The little lakeside village is very pretty, and on first inspection it looks completely deserted. The doors to the charming little houses are all closed and locked, the shutters latched on every window.

Well, that's pretty understandable, and she thinks she's not going to go knocking on any doors.

Can she find anyone that isn't locked in a house?

Yes she can! There's a woman in a beautiful fur-trimmed white dress, sitting on the doorstep of the very last house, looking at the lake.

"Hello?" calls Rivethira, tentatively.

She startles slightly, looking up, but calms down when she sees who it is.

"...Are you the new girl?" she wonders.

"Um. Sort of?"

"...what do you mean?"

"He found me while in search of - of the new girl, and found that he liked me but didn't want to torture me."

She blinks a few times, absorbing this information.

"...so you're not a swan? Did he make you immortal?"

"I'm not a swan," she agrees. "And - not as such, no, he offered to clear out the old capital for me and I didn't like the idea of losing my mind after a century, so. Fountain of youth for me." And suicide if I ever turn out to want it, she doesn't say.

The woman stares at her for several seconds, deep in thought -

- and then abruptly launches herself at Rivethira, tackles her to the ground, and tries to strangle her.

Rivethira was not expecting this. In retrospect, maybe she should have.

She yelps in alarm, kicking at her attacker and attempting to get enough out of the stranglehold to speak.

She's blank-faced with terror, singlemindedly driven, but not actually all that strong. It's not long before Rivethira manages to loosen her grip.

Between desperate gasps for air, she gets out, "Stop! Stop, you're not - not doing me a favor, I don't want to die, no -"

Nope. Arguing her out of it is not going to work.

Damn it, damn it, damn it, she thinks, the words thudding through her mind like her heart flutters in her chest. She could call Serik, and then that'd be it, she'd be safe from this woman who thinks she's helping, but then the woman wouldn't be. She has no idea how Serik would react to someone trying to kill her, but at a guess, it would be 'not well.' No, no, this is her fault, she didn't think about the obvious thing an immortal torture victim would try to offer a potential victim that wasn't immortal -

Can she get away from her attacker?

No, and now in addition to trying to strangle her the woman is also trying to smash her head against the ground.

No no no no no no she doesn't want to die -

- but she doesn't want to set Serik on her -

She has so far been trying to get away clean, hurting her attacker as little as possible to get her off. Clearly that's not working. Whatever Rivethira puts her through, it's probably not worse than what Serik would put her through if he showed up. Accordingly, she hisses in anguish and anger and attempts to drive her thumbs into the woman's eyes.

This is apparently not a very effective deterrent. Not even when she succeeds in getting one eye.

Fuck.

"Please," she manages to hiss, "I don't - want - to -"

The woman is absolutely determined to kill her.

She hasn't succeeded yet, but there's a sharp pain that indicates she might have managed to hit Rivethira's head against a rock. Can't afford too many of those.

She can't, shit, she can't fight her off, the woman's not very strong but neither is Rivethira and only one of them is breakable and cares about pain and this is very clearly a losing battle, she's not going to be able to get away -

Abject panic wins out against compassion, and so she closes her eyes and gets the woman's hands un-pried enough from around her throat to scream, "SERIK! SERIK HELP."

A rush of wind over the lake -

The woman holding her dissolves into the air, re-forms twenty feet away on the shore of the lake. Serik appears, crouched by Rivethira's side and looking at her with concern. "Do you have your healing water with you—?"

Affirmative whimper, and her hands are shaking and she's coughing but she's successfully alive enough to retrieve it and down it -

And then her throat stops hurting and her head knits itself and she gasps in a breath and then a second, and she's fine. Just a little out of breath. Good as new.

"Shit, I'm an idiot, fuck I'm sorry it's my fault I should have realized -"

"Believe me, I should've seen this coming too, and I didn't," he sighs. "We can all be idiots today. Do you want me to take you back to the castle...?"