Terry came to and the first thing he saw was light gray cleavage. A lot of it. He lifted his head more and saw two of the girl from the gas station. He was confused for a minute, but after closing his eyes and shaking his head, she managed to resolve into just the one. He also realized this wasn’t the gas station. It was a church. A large, decaying church that stank of fish. Sections of wall looked bowed in different directions and it felt like the whole thing was melting.

  “Wu-huh?” Terry said. He’d meant to say more but his brain was trying to process a lot after having just come back from wherever it had gone.

  “Hi!” the girl said. She had a name tag that said “RACHEL” and she looked excited. “Glad you’re finally awake! I was afraid Banjo hit you too hard!”

  “B-Banjo?” Terry managed to get out.

  “He’s my cousin.” She frowned and rolled her eyes as she said it. That was a LOT of eye to roll. Terry found himself staring in fascination.

  Terry tried to get up and move, but he was bound. He looked down and saw he had chains around him. The chains all met at a metal plate against his chest with a yellow tree branch drawn on it. His legs were bound as well.

  He grinned. He didn’t like acknowledging the things he could do, but in this case he could make an exception. Terry flexed his muscles as hard as he could and focused his will on breaking the chains. The only things that happened were the chains groaning slightly in and the yellow branch thing glowing brightly.

  “Oooooow!” Rachel said, watching the symbol. “You’re a strong one! Are all knights that strong?”

  Terry looked up in shock at her.

  “Uh, I’m an Errant Apprentice, actually. Sorry.” Maybe that would disappoint her and she’d let him go.

  “Oh, that’s close enough for me!” she said brightly. “Banjo’s making some preparations and talking to my dad, so before the wedding, why don’t we get to know each other!”

  The symbol glowed even brighter as Terry tried desperately to snap the chains again at the mention of the word “wedding”. His eyes went wide. He wasn’t used to this kind of thing not working. He let his muscles relax. He was getting worried he might damage his armor if he couldn’t break his bonds.

  “Look. I can’t get married to you. I don’t even KNOW you!”

  “That,” she said, “is why we’re going to get to know each other!”

  Terry blinked.

  “It takes more than a few hours of conversation to find out if you’re compatible with someone.”

  “AN hour, actually. Maybe an hour and a half. Dad’s in a hurry.”

  “Look,” Terry began, really wishing he could rub his temples, “if you untie me, I won’t call the cops or anything. You seem nice enough. I’ll just hop back on my scooter and we’ll pretend this never happened. How’s that sound?”

  “Wow.” The girl said blinking. “I was expecting a lot more “let me go, you crazy bitch”. Maybe some death threats.”

  Terry was genuinely taken aback.

  “No reason for me to be rude.” He said. “Where would that get me? I’m already captured.”

  The girl grinned. There were a lot of sharp teeth in that grin. She finally sat on her heels in front of him and crossed her arms on her knees.

  “What’s your name?” She said.

  “Terry. Terry Lingal. And you’re Rachel?”

  She looked down at her name tag and looked back at him in mock accusation.

  “You cheated.” She said.

  “You wore the name tag.”

  She smiled again. Terry really wished she didn’t seem so nice. Despite the whole kidnapping thing. This was the goblins all over again.

  “What can you tell me about yourself, Mr. Terry?” she asked with a big and shockingly warm smile. Terry sighed. This was worse than the goblins.

  “I’m from Raymond, Mississippi. I’m an Errant Apprentice. I fight monsters for a living and help people as much as I can. My party is out there somewhere wondering what happened to me. Elton is probably freaking out and Delores, my. . .” What exactly were they now? “Delores, that’s my partner and girlfriend, is probably tracking me down somehow.”

  Her smile slipped.

  “You two are really close?” she asked.

  “We’ve been trying to be.” He said. “We’re just now getting there. We’ve had obstacles.” Thinking about it all made him regret certain things in his life. He was starting to wonder again why he really did the things he did.

  Rachel suddenly looked remorseful.

  “Look, Terry. I’m going to be honest with you.” She said. “You seem really nice, and my family line is dying out because no one wants a wife that will give them a horde of monsters as children. We’ve been here too long and everyone's learned who we really are over the past hundred years. Also, apparently gills are a turn off.”

  “What are you?” he asked. “No offense.”

  She shrugged.

  “We call ourselves Dagonites now. We had another name but that’s been printed in fiction to hell and back.” She shook her head. “Anyway, my sisters all got married off before the Change and tried to give birth to a new clutch so the town would grow. Three of them were killed by their husbands. Two, the eggs were torched before they could hatch. They went into hiding after the Change took them.”

  “The Change?” Terry asked. He wasn’t sure if he could keep up with all of this, but he was starting to get the gist.

  “When we hit a certain age, we stop looking human and we stop aging. It’s not always the same age for everyone though. Forty or Fifty at the latest. Some of us turn into full on monsters. Those that make a complete change return to the sea.” She held up a webbed hand. She tilted her head back and pointed at gills in her neck. “I was more lucky than some. Or not. Maybe being a monster would have been easier on me. Dad wouldn’t have a use for me then. He has a lot riding on me.”

  That phrase, “have a use for me”, set off every instinct Terry had. Whatever this was, it wasn’t right. Particularly not for Rachel.

  “What “use” does your father have for you, Rachel?” he asked quietly.

  She seemed to deflate.

  “As long as I look close enough to human, he figured he could still marry me off and I could be the mother of the next generation. At least, until I went infertile in a few years. Sixty is creeping up.”

  Terry’s eye’s widened.

  “Sixty?! You don’t look a day or two into your twenties!”

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  She grinned.

  “Thank you! Again, the Change was kind.” Rachel’s smile slid off again and she continued. “I wanted very much to leave, Terry. There’s a whole world out there I’ve never seen. But daddy told me that if I want to leave, I have to add to the town. That’s the only way. So I’ve been sitting there for DECADES waiting for someone to drive in and maybe take me out of here.”

  “Then I pulled up.” He said.

  “Yeah.” She smiled. “Big handsome knight on a scooter. I thought maybe you’d sweep me off my feet and I could get out of here. We could start a family. I could leave. Finally.”

  She looked at him with a sad smile.

  “I’m sure you’ll make a wonderful husband and father, Terry.”

  “Maybe, but not now. Not yet. Rachel, you’re forty years my senior here. Even if you still look young and beautiful.”

  “Again,” she said, “thank you for the compliment. I just. . .” She looked away. “I just don't want to be hurt any more. You know?”

  Terry hung his head and shook it.

  “It’s dumb, I know.” She said. “I’m desperate.”

  He looked up at her.

  “It’s not that.” Terry said. “I just wish someone had warned me when I was starting out how normal most of the non-humans were. The Order never warns us. I don’t think they want us to know. They want us armed and angry. I think they want us to hate Fantastics.” He hadn't thought of that before, and it made him even more upset.

  When Rachel tilted her head, it looked more like an owl than a human.

  “Sorry about all this. Like I said, you do seem really nice.” She said. “At least we’ll have some handsome hatchlings before they change.”

  Yep, Terry thought, I’m going to have to do something really stupid, I believe.

  “Rachel?” he asked.

  “What?”

  He considered his next words carefully.

  “I don’t want to get married. Not yet. Not to you. I’m going to have to get out of this. BUT, I’m going to tell you something, and you can take this as the truth and a statement of fact, because I do not lie. I’m an Errant Apprentice. I save people.” He looked her straight in those weird yellow eyes and tried to project the confidence of a man not chained up by enchanted bonds. “You need saving. I swear, I WILL rescue you from this. It isn’t right, and it isn’t fair. You deserve to make your own choices.”

  She had a small smile on her face.

  “Of course you are. We can talk about that after the honeymoon.”

  Terry sighed. Again. She didn’t believe he could get out of this. He flexed again. He was starting to wonder about that himself. Something would come along. It had to. The biggest fish-man Terry had ever seen came walking in from a door behind him. The thing was close to eight feet and wore JUST over-alls. This HAD to be Banjo.

  “Your dad wants to meet your paramour. He doesn't think you can win him over.” Was all he said. Terry gulped.

  Banjo picked Terry up from behind with no difficulty at all, and turned to walk him into the hall. Rachel followed with a worried frown.

  Delores was just about to start burning the store down in frustration when Elton shouted from the stockroom.

  “FOUND SOMETHING! Why in the hell didn’t I check here first?”

  She ran toward the back. Elton was looking at a massive trap door in the corner of the back stockroom. It honestly couldn’t have been more obvious, and Delores felt stupid as well for having not checked here either.

  “Don’t worry about it, Elton. I think we both assumed they’d dropped him by surprise through the floor out there. Great job. Does make me wonder what they DID do.”

  Elton didn’t seem to welcome the praise like she thought he would. Delores took hold of the giant ring on top of the door but she couldn't budge it. She still wasn’t sure exactly what Terry used to enhance his strength, but she didn’t know it.

  “Elton, give me a hand with this.” She said and the bard moved around to grab the ring. They eventually got it up and open.

  Delores looked into a square of absolute darkness. Just pitch black all the way down. She held her hand out. She attuned the mana inside her to “sun”, spoke a word, and a small glowing orb appeared over her palm. She smiled at it. She’d never been able to do this. She turned her palm upside down and the orb floated down into the tunnel and showed an earthen floor below. She looked at Elton and they met eyes.

  “C’mon.” She said. “Let’s get to moving.”

  “ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR GOD DAMNED MIND?!?” he shouted with more energy than she expected. It made her jump.

  “We have to find Terry!” she yelled.

  “You don’t know what’s down there! Hell, I don’t WANT to know what’s down there. There could be Dohls! There could be giant naked mole rats! There could be thirty of these Cap’n D’s rejects down there waiting for us with forks and knives and drawn butter!”

  Delores folded her arms and leveled a glare at the man. Those were all good points, but she was upset.

  “Then what do you-”

  “IT’S A CULT!” he interrupted. “We just find the damned church! In the street! In the sunlight! Not in a hole in the ground that is definitely NOT going to have adorable hobbits in it!!”

  A muscle in Delores’s cheek twitched. That was the only movement she made. Elton immediately folded, and flinched back.

  “Sorry. Sorry. I know, I’m the Troubadour. But this is something I read about in college, Delores. This is magic and religion from before us. Before Earth. Hell, possibly before the Everywhen was dreamed up by whatever sane god made the universe and rightfully abandoned it. AND, I’m a coward. A good, old fashioned, dyed in the wool coward.”

  Delores took several calming breaths. She was letting her emotions lead her. Elton might be a coward as he said, but he was talking sense. She walked up and hugged him.

  “You’re right.” She said, head next to his. “I’m not thinking clearly. Thank you.”

  He awkwardly patted her back.

  “It’s ok.” He said. “I still don’t want to do this, but at least this way we’re not going to be eaten by The Great Worm or something.”

  Delores managed to dissipate her light which she hadn’t gotten a chance to use, then levered the trap door shut again. As they walked back through the store, the little man on the counter called out.

  “HEY! Free me!”

  Delores looked at him, letting her frustration show.

  “Your spell, Fillet-O-Fish. Not my fault. Maybe watch who the hell you’re attacking.”

  When she opened the door, the Vespa was where Elton had left it. Thunder, on the other hand was running from one end of the pumps to the other and revving his little engine. He’d hunker down, hop up, then run to the other end and repeat the motions. He reminded Delores of a guard dog.

  Lying on the ground surrounding them were various forms of fish-person. They had all been run over. Some were in a terrible state. Some were never going to get up again. Delores hadn’t realized the little scooter would actually watch their backs, let alone be ABLE to actually watch their backs.

  As soon as he saw them, Thunder came rolling up, hopping over the fallen, and stopped in front of Delores. If he’d had a tail, it would be wagging. She reached down and stroked his headlight, and knelt in front of him.

  “You,” she told Thunder, “are a very good boy.”

  He leaned into Delores’ pets.

  “Ok. Now let’s go look for a church that looks like it’s run by fish people.” She said to Elton.

  Terry was placed on his feet at the bottom of a set of stairs leading to a cellar under the church. Something seemed off about the idea of a cellar in Louisiana, but he was more concerned with what was going on than mystical contracting. Banjo stood behind him and Rachel squeezed around them to the door. For some reason he noticed her nice clothing. A green button-up shirt and a long brown skirt. It was so out of place here. He realized he just didn’t want to think about what was on the other side of that door. His mind was trying to escape from where he couldn't.

  “Ok,” Rachel said as she got to the door, “I’m going to introduce you to dad.” She turned to the door and stopped. She turned back. “I’m sorry in advance.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  The look of sadness on her face frightened him more than any threat.

  “It was good meeting you, Terry. I hope there’s something of you left, afterward.”

  Terry’s legs were still bound by a length of chain and he couldn’t do anything, but he tensed himself, and braced himself physically. Then he thought about it and braced himself mentally. He needed to be ready for whatever he saw here. He thought of Delores. He needed to get back to her. He’d sworn to survive for her. He wouldn't end alone down here with her never knowing what happened. He wanted to see her before the end, which was a morbid thought.

  Rachel opened the door.

  There is a trope in weird fiction. The “thing that should not be”. The indescribable horror. It is often a cheap trick to not describe something that the author hasn’t fleshed out enough to go into details over. Terry had heard something of this from Sean. It didn’t really cross his mind when Rachel opened the door. Nothing crossed his mind when he looked into the room and for that, later, he would be thankful. He just had Delores on his mind and it cushioned him. If he had thought, it would have been of those things Sean told him, because this thing, whatever it was, should not be.

  What he saw inside was so mindbogglingly bizarre his eyes tried to twist sideways along with his mind. If you took the menu of a high-end seafood restaurant and rammed it through a kaleidoscope, then took those results and spread it around a twenty foot room, it might come close to what he saw. It was a Biblically accurate All-You-Can-Eat seafood buffet.

  Again, it was made of animal parts, all from the ocean. It was made of shifting geometric patterns and shapes. No single part of it was still for more than a second and the whole of the thing seemed to shift on some unseen current in the fabric of reality. It fell within itself, vanishing constantly, then seemed to emerge from nothing. It all happened at once. All logic and beauty crashed into the edges of the thing and neither survived the collision. A voice came from somewhere within it and tried to drill its way into Terry’s mind. It wasn’t something Terry heard. It was something he felt. Terry's mind just kept Delores there and refused to listen.

  Before Terry’s brain had a chance to fully process even a part of this, The yellow branch thing glowed so brightly that Banjo and Rachel staggered back from the heat as Terry turned from the door. He snapped the chain around his legs and was bounding up the stairs through good old survival instinct. Before he made it to the top, Banjo seemed to leap from behind him, over his head, and landed in front of him. He socked Terry in the head and laid him flat. As he fell backwards, he felt Rachel catch him. As he blacked-out he thought he heard Rachel say “That went better than I thought it would.”

  Terry’s consciousness decided it might be a great idea to step out again. Just for a few. Thing’s weren’t going well today.