There was an uncomfortable passion within her heart that came from the calm before a battle. The anticipation of blows upon blows, spell upon spell, to unleash all the fury inside of her, that endless pit that promised to never go away.

Nora monitored the church a small ways out to see if they’d give her warnings any consideration but stormed off impatiently after seeing the chains of hesitation and deliberation take over the town. She’d done her best to explain the situation to them but it looked like they were just as willing to let that poor woman be a sacrifice for the rest of their mistakes and inactions.

Fucking cretins.

If not for them, then for her.

“I know!” Nora barked out to the wind. She knew.

The account from the girl wasn’t as worthless as she had expected it to be. The Incant she was dealing with was much more powerful than her through sheer will alone but Ernesto clued her on the intruders weakness; he was a self-taught wizard.

The bulk of these upstart psychopaths often flew too close to the sun, gobbling up spells around them until they burned themselves out or became bright enough for another upstart or AWW rep to swoop in and snuff out the light.

But there were the other half of psychopaths, the kind in front of her now, the kind that were willing to bide their time. The sort of folk were either methodical killers slowly amassing strength until a slip up made them a priority target but that wasn’t this wizard's method of approach. Taking over a town and stealing children screamed spectacle and desperation.

They didn’t have any other options for the power they were looking for.

As far as arsenals went, the man was displaying slotted spells only. Nothing like a book or disk or anything really to cast an inscription out from and that sadly meant he fell within those murky parameters of action she’d given the Father earlier.

How far she stuck her neck out for those fucks, she wasn’t sure, but at the very least it wouldn’t be a non-starter to crash the ritual and rescue the kid from this mess.

“Hey lady,” Nora brandished the knife in one hand and readied her stance before finding the ball flapping black soot above her, “I’ve got a message for ya from my Master.”

The imp was carrying a glossy envelope in its thin hands. Upon seeing the purple AWW wax seal on the envelope's contents, she grabbed the document from its hands and tore it open.

“Nora Antierre. Do what you can to evacuate the town. Prevent the ritual to the best of your abilities. Help is on the way. Tyler Hansin, Level 6 Incant, is cleared for this quest.” Nora read over the document again and searched around for anything else.

“This it? No time? No bonus?” Nora asked the imp but the knot in her gut told her the answer.

“I don’t know, lady. You got the message so I can piss off.” The imp snapped its fingers and exploded into a puff of black dust.

She punched a nearby wall and felt the layer of brick indent slightly under the force. Responses like these were the worst kind, offering her enough hope to place her best foot forward with the reality that this fucker was going to swoop in and take the credit without any work being done.

“Son of a bitch…” Nora grit her teeth and jogged towards the center of town. She’d dive in alleys and doorways as ghosts or the bound patrolled the city streets. The ghosts were still aimless but there was a sentience to their actions she’d caught as pantomime, a performance for potential intruders to be lulled into a false sense of security maybe? The bound moved in stilted manners and were much easier to avoid.

The sound of copper in the air and the sweet scent of baked flour and apples caught her attention. The only change she hadn’t noted on her initial investigation of the town was the lack of scent across the landscape, a sterilization of smell that made the odor wafting to the west a simultaneously appetizing and revolting affair.

Her steps had since slowed to a crawl as the patrols became denser, each turn towards the center of the community being met with close calls with the enemy. The things moving around weren’t even the bound hostages anymore, just masses of flesh given vague humanoid forms moving across the city streets, leaving lumps behind wherever they walked.

Her skin crawled with each thump on the cracked cement.

The atmosphere had changed too. The sun felt colder and more distant even though it was only meant to be a quarter to four. The colors around her were muted as well, as if the domain he’d established on the land was vacillating between the facade and the grim reality underneath.

“Just give me an answer!” Nora ducked into a building and scanned the street for the source of the outburst. Tilting her head slightly while crouched underneath a grocery store window, she spotted the Lazy Laz’s sign Gabriella had pointed out and found the invader looming over a bound child in a wooden chair.

“Tell me how many there are back there!” Laz raised his hand to hit the child and caught himself, mumbling something under his breath. He laughed and turned away from the child, “I’m so sorry, so so sorry. I know kids love sweets right? Of course they do. You’ll tell me what I want to know, you’re just hungry.” The man’s voice sounded cracked and Nora noted the presence and weight of two other voices in the sentence.

“I have to find that guest too,” Nora’s body clenched, “Oh that town has been quite a thorn in my side. I didn’t think anyone like me would show up so quickly.”

Neither did she but stranger things had happened to Nora.

The man inspected the boy in the chair for a response, an answer, anything and was found disappointed. His eyes turned glassy when he looked vacantly at the sky and conversed with himself some more. As quickly as the outburst and anger had occurred, that face was blank as the man's legs carried him into the diner.

Nora took the chance to crawl to the side of the grocery store entrance and made a thorough glance of the perimeter for her next move. Her inner eye flared with all the magical activity around her as if trying to see with the sun right next to her face but she confirmed her target; a series of threads hung over the boy as if his body were being puppeteered.

She muttered the incantation of Righteous Justice and felt her body well up with power. Good. Her knuckles turned white with the vice grip on the borrowed knife as she funneled her energy into the weapons hilt and pulled her arm back.

“Return.” Nora commanded the knife and it responded with a vibrating hum as the weapon was loose from her fingertips. The blade severed the air on its path, cleaving each string above the boy with ease before finding its return path back to her open palm.

The boy was wide eyed, scrambling towards her direction with all the energy he could muster.

“Come on kid, come on…” Nora reached out her hand for the boys-

Run!

Nora exploded the earth underneath her feet as she stepped backwards through brick and mortar into the back of the building. The boy pivoted in its movements towards her, the shambling becoming more pronounced with each lump of flesh that fell out of it.

The bastard was employing an illusion of some kind and her sight wasn’t strong enough to pierce through that veil. The kid didn’t look any different with her inner eye and looked vacant in person. He merely shrunk in size to accommodate for the illusion as each pound of flesh dripped off the body.

Nora spun up a maelstrom in her hands and unleashed it on the golem. The gale crushed the creature's body against a brick wall and out of the building, mangling its limbs around like an open air blender.

Fucking Incants. Was he expecting this? Did he know?

She shook her head, looking at the swarm she’d avoided until that point began to crawl out of the woodwork and towards the commotion she’d caused.

It was all hostages. The first layer of threats were the bound civilians caught in the town's attack against the wizard with the second layer consisting of phantoms and more manipulated meat. Nora fumbled in the back of the building to find a stealthy exit and ran down the back alley towards a glossed up apartment building half a block out.

The adrenaline and the spell pumping through her system kept her riled up and alert for the slightest movement, the notion of threats. This was burning time though. Time and energy she’d desperately need if facing the wizard in a one on one.

She rationalized her thoughts while skulking in a locked bathroom.

“He’s self taught. No sign of inscribed spells. Flesh knitting, dead movement, puppeteering type of command, and now an illusory spell. Level 4 minimum,” Nora muttered under her breath as she aligned what she observed with the information she’d been given, “The body is his specialization. Most skill around that, most experience shown around that meaning he was harmless at range.”

That fact didn’t matter. She’d need to get up close and personal in the diner, the location the ritual was obviously being held in if she wasn’t such a fucking-

“He doesn’t want a fight. The minions are the show, the bulk of the display of power but none of the spells displayed are offensive by nature. Not to an Incant, anyway.”

It was in the Shield spell, or the lack of one in his case when Ernesto pulled out that wand as Gabriella described. Most learned and self-respecting wizards and witches expecting to scour the states for bounties pick up the fundamentals in case of contact with another Incant (and the violence that often ensues).

For the AWW, it was a Shield spell, a projectile spell of some kind, a Mage Armor spell, and an illusory spell of some kind. At least an offensive option peppered with infiltration or subterfuge capabilities and a strong defensive component.

And this wizard showed none of these qualities. Someone at his level would be smart enough to test her defenses to see if she was from the AWW. Or draw her out to assess her competency as an opponent.

Every moment we wait…

“Yeah, yeah, ‘is a moment the downtrodden remain in injustice’. I fucking get it, but I can’t exactly rush in without thinking this part of the plan through. No point in justice if we’re dead.” Nora spoke out loud.

Even if this Incant was up to that Level 6 bracket, without those fundamentals under his belt or the experience with fighting another wizard, all he’d be is a hardy meat stick.

She could handle this. She’d handled worse.

Nora rose from the cold white tiled floor and kicked open the door. The sound and air of the outside world rushed in to greet her with the pitter patter of foot patrol shambling up and down city blocks to find her and distract her from the main target. She made a mental configuration of the layout as she’d seen it while running for cover and dashed.

Creatures were alerted of her presence but they were there and gone in the blink of an eye and a vault over a wall. They were too slow as each leg pushed forward with localized shockwave power towards the fabricated diner. She held onto the air whipping through her fingers as she ran forward and hurdled a palm sized hurricane into the windows of the diner.

Shattered glass pinged on the ground as sparkling rain, revealing the depraved physique of a middle aged melted man in front of a frantic and wide eyed boy struggling desperately against the restraints on his chair. The man was startled and yelled something out at Nora but the blood in her ears were boiling over all unnecessary distractions.

The child and her locked eyes in one moment and in the next, she’d tightened her grip on the wooden chair and barrelled her momentum through the countertop of the restaurant and out onto the other side.

The shambling things and the hostages were beginning to crowd around the commotion. That moment of hesitation allowed all the ongoing fatigue simmering in the background to come into a boil.

Her bones ached and the mana in her body was hitting its critical low. Anger had gotten her this far but it never was one to bail her out. With vanishing windows of opportunity for escape, she tore into the air for another swirling gust and casted it out in front of her when the group of assailants condensed into a critical mass.

She felt the last of her energy cast out into the world as the remaining length of her internal spell kicked on fumes, propelling her a few extra feet forward before nothing but grit and indignation gave her the strength to lift the boy out of that situation.

Nora ran. She kept running and running as the sun set on the town of CIenmiedos. She ran until her feet gave way and her body tumbled to the ground, scuffing her body and the boy gripped tightly in her arms. She heard an unsatisfying crunch but got up and kept running until the suburbs around her morphed from the two toned picturesque hellscape into the rundown grunge she’d come to expect of the Floridian boonies.

Her body ran on autopilot as she cut the boy free from his restraints and blearily focused her attention on the doorway long enough to etch crude runes at the entrance.

The bed was in reach but the floor came to greet her first.