The Viper
| Type | Sword |
|---|---|
| Owner | Aero Ellisvat |
| Origin | Named by Aero's grandfather and handed down through his family |
| Current location | Lost at The Avonbourn |
| First appearance | Sacred: Eslura's Calling |
The Viper is Aero Ellisvat's sword: a long, thin blade with an emerald hilt and snakes etched along the flat of it. His father's father named it and it came down the family from there. It was forged in fire and doused in venom, and the streets of Varaar hold that its bite cuts deeper than a drovig's pincers.[1]
Description
The hilt is emerald and glitters in lamplight. The engravings run along the flat of the blade and depict the snake the sword is named for, which is where Reagan Hideaway guessed the name came from when she first saw it hanging in a tavern.[2][1] Its point is the measure Aero reaches for when he wants to say how sharp a thing is, cactus needles included. He kept it on the top shelf of the wall opposite his fireplace in Varaar, high enough that he had to stand on his toes to feel for the hilt, and he carries it tucked under his belt rather than slung at a hip.[1]
History
Aero used the Viper to kill Kai Demari, a mountain-sized gorilla of the Rewakan gang, by bringing a loose pile of rock down on the pair of them and driving the blade through Kai's chest in the dust. He drew it again the same night on Jensaad, the Rewakan who had been his mentor, and cut his throat.[1]
He gave it up before dawn. Having promised the dying Noran Daharshi that he would leave that life behind, he came down from her room, unsheathed the sword, laid it on the bar of The Avonbourn and told Reslyn Keiser it no longer belonged to him. She hung it front and centre on the wall behind the bar, a golden placard beneath it reading The Viper, and refused to let it rust in the back for as long as he stayed away.[1][2]
He took it back off the wall the night a crocodile Nelazgian broke into an upstairs room after Reagan and the Eyearke Stone, and Reslyn joked afterwards that she did not know how she would sleep now that he had it again.[2][3] He carried it the rest of the way to Galecrest, stepping between Reagan and the Nelazgian Drayzuzian with a hand on the hilt, and drawing it in Elmryn's study to cut a way out through the Nelazgians in the corridor.[4][5]
He lost it at the Avonbourn. Returning to look for Reslyn and finding the place in uproar and the barkeep arrested, Aero picked a fight with Erwin and was hauled off him by a Rewakan gorilla whose brother he had killed. The gorilla threw him across the bar, and the sword ended up on the floor by the counter while Aero was pinned, dosed with rhinespire and carried away to the Varaar Colosseum. It was not recovered.[6]
Tabitha Glowdish gave him a replacement from the weapon table before he and Reagan set out for Zybersia, a plain sword with no emerald in the hilt, and told him it would not replace his Viper.[7]