"Ngh…!" Oleandra grunted as she seized Wanderer beneath the arms and attempted to lift him skywards. "You're… too heavy!"
"Maybe if you grew a pair of wings?" Wanderer suggested.
With the hillfort surrounded and the enemy at the gates, Oleandra saw no alternative but to flee skywards. Tree-Portation remained a possibility, yet having been Gazed upon by the eldritch presence in the depths of the sea of stars, she was reluctant to attempt the spell ever again.
"Can you at least stand?" Oleandra asked desperately. "I know your legs must feel rather numb after hanging by the neck for more than a week, but surely there's something you can do to help!"
"I…" began Wanderer. His eyes goggled. "Viviane, behind you!"
Oleandra whirled around.
The Druids' chanting had risen to a fevered pitch. With every word that slipped from their lips, every verse they intoned, they wove magic into the very earth itself, seizing control of it much like a master of Transfiguration might reshape a slab of marble.
The great logs planted around the fort as a palisade suddenly sprouted green shoots and leaves, revived by the Druids' Life-Endowing songs. With considerable effort, the logs heaved themselves from the ground where they'd been driven, stepping forth on wobbly limbs fashioned from newly grown roots.
"Ents!" cried Wanderer warningly.
Oleandra clicked her tongue in annoyance.
She had littered the path winding up the hill at the heart of the fort with runic traps, drawn in fiery letters hanging in midair by means of the Flagrate Charm. More than half were mere fakes, hastily sketched to save time.
Their purpose was twofold: to slow the advancing tide of enemies and to deceive them into avoiding the runes— thereby triggering her innate Faerie Magic.
Unfortunately, the wooden golems possessed no consciousness and, as such, could not be deceived even if they had wished to be. They lumbered slowly up the path to the longhouse atop the hill, triggering Oleandra's runic traps as they went.
"ISAZ!"
The ice runes glowed a bluish-white, instantly snap-freezing the nearest Ents. The sap coursing through them froze and expanded, shattering the already weakened cellulose as the Druids forced the trees onward. Roots, branches and trunks grown too brittle snapped and splintered, showering the ground with wooden shards. But the following Ents simply stepped over their fallen brethren as they continued their inexorable march.
"Seeing as there's a very good chance we won't be making it out of this unscathed…" Oleandra said grimly.
"I'm still bound by my oath," Wanderer replied, cutting her off. "I still can't tell you any more about my quest."
Oleandra shook her head.
"I just want to know," she said. "What on earth did you do to make this Muggle warlord so furious with you?"
If she was about to die, she at least wanted to know why!
"Oh, I can tell you that one," Wanderer said nonchalantly. "I slept with his daughter on my first trip to the south of your country. And then again on my way back north, which is when I met you."
Oleandra groaned audibly. Now, she was especially determined not to die!
"Enough of this," she growled, as she willed her Lethifold to take her skywards. "No more playing around with sharpened sticks."
A sudden feeling of weightlessness engulfed Oleandra as she watched the ground rush away beneath her at dizzying speed. Unassisted flight was something she'd dearly missed— flying on a broomstick simply wasn't the same as sharing a Lethifold's senses and soaring through the skies. Perhaps it was something her soul had always deeply yearned for.
Having incarnated as a human, she had no wings.
"Book," said Oleandra simply, holding out her left hand in front of her.
Upon hearing its mistress's command, the Book of the Stars hanging at her waist slipped free of its leather buckle and flew into her palm, its pages turning to the magical bookmark she had previously inserted.
Oleandra's hand snaked into her pouch as she looked up at the grey clouds gathering overhead. Even in the far reaches of the past, the British Isles couldn't escape bad weather… which was perfect for what she had in mind. Light, persistent rain wouldn't do much damage to her foes in the short term, but with a helpful nudge…
"Kenaz! Hagal! Thursaz! Gebu!" Oleandra barked, retrieving a flat, unmarked pebble from her bottomless pouch. "The Torch that Guides in the Darkness! The World-Ending Storm! The Thorn! The Poisoned Gift!"
The pebble began to grow unbearably hot in her palm, so she tilted her hand and let it slip through her fingers. The small stone fell amid the Ents, but not before Oleandra had flown to a safe distance.
"And…" said Oleandra. "Boom."
Suddenly, a lightning bolt forked down from the sky, striking the tallest Ent in the pack with an ear-splitting thunderclap. The discharged power instantly set it ablaze, causing it to stagger wildly, setting its fellows alight as it spewed its molten entrails all around itself.
It was Gungnir, Wanderer's lightning-summoning spear, that had sparked Oleandra's idea to wield the rune of storms in such a manner. Hagal was indeed the most fearsome and uncontrollable of the twenty-four runes of the sky, but by singing the Hagal grapheme into a Galdr, she could easily mitigate the risk.
Through the Gift rune, Oleandra had imbued the pebble with the properties of a lightning rod before calling down a bolt that might otherwise have decided to detour through her, since she was flying far above her intended target. After all, she was part of the path of least resistance: electricity found it far harder to break down air than a human body, composed mostly of water!
A blur of motion suddenly caught Oleandra's attention. Down below, six robed men had slipped into the hillfort through the hole in the palisade— the gap created when the sharpened tree trunks had uprooted themselves and transformed into Ents in response to their song of nature…