Oleandra rummaged through her pouch in search of her rune-carving dagger, wanting to engrave a tracking rune on a nearby boulder, just in case she wanted to Tree-Port back here in the future.
Over the years, so many things had accumulated in the small bag, which had been enchanted with an Undetectable Extension Charm, that she sometimes had to bury her head inside to find what she needed.
Fortunately, the shape of the implement she sought was quite distinctive. After a few more seconds of groping blindly, her fingers finally closed around the knife's handle. She withdrew it from the pouch and unsheathed it, but when she looked up from the pouch's dark depths, she froze.
Gone was the sweet perfume of apple blossoms. The bright blue of the sea behind her had faded to an icy grey, and the green of the lush vegetation ahead had dulled to a weary brown. And perhaps most worrisome of all, her travelling companion had vanished without a trace.
"Wanderer?" Oleandra called out shakily, one hand pressed to her chest, steadying her hammering heart. "I mean, Wōden? Are you still there…?"
A dense cover of white mist was slowly setting on the island, severely limiting Oleandra's visibility. Strangely enough, even though this fog was clearly unnatural, her Mystic Eyes could not discern any traces of magic in it, let alone help her see through it.
A peal of high-pitched laughter rang out from deep inside the mist.
Oleandra drew her wand, ashen-faced. She was beginning to regret not paying more attention in Defence Against the Dark Arts. What was the name of the magical creature that liked to lure travellers off the beaten path, again? Hinkypunks, was it?
Or perhaps, this was the work of some Greater Fairy playing a prank on her. Avalon was Fairyland, after all…
"It's still here!" a very young girl's voice echoed through the deserted beach.
The mists were now parting as swiftly as they had descended upon the island. Oleandra immediately realised she was witnessing a vision from one of her previous lives— this was Avalon in the near future, after a once-in-a-century storm uprooted it from the British Isles and transported it halfway to Niflheim, the World of Mist and Death, stranding it in the Place Between Planes.
"There's not much to see," another girl's pouty voice rang out. "Are you happy now? Can we go back, before the elders and mum and dad get mad?"
"I've seen this before," Oleandra murmured to herself. "In a dream…"
She watched as two winged fairies emerged from the wind-burnt forest at the edge of the sandy beach. The first was a young Viviane, striding confidently across the shore. The second, an even younger Morganna, hesitated to follow her elder sister, choosing instead to linger behind a dead, leafless tree, its bark long stripped and bleached white by the elements. Eventually, the fear of being left behind overcame her fear of the swirling mists, and she trotted after her sister towards the water… only to get splashed with water as a prank.
According to what she remembered of her dream, a meteor would soon fall from the sky, signalling the arrival of a new piece of land from Earth after another terrible storm— an entire French city, Ys of Brittany.
Oleandra blinked.
The devastated Avalon of tomorrow and the lush Avalon of today seemed to overlap in her eyes, and all of a sudden, she was back in the real world. Glancing around, she found a trail of footprints in the sand leading deeper into the island— Wōden must have grown weary of waiting for her to snap out of it and gone exploring on his own.
"Curious," Oleandra muttered to herself.
The ritual that Mai Dulac, Morgan le Fay's current incarnation, had suggested seemed to have at least partly succeeded. It hadn't restored her soul's shadow, but it had clearly awakened the memories of her past lives within her. It was evident that treading where her previous incarnations had once trod was the trigger— stepping onto Avalon's beach had caused her to revisit Viviane's own past visit there.
But if that was indeed the case…
Oleandra's face paled.
"Oh no," she gasped. "Wanderer!"
Oleandra tore across the sand, following the bootprints to the apple orchard neighbouring the beach. The tracks ended there, so Oleandra hastily drew her wand and performed a Tracking Spell.
"Appare Vestigium!" she said breathlessly.
Golden dust sprayed out from her wand and gently floated down to the ground, taking the form of golden footprints. Without wasting a moment, Oleandra started sprinting alongside the tracks. Wōden couldn't have gone too far, she hadn't been daydreaming for that long!
Following the golden footprints, Oleandra ran through the orchard, drawing curious glances from the Lesser Fairies playing hide and seek among the apple trees. But just as she leapt over a small creek…
"Well, well," a sultry voice whispered in Oleandra's ear. "What do we have here, Sister? It's another human…"
Oleandra's entire world spun upside-down.
The ground she had been running on was now above her, and the blue sky stretched below— and the moment she realised she was the wrong way up, gravity reasserted its pull. Arms flailing, her feet left firm ground, and she plummeted skywards.
"SUIT!" Oleandra yelled.
Oleandra jerked to a halt, suspended in midair by the Lethifold concealed on her person. She righted herself before landing back on the ground, which seemed to break the spell. Once more, everything was right side up… but something was still wrong.
The ground hadn't been this red and slippery smooth before, had it?
Oleandra suddenly felt her knees buckle as she was rapidly lifted into the air, ground beneath her feet and all. Staring at the gigantic face rising over the horizon, she suddenly realised that she had somehow been shrunk to the size of an ant.
She was standing on an apple!
"You look good enough to swallow whole," purred the Greater Fairy, licking her crimson lips. "Shall I eat you now, or savour you later?"
Despite their vast size difference, the Greater Fairy's beauty was flawless. Under a microscope, even the skin of the fairest maiden would appear mottled and uneven and full of pores, yet somehow this was not so here.
"This is just an illusion, isn't it?" Oleandra called out.
She could still feel the freshwater coursing through the little brook she had just jumped over. In other words, she was not where she thought she was!