This post has the following content warnings:
Angel!Yvette falls on the Howling Mountain
Permalink

Atreia has been in a number of awful situations throughout her very long life. Times where she was unable to think for the pain, times where she watched friends get cut down, times where she thought is this how I die? She'd always managed to pull through, by skill or luck or assistance.

None of those were quite as bad as this. All allies are either dead or scattered, all hope of help has long fled, and she thinks her luck is about to run out. She'll be beaten, mutilated, and dragged down to the deepest parts of Hell to die slowly at the hands of beings who have devoted their entire immortal lives to breaking unfortunate celestials, until all light in her soul is extinguished and she finally gives up and dies. Not a fate she's looking forward to, to say the least.

Maybe she can get out of this. She's supposed to be the clever one. The demons' wizards have shut down all teleportation and conventional planar transportation, but maybe she can come up with something unconventional. Trying to weave herself an unprecedented escape while fighting for her life is tricky - she misses a parry and fails to get out of the way of hellfire fast enough - but she'd been working on this problem anyway. She'd felt like she was near a breakthrough, one that would let them slip past the wizards' enchantments for a surprise attack. Maybe she was close enough to come up with the last few fragments of it under pressure, pull all of the theories together -

She's clipped by an unholy greatsword and lands in more hellfire, and she's not fast enough to get out of it. A clawed foot lands squarely on her back, pushing her further into the magical fire. Something grabs one of her wings with burning hands and begins sawing it off, and she can't quite manage to bite back her cry of pain.

- and the last piece clicks into place, and she might be fooling herself, but she's got nothing to lose if she's wrong. She hisses a word around the sob that's forming in her throat, and the demons and the battlefield disappear.

The celestial appears mid-air, and has long enough to be grateful that she didn't land in solid stone before her broken body lands unceremoniously with a crunch.

Total: 301
Posts Per Page:
Permalink

Her landing place is on the grassy shore of a calm lake, past the end of a row of charming little cottages. The peak of a mountain stands to her left, a shallower rise cradles the lake on her right, and straight ahead is the last cottage in the row, with a stunningly beautiful castle looming in the middle distance behind it.

 

The cottage door opens. A girl peers out. Grey dress a few shades up from thundercloud; blonde hair a few shades down from white.

Permalink

The heap of bloodied silver-gold feathers and blackened fire-gold hair and twisted silver-blue metal shudders. Her injuries do not look like the kinds of things one survives.

With a groan of pain, she pushes herself up to look around. No demons in sight. That's good enough for her.

She lets herself fall back to a heap with a sound that might resemble a sigh of relief, but for the quiet whimper at the pain.

Permalink

The girl stares at her for half a minute or so—

 

—and then comes out and starts trying to push her into the lake.

Permalink

The heap makes an unhappy sound and twitches slightly at this treatment, but doesn't find it enough reason to move. She's trying to let her internal organs heal while she has the chance.

Actually, the lake water feels rather nice on her burns.

Permalink

The girl shoves her out into deeper water and then dives and drags her under.

Permalink

For about ten seconds, the heap doesn't struggle, docilely allowing herself to be dragged under.

Then there's a flare of silver-gold light, and the both of them are suddenly out of the water, and the winged woman is on top of the girl. She is unnaturally strong, despite her numerous injuries, and the girl is pinned beneath her almost easily.

"If that was an intended mercy," she croaks, "thank you, but it's not necessary."

Permalink

 

yep it's cowering and shaking time now

Permalink

Atreia pulls herself off of the girl and returns to being a heap.

"Sorry, I've - had kind of a shit day."

Permalink

 

She pulls herself together enough to stop shaking and speak clearly.

"You need to leave," she says. "Now."

Permalink

"Okay - why, and how far away do I need to get?"

Permalink

"Off the mountain. Or you will wish you'd drowned."

Permalink

The heap drags herself up and looks at Luar with an intense stare.

"What will make me wish I'd drowned, and do you want me to take you with me?"

Permalink

She inclines her head slightly in the direction of the castle without looking at it.

"Don't take me with you, he'll just find us."

Permalink

"Is he a demon?"

Permalink

"—he's—"

Something about this question seems to be fundamentally puzzling.

Permalink

"... Demons are creatures that would be able to sense certain things I could do to escape and I need to know if there are any. Typically contains some but not necessarily all of the following qualities: horns, wings, cloven hooves, forked tails, red pigmented skin tones, often associated with fire and brimstone, another word used is infernal...? They are usually not subtle."

Permalink

"—that's—not."

Permalink

"Okay," she agrees, and that has been more than enough talking in a crisis for her taste. "Thank you."

She painfully pulls herself to her feet, wincing. The woman glows again, the air subtly hums, and then - fades, her magic unspent. Atreia frowns.

"Can't aim a plane shift anywhere but where I came from, which - no. Which way do I walk?"

The winged woman does not look like she's in any state to do much walking.

Permalink

 

...she points, somewhat dubiously, across the lake.

Permalink

"Great," she sighs.

This is going to suck. She starts painfully dragging herself in the indicated direction, teeth gritted. It will take her a while to get there, but she'll manage it. Probably. If she doesn't collapse into a heap again.

Permalink

 

 

Yeah this isn't going to work, is it.

Permalink

 


Nnnnope. Down she goes.

"... Help?"

Permalink

She catches up and tries to pull the woman to her feet. Not very successfully; she is not, in fact, all that strong.

"...I don't think you're going to get away," she says. "I could try to distract him but he'd know something unusual was happening even if he couldn't make me tell him what."

Permalink

"That's exciting. All right. What does he do?"

Permalink

 

"—he's—honest," she says. "You can't trust him with your safety, opposite of that, but you can trust him to mean what he says."

Total: 301
Posts Per Page: