Returning to the demon world never ceased to fulfill Tyler with awe and shock. It was hard to put into words how abnormally strange and unusual the realm truly was. It was home to some of the most freakish, lovecraftian horrors known to man—and man didn’t even know half of the creatures that dwelled beyond. Every creature and living organism was an amalgamation of slimy tentacles, celestial eyes, spiked legs, metallic wings, crystal-like serpent tongues, and so many more hellish features that were nearly impossible to describe with words.
Tyler walked into the other half of The Slice of Peace, which rested in the demon world. It was relatively similar in shape, but nonetheless had its differences. The seats were all sorts of shapes and sizes to accommodate the different creatures. Blue liquid stained the wall, most likely the blood of a demon, though he wasn’t sure. And outside the doors, Tyler could see glimpses of the ultra violet sky and the tendrilled form above which Tyler could only compare to an unstable sun.
Hank was beginning to pack up, ready to leave work for the day. His scaled tentacles stretched across the room, grabbing his misplaced possessions as his clawed, insect like legs sped across the room. His hulking form was only made larger by his enormous wings, which were the only soft-ish feature of his body. His four circular wings stretched out as he lightly floated across the room. All eleven of his shifty orange eyes found their way to Tyler once he stepped inside.
“The newbie is waiting at one of the tables near the entrance. Good luck!” he said, grabbing his stuff and getting ready to leave.
“Thanks man. See you tomorrow,” said Tyler.
“Yeah, cause tomorrow you actually have work,” said Hank with a grin, before exiting the door and leaving for his home.
“Yeah yeah, shut up!” Tyler yelled jokingly, even though Hank was too far gone to hear him.
Tyler walked farther out, and saw a demon sitting at a table, looking outside of the window. One thing Tyler loved about demons is that no one looked even remotely like another. This demon was relatively smaller than Hank (which wasn’t anything new), and had a bunch of his own interesting characteristics.This demon had a very small torso, with large tendrils jutting out from his back. His large, hooked arms were covered in fleshy veins and something resembling skin. He had no legs-rather his lower body amassed into a slug-like tail that wrapped around the leg of the table. His head was oddly enough, similar to a humans, with a chin and mouth in the right place, but the rest of his head amassed into a gooey orb, with little strands of something looking like ivory (but far from it) whipped around on the back of his head, constantly in some form of flowing movement. He had only one eye-a giant purple circle with no real pupil, but the movement of it suggested it was used for vision. But with demons, one could never be sure.
The demon stared out the window, clearly unaware of the shock he was about to receive. Tyler prepared himself for everything he was about to say for the induction. Prepared himself to change this demon’s life in the same way he had his life shaken what seemed to be a long time ago. He watched for a second as the demon stared out of the window, drowsily looking out at the world which was oh so familiar to him. The demon world was still so fascinating to Tyler, but he didn’t have time to mull over its horrifying beauty any longer.
He walked a couple steps closer to the demon, almost unsure of what to say to him. These were going to be the first words he ever heard from a human! He had to make sure they were immaculate—these next words he was going to say were going to change the course of this demon’s life forever! So much hangs in the balance of these words! What to say? How do I even begin to start talking to a demon and tell him his life is a lie? It has to be calm, clear, and yet cutthroat to the point, Tyler’s thoughts began to race.
BANG!
As Tyler thought, he banged his knee against one of the tables, making a loud crash as he let out a loud yell of pain. As he did so, the demon turned around to face Tyler, his eye locking as Tyler recovered from the sting. So much for an introduction, he thought.
The demon stared at Tyler, his mouth agape as his body began to quiver and began to raise his claws up in a defensive manner as he tried to articulate words. He slowly tried to make for the door as he did so.
“What—what the hell are you? Stay away from me!!!” yelled the demon, still in absolute shock at the sight of Tyler. It always amused him how frightening humans were to demons. Humans just seemed so . . . boring compared to the beasts of the demon realm, that it was so outlandish that they could be scared of humans! But alas, they are, and he now had to convince this one otherwise.
“Relax. I’m not going to hurt you. Just calm down, and I will explain everything,” Tyler said, trying to be as calm and composed as he could be, lest not to frighten the demon any longer.
The demon struggled to get his thoughts out, still in an utter daze over the sight of Tyler. “Are—are you a- a-”
“Human? Yes. But don’t be frightened. I’m not here to enslave you, or whatever it is you fear I’m going to do,” Tyler explained. From what he remembered, just as humans have their superstitions around demons, demons saw humans as threats to. The legend goes that humans are these insanely intelligent creatures that would slowly begin to invade the demon realm and capture the people of it, making them their pets, slaves, and all other sorts of demeaning things as they conquered the world. At least, that’s what he remembered.
“Why should I trust you?” the demon asked, still very skittish, but Tyler could tell he was just a little bit less nervous.
“My name is Tyler Mangene. Yes, I am a human, but if you will let me, I promise I will explain everything to you, and even stuff you couldn’t begin to comprehend,” Tyler said, then went out for a handshake, but due to the nature of this particular demon’s hands, he retracted. “What’s your name?”
“Wayne. Wayne Johnson,” he replied, now far less tense and backing away from the door. “What do you mean ‘stuff I can’t begin to comprehend?’”
Tyler got ready to break the seal on Wayne’s mind. Every human and demon had a seal—a veil which hid their memories of everything they truly knew, and replaced them with millions of fake memories to make sure neither species knew of the other’s true existence. It’s why humans have legends of demons serving the devil and being missionaries of evil, and why demons think humans are intellectual manipulators who are . . . missionaries of evil. And only the workers of The Slice of Peace had their seals permanently removed.
With how close Wayne was to the Vita—it being just a couple feet away in the storage room—Tyler was surprised he hadn’t started remembering things, with what Hank told him about a demon he was serving earlier that day. Tyler walked back into the storage closet, brought out the container holding the Vita, its bright blue glow pulsing through the glass. It looked a bit dimmer today, but it always fluctuated in its brightness, so it was hard to tell.
Tyler held the container right in between his and Wayne’s faces, its blue glow illuminating both their faces. It also began to put Wayne into a sort of trance. He reached out for it slowly.
“Careful there. Don’t touch it, or else you could break the container,” Tyler said, and Wayne took his claw away.
Once he lowered his claw, Tyler uttered the same words that have brought the other workers of the establishment, along with himself, into the light: “Vita iterum fluat.”
With the simple muttering of those words, Tyler watched as everything began to shift in Wayne’s brain. Those words uncovered the seal on him, and suddenly everything began rushing back to him. The human and demon kingdoms, all the true history of the world, and anything else that got concealed by the seal. Wayne’s eye had a wild look about it, the shock of everything coming back to him being a shocker for him.
“How could I forget? Lord Howard . . . . the kingdom . . . . the Vita . . . how could I forget it all?!?!” Wayne exclaimed, still aghast at his memories. His tail whipped around in an angry flash.
“What do you remember?” Tyler asked, trying to help Wayne to get a grip on his surroundings.
“I was a Commander in the War for Lord Howard and Lady Kendra. I fought amongst the demons against the human kingdom. What happened to the war? What happened?!?!?!” Wayne screamed, stabbing his spiked arms into the ground in anger.
Tyler recalled something like this from the other demons. Many of them fought in the war, and they all had the same reaction when they realized they couldn’t remember the outcome. Truth is, no one did. Shirley explained that the reason no one remembered it was because the magnitude of events that did take place was too much for everyone.
“I’ll explain. Take a seat, this might be a bit,” Tyler said, and watched as Wayne slid into the seat, while Tyler struggled to sit in the abnormal chair.
“As you know, humans and demons lived on this planet, Earth, as two separate groups. The Human Empire and the Demon Kingdom. They had always been at odds with each other, both wanting more land and resources, mainly when it came to the lifesource of everything, the Vita. It flowed through every bit of the Earth, every river, and in a different form, through every living being. Each group wanted the Vita for themselves, to strengthen their reign and better their society. Eventually, it got to a point where riots and fighting led to an assassination attempt against the human prince, and once that failed, the two realms fell into all out war. Blood was shed across the land for six long years, and many lives were lost. And throughout this fighting, the Vita slowly began to drain and become weaker from both sides abusing its power,” Tyler explained, regalling the events which had affected him so much.
The war inflicted much pain on Tyler, as it did to everyone. He lost many in the struggle, including his parents. It was a struggle to continue on without them, and the only reason he kept on going was for his emperor and empress, and everyone else in the Human Empire. That very drive is what motivated so many to keep on fighting, for better or for worse.
“I know all that. What I wanna know is why I can’t remember how it ended. What happened for all the humans to disappear off the face of the Earth?” Wayne asked, eagerly awaiting a response.
“I’m getting to that. After so much fighting and so much land torn asunder, the Vita started decaying faster and dying quicker. Everyone began to feel the effects of this too, as people and all living matter alike began to slowly die due to a lack of the Vita. Eventually, it got so bad to a point where almost everyone on the planet was affected by the disease. And that’s when the mage of the Empire—”
“Wait—mage?” Wayne interrupted.
“Yes. The Human Empire, unbeknownst to the demons, had a long running family that had a special connection to the Vita, which allowed them to manipulate it and use it in ways normal people couldn’t. No one knows how they got this ability, only that it has been in their family for as long as anyone can remember. Anyways, the mage saw this decay, and made the ultimate sacrifice. They took the last remaining bit of pure Vita they could gather from the world, and used it and their magic to tear the world into two, forging a human world and a demon world. She fabricated fake histories and mythos for both worlds and every single person, permanently hiding their true past from them. No one was the wiser. Now the two worlds live separate, living off that very last amount of Vita you just saw. And the Slice of Peace is how we continue to strengthen the Vita. The mage took on the role of manager and began recruiting both humans and demons to this place so that she can slowly but surely bring the two worlds together and have the humans and demons learn peace. You see, the Vita gains strength through the spirit and peace of everything whose blood contains it, and by the connection between those very people. By having a tether between the two worlds, we are able to bring the two species so close that the Vita can gain strength. Hopefully it will become strong enough and we can get enough humans and demons to accept each other so that one day, we can reunite the two worlds in peace and make sure everything doesn’t go to shit like last time.” Tyler finished explaining, watching as Wayne’s mouth fell agape in shock.
“I can’t believe it. That’s wild. So all those memories are . . . fake?”
“Everything except for the last three years never happened. You’ve been living a lie.”
“Wow . . .” Wayne stood up, processing everything that Tyler had just told him. It was understandable—Tyler went through the very same thing when he got this talk.
“I know it’s a lot to take in. But now you have a new duty. The highest duty. You’re gonna work here, and help us to bring these two worlds together, one order at a time. You’ve become part of a sacred mission. The question is, are you up for it?” Tyler asks, trying to muster up some courage in Wayne.
“Yeah. Whatever it takes to make sure we don’t break out into war again. Thank you so much for helping me through . . . all this, Tyler,” Wayne said, finally coming to terms with everything that had just been explained to him.
“Hey, no problem, Wayne. I know what you’re feeling right now, and making sure you feel comfortable here with everything we’ve dumped on you is crucial. See you tomorrow,” Tyler said, as Wayne slowly began to walk out the door.
“One thing still confuses me. The connection and harmony of beings to the Vita is what keeps it alive. So why does it need to stay in a container?” Wayne asked.
Tyler tried to answer, but it honestly wasn’t something he had thought of before. He just accepted it when Shirley told them so. In fact, it was a good question the more he thought about it. Why would the source of their be off limits for them to touch directly? Why?
“I’m sure Shirley has her reasons. Don’t dwell on that now—you gotta get ready for your first day tomorrow!” Tyler told Wayne, but he had a feeling Wayne wasn’t the only person Tyler was trying to convince.
“You’re right. Thanks again, Tyler. See ya tomorrow,” Wayne said, and with that, he made his way out of the restaurant to his home.
Tyler picked up the container, and looked into the Vita’s glow. It always allured him—the connection, the innate longing for this piece of his existence he didn’t fully understand. And yet, he wasn’t allowed to make contact with it. Why?
Tyler couldn’t shake the thought, but he couldn’t stay and linger around forever, so he put the container into the storage closet on its shelf, and he began to leave the building and head for home, watching as the Vita slowly faded out of his vision and questions began to fade into his mind.
Why?