Aodh

Description
This simple axe is very hot to the touch, as if it's been left near a fire. But holding it seems to make the air around you grow bitterly cold.

History

 * See: Codex: Aodh

Long ago, as soldier from Gwaren was returning home after twenty years at war. He had sold his sword for passage to Denerim and had to make his way through the Brecilian Forest with nothing to his name but a single crust of bread.

On his way, he met an old blind woodcutter sitting on a tree stump. "Here is someone worse off than myself," said the soldier, and he gave the old man his last scrap of bread. The old man blessed him, and gave the soldier his axe in return.

The soldier went on his way, and soon night fell. He made his bed in a tree branch and held the woodcutter's axe at his side to ward against beasts and bandits. When the moon was high, he was awakened by the sound of weeping. "Show yourself!" he shouted, for try as he might, the soldier could find no one nearby.

"Help me," spoke the tree in which he'd been sleeping, "A mage transformed me into this shape, and I will never be set free. If you had any pity in you, you would cut me down so that my spirit could go to the Maker."

So the soldier took up his axe and struck the tree. The cuts bled like wounds, and soon hot blood covered the axe and burned the soldier's hands. But he held tightly to the axe and felled the tree. The tree shattered when it hit the ground, and from the splinters rose a demon, who bowed to the soldier and vanished into the Fade.

The soldier was chilled to the bone, and could not sleep. In the morning, he found that the axe still burned like the blood of the sylvan, but despite its heat, he could not get warm again. They say he ended his days in Gwaren, cutting wood for his seven fireplaces, shivering and cursing the spirits.