Ten years ago...

Few things bothered Victor more than the way his fingers wrinkled after cleaning duty. But the sting of having to wash dishes hurt a little less with his favorite meal sitting in his belly.

He sighed. This particular dish was being a pain. Fortunately, all it took was a little extra elbow grease. He passed the plate to his father, who dried it and placed it on a rack.

Victor snuck a glance at his mother in the living room, completely enthralled by her Spanish telenovela. An older woman was consoling a significantly younger man. Seeing someone so grizzled weep in a woman's arms tickled him. Especially since his cries sounded more like he had just stubbed his toe.

He always found it odd how none of the characters in her stories possessed his mother's rich brown skin tone despite speaking the same language as her. Even their hair was different—straight, like his father's.

A tap on his shoulder brought him back to the task at hand. "We're not done yet," his dad said.

Victor finished the last plate and spun around to his mother standing right behind them, blocking the exit.

"Bedtime," she said. Victor groaned. He planned on sneaking away and logging in a few minutes of Gameboy time as she was finishing her stories, but as always, his mother was several steps ahead.

Victor's mom stood above her now neatly tucked in son. "Whose turn is it again?"

"I did it yesterday," Victor's dad said, leaning against the door with a toothpick in his mouth.

"Oh, that's right." She gave her husband a quick but passionate kiss before turning her attention back to Victor. "Ready for a bedtime story?"

***

Present day...

Victor felt a slight breeze. Strange, considering he never slept with his window open. His nose wrinkled at an unfamiliar scent. Cologne?

He opened his eyes, expecting to see his dusty ceiling fan. What awaited him was a silenced pistol pointed directly at his forehead. His eyes shot to its wielder. A tall man with sharp features wearing an all white newly pressed suit. Moonlight revealed his shoulder-length brown hair and the sunglasses resting on his blank face.

Aayan. It had to be. He matched the description Connor gave him at Sunbury. A swarm of questions flooded Victor's mind, speeding up his already racing heart. He opened his mouth to speak...

***

A loud pop woke Mr. Au from his sleep—similar to a small firecracker going off.

Supressor.

He leapt out of bed. Something not very difficult since he had been trained to wake at the sound of a pin dropping. Every late night snacking escapade and sneaking out attempt by his son was always either dismissed, or taken care of.

With a stilled mind, he grabbed his handgun from his nightstand and crept toward the sound's source, making sure to check every corner. Each step produced a creak—one of the many flaws of a house built in the 1970s.

Mr. Au stood before his son's door. He leaned in, listening for anything out of the ordinary. Silence. He positioned himself with his back to the wall adjacent to the door and lightly pushed it open. A breeze came from the open window.

He readied his gun and took several steps forward. A hint of expensive smelling cologne was in the air. His legs buckled when he saw the blood splatter covering his son's pillow. But he quickly steadied himself before dashing to the window and scanning the area outside. He caught a glimpse of a white sedan turning the corner.

Something snapped. Rage consumed every fiber of his being.

Not my son.

He sprinted to his car and chased after the sedan, but by the time he reached the end of the street, there was no sign of the vehicle.

His chest felt heavy, his breathing shallow. With his head resting on the steering wheel, he closed his eyes and allowed himself to give in to despair. A still of his wife prowled into his mind's eye, twisting the knife.

Is this Hell?

***

Darkness shrouded Victor. An impenetrable wall separated his consciousness from interacting with his senses and the outside world. Whether there was a world for him to return to was still up in the air. But one thing was true: that man in the white suit had killed him.

So is this life after death? A pitch black blindfold covering one's awareness?

He felt weightless. Already forgetting what it's like to exist as matter, he accepted this new reality. Free from any responsibilities and expectations. From his mishaps and the excruciating pain of loss, current and eventual.

Whiteness filled his awareness, as sudden as the flick of a lighter. Now in an empty void, he frantically searched for a way to get his bearings.

A gargantuan figure wearing a flowing green cloak with golden patterns embroidered throughout appeared, taking up Victor's entire field of vision. The creature had an all white smiling theater mask for a face, and enormous emerald green gauntlets floating near its torso. There was something familiar about this thing. An inviting warmth radiating from its very essence.

A female voice spoke from within his mind. "Incredible," the voice said. The sensation was a jarring one to say the least. It was as if someone hijacked his own inner monologue. There was pain in her voice, though. So palpable, Victor felt his own mood dampening.

"Is that you?" Victor said, peering into the creature's empty slits meant to imitate eyes full of joy. "Get out of my head."

The creature lifted its floating gauntlets and held them in place. Victor watched in awe as something materialized out of thin air.

The object appeared to be a giant crystal ball resting atop a golden stand of some kind. The whole thing was about half the height of the creature. There were milky white clouds swirling within the ball, so fast Victor couldn't track their movements. Bright pink lotus flowers vertically lined the stand on all sides.

The creature rested its gauntlets on the crystal ball. It remained still for a while, so long Victor wondered if this thing had somehow frozen time. Eventually, the gauntlets floated back to the creature's sides.

"Victor," said the female voice, hijacking his mind. "Look at you." Joviality replacing the despair once present in her tone.

Victor inspected the golden handle attached to the creature's mask. "Who are you? Are you the woman in my head?"

"I'm not actually in your head." She laughed. "It's just that in here," the creature lifted her gauntlets. "We can communicate telepathically."

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Her laugh. It can't be...

"Mom?"

"Mi cielo, you've grown so much."

That was all the confirmation he needed. "What happened to you? Where am I? What's going on? Wha—"

"One question at a time, please." She laughed again. How Victor missed her laugh. Hearing it brought back memories of Super Market Sweep reruns and waking up to a fresh cup of Curau de Milho.

It was all so overwhelming. He hadn't even fully come to terms with his death. How could he process such a bittersweet reunion? "Mom, why do you look like that? What's going on?"

"That's two questions."

"Please stop joking around."

"I'm sorry. I know this whole thing must be overwhelming. How about I start with myself. I'm from a race of beings called Ensolians, and this is my original form."

Victor surveyed the white void before him. "And where exactly is this?"

"This is my personal zone. It exists outside of earth's physical plane."

"Personal zone? Mom, what are you talking about? I thought you were an angel."

"Who told you that?"

"My friend, Connor. He also said God ordered him to keep an eye on me."

"Lucius. Of course."

"Who?"

"My older brother. Mi cielo, I'm sorry for keeping the truth away from you for so long."

The empty void was instantaneously replaced with Victor's childhood room, race car bed and all. His mother returned to her human form, looking just as beautiful as he remembered—her dark skin glowing, flawless. Victor reverted to his human form as well, wearing the same clothes he wore when Aayan shot him. "Ah, that's better," his mother said. She spoke normally, no longer relying on telepathy. Her curly afro bounced as she took a seat across from Victor, smiling her signature smile.

"Woah. How did we end up here?"

"This is my domain. I can alter the environment as I see fit."

"Mom, what the heck is going on?"

She grabbed Victor's hand. Feeling her touch again was surreal. Add that to the ever-increasing list of strange experiences he'd accrued these last couple of weeks. "A long time ago, there was an extremely powerful being who created Heaven, Earth, and Hell. That being was my father."

"You're telling me my grandpa is God? The God?"

She laughed. "Your grandfather realized that overseeing everything was too much for just him, so he created my older brother, Lucius, to oversee Heaven, my younger brother, La'el, whose responsibility is maintaining Hell, and me, Luna, whose realm is Earth."

"La'el is your brother?"

"You've heard of him?"

"We think he's the one behind all the demon attacks. Mom, Earth is a mess right now. If La'el is actually behind all of this senseless killing, we have to stop him."

Her face fell. "Lucius and I haven't spoken to La'el in a very long time. I just recently regained most of my strength. If I'd have known—"

"Are you hurt?"

She lightly squeezed Victor's hand. "I am fine. Allow me to explain. After spending several millennia overlooking earth, I developed a particular interest in humans. I mean, how could I not? Your grandfather called them his most cherished creation."

Victor just witnessed a creature the size of a large building demonstrate complete control over their environment, yet humans were God's most cherished creation? "How is that possible?"

"My thoughts exactly. So, as the years passed, my curiosity morphed into a slight obsession. I would closely follow the lives of random humans. From great Roman warriors to members of remote African villages. Eventually, I grew tired of watching. I wanted to take part in the human experience, so I entered a human vessel and did just that. Being so fragile took some getting used to, and I was honestly ready for the whole thing to end. That was until I met your father."

"What was Dad like?"

"About the same. He had a lot more hair back then, though." Imagining his father with long hair made Victor audibly chuckle. "As I was projecting part of my essence into a human vessel, my actual body was weakening. I ignored this for years, choosing instead to indulge in the rollercoaster ride called love." She sighed.

"Nothing has been the same since you left. Even though Dad was never much of an open book, I think your death hurt him a lot more than he'll ever admit."

"I've only seen your dad shed a tear once, and it was at his father's funeral. He always kept his emotions in check. That's partially why I fell in love with him. He made me feel safe."

"Someone as powerful as you? Seriously?"

"Remember, I still had the mind and body of a human woman. I found his temperament quite attractive." She shrugged. "As I was saying, my actual body struggled to maintain the projection. I prolonged the inevitable for as long as I could, but human bodies aren't meant to house my kind for very long."

"So your death..."

"My body could no longer hold my essence, so it shut down. When I returned here, I was in horrible shape. It was so bad that I couldn't even summon my Goze."

"The crystal ball thing?"

She smiled. "Yes, it's what allows me to survey earth from here. But it wasn't until recently that I had the strength to even use it. I've been resting—gathering my strength for a quick return. Unfortunately, I was gone a lot longer than I had anticipated. You said demons have run loose?"

"Mom, it's been horrible."

Victor's mother looked puzzled. He expected her to provide some insight, but her furrowed brow and biting of her bottom lip told him otherwise. "You don't know anything?"

"I'm still not fully healed. What you just witnessed was me summoning my Goze for the first time since I came out of my hibernation. What I saw was unsettling, but it had nothing to do with demons."

"What did you see?"

"It appears that my prolonged absence has caused severe damage to the plane Earth resides in. To be honest, I don't know what the effects of this actually are, but Earth abides by certain natural laws. Damage to the plane could cause everything to go out of whack."

"So demons are the least of our problems."

"I will try to fix things to the best of my ability, but I'm not nearly as powerful as my father. I may not be able to repair everything."

"Where is grandpa? I'm sure he can fix everything with a snap of his fingers."

"I don't know. He left soon after creating us."

Victor recalled his conversation with Connor in the hospital. It seemed bizarre that an angel had never met God, but finding out that his own daughter doesn't know his whereabouts put things into perspective. "What can I do?"

"While I work on fixing things from here, I need you to return to earth. If La'el is ordering demons to kill humans, you may be the only one powerful enough to stop him."

"How? One of his minions killed me."

"If La'el sent someone to kill you, he may be after your body. It is possible for our kind to enter a partially grown vessel, but it requires the removal of the soul. Which is why I instead chose to enter a vessel prior to its birth." She closed her eyes. "Victor, you are half Ensolian. You should be able to enter an unborn vessel as I did."

They returned to the void. The sudden shift in setting gave Victor whiplash. His mother was now in her original form. She raised her gauntlets, summoning her Goze. "I will speak with my brother, Lucius. You mentioned an angel friend before. I am certain he is the one who sent him to you."

"Connor." Victor thought back to the last time they leapt to grab their neighbor's tree branch. Would he ever see him and Summer again? What about his father? Envisioning their grief wounded him.

"He must have sent him to you while I was recovering. Very odd, considering I have yet to inform him of your existence."

"I don't even know where he is. How can I possibly beat him?"

"That's why I'm contacting Lucius. If anyone knows where he is, it's him. Besides, this wouldn't be the first time he's had to fix one of La'el's messes. Souls used to constantly escape Hell. It got so bad that Lucius intervened and established an order of demon slayers on earth. For centuries, Lucius gifted certain humans with the strength to combat any demon they encountered. But the order must have fallen somehow."

How could the existence of demons and an entire demon slaying order be kept hidden from the masses for so long? Outside of several strange conversations with Summer throughout the years, nothing could have prepared Victor for the knowledge he was now privy to.

"I thought Lucius' domain was Heaven," Victor said. "Why did he create a demon slaying order?"

"Lucius has more power than La'el and I combined. There simply wasn't much I could do to mitigate the problem of souls returning to earth."

Victor wondered if he would ever meet this mysterious uncle of his. What is the extent of such a being's power?

"The Goze is ready. I need you to touch the orb and choose your vessel."

Victor peered up at the orb resting atop a stand that stood several dozen feet high. How on earth was he expected to reach that?

"My apologies. I don't know why you're still in your human form. Regardless, touching the stand should suffice."

Does this mean he has an Ensolian form? Victor couldn't imagine himself as a building sized creature with a theater mask for a face. "So how do I even—" Victor cut his question short the moment he touched the stand. People of all shades and sizes consumed the entirety of his vision.

"Focus, Victor," his mother said. "I know it is difficult, but you must focus. You can process information much faster now. I need you to choose your vessel."

Victor allowed the faces to wash over him. Eventually, he found that not only could he absorb every face; he could see the extent of each person's genetic potential. It was like getting a snapshot of thousands of people's lives all at once.

There. That's the one. The perfect vessel.

"Found him," Victor said.

"Fantastic. I will contact you soon."

"How?"

"Through your dreams."