Each step forward was a battle hard‑won for Oleandra, even with Suit the Lethifold lending her its strength. Power emanated from ahead in oppressive waves, pulsing regularly as cracks spiderwebbed across the orb's surface, glowing in brilliant lines of white against silver. The pure telluric energy pouring from the widening and multiplying fissures beat her back every step of the way!
At this rate, she would never reach the orb, much less repair it.
With a roar of desperation, Oleandra planted the Sword of the Lake in the tunnel's stone floor for support and braced herself against the waves of magic battering her, gasping for breath. Five metres to the orb; this was as close as she was getting.
"I can't fall here," Oleandra muttered. "I can't afford to fall here…"
Oleandra's mind was a blank. What on earth was she meant to do now? She knew next to nothing about the workings of ancient magic or the weaving of ogham runes into proper magic— only the runes' names and the half‑formed theories a young Dumbledore had once jotted down in his schoolboy notes.
"The notes, that's it! Dumbledore wrote that Ogham magic was the same as Goblin magic!" Oleandra gasped. "And the repository's receptacle is made of Goblin silver!"
Oleandra closed her eyes. The bearded old man had told her to tame the magic within first, then mend the orb. Somewhere buried deep within her psyche were buried Viviane's memories, and she knew all there was to know about ancient magic.
Greater Fairies were the planet's first children; the same telluric energy that runs through the planet's dragon veins, its ley lines, flows through their own. According to Viviane, plants take root in the soil beneath one's feet, and are bathed in the moonlight above one's head… The Ogham's light is as crimson as blood, symbolising that unbreakable bond between the Earth and the Moon…
All of a sudden, it became clear to Oleandra what she needed to do.
"Ceirt!" she exclaimed, naming the Ogham alphabet's apple-tree rune. "I speak thus: my home is Avalon, the Isle of Apples!"
Something unexpected suddenly occurred to Oleandra as she spoke those words.
For some reason, of the twenty-four ancient runes engraved upon her soul, Perthro, the Cauldron and the Dice Cup, suddenly flared to life, even as the other twenty-three remained dormant. Despite the oppressive torrent of telluric energy battering her body, one of Oleandra's star runes had somehow awakened.
Of the twenty‑four runes Oleandra had mastered, Perthro was perhaps the most mysterious.
Whether by design or by some deeper fault of comprehension, it continued to elude her understanding, even after more than six years. Until now, Oleandra had used its power only to veil her true identity and mislead others, tricks which had served her well enough… but perhaps this was not Perthro's true purpose after all.
In Oleandra's mind's eye, the form of Perthro (ᛈ) quivered, its lone upright line twisting at the midpoint out of alignment. Within her soul, the ancient glyph shifted and settled into a new shape— that of Cweorth (ᛢ).
"Apples and pears," Oleandra murmured. "Ceirt and Cweorth, Peith and Perthro…"
Ceirt of the apple-tree represented the letter Q, but it was also the letter P, Peith of the pear-tree… an anomaly, since the letter P did not exist in ancient Irish, the language of Ogham. In ancient times, Wizards using both kinds of magic must have cohabited in the British Isles for some time, before one discipline of magic supplanted the other…
Oleandra felt the pressure lessen somewhat, and encouraged, she forged onwards.
"Uath!" Oleandra went on, naming the hawthorn-tree where Fae Folk dwelled. "I am sídhe, firstborn of the Earth, an Immortal Fairy governing over the domain of water. In my name as the Lady of the Lake, I humbly beseech thee—"
Without warning, the orb flared red.
Taken by surprise, Oleandra was flung off her feet and tumbled head over heels as what felt like a wall slammed into her. Her hand shot out, fingers closing around the Sword of the Lake's hilt as she flew past, wrenching her to an abrupt, bone‑jarring halt.
"Well, well, if it isn't my clueless elder sister," a woman's cool voice rang out from the orb. "We've been looking for you for years without success, so imagine finding you here. To think the great and mighty Lady of the Lake was hiding below Hogwarts, all those years…"
A young woman's ghostly figure slowly emerged from the orb. Her outline glowed softly as she passed through its surface as though it were nothing more than mist.
"Whatever are you doing here, Vee?" she said. "If you're down here, you're probably planning on stealing the repository from the Keepers, I imagine? I thought you looked down on humans, sister dearest..."
"Who are you!?" Oleandra shouted.
The Sword of the Lake sliced through the stone floor like a hot knife through butter as the telluric currents drove her back from the orb. As a cutting tool, it was performing admirably; as an anchor, she could have wished for something more helpful!
"Why, don't you recognise me, Vee? Weren't you having a laugh, watching me in secret, all these years?" said the woman snidely. "It's me, your sister… Isidora Morganach, Professor of Defence Against the Dark Arts, at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry!"
Oleandra's eyes widened in understanding.
Morgause, Morganna, Morwenna, the Morrigan, Maëlle … No matter the era, no matter the incarnation, Morgan le Fay always seemed to end up with similar-sounding names. Perhaps it had something to do with her own authority as a Greater Fairy… the Variance.
But hang on, something strange was going on…
This Isidora Morganach had clearly already shuffled off this mortal coil, since her current incarnation was Mai Dulac. As far as Oleandra knew, Greater Fairies didn't leave behind ghosts, so what in the world was this Isidora person doing here?
"Tell me, how did you escape my sight, Vee?" Isidora demanded. "We shouldn't have been born too many years apart from each other, nor too far from each other… I should have seen you at Hogwarts, this incarnation and all those who preceded it. How did you do it, hmm?"
There was a simple reason Morganna's incarnations had never found Oleandra's since Viviane's time: Merlin had sealed away Viviane's magic to teach her incarnations what it truly meant to live as human. And perhaps, too, as revenge for her sealing him within Yggdrasil for eternity.
Every incarnation between Viviane and Oleandra had been born a Squib and thus had never attended Hogwarts!
"Why were you looking for me, Anna?" Oleandra asked, using Viviane's pet name for her little sister Morganna. "Something you'd like to get off your chest?"
This incarnation of Morgan le Fay, sealed within the orb, seemed strangely incomplete, Oleandra thought to herself. She was utterly guileless. Perhaps that vulnerability could be turned to her advantage, allowing her to glean Mai's true intentions…