Black blackwork flash design of a stylised dagger with an elongated figure-shaped hilt and a long pointed blade on a white background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Stylised dagger flash design

Blackwork · Black and grey · Flash

A bold solid black graphic design of a dagger, with an oval pommel at the top, a figure-like hilt and outstretched arms forming the crossguard. The long blade tapers to a sharp point at the bottom and is shaded with simple black and white negative space. The design is centred on a plain white background with no colour.

Blackwork Dagger Sword Figure Blade

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mind the step, it's glazed over, and keep your wet gloves off the hearth or they'll stiffen like kippers. There. Now you're thawing, and I can tell the tale properly. Where was I? Ah, the smith at Cold Hollow, the winter the river froze to the bottom.

Keep reading

Oswin Tallis was the best smith between the passes, and the Reeve of Hollow asked him for a blade that could cut through any lie. He hammered it for three winters. The steel was black as a rook's wing, and it would not hold an edge until Oswin worked a figure into the grip, a woman with her head bowed and her arms flung wide, as though she were stepping between two men about to fight. The moment he set her into the hilt, the blade sang. Its point was true enough to split a rumour in two.

The Reeve kept it a season. He found it useful at the trials and less useful at his own supper table, and when the blade turned on him in the market square, he threw it into the frozen mere to be rid of it. Oswin went out at dawn with a lantern and found it standing upright in the ice, arms spread, its point driven through the crust as neat as a pin in cloth. He never pulled it free. He said it had chosen its ground.

Some nights, when the wind comes down off the pass, the lantern light catches those outstretched shoulders and you'd swear she's turning to look at the door. She isn't looking at the door. She's pointing at this inn, and she always was. Pass me that ladle, love, and I'll tell you what she says to liars when they come in out of the cold.