Delores finished eating at the Chinese place across the street from The Green Circle. Standing there, she realized she had a mistake to correct. She’d needed to get away, to break down, but she had left too quickly. She walked back across the street and reentered the little book store.

  Taz was already watching the door with a smile on his face.

  “It’s jarring, isn’t it?” he said.

  Delores leaned on the door.

  “It is. I’m sorry I left so quickly. I just-“

  “Don’t even worry about it, Ms. Cody.” Taz dug under the counter and pulled a book up and set it down. “Before you go, you’re taking this with you.” He said.

  “What is it?” she asked as she approached. He shook his head.

  “Nothing to talk about now. I wanted you to know how happy I am for you though. It’s not often you get to be there when something like this happens. Are you alright?”

  She nodded. She really was feeling better.

  “Yeah. The Chinese helped.” She smiled at him.

  “Good! There are two important things I need to talk to you about now that you’ve reached this level, as your adviser in the Circle.”

  “Are you?” she asked. She’d never thought about that. He was just Taz and joked around with her.

  “Delores, despite the moose-hat and dick-bell I take this job very seriously. You always come to me and I take pride in that.”

  She nodded.

  “Ok. Hit me.”

  “First off, I know you weren’t aware of this, but now that you’re above a 4 you can actually hold onto mana at all times safely.”

  “What?” she said, mouth agape.

  “Yeah.” He said. “As long as you aren’t walking around filled to the brim constantly you can just store it. Most of us do. It provides advantages. Mage sight. Mana sense. Natural affinity to the Earth. Stuff like that.”

  She just stared at him.

  “Try it.” He said. “Just enough to cast your favorite minor spells a couple of times.”

  She did. She drew mana into herself and it settled inside her and, while it wasn’t as euphoric as holding her maximum she felt alive again. She also realized something. She could feel mana inside Taz. Her eyes grew wide.

  “I feel it.” She said in a whisper. Taz smiled.

  “You can also get a feeling for my capacity if I pull in enough. It’s kinda like the chi-sense thing in DBZ.”

  “You are such a weeb.” She said.

  “I know.”

  He held up his hands and she saw on his right hand he wore several wooden rings. On his left, several metal ones. He inhaled as he drew in mana. It was something the older mages did, this breathing while drawing mana. A weird habit they’d learned from the elves when-SHE FELT IT. She could feel his potential. He was stronger than her. Not by nearly as much as she thought. She didn’t know anything exact. Just a feeling she could compare to herself. He let most of it go again and put his hands back on the counter.

  “Second,” he began, “you can choose a specialization if you want. Besides counter-spells of course.” She put a hand over her mouth.

  “I have no idea what I’d specialize in.”

  “Well, no rush on that. That’s why I have this book for you.” He picked it up and held it out. It was a mass market paperback and it appeared to be a printing of two books by the same author. “Specialized Magic for Fun and Prophet” and “Generalized Magic for Fun and Prophet”.

  “I don’t know what to say.” Taz just smiled in his weird almost grimace. It was just his way of smiling though.

  “Delores, I’ve appreciated you coming here. I’ve enjoyed your company. I look on you as, well, maybe not a student, but someone I want to see succeed. I say that so I don’t seem like a creep when I tell you my business card is in there with my personal number on the back.”

  She raised an eyebrow at him. He gave her a flat stare back.

  “You’re going to have questions in the coming months. When you do, you call me. Any time. Day or night.” He paused for a minute. “There’s a lot of things I could say right now but most of them would make us both a blubbering mess. I’ll just say go out there and make me proud.”

  It didn’t work. She came around the counter on the verge of being a blubbering mess and hugged him. When she stepped back he had his glasses pushed up in an attempt to hide his bloodshot eyes. She got back on her side of the counter and picked up her book.

  “I gotta go, Taz. I can’t thank you enough. For everything. I’ll call. I promise.”

  “I hope whoever you’re working with appreciates you.” Was all he said. Well, until the dick-bell rang. He looked at it and just smirked. Delores arched an eyebrow.

  “What’d he say this time?”

  Taz just shook his head.

  “He just wanted to say ‘good luck’.”

  Terry had been wandering for hours. He’d paid no attention to where he was going. All he did was watch the people of New Orleans part around him. Occasionally another knight would eye him suspiciously. He started to think it was Elton's blogging and social media posts. Anti-knight graffiti seemed to be everywhere he looked. Mothers pulled their children closer if he got too close to them. He stopped to help someone who’d fallen down and they pushed him away mumbling an expletive for all knights everywhere.

  The world seemed dead. He didn’t feel anything. He needed something, anything, to make this worth it again. To make ANYTHING worth it again. To let him FEEL again. He found himself on Bourbon Street. Normally, Terry would have walked by, but today the entire world felt like that street felt to him. Old, filthy, and horrible. So he turned down it and began walking. He reached Orleans Street and right after the intersection was a rat hole of a dive bar.

  There was a window pane painted white with a stylized red cross that drew his attention. When he looked up, the sign said “The Knight’s Tail” and there was a 3D knight’s butt above the door. The metal butt-flap of its armor would rise every few second and show it’s bare bottom. It made a fart sound.

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  Terry glared at the sign. At the entire bar. Was this what he’d sworn his life to? This sign and the people it would attract? Was this the majesty of knighthood? Was this the holy order of knights he'd sacrificed his childhood for? He knew he had to go in. There was no way he could NOT go in. This was going to be the test. He had to see where a cross-section of the Order landed on the graph between him and Robert Lawless. Terry was dangerously low on hope to begin with. He told himself he wasn’t doing this to start a fight. He knew the lie for what it was. He went in anyway.

  Elton Boozely (he cackled at his own wittiness) swore he saw Terry go into a hole in the wall bar, but he was on his fourth or fifth daiquiri so he couldn’t be sure it wasn’t just a child in combat boots. He continued his crooked walk down Bourbon Street confident in the knowledge that there was no way that had been Terry Linglal. Lingignal. Lingal. There. Nailed it.

  He was currently enacting phase two of “The Plan V. 2.4”. He still wasn’t sure if it deserved to be a full .5 on the scale or not. Part one had involved the hotel. He giggled at that. Part two involved him getting shit-face enough to not only fail a sobriety test, but possibly intoxicate the arresting officers through osmosis while he was at it. So far it was going swimmingly.

  Elton was worried about his two best friends. Well, not currently since the pavement presented a more pressing concern, but normally he worried about his two best friends. He didn’t tell them he’d grown up just as alone as Terry. Once his siblings had realized he was the heir apparent they’d turned on him. He'd been raised by staff and played with by Nintendo. But that wasn’t important. Terry was the stra. Star. Whatever.

  Elton wanted to write a massive, exciting epic full of romance and monsters and so far his two leads would not stop finding reasons to not bone the hell out of each other. It was frustrating. They needed a room. He'd get them a room.

  Again, the pavement continued to try to introduce itself to his face. He had faith though. Not in his walking, but in "The Plan V. 2.4". He had the best plans.

  Speaking of all these wonderful things, he needed to turn himself toward Canal so he could get to the Aquarium Fish Park thing by Saturday. . .

  Terry stood inside The Knight’s Tail waiting for his eyes to adjust. The only light seemed to come from the mirror behind the bar and some neon signage. Something that could barely pass for music blared from the jukebox. Once he could see, there was a man behind the bar that looked like he'd changed eyes with a mantis, and a surprising number or people at the few tables for a Thursday morning. If it was still morning. He wasn't sure any more. Terry looked around slowly. The barman spoke to him.

  “Get ya something, son?”

  Terry thought it was the “son” that did it. Once the man had said it, it stopped all conversation and all eyes turned to him. Several were unfriendly stares. Some just showed a mild interest. Four in particular though. . .

  “Well, well, well! If it isn’t THE Errant Apprentice! Got us a celebrity, boys!”

  The man who spoke had apparently based his entire aesthetic on the classical French knight, right down to the mustache. One of his friends was going for something more Arthurian and had a pageboy haircut. The other two sharing the table looked like bikers in tabbards. Terry sighed. The faux-Frenchman had stood from his seat with his arms held wide.

  “If you don’t mind,” Terry said, “I’m just looking around. I’m not looking for trouble.” Again, the lie stung his own ears. He was already making fists in his coat pocket. What was he doing?

  “He wants to know if we mind?!” laughed the reject from Camelot. “He makes us all look like criminals on social media then asks if we mind! You and your so called Kaiju fight. You’re full of shit, Lingal.”

  "We kinda are criminals." One of the bikers said quietly.

  "He's got a point." The other biker added.

  "SHUT. THE FUCK. UP." the Arthurian said to the both of them.

  The man stood up and clapped his French-friend on the shoulder.

  "Hey, better criminals than liars. Mr. Honesty here marching around like he's God's perfect idiot." he said.

  The rest of the table started laughing. Terry noticed quite a few of the other patrons start moving to the back of the bar. He heard “Lingal” mentioned under someone’s breath a couple of times. Apparently either his father’s reputation cast a massive shadow or Elton’s stories were spreading out of control. Even the barkeep looked at him in a new light. Terry hated this.

  “Are you really Terry Lingal?” The man asked.

  “I am.” Terry sighed, never taking his eyes off the faux-French knight.

  There was a flash. The man had taken a picture of him. Lovely.

  The two biker guys stood up along with their costumed friends. One of them whispered loudly to the others.

  “I think this kid needs to be put in his place finally. Because you know what I think?”

  “What’s that?” asked the faux-Frenchman.

  “I think he waited till Lawless was plastered and hit him over the head with a bar stool. Lawless wasn’t getting any younger.”

  The Aurthurian sneered.

  “That Beasley runt posts bombastic garbage, anyway. Lying seems to run in his family too." He said. "This guy’s just roaming around with his girlfriend and hoping for a sponsorship deal. What’s say we bring this kid down to size?”

  Terry sighed again. He'd come in hoping this would happen. He knew that. He was going to admit it to himself. So why was this making him miserable if it's what he wanted? Because this was a betrayal of what he was supposed to be, and what he was supposed to be had turned out to be almost as big a lie as himself. He turned to the poor barkeep.

  “Sir, if I defend myself here, are you going to call the cops?”

  “Cops?” the bug-eyed man said, “Mr. Lingal, these are knights. If you actually drop a couple I’d consider it an honor and a privilege to watch you in action.”

  “Who’s side are you on, anyway?!” Yelled a biker-knight.

  “Mine. And you haven’t paid your tab all week, ya scum.” The barman put an elbow on the counter, rested his head in his hand and grinned, watching. Terry decided to make an attempt to defuse this.

  "I am going to ask you four to stop. Now. You don't want to do this."

  More people moved toward the back of the bar. Terry saw money change hands.

  With that, the four men started making their way toward Terry. He let his muscles relax. Speed first, then bring the pain. Just like Dottie taught him. The pageboy Aurthurian got to Terry first. He came at him with a punch to the face, which Terry stepped out of the way of, before nailing the man in the side of the head with a right hook. He punched as hard as he dared. The man flew across the room into the wall and dropped. Terry hoped that would serve as a warning to the other three. It didn’t. They were drunk. Terry refused to let himself smile. He didn't deserve to.

  The faux-Frenchman pulled a knife on Terry. The man did an awkward little shuffling dance as he approached, tossing the knife from hand to hand. Terry narrowed his eyes. This man was willing to draw blood. No more warnings. No more lessons. No more pulling punches. He felt himself get stronger.

  The man kept making weird little feints and leaps forward, and to the sides. He took swipes and jabs at Terry, which Terry managed to dodge. The man was too drunk to try this kind of showmanship. As soon as he was in arm’s reach again, Terry whipped his hand out in mid-knife toss. He snatched the knife from between the man’s hands and immediately tossed it over his shoulder where it stabbed, point first, into the wooden door leading to the street. The man stared at the empty space between his hands in confusion before looking up at Terry. Terry pulled all the way back and punched him straight in the face as fast and as hard as he could without killing the man.

  The two biker-knights managed to leap aside as the man flew to the back of the room and crumpled. One of them started to flank Terry, trying to divide his attention. The other dove for him, trying to get Terry in a bear hug. That was the very first thing he'd learned to defend against with Dottie. Terry dropped to one knee as the man fell further than he expected. Terry grabbed him by the belt and tabard, raised him over his head, and threw him at his flanking friend. He nailed him. They both hit the ground and stayed there.

  When Terry looked around, the barkeep was staring.

  “Thank you, Mr. Lingal. Do you mind if I tell them and other’s you’ll be back? Maybe I can put a sign up of you?”

  “At this point,” Terry said, “I don’t care what you do.”

  The barman quickly snapped another photo, facing forward. A voice from the back called out.

  “SHIT! WHY DID YOU EVEN COME IN HERE, MAN?!”

  Terry recognized that voice.

  “Hank? From the shower?”

  The man’s face went white.

  “I came in here to see if there was anything actually good about the Order and knighthood.”

  No one said anything.

  “You’re all useless. Knights were a mistake.” Terry said. He turned and walked out the door, slamming it behind him. He stood on the stoop of the building and breathed. The smell on the street assaulted his nostrils and he gagged. It smelled worse than the bar. More than two centuries of alcohol and vomit. Everything about this city was terrible. Everything about the Order was terrible. He looked at his hands. HE was terrible. He wasn't sure there was anything good left in the world.

  I want to be gone, he thought, I want this to be over. I don’t even know what I’m doing anymore. All the anger and energy drained out of him and he blindly made his way toward Canal. He never looked up once. Not even in traffic.