Oleandra watched from above as her army of tree monsters surged through the Druids' ranks. Although she had hurried their growth to full maturity in mere seconds, her Ents were far more resilient than the Druids'. Unlike theirs, hers hadn't spent years staked into the earth as part of the hillfort's palisade, slowly succumbing to mould, moss, and the relentless fury of the elements.
With each swing of their gnarled limbs, her Ents cracked bark and battered their foes to splinters. Aside from the familiars dive-bombing her as she hovered in midair, there was precious little reason for her to forsake the high ground and risk joining the mêlée below.
That is, until she caught sight of a wolf darting from the living forest out of the corner of her eye.
"Oi!" Oleandra yelled. "Oh no, you don't!"
But just as Oleandra was preparing to swoop down to intercept, one particularly unassuming swift among many others suddenly transformed into a human, driving both feet into her back and knocking the wind out of her.
Oleandra grunted, rolling in midair to shake off her assailant, but the Druidess had already latched herself firmly onto her back and wrapped her fingers around her neck. By transforming herself into a bird, the female Animagus had successfully managed to approach her by pretending to be one of the thousands of bird familiars pecking at her!
"Gerroff me!" Oleandra grunted.
They were both free-falling now, as Suit was still too young to support the weight of two nearly fully grown women. Seeing the ground rushing towards her at a frightening pace, Oleandra desperately elbowed her passenger hard in the nose, causing her face to cave in with a crunch. Even though her supernaturally enhanced strength had mostly faded away by now, Oleandra was still quite strong for a slender girl of her age.
Moments before she would have been flattened like a crepe on the unforgiving ground, Oleandra righted herself, landing more or less gracefully— rolling and tumbling down the hill past the wolf Animagus. A few yards away, a bed of moss suddenly sprang up, cushioning the unconscious bird Animagus's fall.
Oleandra scrambled to her feet to catch up to the wolf, but a root suddenly burst out of the ground and wrapped around her ankle, causing her to trip and land face first into the dust once again. This was beginning to get very old…
Glancing over her shoulder as she knelt and tugged at the root binding her foot, Oleandra spotted the remaining four Druids darting out from under the Ents' shadows. The colossal wooden golems were largely engrossed in battling one another, allowing them to slip by unnoticed!
"Diffindo!" Oleandra snarled, slashing at the air with her wand.
The root split, spilling copious volumes of clear, sweet-smelling sap, only to regenerate with astonishing speed. Before Oleandra could utter even the first syllable of the Revulsion Jinx's incantation, her attention was drawn back to her foes. Wanderer would simply have to face the wolf Animagus on his own.
"Stupefy!" cried Oleandra, aiming her wand at the closest Druid.
A red bolt of energy shot from her wand, instantly felling the brown-robed man. She levelled her wand at the next enemy, but he abruptly sprouted dark red fur and long, curled horns from his head, dropping onto all fours and unleashing an angry bellow as he continued to swell in size.
In an instant, the man Transfigured himself into an aurochs— a gigantic species of bull long extinct in Oleandra's time. A creature of such size would easily shrug off coma-inducing magic, so Oleandra aimed her wand at her own foot rather than attempting to Stun the beast.
"Relashio!" she spat.
The root slackened, releasing its vice-like grip on Oleandra's foot. Now that she was free, she jumped and took to the air, but she was a fraction of a second too late.
"Elhaz!"
Oleandra managed to extend three fingers, adopting the rune's Mudra just in time to bolster her defensive spell. The aurochs Animagus charged, ramming her with his horns and sending her tumbling through the air, but thankfully the protective rune, combined with Suit's resilient hide, held firm, saving her from being gored.
Heavily rattled by the impact, Oleandra and Suit fell back to the ground.
The aurochs charged past them, then wheeled about, foaming at the mouth and pawing the ground as it prepared for a second charge. At the same moment, the two remaining Druids, who were still conscious and in human form, began chanting.
Oleandra blacked out.
…
"Fergus, no!"
"This can't be happening!"
And a fraction of a second later, she was conscious again, and the aurochs Animagus lay dead, his dark crimson blood pooling at her feet. The two Druids were staring at her white-faced, clutching their staffs in front of them as if to shield themselves from her.
Oleandra groaned, holding her head between her hands.
Memories not her own spun wildly within her skull, foreign landscapes she had never glimpsed flickered before her eyes, and ownerless voices she failed to recognise echoed sharply in her ears.
"Humans…? Here?" came a woman's crystal-clear voice.
Startled, Oleandra turned around sharply.
Somehow, a stunningly beautiful woman draped in flowing blue robes had slipped quietly behind her. Contrasting sharply with her fine features and slender frame, and most unsettlingly, she was pinching an eyeball between her delicate fingers, studying it with evident fascination. The striking woman seemed vaguely familiar to Oleandra, but there was scarce a moment to ponder where they might have met before.
"Petrificus Totalus!" Oleandra snarled, pointing her wand at the woman.
The blue bolt of magic passed straight through the strange woman, and she vanished as though she had never been there at all, like a mirage.
Upon hearing the two Druids beginning to chant again, Oleandra whirled about, raising her left hand to eye level, pinching her thumb and forefinger together to make a diamond shape.
"Ingwaz!" Oleandra spat sharply, her gaze piercing through the narrow gap between her fingers as she fixed her eyes on the two robed men, nailing them to the ground with her magic.