Terry came to again sitting in the church, back in his chair. He shook his head and his vision didn’t take nearly so long to clear. Rachel was kneeling in front of him with genuine concern on her face, her eyes wide which was saying something.

  “Are you ok? Like, are you still you?” she asked quietly. She really looked afraid.

  Terry had to admit, Rachel was pretty. She just wasn’t Delores. That was just a standard no one could ever reach for him again. He hoped Rachel could find someone some day. He realized he was specifically not thinking about what he’d seen before Banjo hit him again.

  “I’m ok.” He said, voice shaky. “I, uh, I don’t think I like your dad.”

  She smiled. Holy crap those sharp teeth!

  “I’m glad. Daddy usually destroy's people’s minds and devours their souls. I’m glad you survived, Terry. It's pretty impressive.”

  Terry looked around. The church was still empty except for them. New chains were around his legs and seemed attached to the rig on his chest. Thicker chains, and more of them were everywhere on him.

  “Where’s Banjo?” he asked.

  “He’s going to wake up Father T’gmut. He’s the high priest of the Order of Dagon. He usually sleeps until service every night. He also said he was going to check on the witness.” She looked worried at that last part.

  For some reason, the idea of a night time mass with these people was almost as horrifying as Rachel’s father had been. He needed to get out of here. He needed to get Rachel out of here. He needed to find Delores and Elton.

  “Rachel, if you can get me out of these chains I can take you out of here. I promise. No marriage or children required.” He said to her, trying once again to project a confidence he hoped he’d start to feel again himself.

  “I wish I could.” Her expression dropped into sadness. “Even if you got me out of here, daddy still has a grip on me. There’s a part of him wrapped around my soul. The one time I left, he squeezed it until I nearly died.”

  Terry’s face contorted in rage. The yellow branch thing on the plate began to glow even brighter. Rachel looked at it curiously and leaned back.

  “Rachel,” he asked, “what IS this thing on me?”

  The fish-girl tilted her head in a sharp move that, again, reminded Terry of an animal.

  “That’s the Elder Sign. It came from the stars with our maker. In this case, it is supposed to weaken the will, but it also absorbs and redirects mana and spells.”

  She looked at his face then, a horrible knowing look in her eyes.

  “It hasn’t done anything to your will. You must be keeping it really busy with mana for that to happen.”

  The bottom of Terry’s stomach dropped out. He felt like his insides were going to fall into a pit. Someone said it out loud. Dottie and Ernest didn’t talk about it. HE didn’t talk about it. There was a whole side of his family he never looked into because of this. He didn’t want to be a cleric.

  “Don’t say that.” He told her quietly.

  “I mean, you're the one that's making it-“ she began.

  “PLEASE don’t say that!” He begged her. Terry had to calm himself. He was panicking.

  She nodded. She looked confused as she did it, but she nodded. Some new Dagonite came in from the back door manhandling a, well, a man. Just a regular older man. He was bald but hairy with a beard, and was definitely a normal human.

  “Hi!” the man said. “Name’s Scott! How ya doin’?” The Dagonite led the man, Scott, to the back corner of the church and the man stood there placidly, grinning at the both of them. Terry saw the man also had a plate on him with an Elder Sign. It was strapped to his stomach. Something about the placement bothered Terry. EVERYTHING about this bothered Terry.

  “Uh, hi.” Terry answered. He looked back to Rachel and she looked sickened.

  “The witness.” She said, sounding disgusted.

  “Is that how I should be acting? With this thing on?”

  She nodded. Terry swallowed. He let his rage build again, the sign glowed, and he DID feel more in control of his faculties.

  “Something tells me “witness” is a bad thing. For us? For him?” Terry asked.

  Rachel nodded.

  “He has to witness the start of the marriage." She said. "Then he has to be dispatched to the Old Ones to tell them. He is the gift for the Blessing. So I'll be fruitful.”

  Terry watched Rachel’s face shine with a reflected yellow light as he started growling and the Sign made a sizzling sound. Her eyes widened as she watched it. He was trying everything he could to break this thing, but all he did was tire himself out after a few minutes. Maybe if he had tried learning about this part of himself instead of denying it, pretending he was a holy warrior instead of a wizard, he’d be able to do something. He hated lies. He hated lying. His entire life was a lie. TERRY LINGAL was a lie.

  It was then that Banjo came back in with a short, scrawny little fish-man with thin hair and the biggest eyes Terry had ever seen. His eyes looked like they were creeping around to the sides of his head. Banjo was guiding the man by a shoulder and the little man had a bottle of whiskey in one hand and a pale leather book in the other. He was dressed in a mockery of priest’s clothes.

  “T’gmut,” Banjo said in his deep bass rumble, “Uncle Zeke says you need to get this done fast. This boy's got a strong will, but he’s honorable. You get him married, he won’t leave her behind.” The little man, T’gmut, nodded.

  Terry felt sick. Banjo was right. He was far too honor bound for his own good. If this marriage happened he knew he’d have to live with it until they could figure something out to get them both out of it. He also had a feeling that these vows would be binding in a way that would make that extremely difficult. This went beyond law. This was old magic.

  With great difficulty, Terry stood from the chair. The best he could manage was a hunched stance. He awkwardly took little shuffling steps up to the “priest”. Terry spoke with as much passion as he could muster.

  “Hey, little guy, you can’t DO this! I’m already with someone! I don’t love Rachel! This isn’t right!”

  Father T’gmut gave Terry an unsteady look, looked at Rachel, then back at Terry.

  “W’smatterchu? She’s got big ol’ boobahs. Shaddup and get ready ta make babbies for Dagon.”

  Terry had gotten right in the little guy’s face as he spoke. No one had thought twice about it, so when Terry whipped his head up and head-butted the little dude, it came as a complete shock to everyone. Particularly Father T’gmut.

  Delores drove Thunder at break-neck speed through the streets of Dans la Bouche with Elton hanging on to her for dear life in her usual spot. She had no idea what use the bard would be except in recording the proceedings, but she’d rather not do this alone. She was afraid and didn't mind admitting it. She was afraid she wouldn’t find Terry before they sacrificed him or something, and that he'd be dead when she found him. She was afraid she wasn’t going to be enough to save him and that they'd be an army of fish mages to fight her. Every self doubt she had rose in her mind to try and freeze her blood.

  She mentally punched them as hard as she could and kept thinking about what Terry had told her about bravery. You acknowledge the fear, then do what you need to anyway. Fearlessness is for the foolish and the dead, she thought. She grinned and that grin became grim. She’d had to run over four men armed with knives so far on the way. She'd thought it would be a problem but, every time, Thunder hopped into the air, landed on them, and burned rubber until there wasn’t face enough on them to identify who they’d been. She was going to buy this scooter the prettiest god damned basket and bell after this.

  Finally she saw it. The church was on a road called “Church Street” which made her feel incredibly stupid for not looking for that at the start. The street literally ended at the church. It looked old and waterlogged like every other building here. The difference was, this one looked like she could grip the wood and squeeze, and the material would disintegrate. She stopped the scooter and stared. Elton looked around from behind her at the building.

  “Like, what are we going to do now?” he asked, sounding for all the world like Shaggy.

  Delores stared at that dirty, fading green door on the oddly domed building with it’s bronze eye over the entrance. She looked at Thunder and scratched his headlight. The scooter turned and looked at her over his shoulder, as it were. She nodded at him. He nodded at her.

  She hammered the accelerator. Thunder held himself back. The rear wheel spun faster and faster and he seemed to hunker down, like he was getting ready to pounce. The whine of rubber on tarmac was piercing.

  “Fuck it.” She said.

  Thunder sprang forward, already at top speed. Delores ducked to get behind that shield Terry had attached to the front. Elton saw her, and did the same. Within seconds they crashed through the terminally softened wood of the door and a chain on the other side went flying.

  They slid sideways to a stop and Delores jumped off the little scooter in the center aisle between the pews. She threw her hands up and immediately drew in enough mana to do some damage. She looked at the scene before her. There was a fish-priest getting up from the floor and rubbing his head, an admittedly beautiful fish-woman, a normal guy with a beard wrapped in chains with that stick symbol on him grinning like he was high, and. . .

  There was Terry. He was wrapped in chains as well with the same symbol on his chest. He was struggling in the grip of the largest man, or fish-man, she’d ever seen. The more Terry struggled, the more the branch thing glowed. It’s absorbing mana, she thought.

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  “Elton! Get somewhere safe and-” she looked and instead of cowering, the bard was staring at the fish-girl and she seemed to be looking at him with a curious and confused expression. Then she tilted her head with a snap motion and Delores jumped.

  “Elton, snap out of it and get somewhere safe, damn it!” Elton shook his head and dove behind a pew and she sighed. It’d have to do.

  “D!” Terry shouted to her. “Don’t hurt Rachel! She just wants out! We can-”

  The giant looked down at Terry and growled. She could feel it through the floorboards. He lifted Terry by the chains on his back and smashed him face first into the ground, before turning his attention to the fish-girl, Rachel.

  “YOU WERE WARNED ABOUT SCHEMIN’, GIRL!” he bellowed and took a threatening step towards her.

  Delores wasted no time. She attuned something frigid inside her, spun for momentum, and threw a glowing blue ball at the hulk. It hit with a splash and the man-beast fell backwards surrounded by ice. He let out a yell as he fell but he didn’t shatter like she’d hoped. He was too damned thick.

  She sensed the mana flare before she saw it and spun her left hand in a circle to shield herself from whatever it was. The unattuned mana absorbed whatever it was the drunken little priest had thrown at her. She began hurling minor traps and cantrips, but he seemed to be just as fast as she was with counters. She spent a brief moment to sense his capacity and shuddered. More than her. This might turn south quick.

  The wooden bench nailing the priest in the back of the head came as a shock to her, and when she looked at who’d swung the thing, it was Rachel. She looked at Delores.

  “Are you Delores? He called you “D”, but. . .”

  “Yeah. Rachel?” The girl nodded.

  “Great. We’ll get you out of here and-“

  “No,” the fish-girl said sadly, “you won’t. You’ll get your boyfriend out of here. I’ll stay here and face the consequences.” She looked down at Terry, who was shaking his head and trying to stand back up with all the chains on. “He’s too good for this.”

  Delores saw more Dagonites entering from the back room so she jumped on a pew and threw slicks on the ground under them. She heard shouting in the streets. She spun to face the door that she and Thunder had broken, and the little scooter took off and started running the monsters out there over. He started spinning on his front tire in the vehicular equivalent of a roundhouse kick. This could only go badly for her in the end, and she knew it.

  When she turned back, a Dagonite had pushed Rachel to the floor and drawn a sword with a serpentine blade. Delores threw a fireball to stop him, but the priest was already back on his feet and countering it, pulling it toward himself and the shield he’d made. How tough ARE these guys, she thought. Delores was already defending from a lightning bolt the priest had cast, when she saw something that made her reevaluate everything Elton had told them about himself.

  As the Dagonite raised that horrible sword, Elton Beasley, self-admitted coward and cynic, ran and hurled himself at the man’s midsection and carried the both of them flying against the back wall. Delores shook her head. As she prepared a more stable shield, she heard ice crack and the giant stood up.

  “FATHER! Say the damned wedding rights and finish this. They don’t have to agree to nothing. I’ll kill the witness.”

  WHAT?! Delores heard the priest start chanting something that sounded like everything wrong in the universe condensed into speech. The giant strode to the bearded man who smiled up at him. His fist hit the mans head, then the wall behind leaving nothing but a red mist and a lurching in Delores’s stomach.

  Then something exploded.

  Terry heard the fight, but was barely able to pay attention. He had finally gotten to his knees and, with Rachel’s sudden help, to his feet. He looked around them at absolute chaos.

  “I’m sorry, Terry.” Rachel said. “I hoped your friends could get you out. I’m so sorry.”

  A sickening sound like a watermelon being smashed by a mallet broke through everything, and when Terry saw what had caused it, everything seemed to freeze. He killed him, Terry thought, Banjo has killed the witness. His name was Scott, and he killed him. It froze Terry to the marrow. Something thick and evil hung in the air around him. It was a nearly visible, oppressive force. He could feel it now. See it. This entire room, no, the entire TOWN was the antithesis of who and what he was. His soul burned with sudden purpose. His fear and doubts washed a way in the cleansing fire of righteous fury.

  He mentally called on the help of God, his father, his mother, and anything else in the hereafter that would help him. At that point he didn’t care if it was the Greenman himself, as long as it helped him end this. He felt something inside him fill, stretch, expand, and fill again.

  The entire plate-chain combo around him glowed the molten red of the forge. The symbol seemed to melt out of the plate and with a scream, Terry flexed and the entire thing exploded sending molten metal everywhere. One large fragment of the plate hit Father T’gmut in the side of the head and sent him screaming to the floor. There was a sickening sizzling sound and a smell of burned fish. Terry remembered the man’s eye was mostly on the side of his head. He wouldn't be a problem for a bit.

  He saw Delores look at him and immediately start hurling magic at the other Dagonites now that she was free to. Terry did the only thing he knew to. He pulled out his sword, the blade already glowing almost too brightly to look at. He held it in both hands. He could see something flowing into it from around him. FROM him. Below the blade a sickly green light seemed to drip down and away from him like too-heavy smoke. It evaporated before going too far. The air around the blade and himself felt cleaner. More normal. Right. Cleansed.

  He looked, and Elton was wrestling for his life with a man holding a sword. The bard was no fighter and the fish-man was winning. Thunder had run back into the church and was running over or slamming into any monster-men he could to keep them away from Delores. Delores desperately spun around, unleashing electric death as fast as her hands would allow. The look of desperation on her face was obvious and broke his heart. His fighting with the blade would only prolong the inevitable. They’d be overwhelmed soon enough. Someone else would know magic. They’d unleash Rachel’s father. They'd kill Elton. They'd kill Delores. They'd kill Rachel now.

  But he could fix this. He could fix this in one act. He just had to believe. He had to accept what he was. Just once.

  “Rachel?” he said, already feeling tired. She was staring at him and his sword.

  “Yes?”

  “Did you mean what you said about wanting away from here? Do you not want this any more? If I freed you, would you really leave here? If you could?” He had to be sure.

  She looked like she was going to cry, but no tears came.

  “Yes.” She said in a near whisper. “I never want to see this place again. But there’s nothing to be done.”

  “Yes there is.” He said to her quietly. “Because I’m the hero, and heroes save people, Rachel.”

  He close his eyes. He felt something. There was a force there with him. Something more than himself, but still himself. Whatever it was, it was smiling on him. This would work. He could feel it. He stepped forward and kicked over the blasphemous pulpit of Dagon and stood in the space it had occupied. He began to speak quietly, gaining volume and intensity as he went.

  “Father,” he didn’t know which father he meant right then and he didn’t care, “I’ve asked a lot today already. But this town is a blight. It is an abomination. It is everything I came out here to fight in one place. I ask you to use me as a vessel of retribution for all that is good in the world. Let me save these people I love.”

  His words had the effect of stopping everyone in the room dead and they all turned to him. There was something here with him and now they could all feel it, he thought.

  Terry held his sword up, just like that cartoon George and Sean showed him. The memory of the three of them together grounded him.

  “SMITE MY ENEMIES!”

  A bolt of lightning ripped through the roof and struck Terry’s sword. His entire being glowed for a moment like some divine entity, before arcs of electricity shot out of him in all directions. Wood disintegrated and screams filled his ears. He blacked out.

  Delores found herself lying at the bottom of a deep, square, dirt pit. She was in the basement of the church, but there was no church. There was no basement. Just the hole dug out for it and the tunnels leading off to the rest of town. As far as she could tell, she was completely untouched by whatever spell Terry had cast. Jesus, the power, she thought. Thunder was running around in circles, confused. Elton looked like he was in shock, but otherwise unharmed. Rachel was by Terry looking at Delores with concern, and Terry was. . .

  Delores scrambled to her feet and ran to his side. He was unconscious. He’d done something devastating again, and this time she’d felt, seen, and understood exactly what he’d done. She placed his head in her lap like she had done those months ago and began pouring mana straight into him, but this time there was too much missing. The gulf inside him was terrifying. There was barely enough for him to hang on to this side of life. Her hands shook. What she was doing could take hours. She already knew she'd take those hours if it killed her. She would not let him die from his own ignorance.

  “What did he do?” Rachel asked her. Delores looked up and had no idea how to tell her something like this.

  “He freed you. That’s all you need to know.” Delores watched the girl as she kept her hands on Terry's face. Rachel looked around the empty cellar space.

  “My father’s gone. I can, well, I CAN’T feel him touching my soul.” She swallowed. “Thank him for me when he wakes up.”

  Elton had walked over and was standing over the three of them as Delores continued to channel mana into her Errant.

  “Y-you could come with us.” Elton said and Delores. He sounded more innocent right then than she'd ever heard him sound. Like a child. Rachel stood and looked at him with that off-putting head tilt.

  “No. I don’t know where I’m going, but I don’t think he needs me around to remind him of this.” She said as she walked up to Elton. “You attacked someone armed with a sword when he tried to kill me. He could have killed you. He nearly did kill you. Why did you do that?”

  Elton suddenly looked confused himself. He looked at Terry, then at Rachel. Because Terry infects people with heroism. He makes us all want to be heroes, Delores thought.

  “It just seemed like someone needed to.” He said, and Delores smiled. Coward indeed. Rachel kissed him on the cheek.

  “Thank you.” She said.

  “Rachel,” Delores said, “I need to get Terry somewhere safe where I can help him. Do you think you can find us a car we can borrow and we can leave it somewhere for you? I hate to ask but. . .”

  The girl smiled.

  “I’d be happy to. It wouldn’t do for you to have to hold him up on that scooter. I’ll be back.” As she passed, she rubbed Thunder on his handlebars, which he waggled at her, and then leaped straight out of the hole like a frog. Delores looked at Elton as he watched her sadly.

  “She's pretty." Delores said.

  "Yeah." Elton replied. "Pretty and leaving." He said as if he'd known her for days. Of course he'd fallen head over heals. Cynics were just people who cared too much and been scarred.

  "You're a poet.” She said. "Of course this would happen to you. It's LIKE poetry."

  “If my life is poetry,” he said grimly, looking down at the two of them, “it’s written by Poe. Is he going to be ok this time?”

  She looked down at Terry herself. He was pale and cold. His core continued to drink every drop of mana she could pump into him, but he still didn’t stir. This would take much longer than before. She needed to get him to the only safe place she could think of that was close enough. She didn’t think New Orleans would help his mental health and Terry would raise too many questions with Taz.

  “Elton, he’s killing himself when he does this. He doesn’t realize he is, but that doesn’t change the fact that he is. I think we can move him, but he's not completely stable. I need time.”

  Elton looked sick at that. The front a a GMC Starcraft van peaked at them over the lip of the pit and honked. Rachel jumped out and into the pit.

  “The town is still up there. Every THING is still there. My people are gone. There’s just scorch marks everywhere one of them had been standing.” She said as she landed.

  “I’m sorry.” Delores told her. She wasn’t sure she actually meant it, but she wasn’t about to tell Rachel she was glad her family had been wiped out.

  “I’m not.” Rachel said with a horrible, toothy smile. “My family didn’t deserve to continue. I’ll help get him out of here. I’m stronger than I look.” She said to Delores. “Will he be ok?”

  Delores looked at the girl.

  “Hopefully” she said. Rachel looked at the both of them.

  “I think he loves you.” She told Delores. “I can’t imagine what else could have let him survive. He’s hung on to something this whole time that let his mind survive my father. Besides, he would have grown to hate me if we'd married. Please take care of him. He's special.” Delores just stared as the fish-woman picked Terry up and leaped from the hole.

  Delores didn’t say much as Rachel helped the rest of them out of the pit. Even Thunder. Delores helped Elton load the scooters into the middle of the van. Thunder was very patient and gave them no trouble. They laid the back bench seat out into a bed and laid Terry down on it. Delores covered him with his sleeping bag. They both watched as Rachel hopped off into the bayou alone while they were occupied. The mood in the van was somber.

  “Where am I going?” Elton asked Delores as he sat in the driver’s seat, staring after the girl.

  Delores took his phone and plugged an address into the maps app. He looked at it, and looked up at her.

  “You’re sure about this?” he said.

  “No.”

  She walked back to sit beside Terry on the makeshift bed and began to try and keep this man that might actually love her alive. They hit the road.