Cohost writing prompt: @Making-Up-Adventurers — Light footed adventurer who is going to take this villain down with the ultimate power - the power of dance
Malia's whispered reputation has once again seen them slipped a surreptitious message, accompanied by a concerningly large up-front fee and a tight deadline.
"I don't like any of this," the berserker says miserably. "And not even for Malia reasons."
"Cheer up, big man," the archer says, nudging him as they lounge in a quiet corner, watching the ballroom's worth of astonishing couture whirl around and around to the genteel strains of strings and spinet — "it's not for Malia reasons yet."
The paladin is across the room, red-faced, trying to catch their eyes so they'll help him manufacture a reason to escape the clutching, stroking fingers of a cooing marquise; and the wizard is dancing scandalously close with the Court Magician, a bardic practitioner with dark eyes, pianist's hands, and a waist-length braid.
They've been pressed together without a break for every dance so far, footwork elegant and perfect, every line of their bodies heated and expressive; and they haven't stopped very obviously arguing the entire time.
"Nobody's going to see a hair of either of them outside of a bed for a week, after this," the archer says. "...Unless Malia gets the wrong kind of heated and we have to flee for our lives."
"If it's a week, we might have to find a temple for Arlo to take sanctuary in," the berserker says, studiously looking at the tiny hors d'oeuvre in his hand instead of giving the paladin a rescuing glance.
"If it's a week," the archer agrees, grinning; and the musicians wend to the finish of another piece, and pause to rest themselves for a minute. Malia immediately quits the floor in a beeline for them, towing the Court Magician by the hand and not relenting her argumentation for a moment.
"—Narrow-minded," she's saying, as they approach.
"Malia," the archer says, raising a crystal wineglass in sardonic salute. "Your Puissance."
"Oh, now your cohort's making fun of me," the Court Magician says dryly, not sounding very put out at all. "Are they about to lecture me on geometry, too?"
"Oh, goodness, no," the archer says, "geometry involves harder drugs than I've any nerve for."
"Drugs?" The Magician looks at them all deeply askance. "Gods abide, wizards, I swear—"
"But I have to insist," Malia says, tugging on their hand. "It's all simply relative position and symmetry and repetition. From the correct perspective, there's simply no difference between mark-making patterns of power in spatial and time domains, that's the entire basis of the working we've just laid down, it's a mere domain transposition of the wizard's method—"
"Now it's for Malia reasons," the berserker mutters, looking distrustfully at the dancefloor.
"Are you saying," the archer breaks in, "that for practical purposes you're a bard?"
"Wash your mouth out," the Court Magician says in delighted horror, and, "You know very well not, Steady," Malia says simultaneously, prim but sparkling.
"Oh, a week, then," the berserker grouses, "and you in the middle."
"Well, go and dance with Arlo and stop sulking, then," the archer says, smoothing her hair.
"All my homeland's dances involve more snow and shirtlessness and axe-juggling," he says, a touch defensively.
"Oh, please take your shirt off and demonstrate," Malia says, smiling a happy predator smile. "I want to see ladies faint."