Like slipping through a tunnel towards the center of the earth, Nora felt it ungulate with growing anticipation. Her skin prickled with heat and cold and a wet sheen that glimmered like stars until she blinked and found herself surrounded by an expansive horizon of pinewood dreams stenciled after her favorite storybook.

The Snakes Song.

“Lost child, lost child, where have you gone…” something in the trees called out to Nora. The moon hung low but offered no light, only an uncomfortable warmth and humidity that left her mouth parched for water and body relief for the heat.

If she squinted with what little glimmers the stars above her offered, she could make out the mass in the distance, a form in between the trees that stretched as far out as the horizon did.

“Whistle if you can and I will find you lost child, I will show you the way home…” The creature hissed out honeyed words like the snake in the grass.

Nora looked back at her palms and wondered how long she’d been running, fingernails caked in dirt and blood.

It only felt like a moment, shifting from moment to moment and yet she lost a bit of her past as time passed. There were scrapes on her legs and bites where the creature must have taken from Nora what it did not deserve.

She felt so tired, so drained as the scenes drifted, her short legs crunching down on dry leaves and twigs looking for an escape in the infinite expanse. Curling in a ball would do her no good. The creature was always close, always a hair's breadth of finding her when she was down and-”

Nora gasped for air and frantically scanned her surroundings for enemies.

For anything.

I’ll take and take… the creatures voice hissed in her mind.

But she was the one that had gotten the last laugh in the end.

She took a deep breath and centered her mind on the tasks at hand. Discovering the wizards strength was the main priority. To do that she’d need to enter the town and thus, the fuckers field of influence. Which didn’t bode well if he was as described by the terrified folk as puppeteering the bodies of those Ernesto had brought with him.

Infiltrating the town without discovery then. An alarm spell that covered the entire perimeter of the town would be unwieldy.

But if he were a level 6? Child’s play.

Nora shook her head. Overestimating her opponent was just as bad as underestimating them. No need to psyche herself out. Moreover, this was some isolated town in the middle of the swamps. If I were looking to take over a place like this, I’d have enough hubris to think the towns folk that escaped my initial powerplay would pack up and leave or call for help.

Meaning showing up as a stranger was out of the question. A disguise spell then.

The needling of a headache was forming prematurely. Anticipating the doublespeak already.

Nora went to her bag and cleared the living room of the furniture, placing what she could at the edges of the walls or in the other rooms altogether.

On the floor she began to paint a circle with white chalk, an elaborate pattern with a smaller circle formed of unified salt and crushed stars. She set out the objects in her bag on the three points at the threshold, a mirror, a mask, and a makeup palette she’d bought on a whim several years ago.

“I call upon the services of this contracted partner, Jane. Come forth and emerge in this circle's center for there is work to be done as outlined in our bond.” Nora reached out through the astral plane and tethered the contact she was searching for.

She blinked and Jane appeared in the circle. An unassuming face, inconspicuous and unremarkably plain with no discernible features to speak of. A person so average they did not exist and could not because they weren’t a person.

“Oh…” Her voice was playful and sounded very much like the mechanical telephone operators of the past now given life to speak outside their scripts, “To what do I owe the pleasure, Nora?”

Nora’s face remained neutral, “I only ever call you to cast your spell on me. Perform your task and be dismissed to your corner of the world.”

“How cruel you can be! And after all we’ve been through together!” Nora knew that Jane was feigning theatrics and yet a part of her felt the threading of a false memory beginning to form in the back of her mind, attempting to piece together a moment that never was.

“Jane,” Nora’s voice was terse, “Stop it or I’ll have to terminate our contract.”

The creature stopped mid wailing and picked itself up from its exaggerated stance into a still, standing position, “As you wish. I expect payment after your mission has ended. It’s always a treat when I know you’re looking to me for an answer to a problem.”

Jane swiped her hand over Nora and she felt a veil billow over her form, clinging to her body like a hot blanket.

“Good luck, my love.” The creature waved Nora goodbye and disappeared into a puff of smoke. She could feel her stomach churn, the lingering unease of her body not quite falling into place where everything was meant to be inhibiting her initial movements.

Nora would settle into her veil in a bit. It would have been smarter to wait for the sun to be at the edge of the horizon but she’d take advantage of the wizards mindless puppeteering.

She placed her items back in her bag and walked into the fresh heat of the afternoon. Respites found her at each shade of a tree as she walked on the beaten path towards the edge of town. The path broke out into a cracked road left to decay at the fringes and she followed it along until finding the first signs of civilization in an abandoned gas station.

Further up the road began to trickle in suburban houses of insipid design, lawns left overgrown to reclaim what humanity was happy to have thrown away so many years ago.

She felt her skin prickle as she crossed the wizards threshold. The world was suddenly steeped in stark contrasting colors, the humidity and heat fading away in favor of an ambient wind that carried the scent of an ocean too far away to be real.

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Nora felt her stomach turn. How long had he taken over this town that he was able to manifest this far out?

Or he was just much more powerful than she was capable of handling.

The likelihood of leaving this mission was rising higher and higher. She kept moving towards the center of town, observing the oddities presented by the mysterious wizard's domain. Phantoms inhabited the idyllic houses, their structures switching between the dilapidated reality of a ravaged Earth and the idyllic suburbia they had in mind. The same houses pasted over the real ones regardless of the size and shape of the house, contorting the world into his image.

“Hello neighbor!” A middle aged man called out to her from his lawn while watering the grass with a garden hose.

Nora returned the wave while saying nothing.

“Hello neighbor!” The man called out again at where she once stood with the same passively pleasant and vacant stare. She stopped in her tracks.

You have to do something! You can’t leave him like that.

But what if he’s not real. What if-

And if he is? You have to make a difference, however-

And what if this fuck is alerted of her presence? Saving one guy over a whole town? Jeopardizing the whole infiltration operation and dismissing the spell she had to stomach involving that thing…

Nora kept walking, making a mental note to at least unshackle the man before she left the threshold. The wizard's headspace became more and more involved the deeper she went into town with a mix of ethereal phantoms and hijacked people pantomiming suburban living for potential onlookers.

The chimes of an ice cream truck in the distance made her feel nostalgic even though the closest thing to an ice cream truck she had in her own slice of boredom were the blade sharpeners and local food vendors that traveled across the community for families incapable of making the trek to the store.

Hitting an intersection, she looked on either side of the road and spotted the worn steeple of the town's church sitting just outside the wizard's field of influence. How long it’d take for the wizard to conquer the land, she couldn’t say for certain but the impact he was having this far out bode ill for their chances.

Few pedestrians noticed her as she walked through the town. Those that did look at her did so with vacant stares, incapable of scrutinizing her disguise and pinning down details that would make the effect fade. A luxury really finding a variant of a spell like this.

She was tempted to open her inner eye and cut the belabored search but held back. Doing something like that would definitely let him know someone was looking for him.

It was becoming more and more unnerving however that through all of her walk across town she hadn’t spotted-

“Let go of me! Let go!”

Nora turned her attention to the voice, their yells carrying across the murmuring town and found the source two streets over.

The vacant stare of a man and a woman with iron strength grip on a fidgeting pre-teen girl. The tyke was kicking and screaming, flailing her lower body around to kick at their knees or find purchase with a ground they refused to drop her onto.

“Let go! Let go! Let go!” The girl yelled as she swirled her body around. The older adults continued to walk towards a mysterious location with a vacant stare and hollow smile.

You can’t wait.

Nora’s body was on the move before she could fight against the impulse. She ran towards the two as she whispered her incantation, her muscles suddenly swelling with a burning fury and desire to inflict pain against these thralls.

But in the pit of her stomach she knew she couldn’t dispense a beatdown without killing the host.

“Don’t worry kid!” Nora assured the small child as she reached with her arm and squeezed the man's wrist. She felt the crunch of bone in her palm and the warm sticky touch of blood as the grip became slack, allowing the girl to yank herself free from the first bond.

In the same breath, Nora jabbed her open palm towards the woman and crushed her wrist beneath her fingers.

Neither of them made a noise or showed signs of pain, staggering to either side of them as if registering a parcel was missing from their hands.

“Brace yourself!” Nora grabbed the kid and felt her leg muscles coil up. Aiming for the church, she bursted with kinetic speed, taking long gaits running through the empty streets. She turned back to see if the assailants were chasing them and found them stuck in a physical loop; they’d motion towards collecting the girl with outstretched hands before rotating on their feet to walk towards their point of contact and back again.

She’d gotten lucky but if this wasn’t a typical directive for them, the wizard would be on alert now.

“You planning to let me go or what?” The girl wriggled in Nora’s grip, a thick southern drawl equal parts annoyed and fearful.

She released the kid from her grasp and gestured at the church, “Father Vincente and the rest of your town hired me to handle the situation back there. You should count yourself lucky I was around when they were dragging you over to who knows where.”

It looked like the girl was going to argue but held her tongue, patting her jeans clean of dirt that looked like it’d clung onto the fabric for years.

“Anna-Marie!” A high pitched shrill from within the church proceeded with a heavyset white woman running towards the child. Nora saw a number of other folk, the congregants of the Father’s flock, gather around the entrance to see the commotion outside. “Anna-Marie, where’ve you been!” The woman snatched the poor girl into a tight embrace before turning her attention to Nora.

The woman sneered, “What did you do to my poor child?”

Oh boy.

“I saved your kid from getting dragged to some place by the other townsfolk back there.” Nora looked at the woman with a bored expression, the effects of her spell beginning to fade from her body.

“My little Anna-Marie wouldn’t think of going out there alone!” The mother proclaimed the infallibility of the girl. Nora looked at the girl and although she squirmed in unease at the dramatics unfolding, she didn’t offer an alternative story.

Kids will be kids.

“I don’t have time for this nonsense. I need to speak to-”

“Oh no you don’t! You put my little girl in danger and you’re going to apologize for using her like that.” The mother irrationally snarled.

Nora raised an eyebrow, “You’re fucking dreaming if you think I’m gonna apologize for saving your kid,” She turned her cold gaze at the kid, “And don’t you think I won’t be interrogating you about your trip outside.”

The white woman’s face grew red hot but she stormed off back into the arms of the congregants. She’d simmer and stew over her anger but she had her child back and there wasn’t a chance in hell she’d have been dumb enough to mess with a ‘spooky heretical witch’ in any capacity.

The Father emerged from the church and approached Nora, “My congregants caught me up to speed. You saved the Hilston girl?”

Nora kept her gaze on the backs of the two as they were subsumed back into the church walls, “Yeah. And her mother wanted me to apologize for taking her out there.”

The Father merely rubbed the bridge of his nose, “Yes, Miss Hilston and her progeny share quite a… fiery personality.” A real struggle to find positive qualities in them then. “Annabelle Hilston and her husband Jonah Hilston were devout churchgoers since before the Schism, since before I even bared the wheel for the town of Cienmiedos. Was warned then about their passions and I find myself surprised by their behaviors even now.”

“Girl got fucking lucky I was even around to help when I did. Cost me the infiltration mission but I can’t sleep right thinking an injustice might be carried out that I coulda stopped if I committed to act.” Nora admitted. An inability to sleep without weighing the moral considerations of her actions towards the greater good; just another benefit to the power she’d claimed for herself. “If you don’t mind, now that my previous plans have gone up in flames, I’m gonna try to salvage this stage of planning however I can.”

“What exactly have you planned?” The Father asked.

“I need you to give me some time alone to talk to Anna-Marie. While you’re soothing their souls or whatever, point me in the direction of someone else who was around when the wizard walked into town. Anyone that had extended exposure to ‘em.”

If she couldn’t observe the neurosis from a distance, a second-hand account would have to do.