Cohost writing prompt: @Making-Up-Adventurers — Berserker who doesn't remember what happened last night or how that fire got started
"Lord Tendail," the elf in the scrying-glass says deferentially, "My name is Vermillon Thousand-Mile-Eyes. I am your sheriff in the town of Nieford."
Lord Tendail, tired-eyed, runs a hand over his neat beard. "Speak," he says.
"There was a disturbance, three nights ago," the sheriff says. "There was a statue in our town square, placed there to commemorate your wedding, and...someone set it alight. There's a party of adventurers in town, said they were accompanying a noble lady on the road, and naturally — well, your Lordship, all the local ne'er-do-wells are known to me. We don't have this type of trouble. And adventurers."
Lord Tendail makes a gesture of assent.
"I've witnesses — but not especially reliable ones, from out the local tavern, you understand — putting the adventurer warlock in the town square about the time. And they have a berserker with them, and I have someone I trust who swears they know the berserker was elsewhere. But the berserker says it was themself who must have set the fire, in a drunken stupour." The sheriff pinches his nose. "All signs say the fire was magical, my Lord."
"Well, then, the berserker is lying for their friend's sake."
"Aye," the sheriff says. "So I said, and the berserker turned an odd kind of smug, and accused me of bias against those of the pact. The warlock's sworn, it seems, to the Lord of the Leaf-Litter. Her powers are all poison and decay, my Lord, she couldn't set a magical fire if she wanted. And then I discover that the noble lady they accompany is — well, she declines to meet with me, but I'm told she's your lady wife. Burning a statue of you, on the occasion of her visit, that seems...political."
"My lady wife," Lord Tendail says, "is an elemental channeler. She specialises water, atmospheric water, knows all kinds of secret things about rain. How familiar are you with elemental channeling, sheriff?"
The elf makes a cautious face. "A little?" and Lord Tendail strokes his beard again, raises his eyes to the ceiling of his chambers, and shifts in his chair.
"All channelers specialise," he says. "But none are specific to the element of their specialisation. There are characteristic — correspondences of mood, of extremis. It's a traditional wedding present, to gift channelers with fireproof sheets, for the — for the wedding night."
He reaches to his side, out of the scrying glass's sight, bringing his hand back holding a cup of wine.
"My wife is so accomplished a channeler, that in ten years of marriage," Lord Tendail says, grip on his goblet tight, and gaze directed not quite at the scrying glass, "they proved not at all necessary. And now my lady wife has taken to travelling the roads with an adventuring company, alongside a lady poison warlock of half her years, and along their travels so far have been two tavern rooms with fire damage, a grove of temple trees set alight, a mysterious bonfire on a heath, and now the arson of a public statue."
Lord Tendail lifts his cup, tips it, and gulps all of the wine in it down and down and down, then casts the cup aside with a clatter.
"Fine the berserker for petty vandalism," he suggests, in a voice which is not a suggestion.