash trees are rare south of the Wall, and the wood must be harvested under a waning moon and cured with salt water to retain its potency against fae magic.
• A faerie struck by an ash arrow feels the wound as a cold, spreading numbness that resists magical healing; the wood itself seems to drink magic from the flesh around it.
• In the mortal lands, a single ash arrow can trade for a year's worth of grain; in Prythian, possession of one is often a death sentence, as it marks the bearer as a fae-killer.

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