"Master, what he has in his hands is the sleeping potion he stole from us," Kiki said excitedly, pointing at the test tube held by the werewolf wizard.
Alan merely nodded, his mind drifting elsewhere. He wasn't focused on the wizard at the moment, but rather on the prophecy the Centaur Elder had just spoken.
The messenger of the Big Dipper's seventh star…
The wrath of thunder…
Did that refer to him? His current position was indeed north of the centaurs. Had the Elder truly foreseen his intervention, or was it a calculated gamble? He wondered if genuine prophecy magic existed in this world. In his usual analytical way of thinking, he had always felt prophecy was too abstract—like the air in a bag of potato chips; you knew it was there, but it vanished the moment you tried to grasp it.
Now, someone had essentially pointed a finger at him in the dark. It sparked a strange interest; when he had chosen his electives, he hadn't even considered Divination, mostly because his friends in the Charms Club insisted the Hogwarts course was a sham. They said Professor Trelawney was unreliable, predicting a student's death every year without a single one ever having the decency to actually die.
"If I just sit here and watch, will the prophecy fail?" Alan thought with a flicker of mischief.
"Master, look! The centaurs are charging," Kiki shouted, her voice snapping him back to the present.
Alan looked down at the battle. The centaurs were being enveloped by the vaporized sleeping potion. As a race proficient in herbalism, they recognized the effect immediately. They knew that if they stayed on the defensive, they would be unconscious within minutes. They organized a desperate charge, hoping to break the line through sheer brute force.
Upon seeing them move, the werewolf wizard threw back his head and let out a piercing howl. The surrounding werewolves, their eyes bloodshot and yellow drool dripping from their muzzles, lunged forward with feral madness.
The two sides slammed into each other in a chaotic mess. The Centaur Elder drove his spear forward, aiming directly for the werewolf wizard in a clear attempt at a decapitation strike. The wizard bared his teeth in a sneer, raising his wand to snap a vicious curse at the Elder.
The Elder reacted with surprising grace, swinging his heavy spear horizontally with a sharp whistle. He swatted the spell away as if it were a common fly; the wood of his spear was clearly of extraordinary quality to withstand such magic. While the parry was impressive, the momentum of his charge was broken.
The duel devolved into a deadly rhythm: the wizard cast high-speed, jagged curses, and the Elder deflected them with his spear, occasionally finding an opening to lunge. The wizard's physique was unnaturally agile, allowing him to twist out of the way of the spear's point. They were locked in a stalemate.
The rest of the centaurs, however, were in deep trouble. They were outnumbered nearly two-to-one, and their ranks included three juveniles. Their charge was halted almost instantly, forcing them into a frantic melee. Their heavy hooves were powerful weapons, and they managed to severely injure two werewolves in the opening clash, but the wolves were tactical. They utilized low-to-the-ground, agile footwork that the larger centaurs couldn't easily track in close quarters.
It looked as though the centaurs were the hunters, but every time they missed a swing, a werewolf would dart in to rake a flank with its claws. It was a war of attrition, and the centaurs were losing. The werewolves' self-healing was the deciding factor; one wolf bit off an arrow shaft embedded in its shoulder, howled, and dove back into the fray. A wounded wolf could retreat for a few minutes and return nearly fresh.
In contrast, every new wound on a centaur drained their strength. Several were already slick with their own blood. The sleeping potion was also taking a toll; the warriors were beginning to sway, their movements becoming heavy and sluggish.
The two werewolves ambushed on the high ground chose that moment to strike, leaping down onto the three young centaurs. They tore the bows from the hands of two juveniles, leaving them weaponless. The wolves clearly didn't want to kill the young ones—to the wizard, they were prime merchandise—so they circled them instead, nipping at their legs to wear them down.
The stamina of the juveniles was failing fast. One young centaur's eyelids began to droop, his legs buckling as the potion took hold. The adults grew frantic, swinging their bows like clubs to force the wolves back, but the exertion only pumped the tainted blood through their systems faster.
"Haha! It seems your prophecy has abandoned you! Die with your broken stars, old man!" the werewolf wizard taunted, seeing the tide turn decisively in his favor.
The Centaur Elder felt a cold spike of anxiety. He watched the first of the young ones collapse into the dirt. Had he misread the heavens? Had the Morning Star truly turned its back on his people?
Alan knew he couldn't wait any longer. While he had wanted to test the validity of the prophecy, his distaste for the werewolves' victory outweighed his curiosity.
"Kiki, stay here and do not move. If you are in danger, Apparate away immediately," Alan instructed.
He drew Dark Depiction and leaped from the branch.
"Eye of the Storm!"