She jabs at its face, but with momentum intended to meet resistance, and there is none. With momentum intended to compensate for a dodge on the part of the creature, but it surges forward. She's engulfed, and then there is no snake, and there is no ground, and she's falling.
She gasps. The air is clean; she doesn't need to heal poison out of herself with each breath. She sees - floating land, of sorts, there, some kind of oddly geology-themed ship maybe. She could, potentially, turn Lævateinn into something with enough surface area to steer herself onto it rather than fall farther and suffer worse from the fall, but she just recently perfected a new...
She's a bird, a swift, and she catches the wind, and her spear is a twig clutched in her feet, and she wings her way to the land.
"That's like asking, do you want to make a deal? Depends on the deal. Depends on the secret. I don't normally have a good reason to gossip, at least."
"I'm mostly wary of unconditional promises. If there is a compelling reason to reveal something I promised to keep secret, I will reveal the secret. If I promise to, I don't know, keep it secret that I saw someone hanging out in front of an abandoned building. Discovering them with a bloody knife and hearing that someone was murdered inside is a good reason. Thinking that abandoned buildings should be left alone is not a good reason."
"Mm. Well. I can do a number of things which I have not told you about. I would like to disclose one of them so as to speed this excursion up. I assure you that if you ever hear of a murder which could only have been committed with the use of my unusual abilities you will not be obliged to keep your promises to me, but do I otherwise have your word on your silence?"
"Lots of things are up. The thing I have in mind is -" She holds her hand out palm-up. She appears an illusory jellywings there, revolving slowly on the spot. "Squid bait."
"...Once we've gotten the squid. If I can."
"I could try, but I've never taught before. I'm largely self-educated myself so I have no tutors to imitate. Also, spell development takes decades."
"But I'm getting sidetracked. For now: Squid. The best way to attract it would be a large, injured-looking jellywings. The older and bigger they are, the more they accumulate damage and the easier they are for squid to hunt. Shall I keep the ship as steady as possible while you attempt to lure in our ticket to riches?"
"Good enough. Squid are smarter than most critters, but they're still pretty stupid. One attacked my ship just because the roof was a little green, remember?"
"I'll be flying the ship, trying to keep her as steady as possible for you. Let me fly well clear of any islands first. If that thing knocks around my ship, and it will, I don't want to crack open against one."
She looks up, and puts an illusion jellywings with a nasty wound in its side above the ship, at an angle convenient for her to stab at and beyond.
No squids immediately attack. If they're as rare as bears and other monsters are in Asgard, it'll take an hour or two before one finds them.
Hmm.
"Hey, do jellywings usually make noise?"
"I don't think so. Not that humans can hear, at least. A wounded one might smell like hydrogen sulfide though. Should I vent a little gas from the ship? The effect would be similar."
A few minutes later, spike-tipped tentacles suddenly close on the illusion jellywings from all sides.
(The gas is mildly poisonous. She clears it from her system with half a thought.)