- she barely has time to meet his eyes before she hits the ground.
There's a discontinuity in time, and then - her chest hurts - she's lying down - can she breathe, one breath, another -
Well, hopefully the festival won't go on too long. She spirals out from the jewelry shop, checking to see where she might be able to spend the night or buy food.
There's an inn. There are some street vendors mostly serving the festival clientele right now. There are some bed-and-breakfasts.
That person over there is a demon in disguise. That one too. Also that other one. Also now that she's thinking about it several of the people who were nearby right when she regained consciousness.
OKAY she is going to whisk herself real REAL fast into that temple and hope it is not a demon temple.
Normal temple! To the shining-sword god! They have a statue of her in the middle of the room, a woman in armor with a heavy shield and a sword.
There are side shrines to lots of other gods that one might want to venerate and that are presumably on good terms with Shining Sword god. There's a young woman in a priestess's vestment at the back. "Can I help you?"
Hello, uh, my entire everything is a super long story but I can tell when people are demons and spotted some outside, are you who I tell?
Yes and yes I will but I do not expect to be of the slightest use in a fight with any.
Part of the telepathy package, not too uncommon where I'm from. I can identify people as individuals and by species sort of like recognizing faces except it works through walls and illusions and stuff. It's super super not safe to do anything telepathic with demons, if I'd been trying to talk to one like I am with you I would be having a problem right now.
"Oh are you a psion? I thought those weren't a real thing." Out the front steps of the temple and back into the town square.
....where kind of a lot of these people are actually demons in disguise. Ten of them, a dozen of them, a dozen more over here -
"Where's Hulrun?" she demands of the nearest paladin -
- is Bella stunned in her tracks or can she run for the hills.
She screams about that! And fights the temptation to fly! Broken legs are survivable!!!!
Honestly this underground tunnel which was just abruptly renovated to have a skylight is probably a better place to be than the aboveground right now, what with how aboveground there's presumably a fight ongoing between some demons and an ancient silver dragon. This underground tunnel just has Bella, and up ahead a couple of other people who fell through and are still moving.
The armored woman who helped her to her feet earlier is trying to improvise a splint for the other woman, who did break a leg in the fall. "- oh good," she says, "the more we can find the better. Do you have anything that'll do for ropes or leather straps? Where are my manners - I'm Seelah. Paladin of Iomedae."
"Anevia," says the woman with the broken leg.
She has an arcane healing spell that'll do even up to missing body parts.
No she doesn't. She has this nice embroidered sash. She unties it. "Bella."
"He's a demon lord," Anevia says, while Seelah ties the splint. "The Lord of Locusts. - Terendelev is dead. She'd have had about as much chance against him as I'd have against her."
"He won't dare spend long on the Material," says Seelah. "He's probably already gone. We've just got to drive the lesser demons out, keep people safe."