So, here he is somewhere in the coal country of northeastern Pennsylvania, under an inaudibility spell (which he vastly prefers over invisibility), sneaking up toward the cabin by an isolated airstrip where some foreign mages (with their small plane that's undoubtedly souped up with a few spells) have smuggled in a winged snake.

The snake's got some other official name - probably a couple of them - but Gene just calls it a winged snake.  What he does remember from the briefing, though, is that the snake is venomous, and has enough magic to bite you through personal wards, and is at least a near-person... and that the mages' friends in their home country have been known to use enslavement spells on these snakes.

("At least a near-person" means that if it tells him its name for itself, then he won't be shocked.  But it also means that probably it won't be talkative, or else his Chief wouldn't have said the "at least near-" part.)

Gene doesn't care to get bitten by a snake.  Especially not an enslaved snake.  So, he's going to try to keep this from being a fight in the first place.

He sends a wind toward the cabin... and nothing moves.

Not even the moss hanging off the shingles.

It's shielded.  And stupidly shielded at that!  All the good shield spells would've left the moss outside!  The muggles would notice, if any of them were here!  The mages here are endangering the whole Masquerade!  He could indict them for that in itself!

So, facing some rogues who can cast some powerful shields but don't have good judgment about how to cast them, Gene rethinks his tactics.  He can't sneak in.  He's got to get in and then overpower them or convince them to surrender at once, before they can unleash the snake.  Or any other magic, but the snake's what he's most concerned about.

Well, he's got one idea for that - he learned it from one of his partners when they were taking down a big nest of dragonlets last month in northern Alberta.

He touches up his personal wards; they'll be useful against the mages even if not against the snake.

Then he takes an ax out of his backpack, and pauses thoughtfully.  The land here knows coal-mining... an ax isn't quite the same as the pickaxes miners use, but it's sort of close and it'll have to do.  But he can at least use a drill-spell; the land's memory will strengthen it.

So, an ax in one hand and his wand in the other, he twists his wand to unleash the Aethereal Drill Spell against the house's shields.

The shields collapse in half a minute, probably sending off all sorts of alarms inside.  But Gene is right behind it, smashing through the window with his very physical ax.

It gets through, and he doesn't see any tripwires - even without the land's memory, most mages' tripwires would react to magic a lot better than to physical force.

Inside, one of the mages has his wand trained on the door; another is ducking with spots of blood on his shirt and head from the shower of glass Gene unleashed.  They quickly swivel to face Gene.

But the other two are doing something with a large wooden shipping crate on the other side of the room.

So Gene raises his wand to his head and casts:  "Regal Awe."

He remembers what Clara did with it in Alberta, how it had all the dragonlets sitting at her feet and how even he and Alex were staring at her like a queen and hanging on her every word.  He's counting on it to stop the rogues here -

But nothing happens.

"Stop!" he cries.  In Alberta, that would've had everyone under the spell freezing in place. 

But here - they keep moving and actually shoot a spell at him -

He wastes a few seconds boggling.  How'd the spell fail so utterly?

And then, his plan in tatters, with the snake's crate about to come open, he can only cast some useless sleep spells and a thunderclap that might just possibly do something -

The guy who got hurt by the glass cringes again at the thunderclap.  But a moment later, he's undone the last clasp and thrown the shipping crate open!

And Gene is backed against the wall, with his only escape somehow to climb back out the window or somehow think of some spell that'll actually work -

The winged serpent slithers out and raises its head high, wings outstretched.

The rogue mage next to it holds out his hand, pointing at Gene, giving it an order in some language Gene doesn't speak. 

Gene sends a desperate cutting spell at it, but it's deflected by someone's shield.

And then the serpent moves -

- and it sinks its fangs into the rogue mage next to it.

The enslavement spells had failed too.

After that, one other rogue mage got herself killed while trying to re-cast the enslavement spell, and the other two retreated out the front door (along with Gene) and were happy to surrender and work with Gene to fix up the window and cast some new wards and make sure that winged serpent stayed inside.

Gene texted (over the muggle network; hey, it worked) explaining what'd happened.

The Commission replied that they were short on Patrolmen (as always), so did Gene feel up to try negotiating with the snake?

Gene replied, "Remember Thule?"

The Commission did indeed, apparently, remember Thule.  They quickly assured him Patrolman Marvin (who spoke a few more languages as well as having some diplomatic successes) was on his way; he could deal with the snake while Gene came back with the prisoners.

He did, and then was granted leave for at least a day or until the next case came... which probably meant it'd be a day.

But he had a day.

Without any other adventures to distract him, as he walked around Niagara Falls (the home of the Commission), his confusion resurfaced and filled his head.

Both the enslavement spell and the Regal Awe spell had failed.  If it'd been just one, he would've guessed someone had miscast, but both?  Was there something weird about that part of Pennsylvania that hadn't appeared on any maps?

Gene has never been one for theory.  And, his directors have never been ones for explaining theory in ways he'll get.

So, he finds his footsteps leading him to the one scholar who had gotten him past the exams... Aeslin Sellon.

If Aeslin's anything other than human, she isn't telling.  But if she is, then she has to have some really good eternal youth spell that a lot of people would pay a lot of money to get.  (Both muggles and mages.)  Either that or she's a Fay who wants to look like a teenage girl.  Or she likes how she looked when she was a teenager, and re-casts illusion spells every day rather than get used to a new face for herself.

Whichever way, everyone says she'd be one of North America's best magical researchers if anyone could convince her to keep focusing on a problem long enough to not just solve it to her own satisfaction but also write up her solution.  As it is, she produces some really great bespoke artifacts, occasionally writes things up, and once in a long while helps tutor people... including Gene.

(He asked her why, and she shrugged and said he reminded her of someone.  Who that someone was, and whether they were human or Fay, and whether she'd met them or just read about them in one of the books filling every empty wall of her library, she didn't say.)

She shoots Gene a frown.  "What is it?  I'm in the middle of collating some seventeenth-century geomancy records."