Cohost writing prompt: @Making-Up-Adventurers — Adventurer who is aggressively min/maxing their equipment loadout not for power, but for style
"Who's going to tell Malia?"
"We could draw straws."
"We tell her all together," the archer says resolutely. "No single target for her ire, aye?"
"That's a noble solution," the paladin agrees.
The berserker heaves an enormous sigh.
When they arrive at the inn, Malia is busy humming over one of her leather-bound notebooks with a new pen and fresh ink, scrawling out endless chicken-scratch.
"Bit of news about the Laird of Cragtower," the archer says, falsely bright, and Malia looks at the three of them, shuffling together like crestfallen children owning up to belatedly regretted mischief, and wipes her pen off on a bit of rag.
"What might that be," she says.
"Some kind of local wise-woman omened that he'd come to ruin by magic," the paladin takes up the tale. "There's jobs there, aye, but to go to Cragtower, wizards are...it's not welcoming."
"You've got to have a thing in your mouth so you can't say any magic words," the berserker says.
"A gag? I have to be gagged?"
"Aye."
"And — excuse my ignorance — what exactly stops those of wizardly tendency from just taking it out?"
"Gloves," the archer says. "They make you wear these gloves like — tight leather bags, with no fingers. So you can't take the gag out, or—" she wiggles her fingers, "prestidigitate."
"So we'll just keep going, aye?" the paladin says. "On up the road to the border, see what's afoot over yon."
Malia puts the pen down neatly, folds her cleaning rag, folds her hands together, and shakes her head a little. "We could do with a little more work, before the winter weather sets in, aye?" she says. "We know there's work to be picked up there, rather than chancing it. I'd rather not be scouring the border hills for bandits in the snow in a few months."
"There's inns outside Cragtower proper," the archer says. "We can get settled and meet you back there afterward."
"Think you I'll turn somebody inside out if I have to suffer an indignity?" Malia says, and beams at them when there's a certain amount of shuffling and exchanged glances instead of an immediate answer.
"I don't like this at all," the berserker says.
"She volunteered," the archer sighs. "We'll take her down to the gate, they'll get her kitted up, we'll suffer the interview with his Lairdship's steward, take the job, and go."
"I don't like it when she volunteers for things," the berserker says plaintively.
"Be brave, big man," she says, patting his arm, and opens the door to their tavern room. "It'll be—"
Silence falls.
Malia is waiting for them, in a wizardly-looking black frock with sigils embroidered in black thread. She is already prepared; mouth cleaved not by the simple knotted cloth of the Laird's provision, but a buckled contraption of shiny black leather; her hands are immovably encased, likewise, serious-looking fasteners at the wrists. Around her neck is another sturdy black buckled leather strap, from which a chain dangles, looped and offered forth to them over one outstretched wrist; and fastened atop her head by a band of black hair ribbon is a pair of pointed ears like a cat's, fashioned from fur.
Less physically, but palpably, she's clad in an aura of smugness and entirely unrestrained danger, eyes flashing.
"I'm not holding that," the berserker says.