To the vast majority of people, the supernatural wasn’t really that significant. Sure, the ‘superheroes’ and ‘supervillains’ showed up in the news a lot, people even heard about magic users like witches and mages occasionally, but that didn’t change the fact that it didn’t really affect day to day life. People may obsess over the good looking heroes and wish they also had superpowers, but very few ever actually saw one. Similarly, magic was often sought after, but rarely encountered.

To others, the supernatural was a day to day occurrence. Some people and certain places just seemed to attract that sort of thing. These people and things seemed to gather together, which made them easier to keep track of. Still, there was some indefinable balance to the world. No one understood it, and nearly every attempt to study, disperse, or harness anything supernatural failed. Supervillains never took over the world, wizards never achieved true immortality, and giant monsters never destroyed more than one city.

There were worse things out there as well, and somehow they never destroyed, ate, or assimilated the planet. Whatever the reason, there were rules and laws that kept things in order. Some claimed it was the planet, the universe, or even pure luck, but something out there enforced its own idea of balance.

There are exceptions to every rule though. Luckily, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing...

~~~~

Harvest festivals are fun. Of course, they tend to be that ‘family friendly’ fun that requires you to either be a bit drunk or have the heart of a child to properly appreciate. That wasn’t to say it wasn’t enjoyable, rather it was one of those things that is as fun as the company you keep.

Whether you loved harvest festivals themselves or just liked hanging out with friends and family while using it as an excuse, you would still come with an acquaintance. Attending this sort of event alone wasn’t all that common, but wasn’t unheard of.

Coming to this place in a trench coat and hat wasn’t normal. Despite the slightly chilly weather people tended towards less …distinct fashions. Still, the ticket seller noticed several suspicious men in trenchcoats entering the corn maze that night. He decided not to make a fuss. He wasn’t paid enough to care about any illicit dealings on his last day working here.

Only two of the four men in trench coats currently wandering the corn maze were actually intent on committing crimes. The other two simply had what locals considered eccentric fashion sense.

The first criminal was waiting to hand off a ‘package’ to a far more competent conspirator. He was new at this, and seemed to have learned his methods from books and tv. He skulked about like he wanted to be seen. The man’s accomplice blended in far better, but only because he’d decided NOT to wear a trench coat.

The second trenchcoat wearing criminal also had a penchant for drama, but he just thought the trench coat looked good. He wasn’t completely wrong, though. It would be more accurate to say it fit him well than that he looked good in it. He had the slim build and perpetual stubble that made certain movie actors into hunks and normal people look like they haven’t shaved properly.

His appearance gave the impression of the lame weirdo the protagonist starts out as before becoming the trenchcoat wearing badass. Which is ironic, given his experience in breaking certain laws should have qualified him as the latter a long time ago.

The laws that he frequently broke, and the ones he was planning on breaking now, were the laws of nature.

Ethan Bridges had been wandering the corn maze for a while. The sun had set about a half hour ago and the full moon was growing brighter by the minute. This particular corn maze was famous for being the largest in the state, and even the massive crowd that wandered through it would be quite spread out.  

This suited Ethan fine. He wanted a bit of privacy anyway. The ritual he planned on performing wasn’t one that needed an audience.

A hand disappeared into the coat and emerged with an assortment of odd items. A small box of colored crayons, a small clipboard with a circular maze pinned to it, a box of birthday candles, and a small bell. Any eldritch cultist worth their salt would have sneered at this. Of course, the vast majority of all eldritch cultists died or went insane doing their first rituals, so their opinions wouldn’t hold a great deal of weight.

Ethan sat down on the dirt cross legged and began scribbling around the border of the maze. If anyone had happened upon him they would have heard him muttering odd calculations with strange variables like leylines, weather, and phases of the moon.

Once the muttering ceased, the maze on the clipboard was surrounded by symbols and runes. The writing was made in greens and purples. Despite the mundane colors the writing was somehow nauseating with its twisting and mesmerising patterns. It had the appearance of an odd mix of art and a strangely distorted language.

With that out of the way Ethan placed the clipboard on the ground and shook seven of the birthday candles out of the box. He frowned before swapping a few of them with those of different colors and stabbed the candles he’d chosen into the dirt in a heptagon around the clipboard. The small, glittering bell was rung over the center of the heptagon, and the candles spontaneously lit themselves one after the other. Seven rhythmic snapping noises accompanied the sequence of the seven candles flaring with a purposeful air. The dim light that the heptagon of flames cast wasn’t able to illuminate much more than the sheet of paper and the man’s focused expression.

As the last candle burst to life Ethan grinned and held his hands over the ring of candles, pointing his palms at the maze surrounded by its border of alien writing and began chanting.

“Oh _____ the Lying Compass, I call upon you to renew the pact. I offer you a meal prepared to your taste. _____ Map Eater, before you is food I have brought in exchange for your boon.”

His voice shifted from english to an inhuman language filled with alien consonants and warped vowels. As he spoke his voice began to shake the air unnaturally, causing refractions to spill from his mouth like mist.

After his unnatural chanting drew to a close the air turned still and quiet. Even the stalks of corn stopped rustling in the wind. The soundless lull persisted for a few moments before it ended abruptly. Space itself split open, shattering the very laws of reality along with that unnatural silence. A sound like ice cracking began to resonate for miles around. The crowds enjoying a lovely evening all paused and looked around as the almost musical noise seemed to resonate from everywhere at once.

Back where Ethan sat deep inside the corn maze, the paper within the circle had torn free of the clipboard and floated off the ground. It shook for a second then snapped taut. The symbols around the maze shifted. Just as the cracking grew loud enough to grow painful all sound suddenly ceased.

A vantablack line slowly ran through the maze on the paper, completing it. The moment that crack in space reached the ‘finish line’ printed into the paper it drew taut. The long, meandering line became short and straight. That movement of the pure black line warped the ink around it: dividing the printed maze in half with a straight path running through it.

Then, slowly, the line opened up to reveal a grapefruit sized eye.

A massive, starry blackness filled with nebula and shifting constellations formed the sclera, and the cornea appeared like a many armed, iridescent, green and blue starfish. The pupil was a pure black rimmed with light, like some horrible eclipse. Ethan grinned like a man meeting a friendly acquaintance.

“_____ Ethan, _ ___ __ ___ ____ ___ ___ _____?”

“Hey _____. Yeah, I got you a good one this time.”

The strange eye looked about, A nictitating membrane slid over it once as it gazed at the surroundings. A feeling of interest emanated from the wandering eye.

“____ __ ____ _____?”

“This? It’s called a corn maze. A maze is cut into the crop field for people to wander through. They made it for a harvest festival.”

“___?”

“For fun mostly.”

The eye seemed to chuckle for a second, the not-noise made the air around Ethan feel ticklish.

“___ ____ ____ ____? ____ ___ _ ___ __ ______ ____.”

“Yeah. There have got to be a couple hundred here right now. I got a favor to ask though: can you cut your meal a bit short? I don’t want to have that fuss we caused in seattle. That was in the news for weeks and I’d rather avoid the worldwide attention.”

“_ ___ ____ ___ ____.”

“Yeah I know But if the events are more minor I’m hoping it won’t make things worse.”

The eye rolled once before agreeing. Ethan stood up and brushed off his jeans before stretching.

“Oh yeah, please don’t trap me here again as well.”

“_____.”

The giant eye focused carefully on Ethan and began chanting. The words were very similar to the ones Ethan had used in the summoning. The biggest difference was the way they echoed; the speaker obviously had a different anatomy than Ethan’s. An anatomy far more suited to speaking the unearthly tongue was at play here. By comparison, the human’s simplistic biology was unable to speak the language properly.

There was a strange flicker about Ethan, then a snapping noise of something clicking into place. The man gasped as if he had been dunked in ice water and began coughing. After a moment he straightened up and smiled. He waved to the eye floating upwards as he turned to leave.

“See ya later _____, have a good meal.”

“___ Ethan, ___ ____ _ ____ ___.”

The Eye seemed to smile as it watched the man take a long step through space and disappear from the corn maze. As he disappeared the paper with the eye rose up into the air high above the corn maze, gazing down at the people wandering about.

Space began to warp and flex. The eye was centered in a spiral of change as the corn maze spread itself throughout the festival grounds. The maze seemed to twist and curve on itself. People found themselves in a corn maze that looked like an Escher painting.

The corn maze had been turned into the inside of a massive sphere. Anyone who looked ‘up’ could see the rest of the maze and the other people navigating it. The concession stands, porta potties, and tents from the festivals grounds became islands scattered throughout the maze. A gentle but bright moonlight shone on every part of the inside of the sphere with no visible source.

The eye floating in the center of the sphere was somehow looking in all directions at once despite the flat plane of the paper it was summoned with. It was ready to feed.

The majority of the people now trapped in the corn maze space bubble hadn’t been inside the original maze when _____ began his modifications. Nearly everyone began panicking at first. Eventually though, the fact that nothing seemed to be happening took the edge off the hysteria. No one was trapped or disappeared. No one was suffering from vertigo. People had been panicked and suspicious at first, but there was no sign of anything malicious about the changes.

Luckily everyone’s phones were working fine, so communicating the problem to those outside was relatively easy. Dozens of people called emergency services. That many people couldn’t be ignored as a prank. It wouldn't take long before the government had a variety of specialists on site to free the trapped people. Until then the crowds that had been enjoying the festival had to wait.

Time hardly passed before the people trapped within the maze began exploring. Some were looking for an exit. A few were trying to organize everyone together. Plenty of the people were hunting down the spaces of the maze holding food or restrooms. The more easygoing ones were just enjoying the novelty of the strange maze.

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As the people moved about, _____ fed.

Hours passed, and the people joined into crowds, separated into search parties, and reorganized to exchange information. It didn’t take long before everyone was accounted for, and not much longer for everyone to map out the maze’s new form.

And as they did so, _____ fed.

_____ the Lying Compass was an eldritch being. Like most eldritch beings, there was little of it that humans could truly understand. Such creatures were not of this world, and their very nature reflected that. This particular one lived in the sapient interpretations of space. Streets and roads, familiar landmarks, the floor plans of buildings, forest paths. It made these and the other ways sapient beings like humans interpret their environment as its home.

Despite calling these it’s home, it was never visible. The pan-dimensional nature of its existence meant that the way it lived and moved were incomprehensible to three dimensional material beings. As far as it was concerned, humans weren’t even capable of moving, at least not in any true sense. It thought of people like they do plants.

______ sustained itself in a way that was utterly foreign to beings like humans as well. The Map Eater fed off the act of orientation. In other words: beings interpreting the space they occupy was its food source. The act of navigating, travelling, searching, and other methods humans used when moving created food for it.

Right now it was feasting. With the ritual bringing it far ‘closer’ to our dimension than it could usually travel, the ‘food’ was fresher than it normally was. The concentration of people moving about the maze and the many attitudes and reasons for moving about created a variety of flavors for the Lying Compass to enjoy in vast amounts.

As far as it was capable, _____ was fond of Ethan Bridges. The other humans it met were always obnoxious or annoying, always demanding strange things or behaving in ways that irritated it. Ethan communicated simply and asked for things it could easily give. _____ was known to lash out at humans who tried to summon it with unclear rituals and offer it unpleasant and useless gifts. Not Ethan though. _____ looked forward to seeing Ethan Bridges.

After several hours of feeding, _____ began the second phase of its meal. The normal method would have been to leave the maze in its new state till the human’s within it offered no more ‘food.’ This usually meant that the majority would starve to death, though the Map Eater hardly understood humans enough to notice.

Ethan had managed to convince _____ to take a more gentle, sustainable approach. It didn’t mind, and it was beginning to become fond of food that wasn’t laced with what Ethan had called despair. The second phase was designed to release its source of food in a way that acted as dessert.

The strange eye floating in the air blinked once, then let out a flash of light that warped space once again. The maze coating the inside of the sphere warped and unravelled. Soon all the humans within the maze found themselves at the beginning of a spiralling strip of corn maze. This corkscrew of land looked as if it was floating within the starry depths of space. Everyone stood in awe of the new spectacle.

After an endless moment absorbed in the alien beauty, someone shouted and pointed off into the distance. At the opposite end of the maze was a pillar of light. That bright signpost spoke to each of them. “This is the exit, here is freedom.” It wasn’t wishful thinking; it was an unmistakable promise made from a being that they normally could not even begin to comprehend.

There was little preparation done. Many wanted to argue caution or for more group planning, but in the end they didn’t. Like the sphere, this spiral lacked a sense of maliciousness that it ought to. The sense of organization that they had before became a lot more casual.

The narrow nature of the corn maze’s new form made it simple to travel through. There were only a few paths to take at a time. If a dead end was found, it would quickly be marked off for those behind. It wasn’t long before the last human reached the pillar of light and passed though.

_____ sighed and closed its eye. It had truly enjoyed this meal. The last bit of it was satisfying in a way that it had not experienced before meeting Ethan Bridges. With an imperceptible relaxing of cosmic muscles, it let the land he had warped return to its proper place and form.

Every human for miles felt a metallic snapping sensation. It was as if they shifted a thousand miles in a direction that didn’t actually exist. With that final bit of strangeness, the grounds of the harvest festival returned to normal. The crowd outside the entrance turned to look at the newly returned festival grounds. Everything looked normal; as if the insanity had never happened. The only evidence of the eldritch event was a ring of burnt out birthday candles and a piece of paper fluttering back to the ground deep within the maze as _____ left it behind.

Somewhere both next to them and impossibly far away, one of the culprits of this whole commotion basked in the twists of space as it digested its recent meal. The other culprit was browsing one of his favorite markets in Vietnam.

~~~

There were worse jobs out there. The man had to remind himself of that over and over.

There were jobs with more paperwork. There were plenty of jobs where you had to deal with obnoxious or unpleasant people all day, every day. There were even jobs that were more dangerous, though that was debatable sometimes. Each part taken separately, this job shouldn’t be that bad.

Unfortunately, when taken together, the pay was the only thing that didn’t suck. When the job wasn’t boring it was horrifyingly exciting, and when it wasn’t either of those it was irritating and stressful. Right now it was the latter.

Several hundred people had been victims of the eldritch event at the Indiana State Harvest Festival. They needed to interview every single one. He had coworkers to help, but that still left him with almost a hundred angry and impatient citizens who were taking it out on him.

There were mothers that thought having kids meant they were to busy too be checked for eldritch influences. Men who blamed him for not having prevented whatever happened here. Little old ladies who had decided that they didn’t need to be interviewed. More than a few drunks who tried to assault him or simply vomit on the floor of the modified freight truck he was using as an office.

There were more, but the man could feel his brain practically eating itself while trying to forget the last few hours. He would almost rather deal with the eldritch than this mess. He was busy humoring a conspiracy theorist having the time of his life when a beep sounded in his ear.

“It’s the russian satellites I’m telling ya; Pumping gamma rays into the ground.”

“Ah, yes I believe that’s enough.”

“-and the corporations are using the corn to control the population but the chemicals and the gamma rays… Huh?”

“Thank you for your help sir, this has been ...enlightening but there is a lot of work to be done to make things safe.”

“What? Wait, you can’t just-”

The man stood up from his chair and walked around the desk, making noises of agreement while firmly herding the conspiracy theorist out. The door was closed and latched before the nut job could get too worked up.

Once the raving conspiracy theorist had been evicted, the agent slumped against the wall and let out a long sigh. The man’s body language and expression radiated pure, exhausted relief. Some people just weren’t suited to jobs that dealt with that many people.

Agent Wesson should look like an average man. He wasn’t overly muscular, nor was he fat, thin, tall, short, or any other easy description for body types besides average. He was the type of person who was so indistinct that he looked vaguely familiar to anyone. Almost all of his scars could be hidden by a long sleeve shirt and the right haircut.

Perhaps if his body language changed a bit he could blend into a crowd easily, but as he was no one would think him normal. The atmosphere around Agent Wesson was that of a man who had seen it all. It wasn’t a nice feeling, watching him; it was like being told how sheltered you were.

Despite the atmosphere of experience he was unable to deal with the public easily. Customer service was unpleasant even for him. Agent Wesson put a hand over his face and sighed slowly. After a moment rubbing the bridge of his nose he pressed the button on his earpiece:

“Alright, come In.”

The door behind his desk opened, and two of his fellow agents entered. Thanks to their suits and sunglasses they looked remarkably similar, although one was significantly bulkier than the other. The two men held a case between them. If what they brought him was real, then it was the source of whatever had caused this eldritch event.

It was S.O.P to have two agents accompany suspected eldritch objects at all times. These things were often incredibly dangerous. Of course, that meant there were plenty of people who would pay quite a bit for them. The agency didn’t want to risk one of their own endangering thousands of lives because they got a little greedy.

“What did you find?”

The two holding the case fidgeted a bit.

“You aren’t going to like it.”

Agent Wesson frowned and grumbled;

“I never like it, it comes with the job. Now show me.”

The case was opened by one while the other put on a pair of gloves before removing a sheet of paper and a handful of half-melted birthday candles.

The two stood before the man with nervous expressions as he sat there, dead silent. He stood there staring, looking angrier and angrier. The more muscular of the two leaned over and whispered in the other’s ear.

“I told you they weren’t what we were looking for. Thanks to you we just bothered Agent Wesson. They’ll demote us to hazardous disposal for wasting his time.”

The other shook his head and whispered back.

“Wait.”

It took a second before Agent Wesson quietly exploded. He slammed a fist into the desk and began muttering out a list of swear words. He spat them out like each word tasted foul. After a moment he started repeating himself and his swearing petered off. He seemed to droop for a moment. He eventually returned to his firm image of professionalism, but his dignified image was already destroyed.

“Okay, so it’s highly likely that this incident was a result of Ethan Bridges. No, it’s practically guaranteed. That… It’ll make things safer if nothing else.”

“Um… Sorry sir, but who is Ethan Bridges?”

The thicker agent got a long sigh from his partner and Agent Wesson as an initial reply.

Agent Wesson ran his hand down his face before replying.

“Well first you need to remember A.S.E.T was founded to deal with the dangers of summoning eldritch or channeling eldritch powers. Eldritch are more dangerous than supers and mages. For a long time there have been groups that hunt cultists and eldritch artifacts because of that.”

The bulky agent looked unconvinced.

“I know they are dangerous, but more than mages and supers? Didn’t Blitzdrive knock over a city a couple years ago?”

“Yes, but despite ‘knocking it over’ South city has recovered quite well. Part of that is because of the charity work of North city, and East city. The biggest reason the city recovered so easily is because there wasn’t that much damage in the first place, relatively speaking. I’m guessing someone in the government wants to use the event to push a few super related laws or something. Either way, the event got portrayed as a lot worse than it actually was.”

Wesson stared off into the distance before blinking a bit and continuing.

“Eldritch events of that scale, they aren’t something that the government likes to advertise. Entire towns can disappear. I’m not talking about the town being razed to the ground and the people killed. I mean that the town disappears without a trace. The roads leading to the town will just end, with the land ahead being an empty field… Or worse.”

The two agents glanced at each other uncomfortably as Wesson spoke. He had this look in his eyes that gave his words a certain amount of gravity. Eventually he sighed and the dark mood eased slightly.

“Luckily, that rarely happens. A.S.E.T has perfected techniques for tracking and preventing large eldritch works like that. Most of the time we know where the sites of power are and can set up ambushes and stakeouts during full moons, winter equinoxes, and other special times.”

Agent Wesson poked the candles with a pencil. He used the eraser to push them into a row as he spoke.

“There are still dozens of events that we don’t catch in time. They are mostly small, but occasionally some nutjob manages to cause a real mess. That’s when we get missions like this; clean up and investigation. It lets us track down the nutjobs who did the ritual, if they are still alive of course.”

The agents nodded. Aside from the news that towns had gone missing, even agents as green as them knew this much. There was no way they would be sent out on missions if they didn’t.

“A.S.E.T only has a few major eldritch threats that we haven’t managed to stamp out. The Cult of Living Ink. The Acolytes of Mars. The Fishers of the Abyss. There are a few cults and organizations that we are having trouble with. The only major ‘threat’ to A.S.E.T that consists of a single person is Ethan Bridges.”

That was a shock to them. They had heard of the other organizations before. Even normal citizens knew about the nutjobs called the Acolytes of Mars. What surprised them was the idea that one man could go up against an international organization like that of A.S.E.T at all.

“Wait, like actually one man? You don’t mean one man running companies and organizations behind the scenes?”

A vein twitched on Agent Wesson’s temple as he stared off into the distance. His expression warped into pure irritation before he calmed down and looked the agent in the eye.

“Just one man. I’ve been chasing him for years and he never uses anyone for his schemes. The most involved anyone ever gets are the people who get dragged into the messes that he makes. They never know anything either. The man can disappear like a ghost and reappear on the other side of the planet. That isn’t what makes him dangerous though.”

The newer agents listened with rapt attention to their senior mutter dourly. Agent Wesson was living legend even amongst his equals in A.S.E.T. That made the way he had spoke all the more jarring.

“How is he still alive? The cults can make up for the dangers of summoning eldritch with numbers. How could a single man survive multiple summonings? The odds are astronomical…”

“He’s been active long enough that even if he only used a single, perfected ritual he would still be affected. From what we’ve learned he has used multiple kinds of rituals and summoned all sorts of eldritch beings… He should have died, gone insane, or much worse years ago. That’s the problem.”

Agent Wesson paused for a moment. The lean agent seemed to come to a realization. He muttered his theory as a question, as if he wanted to be wrong.

“...He has some method of making rituals safer?”

“That’s right, although safer for him may not necessarily be safer for the world. Either way, all sorts of cults, terrorist organizations, governments, and other groups want his methods.”

The heavier built agent looked puzzled at this. He pointed at the paper covered in unnerving scribbles.

“Wouldn’t it be fairly easy to reverse engineer his methods with the evidence that’s been gathered over the years?”

The agent reached for the paper as if to read it.

“Don’t touch that!”

He pulled his hand back as if the paper burned him. He looked terrified as he stared at Agent Wesson.

“We’ve had analysts look at Bridges’ work before; nearly all of them needed therapy at minimum. Have you met Hakim? He was in charge of the evidence we recovered from the event in seattle…”

The agents shifted nervously as they avoided looking at the paper directly. Hakim was a great guy, and everyone knew how smart he was. Unfortunately his mannerisms upset people. The man had covered every square inch of his office with maze-like drawings scribbled with different writing instruments. His eyes would also move independently in a way that made eye contact uncomfortable.

Both the agents had attended a few of his lectures during training and remembered how he had a stack of papers that he was writing on during the class. Someone had looked at them after he left and discovered he had made incredibly intricate mazes while speaking. What was stranger was the fact that he had never once looked at what he was drawing.

Despite this, everybody liked Hakim. He was and is quietly intelligent and understanding in a subtle way. That kind of person was normally welcome anywhere. Nowadays though, people avoided him like the plague. Aside from being a living reminder of the dangers that came with the job, Hakim was creepy to be around. He knew it too, even if he couldn’t help it. The poor man had no control over his reflexive maze drawing and the eerie way his eyes moved. Many people tried to keep including him, but it had become like an act of charity.

He wasn’t the only one who had gained mental scars from the job, but he was one of the very few who hadn’t retired after receiving ‘eldritch induced mental damage’ from working in A.S.E.T. As bad as Hakim had it, he was actually quite lucky. His case could be considered a mild one. Plenty of agents had been left gibbering messes that would spend the rest of their lives in insane asylums. By comparison, being ostracized by his coworkers wasn’t nearly so terrible a fate.

“Just… just put it back.”

The agents nodded and returned the papers and candles to the case. When the case clicked shut the two newer agents relaxed while Agent Wesson regained a bit of his former dignity.

“We’ll call it in. The investigations, have they found any other traces?”

The two shook their heads quietly. Agent Wesson grunted sullenly.

“Good, then it’s almost certainly Ethan Bridges’ work. He doesn’t leave much damage on the surroundings. As long as the random crap he used as ritual items is destroyed we can close this case.”

“I-isn’t that good?”

“No! I mean… Yes, it’s just frustrating.”

The other agents excused themselves and left. Despite his lack of dignity, they hadn’t lost any respect for him. The idea that the legendary Agent Wesson was engaged in a battle with such an abnormal foe fed their sense of hero worship, and elevated him even higher in their eyes. It didn’t take long before their memories of his discomposure warped to paint him in a much better light.

It didn’t take long before rumors of Agent Wesson’s perseverance in the face of an impossible opponent spread among the newer agents. His determination and frustration were praised while his undignified outburst was ignored. Agent Wesson was too respected for something so minor to mar his reputation.

He wouldn’t have cared if it did though. As much as he hated his job, in the end it was all that mattered to him. His unwavering focus and determination in hunting down cults earned him the respect of others, but it was also why he couldn’t care less about whether he was respected or not. He would fight the cults every step of the way, and he was bound and determined that not even Ethan Bridges would escape forever.