The problem with Millhaven turned out to be that half the town was upside down.
Not metaphorically upside down, like when people said their world had been turned upside down by unexpected news. Literally upside down. The entire northern half of the town—buildings, people, livestock, and all—was hanging from an invisible ceiling about twenty feet in the air, with everyone's hair and loose clothing dangling toward the ground.
"Fascinating!" Corny breathed, immediately pulling out his notebook. "A localized gravitational inversion field! The magical theory required to achieve this level of spatial distortion—"
"How long have they been like that?" Kael asked the town guard who had met them at the gate.
"Three days," the guard replied miserably. He was one of the lucky ones still on the ground, but he kept glancing nervously upward where his upside-down colleagues were trying to maintain some semblance of patrol duty while hanging from their feet. "Started when old Fergus tried to fix his leaky roof with a magic scroll he bought from a traveling wizard."
"What kind of scroll?" Al asked professionally.
"'Universal Home Repair Solution,'" the guard read from a crumpled piece of paper. "'One size fits all problems. Simply activate near area of concern.' Cost him five silver pieces."
Al winced. "Oh no. Those are illegal in seventeen kingdoms. Completely unstable general-purpose enchantments with no safety limitations."
"Fergus's house was the first to flip," the guard continued. "Then it started spreading. Anything that touches the flipped area gets flipped too. We've lost half the town, including the mayor, the constable, and our local wizard."
"Where's the local wizard now?" Kael asked, scanning the upside-down section of town.
The guard pointed to a figure hanging from a second-story window, robes draped over his head, frantically waving a wand that kept dropping things upward. "Wizard Pemberton. He's been trying to counter-spell it for two days, but every time he casts something, it just makes the effect stronger."
"Stop him," Kael said immediately.
"What?"
"Tell him to stop casting spells. He's making it worse."
"But he's the expert! He has a degree from the Royal Academy and everything!"
"Al," Kael called. "Is the upside-down getting bigger or smaller?"
Al studied the shimmering boundary line between normal and inverted gravity. "It appears to be expanding at a rate of roughly six inches per hour."
"And how long has Wizard Pemberton been trying to fix it?"
"Two days," the guard said.
"So it's been getting worse for two days while he's been trying to fix it," Kael concluded. "That means he's doing it wrong."
"You can't just tell a Royal Academy graduate that he's doing magic wrong!" the guard protested.
"I can if he's doing it wrong," Kael replied reasonably. He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted up at the hanging wizard. "HEY! WIZARD MAN!"
The upside-down figure looked down at him (or up, depending on your perspective) and called back in a muffled voice, "Are you here to help? I'm attempting a level seven gravitational restoration matrix, but the thaumic resonance keeps interfering with—"
"STOP DOING MAGIC!"
"What? But I need to counter the inversion field with precisely calibrated—"
"YOU'RE MAKING IT WORSE!"
"That's impossible! I'm a certified practitioner of advanced spatial manipulation theory!"
"Then why is it still getting bigger?" Kael called back.
There was a long pause. "...Magical problems sometimes take time to resolve properly?"
"AL!" Kael turned to his own wizard. "Is he doing it wrong?"
Al was studying the magical distortion with professional interest. "Well, general-purpose enchantments like this are essentially uncontrolled magical reactions. Trying to counter them with structured spells is like... like trying to stop a forest fire by throwing more wood at it."
"So he's doing it wrong."
"Technically, yes."
"WIZARD PEMBERTON!" Kael shouted. "STOP DOING MAGIC RIGHT NOW!"
"I am a Royal Academy graduate!" came the indignant reply. "I don't take orders from... whoever you are!"
"Fine," Kael said. He hefted Skullsplitter and started walking toward the boundary line between normal and upside-down.
"What are you doing?" the guard asked nervously.
"Fixing it."
"You can't fix magical gravitational inversion with an axe!"
"Have you tried?"
"That's not how... nobody's tried because it's obviously impossible!"
Kael reached the shimmering boundary and examined it carefully. The line was perfectly straight, running right through the middle of the town square. On one side, normal gravity. On the other side, everything fell upward.
"Interesting," he murmured.
"What's interesting?" Beltran asked, staying a safe distance back.
"It's like a fence," Kael said. "Magic fence, but still a fence."
"A fence?" Corny scribbled frantically. "What do you mean, fence?"
"Well, you've got the normal side, and you've got the broken side, and there's a line between them. Just like a fence between two fields."
"That's... actually not an entirely inaccurate metaphor," Al admitted grudgingly.
"And what do you do if you have a fence you don't want?" Kael asked.
"You... take it down?"
"Right." Kael raised his axe. "So let's take down the fence."
"Wait!" Al and Corny shouted simultaneously.
"You can't just chop a dimensional boundary!" Al protested.
"It's a manifestation of pure magical force!" Corny added. "Physical weapons can't affect non-corporeal energy constructs!"
Kael looked at them patiently. "Did you say that about the sky holes too?"
"Well... yes..."
"And were you right about the sky holes?"
"...No..."
"Right then." Kael turned back to the shimmering line and swung Skullsplitter directly at it.
The axe blade hit the boundary with a sound like breaking crystal. For a moment, nothing happened.
Then the entire magical effect collapsed like a house of cards.
Every upside-down building, person, and object suddenly flipped back to normal orientation with a series of loud *thunks* as they all landed right-side up again. The shimmering line vanished completely.
Wizard Pemberton fell out of the second-story window and landed in a conveniently placed hay cart.
"There," Kael said, shouldering his axe. "Fence is gone."
The town square was full of people picking themselves up, checking for injuries, and generally marveling at being right-side up again. Someone started cheering. Soon the entire crowd was applauding.
"How much do we owe you?" the guard asked, grinning widely.
"Standard rate for magical problem solving," Beltran interjected smoothly. "Six hundred gold."
"Six hundred?" the guard's eyes widened. "That's... that's our entire emergency fund!"
"Was half your town being upside down an emergency?" Beltran asked politely.
"...Yes."
"Then it sounds like a fair price for emergency services."
As the guard hurried off to fetch the money, Wizard Pemberton climbed out of the hay cart and approached them, looking somewhat disheveled but deeply curious.
"Excuse me," he said to Kael. "I'm Pemberton, Royal Academy Class of '89, specializing in spatial manipulation theory. Could you possibly explain how you just accomplished what should have been theoretically impossible?"
"I hit the magic fence with my axe," Kael replied helpfully.
"Yes, but the underlying theoretical framework—"
"There was a fence. I chopped it down. No more fence."
Pemberton blinked. "But the magical principles involved—"
"Don't really matter, do they? Town's fixed."
"But... but my seven years of advanced magical education..."
"Probably very useful for other things," Kael said encouragingly. "Just not this thing."
As they waited for their payment, Al sidled up to Kael. "You know, I'm starting to think you might actually know what you're doing."
"Course I do," Kael replied. "I fix broken things. Always have."
"But how do you know which approach will work?"
Kael shrugged. "Same way you know anything. You look at the problem, you try something, and if it doesn't work, you try something else."
"That's... that's actually sound empirical methodology," Corny said in surprise.
"Is it?" Kael asked. "Well, that's nice."
The guard returned with a heavy purse of gold coins. As Beltran counted their payment, he grinned at Kael.
"So, my friend, ready for the next town? I hear there's a place called Riverford having trouble with their water supply turning into butterflies."
"Water turning into butterflies?" Kael considered this. "That sounds like a weird one."
"Weird ones need hitting?" Al asked.
"Probably. But we'll see when we get there."
As they walked out of Millhaven, now considerably richer, Kael reflected that this really was turning out to be an excellent career choice.
Behind them, he could hear Wizard Pemberton frantically questioning the townspeople about exactly what they'd witnessed, trying to fit it into his theoretical framework.
Kael figured he'd be at that for a while.