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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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."

yep it's cowering and shaking time now

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?"

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."

"Is he a demon?"

"—he's—"

Something about this question seems to be fundamentally puzzling.

"... 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."

"—that's—not."

"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.

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

"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.

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

Nnnnope. Down she goes.

"... Help?"

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."

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

"—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."