Making Up Adventurers writing prompt — Berserker who was thrown out of magic school because “Smash It With Your Fists”, while effective, is not traditionally considered “magic.”
“I got thrown out of magic school once, actually,” Bertholda says, grinning all over her big, guileless berserker face.
It’s the expression she makes when she’s an hour deep in solemnly nodding along to some man in a tavern patronisingly explaining how a card game works, right before she wins everyone’s money, jewellery, and pants and silently dares them, with a glinting eye and flexing biceps bigger than their heads, to make something of it.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Vlinda the Arcanatrix says earnestly.
“Yeah,” Bertholda says. “I smashed a wizard with my fist.”
Vlinda looks at Bertholda’s nearest hand, wrapped around a tankard. “Oh,” she says faintly. “Well. I expect they did something to slight your honour, and it was called for.”
“Oh, she was a skinny little thing,” Bertholda says, and absently licks her lip, as though there might be some ale-foam still perched on it. “You’d have thought it would break her in half! But wizards are tougher than they look. Maybe she had some kind of magic to help her take it, eh?”
Vlinda nods hesitantly. “Mage armour,” she offers. “I mean, it’s a generic term — there’s quite a variety of actual techniques, favouring various applications—”
“She turned out to be the headmaster’s niece,” Bertholda says reminiscently.
“Oh,” Vlinda says again, wincing. “Well, that’d do it, I expect. If you go around beating up faculty members’ relatives,” and Bertholda gives her a slyly amused look.
“Beat up,” she says. “Yeah. That’s what I like about wizards, you know, Vlinda.”
“What’s that?” Vlinda clutches her faintly alcoholic cordial, dismally aware that she’s missing something and that everyone’s somehow having a laugh at her expense.
“For all those smarts and all that reading,” Bertholda says, leering over her beer, “you’ve got such wonderfully broadenable horizons.”
