...did she accidentally unleash this effect on the whole planet down there.

Oops? Tegan and the Doc are probably freaking out right now. (And also everyone who is less endeared than her by creepy surreality, which is most people.)

Tablet stops recording and goes back in her Pocket. It is not rated for reentry.

Cameron's landing strategy involves steeply angled (very very very large, the largest she can make) shields, alternating in sequence. (At this speed, even the smoothest real materials would rip her arms and legs off with the friction at even slight contact, but her shields don't have that problem, and she can lean into them pretty hard.) She kicks on her hoverskates and skids from one shield to the next, bleeding off momentum in a long boxy spiral as she enters the atmosphere, until eventually she spots what she hopes is the right town, far below her.

The effect fades quickly once she's no longer directly underneath the hole, except for things seen through the column, which still appear as they did when she was inside the effect.

The landscape below seems to match what she remembers, except... as she approaches, something about the town itself seems – off.

And then she gets closer, and she sees. Half the town is consumed in a wild overgrowth of – something – mirroring the crystal growth of the glass ceiling. It's a tangle of organic and manmade shapes and materials: a red brick tree, with shingles for leaves; hinged brass vines, with chitinous chimneys in place of leaves; a fence whose slats are – enlarged human fingers?

The sounds of screaming, from the intact part of the town, gradually become audible over the rushing wind of her descent.

Well fuck.

Cameron descends out of the sky, orbs blazing.

She'll blast anything out of her way that encroaches on her while she... hmm... First, she'll try to use her healing to rip an intact person out of the finger fence?

Nope. This finger belongs to an organism that naturally grows in the shape of a fence.

Also, when she gets low enough to see the ground (womb) in the gaps in the overgrowth, it becomes apparent that the whatever-it-is has spread out over the surface: objects in the distance look normal, but anything within about a foot of the ground has the (truth, metaphor, joke) distortion apparent.

Cameron skids to a stop on top of a shield, rather than set foot on the crazy directly.

Maybe the fence isn't a person. She's going to assume the fence isn't a person, for now.

She casts her Scanner Pulse spell, a radar snapshot of all (conventionally) living things for miles around, in perfect fidelity.

There's plenty of living things in the area. Some of them aren't shaped like it. That windowframe made of linen and straw, for example.

The crazy doesn't extend for miles, though it does seem to have spread out some way beyond the falling column. Within it, three of the living things – all relatively close to the edge of the affected area – are recognizably human in both form and composition, though they have strange things growing on, in, and through them. None are likely to survive without help, though only one is urgent on a scale of minutes.

There are also a few dozen dead humans, recognizable by the shapes formed by their not-yet-dead individual cells; most of them appear to have died of something growing through a vital organ, or of being crushed under something heavy.

That wooden torso full of vinegar and organ-sized beets, half-buried in the earth, was probably never human.

At least it is localized. Still annoying, but not a disaster.

The three survivors come first. Cleansing Aura, out just far enough to cover the warped area. She floats three orbs down and burrows them into the warped terrain to reach the trapped townsfolk. Her weapon is part of her. Touching someone with an orb counts the same for her spells as touching someone with her hand.

Combined with Cleansing Aura, Perfect Incarnation is truly comprehensive, amplifying the cleansing effects to macroscopic scales. Anything outside the body that's not supposed to be there is severed with prejudice. Anything inside the body that's not supposed to be there is shoved out of existence. In half a dozen seconds, all three are in perfect health.

She switches from Perfect Incarnation to Inviolate Stand. Each of the trapped townsfolk find themselves suddenly floating, their limbs able to cleave noisily through their surroundings without sensation or effort.

Then she withdraws her first three orbs, and sends out all four, shoving them down to the closest four corpses. She repeats the process, restoring those bodies to life and health, then leaving them protected by Inviolate Stand while she moves on to the next set.

Miraculously, none of them have deleterious brain damage, though that one woman with tiny jellyfish in her cerebral-spinal fluid came damn close.

Cameron withdraws her orbs from the last of the restored townsfolk and brings them back into range of her body.

This next part is going to push her limits. Inviolate Stand is almost free when the target isn't moving or being affected by outside forces. She is about to affect them with a whole lot of outside force. But it should be within her capacity, if barely.

Cameron casts another Scanner Pulse, shoring up her mental map of where exactly she needs to clear away enough crazy for the townsfolk to get out, and then fires all four orbs off at the horizon. Concentrating, she forces the path of the orb blasts to curve upwards, loop back, and streak downwards into the warped terrain on top of the tightest groups of healed townsfolk.

They are protected. The terrain isn't. Cameron's mana screams in protest but she doesn't drop any of the spells.

And now there is an area of blasted barren earth (lid) with a few dozen frightened naked people variously on and above it. The ground tries to regrow, slowly, but there's no sign of the riot of forms and materials from before... no, that's not quite right. Near the victims, the ground occasionally takes on slightly more human characteristics: an outcropping of bone (bedrock) here, an elbow-shaped mound of earth there. The growth is somewhat faster (though not particularly more human) around a few of the victims (friends).

Cameron re-summons her orbs and sends another volley of blasts out, freeing the last few townsfolk and clearing a path to safe ground.

She dispels the Inviolate Stand spells and shouts, "Run already! Go!"

Horizontal shields appear in front of them, quickly followed by more shields forming low bridges over the more stubborn spots of warped terrain.

Perfect Incarnation doesn't heal mental trauma; a few of them need some further encouragement to get up and start moving rather than curl up in a ball on the ground and cry. Those that do run don't have her experience with running on the slippery surface of her shields, and there's more than a little falling down.

Soon enough, though, everyone's out. There are people who hadn't been caught in it distributing heavy blankets and hot cider, and some of the victims are being led away by family or friends. Not everyone is talking; of those who are, some are pointing at Cameron.

Cameron leaps down and hauls the stragglers to their feet herself.

She figuratively grabs the first blanket-distributor who looks like they know what they're doing and asks, "Who's keeping a headcount? Is anyone still missing?"

Even as the asks this, she casts another Scanner Pulse and looks for where everyone is congregated.

Most people are gathered a little ways past the border on the side toward the busier part of town. A few stragglers are trickling in, victims who came out of the area on the other side and had to go around, and volunteers helping them along.

"We don't know yet who-all was in the area, but we're putting the word out. If anyone's still missing, we'll know in a day or so. What was that?"

"A day or so?" Cameron repeats incredulously. "If anyone else is still in there, they've already been warped beyond recognition, beyond my magic's ability to detect. Only three of the victims I pulled out were even still alive when I got here. In a day there won't be anything left to recover, let alone revive."

Cameron is already moving as she says this. She rushes ahead to the gathered crowd, leaping up onto a shield to stand above their heads. Is anyone obviously in charge? What about familiar faces? Are there any of those in the crowd?

Nobody's obviously in charge. Doc is among those helping; Simon is among the victims. Tegan is nowhere to be seen.

Cameron sends an orb floating over to touch Simon, and heals him. She sends orbs all through the crowd, healing everyone who's obviously injured or mutated, in sets of four.

"Doc!" Cameron calls from above him. "Do you know who'd know who's still unaccounted for?"

There is a certain amount of apprehension at the unfamiliar magic flying around touching people, but it becomes clear soon enough that the effects are benign.

"Cameron! We have almost everyone who lived in the area or we knew to have been there, but we don't know who might have been passing through. The only person we're sure is still missing is Tegan."

"Shit."

Cameron dispels her shield and drops neatly to the ground next to the Doc.

And she starts casting Scanner Pulse in rapid succession. Closing her eyes, she focuses on the mental image of the surreal area, picking over it more carefully this time. She's not looking for human shapes. She's looking for active nervous systems. Anything that could be a brain in function if not in form. If there's anything left that she can save, that'll be it.

"I'm looking. I already got everyone out that my magic detected. If I missed anyone, it'll be because they're warped beyond recognition, but I might still be able to find them. Was she close enough? That it's likely?"

"Yes." He swallows. "I went home, after you – left – but she wanted to wait there for you. She would've been near the – center."

There are nervous systems. Most of them were probably never human; several are recognizable as cats or goats or insects; a few seem to have grown in no recognizable pattern. There might have once been someone at the center of that fleshy kudzu.

Scanner fucking Pulse. The center. The center.

That... those are neurons, connected, and there's enough of them to make a human brain, maybe.

"I'm going back for her."

Cameron turns away from the Doc, leaps into the air, and runs across a series of shields back to the crazy.

She crosses the warped terrain, homing in on the connectome tangled up in the center of the chaos.

Inviolate Stand is more than enough to rip apart anything in her way, flickering the spell on and off. Move, then break stuff, then move, then break stuff. Until she reaches what's left of Tegan.

PERFECT FUCKING INCARNATION!

Yep, that's Tegan. Alive, even. Her newly restored eyes are filling with tears, and she reaches up wordlessly toward Cameron.

Cameron scoops her up.

Tegan is... raw and fragile. Like a hairless clone fresh from the tube. It's the best the spell can do, building a body from just genetic information without an image template to follow.

Cameron carries Tegan out of the surreality zone at a steady walking pace.

"Tegan. Do you remember who you are? Do you remember where you are?"

"...camr'n? hiii. yeah."

"...thinkso. yeah. knowuyam. whoyam."

"where? m. ...under. you, were, up. 'nthen, ehh, evvythn – wibbly?"

She stretches her jaw, a motion a little like yawning. "Talking. I know who, an' where. You got me."

"I've got you."

And now they're back with the rest of the townsfolk.

And there's the Doc again. Hi, Doc, here's a Cameron with a super-naked-and-bald Tegan in her arms.

"I got her out."

"Hii doc." She seems to be checking him out.

"Thank you," he says sincerely to Cameron.

To Tegan, "I need you to stay awake while I check you over. Are you hurting anywhere?" He doesn't reciprocate her gaze, but neither does he make any move to discourage her.