Cohost writing prompt: @Making-up-Monsters — Monster who needs to keep hidden
They meet Malia on the road out of a village, deep in black-barked and snow-laden woods.
"There she be," the paladin drawls. "We've been hearing tales on the way; some kind of devil or spirit or angry ghost, possessing the bodies of good village folk, committing foul deeds in secret, turning them against one another in paranoia. Seems the kind of story that sows its own trouble, to me."
"Oh, no," Malia says. "There was definitely one here. Taken care of, now."
"Aye?"
"Aye."
"How did you discover it?" the paladin says. "There's holy rites to do the like; know thee some spell—"
The wizard nudges him with a hip as she passes him. "Things have a shape, Arlo," she says. "Metaphysically. The layman looks on a wizard, for example, and sees a person who's learned a skill; but more properly, my ilk are those whose learned to thrust our shapes into the kiln and cast them anew to our own liking. Show me a wizard who seeks only to throw a fireball, and I'll show you a coward; wizardry breeds monsters, but even a monstrous wizard is one true to themself. To find one's shape lacking, and cast the cosmos off its axis to correct it, to refuse to be bound to what one's been given just because it was given: this is the true art." She taps her breastbone with a finger. "No gods, no masters: only me. Aye?"
The paladon squints at her suspiciously. "The demon, Malia," he says, and she shows off her teeth.
"Bait," she says. "Bright, irresistable, metaphysical bait. If you were a thing that possessed people, would you not want a wizard instead of a flea-bit potato farmer?"
"And what—"
"Of course it's possessing me, paladin," the wizard says, and affectionately rolls her eyes. "I promise you," she adds, "it's not enjoying it."
"Did I hear right," the archer calls back from the front of their walking order, "that Malia's possessed by a demon—"
"I contain space," Malia calls back. "And I am master of it. The demon wanders a labyrinth all of mirrors, that dwarfs cities, overshadows worlds. It is feeling very small, afraid, and alone."
The paladin looks at her. "Planning on keeping it?" he says eventually, wryly resigned.
She shrugs, one-shouldered. "Probably pay for an exorcism, next place with half-decent clerics," she says airily. "Any demon so easy to catch isn't likely worth keeping. Unless you'd like to bargain the traditional three magical services for its freedom?"
"Why would I," he says, and lets out a sudden puff of breath and tension, half-annoyed, eyes nonetheless affectionate. "We have a wizard."