The elf did not think much about the how of his plan, and it did not matter to him. Even as he arrived at the mountain range and began to climb it, the concept of how he—a diminutive, girly-looking elf—was going to join a group of mighty fighters—that, according to the tales, were more beast than man—was not something he thought about. It was either going to happen, and if it did not happen, they would probably kill him anyway, so what was the point of trying to plan past that? He would live his dream or not have to worry about anything anymore, so to him, it was a win-win. Perhaps this was a morbid way of looking at life, but it was born out of years of resentment towards his doubting brethren back home building up inside. They laughed at him, but he would have the last laugh, they would see.
Eventually, he found his destination: a settlement nestled on a small plateau—tales tell of the barbarians flattening a mountain with their bare hands—with two men standing guard on the outskirts. They looked just like the stories described them: barely clothed at all, their bodies muscular beyond anything the elf had seen, a truly imposing sight. And yet, Themaris strode up to them with entirely unwarranted confidence. "What do you want?" one of the two asked with a gruff murmur.
"I wish to join the Brothers of Destruction," the elf replied.
The two warriors shared confused glances, and silence fell over them for a moment. "Good joke. Now give an actual answer," one eventually said.
But Themaris shook his head. "I want to join you. Take me to your leader, make me do whatever it is I need to do to join you, whatever. Let us get this going," he told them, not wavering in the slightest.
Again, the two shared glances, and one of them sighed. "You tell the boss."
It only took about ten minutes before the elf found himself in a makeshift arena of sorts, unarmed, and across from him stood the biggest, burliest berserker of the whole lot, the leader of the Brothers, a man known as Cain. The task at hand was simple: to defeat Cain in a hand-to-hand contest of fisticuffs and grappling. And with a yell from a warrior in the audience, the contest was on. Cain merely stood there, bemused by this little interloper, wondering what he could do. Themaris charged him, closing the distance quickly and pummeling his chest with strikes that left Cain entirely unfazed. After about a minute of this, the berserker responded with a clubbing blow that sent the elf crumpling to the ground, and beckoned to the cheering crowd that he was once more victorious.
But he did not expect the elf to get up. Indeed, when he looked down, he saw this runt back up on his feet, shaky, but standing and once more striking at his rock-solid stomach. Most outsiders got the hint after the first blow, but evidently this one needed some more, so Cain grasped Themaris by the neck, hoisting him up over his head and slamming him back down to the dirt with a thunderous thud. Surely, that would be it, nobody got up after that, especially not a girly weakling like that.
It would have been so easy for the elf to give up, to just accept that he wasn't winning this. But if there was one thing he had, it was tenacity. It was a will to keep going, to prove everybody wrong. And so he summoned up all he could, and willed his limbs to move, to raise himself up once more. All he could manage was a single weak punch before he found himself grabbed by the waist and tossed across the arena like a sack of potatoes, crashing down face first. Had he broken something? He did not know. He felt like he tasted blood in his mouth. And yet, there was adrenaline still left in his hapless form, still something that he felt he could give. Somehow, he got up one more time, pointing at Cain with something that might have approximated a cocky grin in his mind on his face. "Th-That the b-best... b-best ya g-got...?" he stammered out before launching his next attack. Or rather, he took one step forward before his legs gave out once more and collapsed, unconscious.
When Themaris awoke, he was laying in a bed, with one of the berserkers watching over him. This, he did not expect. Indeed, he was still alive. "Wh-What...?" he muttered, more to himself than the other man in the room, but he still got an answer.
"Boss says you got berserker spirit. You're in, elf. Now rest," was the warrior's taciturn response. The elf wanted to say something, even if he didn't know what, but he simply did not have the energy to do so, and instead slipped back into an exhausted sleep.
About a week later, Themaris had recovered enough that he could walk comfortably enough again, and in that time, he learned a lot. It turned out that Cain was fascinated by the sheer moxie and disregard for his own safety he displayed in that fight, and while he was knocked out, multiple other warriors of the Brothers came up to Cain and expressed their admiration for Themaris's spirit. That while he did not look the part, he embodied the group's spirit in a way that they hadn't seen in ages, and they wanted the little guy. So, he was now officially a Brother of Destruction, and they were going to train him. For now, he was still recovering from the beating he took, but he could still take part in some communal activities, like the baths.
The elf could not believe his eyes as he was led over to a nearby river. There stood about a dozen of the berserkers, all now completely naked, gleefully washing themselves—and each other! Why, the way they were rubbing each other looked quite intimate, and yet they did it without a care in the world. And once they spotted Themaris, they beckoned him to join them! All those big, burly, naked, wet men... and he was going to be right in the middle of them! These were thoughts the elf never had before, but now that he's had them... he liked them.