Tuesday, April 16th, 2069

“Your son is trending all over social media,” Ms. Stovall said, her voice held an odd mixture of emotions. Excited, proud, worried, and nervous. In the time that it took my father and me to drive home, my follower count had doubled—then tripled before I’d shut down notifications.

But not before I had seen the video. The video that was captioned, ‘Is this the next S-rank?’

The fact that my Demonic Vault Skill still was ‘rebooting’ left me without a touchstone—Smegma, in this case, to explain what had happened. Surely more followers weren’t a bad thing, right?

I’d spent two years of my life, many late-nights, and dedicated days of trial and error to growing a fan base. Now, all that hard work was bearing fruit—right?

Even I could tell I was only trying to convince myself…

Sitting around our small kitchenette table with Ms. Stovall, who had made an emergency trip to the house, didn’t make my attempts to convince myself very effective. Both of my parent’s expressions were serious, worried, and drained. They looked like they’d lost color and were now the traditional ‘Canadian’ pale, but that usually only occurred towards the end of winter, and not in early spring.

“He’s been trying to grow his followers for years,” my dad said, mirroring some of my thoughts. “Surely, this will only help him in the long run?”

“I’ll be honest here, Mr. Flacarada. I’m really not sure what this means. Normally, I would congratulate someone for the meteoric rise that’s occurring, but in the midst of the trial—well I assume your son told you about the pre-trial.”

She said it matter of factly, like that was a foregone conclusion. I winced. I had in fact not worked up the courage to tell them the whole story. I figured I’d reveal the whole truth all at once, and them knowing about my ‘Awakening’ in the car would just be another piece to the explanation.

Everyone at the table was looking at me and saw my grimace—

“I guess he hasn’t. Brodie, I think it will mean more coming from you…” Ms. Stovall said. I could tell she was confused by the situation, and wanted a bit of an explanation herself, but felt my parents deserved the whole story more. It was probably also telling that I looked at Ms. Stovall for a long moment after she made her ‘plea’. “Would you like me to give you some privacy?” she asked.

Both my parents shifted visibly in my peripherals, but I maintained eye contact with Ms. Stovall. She probably needed to know the whole truth to be effective at her job. Or at least that’s what the TV shows depicted. Plus, she’d rushed over here as soon as she saw—almost arriving before my father and me. I gave a small shake of my head, and then reaffirmed the motion by saying, “No, you should probably stay and hear this too.”

“This all started the night the Shop–uh Morgan Hallsbrad attacked me,” I started. My parents blinked at my admission, but Ms. Stovall gave a small nod of confirmation, like I had just confirmed her suspicions. More worried about what my parents thought, I turned and addressed them. “It isn’t like I lied. There is just more to the story than I originally explained.”

My mother gave me a soft look that made my stomach twist—I hadn’t seen this particular look in a long while. I knew what would come next but didn’t interrupt her. With a matching tone to her look, my mother said, “Brodie, that’s an omission and the same as lying in our house.”

Tears threatened then, even as my windpipe seemed to suddenly have a grape in it. I knew that. I did, but it was also far more complicated than that. Wasn’t it? Even now, the whole truth felt like something of a death sentence. Like I could see the plank extending off of the edge of the ship and knew the waters we were treading weren’t close to land—not to mention dark, sinister, and shark-infested. I knew in my bones that those black waters held unknown and terrifying creatures beneath its depths.

“Ma—” my throat attempted to stop me from speaking the truth, constricting down even as my brain urged it to stop. I cleared my throat, and found a water bottle in front of me. The hand that retracted from the bottle was Ms. Stovall’s, and I nodded to her in thanks. Took a sip, cleared my throat and tried again. “Mom, I know that but I think you’ll agree it’s a bit more complicated than that.”

My voice still sounded slightly hoarse but with that segway uttered I took another sip of water and let the silence mount. A deep breath later I began. “As I said, this all started when I was assaulted by Morgan Hallsbrad. He seemed to have a Skill that he was going to activate using my Mana Pool, by Husking me.”

My parents gasped at that, and I paused for another sip of water. “Thanks to the information from the cops, I think that Skill was either Cannibalistic or Snatcher in function. My current theory,” I said, changing the topic before my parents could interject. “Is that he screwed up, somehow, somewhere, because—”

My throat again attempted to silence me, and my last word came out like a croak. Water, a cough and then I started again. “—because I’m pretty sure I inherited his Skills.”

My mom’s hands went to her mouth, and my dad’s hands gripped the top of his head. Still, a moment later his eyes and head pivoted to me in a rush. “Wait, you got a repair mark Skill!”

My brain went blank at the reminder of just how big my lie snowballed. The silence was clearly answer enough, because my dad said, “So, you didn’t get a repair mark or not just a repair mark?”

“Gary!” My mom exclaimed. “I think you’re missing the bigger point. Our son got a Skill that is Cannibalistic or Snatcher in origin.”

My dad’s face paled so much he looked like he was turning blue. I waved my hands back and forth in front of my face to get their attention—but also to deny the assumption. “That’s where my theory kind of falls apart. You see what I inherited is a Skill called Demonic—”

My mom fainted or at least became lightheaded enough to slide from her chair to the floor. My dad jumped up and checked on her. Ms. Stovall pulled out a phone, looking ready to call one-nine-nine. Whether it was to arrest me or help my mom was still unclear.

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Husk!

Well, this was going almost exactly as I had feared. I was thankful to see my mother was still conscious, but her reaction just seemed to drive a stake deeper into my stomach. Should I have continued to lie? My too calm brain, something I had grown pretty used to, logically explained how that wasn’t possible after the events of the day.

The awareness of Mental Fortitude at work reminded me of just how much I’d changed. Just how much had happened in the two and a half weeks since the assault. With some mental coaxing, I managed to start speaking again. “It’s called Demonic Vault.”

My mother gasped, and I felt my stomach go from a twisted snake, to one coiled and ready to strike. Thankfully I reigned myself in, probably with the help of Mental Fortitude. “Mom, you’re going to have to stop reacting like that, or I’m going to have to stop telling the truth.”

“Brodie!” My dad said, but I wasn’t in the mood for him to blindly defend my mothers current responses.

“I get it. I do. But why do you think it’s been so hard to tell you this right away?” I said, and immediately felt bad as my mother started crying.

“You can’t blame your mother for your lies, Brodie,” my father said.

My nose sucked in a breath but once again I calmed myself enough to respond without raising my voice. “I’m just saying that this isn’t making it easy for me to—”

Smegma popped back into existence right in front of me. Blocking my vision of my parents, and the whole room. I had enough time to register that he’d grown again—and quite a bit at that before the screaming started.

My mom did faint then, even as my father tried to cover her with his body like a shield. Still, it was Ms. Stovall that I leaped toward, grabbing the phone and stopping her mid dial. Shouting, “No, no, wait!”

The room devolved from there as Smegma said, “Husk, I can’t believe I didn’t even remember how to make myself visible to others.”

“Could you maybe turn it off!” I shouted, even as Ms. Stovall attempted to interpose herself between me and the human sized Demon with bat wings. “He’s part of my Skill!” I shouted as my dad, not feeling claws in his back, began to crawl away while dragging my mother. “He’s part of my Skill. He won’t—no he can’t hurt anyone!”

“I mean I can insult people enough to make them wish they’d be dead,” Smegma stated evilly. Then he started cackling and I closed my eyes tight.

At least I could no longer say this was going the way that I thought it would.

* * *

“So, you’re saying that the earth is home to more than just humans?” Ms. Stovall asked Smegma. It had taken quite a while to calm things down, and quite a bit longer on top of that for my mother to wake up and be able to be in the same room as the imp—well full-sized Demon.

To call Smegma an imp anymore just wasn’t possible. His body was muscled and toned in a way that spoke of athletes of old, before the System. Those muscles looked honed for combat, but not in a brutish way. More like his body was made for long drawn-out combat—for battles of endurance and survival. The color of his skin was still black with red, and his pupils, talons and sharp teeth were the same as ever—but only his bat-like wings seemed to suggest he was anything other than a terrifying human with horns. He looked like a Felguard—well, it wasn’t like I knew what a Felguard would look like, or an imp for that matter. Maybe all Demons had bloody wings…

What surprised me most was just how human his face looked. Sure, he had defined cheekbones, and a cranial ridge just under the start of his horns—but if his skin was just black without the red accents—his face would look like a cosplaying black man.

Smegma preened, telling me he was listening to my thoughts, and I rolled my eyes. Thankfully he answered Ms. Stovall, instead of verbally poking fun at me. “I can say, without a shadow of a doubt, that your world is definitely acting as an asylum for numerous failed races. It would be overrun and conquered if the System didn’t have preventative measures against such things…”

“It would be what?” My mom squeaked.

“Conquered,” Smegma stated firmly, clearly missing the reason for the question he continued, “Don’t feel bad. The Crendalar Cluster would have been conquered too if the System didn’t have checks in place.”

“I don’t think she was asking for you to clarify,” I said flatly. My mom was looking faint again, but thankfully Ms. Stovall coughed and returned Smegma’s attention to her.

“Can you explain that a bit further for me? What checks does it have to stop—” she paused in her question clearly looking for a polite word to use to describe Smegma.

“Demons? Invasion?” The Demon crowed happily. “Trust me, we aren’t even the race you should be most worried about. But I digress. You want to know what the checks are?—” Smegma paused waiting for confirmation. At Ms. Stovall’s nod he smiled, and I groaned. “You and every researcher under the stars, lady. We do know some of the more important ones, though.”

“Like?” Ms. Stovall said with an emotionless prompting voice.

“A Portal can only allow one member of a sapient race through, and they must be one rank lower than the Portal to pass through it. A higher ranked individual could go through but then they would be forcibly reduced in power by the Portal, which means they’d lose Skills they’d obtained without control over what they keep or lose. l So, low rank Portal’s can’t be used to cross over for the truly powerful of other failed races without dire consequences. Well they can, but they’d lose all that power. F-rank portals would send them here with no Skills for instance. Even then the one is important. Even during a Portal Break, only one sapient can cross from their indigenous world, all others who try—haven’t been heard from again. These rules don’t apply for races undergoing the Trials of course”

“Indigenous world?” Ms. Stovall prompted.

“Where did you think the Portal’s were taking you? You think you show up onto some alien geography with multiple suns or moons or different constellations in the sky and that it’s all—what? Some kind of hallucination?” Smegma asked derisively.

Ms. Stovall frowned but answered with a commonly held belief of humanity. “We believed that Portals took us to planes of existence outside of our own that are created to house the monsters.”

Smegma glanced at me and then around the room at the nodding heads of my father and mother. My mother froze when his black pupils crossed over her, but inhaled sharply after his gaze moved on. I sighed and moved to her back to rub her shoulders. While waiting for Smegma to contradict Ms. Stovall I whispered, “Don’t worry mom, he can’t do anything to hurt you. I promise.”

She raised a hand to rest atop mine on her shoulder and gave a weak squeeze.

“Again, words can hurt!” Smegma said but continued quickly, while addressing Ms. Stovall. “I can’t remember everything, but I do recall Brodie telling me that your race wasn’t aware of any locals inside of Portals. Partially, that could be because of your stigma against going inside at night, which I will admit is a good choice. The second, far more likely reason, is that they are here and actively hiding themselves.”

“Why would they hide themselves if they’re powerful and have greater knowledge of the System than us?” I asked.

“To avoid a purge,” Smegma said. “Plus, anyone they sent over would be A-rank at the highest. That’s one of the biggest reasons that my Abyss Sect made this Skill. We were kind of hoping to give it to someone who was crossing over—so they would possess all of our knowledge and be powerful enough to—” Smegma coughed, while glancing at my parents. Then while licking his shark-like teeth with a black tongue mumbled, “powerful enough to take over.”

Everyone heard him. My father jumped to his feet while pointing an accusatory finger at the Demon. “So, you admit it. You’re evil!”