Oleandra opened her Mystic Eyes, and the illusion instantly shattered like a broken mirror. Standing by the babbling brook she had just leapt over were two breathtakingly stunning women, clad in nearly translucent celestial robes of feathers. At their knees knelt Wōden, his arms magically bound behind his back.
The first of the two Greater Fairies, Oleandra recognised as the woman from her flashback during the fight against the Druids, but to her relief, she did not yet seem to have plucked any eyes from anyone's heads… yet. As for the second— the one who had feigned a desire to take a bite of her along with her apple— she also struck a faint chord of familiarity…
"Oh?" said the first fairy, her laugh tinkling like crystal. "Morgause, don't tell me you were fooled by the oldest trick in the book?"
"Her human disguise is quite convincing," Morgause, the other Greater Fairy, replied begrudgingly. "But if it hadn't been for my powers, that human child would have pulled the wool over your eyes as well, Mélusine! So, there!"
In the gaze of a Greater Fairy's Mystic Sight, a fellow Greater Fairy's pair of Mystic Eyes would shine like two bright beacons, much like the beams of a lighthouse. In an instant, they had recognised Oleandra for what she truly was— one of their kind.
"What are you talking about!" cried Wōden in desperation. "I told you I came here in peace! Why won't you believe me? I thought your kind could tell when we humans lied! Viviane, tell them!"
"This human male is your pet, then?" asked Mélusine sheepishly, turning to Oleandra. "I'm sorry, I damaged it a little. Here, this belongs to you."
Mélusine turned over her hand, producing a single, round eyeball, which she placed gently into a frozen Oleandra's palm. She then waved her hand, releasing the spell she had cast upon Wōden.
As soon as the invisible pressure lifted from his shoulders, Wōden struggled awkwardly to his feet and lunged at her, fingers outstretched, snarling fiercely. With a swift gesture, Mélusine summoned a water whip from the nearby brook, coiling it about his neck like a leash and dragging him beneath the surface.
"NO!" yelled Oleandra, summoning her Authority of the Lake to pull Wōden's head above water.
"What!?" gasped Morgause in surprise.
A splitting headache suddenly exploded behind Oleandra's eyes, and she sank to her knees, screaming in agony. It was as if a dam had burst inside her head— blood streamed freely from her eyes and nose, trailing down her face. Then, she crumpled into a heap, her wide eyes locked on Mélusine's, who had collapsed beside her, also bleeding from her nose and eyes.
Oleandra was Mélusine's reincarnation.
Mélusine was Oleandra's past incarnation.
By simultaneously realising that they were the same person, since only one single Greater Fairy could possess the same Authority at a time, they had just broken the most fundamental law of time travel— never, ever meet your past self. And now, they were both suffering from the consequences…
"Sister!" screamed Morgause in shock. "What's happening to you!?"
Consumed by worry over her sister's mysterious condition, Morgause failed to notice a livid Wōden crawling out of the water. She had unconsciously dismissed him as just an another powerless human! Fury twisting his handsome features and blood streaming down his face from his empty eye socket, Wōden silently snatched up his Gungnir, his golden spear…
"Die, inhuman monster! Die for mankind!" he screamed, plunging the tip of his spear into Melusine's back, piercing her heart. "And that's for my fucking eye, you bitch!"
The debilitating agony wracking Oleandra's body suddenly abated.
"Expelliarmus!" gasped Oleandra, whipping out her wand and taking aim at Wōden.
The scarlet beam of light struck him in the chest just as he was about to impale Morgause, knocking him back a few feet and forcing his spear out of his hands.
"You!" growled Morgause, rounding on Oleandra. "You brought him here! This is all your fault!"
"I'm not the one who goes around plucking eyeballs out of people's faces!" Oleandra protested. "I…"
A sudden tugging sensation at the core of her being cut her off mid-sentence. She looked at her hands, which were beginning to tingle.
"What's happening to me!?" Oleandra cried.
Her fingers began to grow translucent, her skin seemingly turning to glass before becoming completely see-through. The strange condition raced up her arms toward her shoulders, while the same affliction crept from her toes up her legs.
Was she... vanishing from existence? Was this the consequence of causing the death of her past self? Oleandra refused to let things end like this, but she was now so immaterial that she could not even touch Morgause in front of her!
Morgause watched, transfixed, as Oleandra became so faint, so insubstantial, that she drifted up a few inches above the earth.
Wōden, meanwhile, disappeared into the forest, probably realising that he had better make himself scarce before the powerful Fairy whose beloved sister he had killed came after him.
"Help!" Oleandra cried one last time, before vanishing for good.
Morgause glanced at the ground.
Before disappearing into thin air, the mysterious, unnamed Fairy wielding the same Authority of the Lake as her sister had dropped the human child's eyeball, as well as a curious dagger embossed with an Ansuz star rune.
"Oh well," Morgause said with a dismissive wave. "I suppose I'll see Mélusine again when she's reborn."
Of course, that newborn Faerie wouldn't truly be her Mélusine, but it didn't really matter. As divided fragments of the planet's soul, Greater Fairies could never truly die. After her own death, Morgause would still be able to speak with her sister's lingering soul-shadow, if their new incarnations were willing to spare them some time from their own lives to let them catch up.
"Now, should I report this to the queen?" Morgause mused aloud. "That human child was definitely up to no good…"
In the end, she chose to do nothing. Life went on, and so did she— waiting patiently for the day of her own death, when she would be reborn once more as Mélusine's sister.
For reasons no Fairy could comprehend, the Authorities of the Lake and the Difference always returned to the world within a few years of one another, making them the only true sisters in the realm of Fairies. Only Morgause's incarnations really understood why this phenomenon recurred so consistently, generation after generation, ever since the birth of the planet…
As holders of the Authority of the Difference, Morgause, Morgan le Fay, the Moriggan, Mai Dulac, and all the others had always stood apart from their own kind. As the most humanlike of the inhuman monsters that were Greater Fairies, what they craved most of all was the love and warmth of a family— love that, ironically, could only be fully reciprocated by the pitiful mortals they had always sniffed at.
In truth, since the dawn of time, Morgause and company had always deliberately used their powers to keep reincarnating themselves as the Lake Authority Holder's little sister, for that was how it had been in the very beginning.
But everything changed when Morgan le Fay was reborn as King Arthur's half-sister, discovering for the first time the warmth of human love— only to have the idyllic life she had always longed for cruelly torn away by her so-called sister and that hateful Merlin.
And the stronger the love, the fiercer the hatred it begat…