“Good morning, Victor!” the baker said, stacking another loaf into Victor’s cart. “This one’s on the house, my boy!”

Victor glared at him and he dragged his cart away from the baker’s grasp. “I don’t need your handouts.”

The baker laughed in his booming voice. “Of course not, Victor. I knew you wouldn’t accept it. You always think about my profits. But I made this cinnamon loaf for you, since you did such a great job yesterday.”

Victor bristled like a drenched cat. “What foolish words are you throwing at me? I did not do anything worth congratulating.”

“There is no need to be modest, hero,” the baker said, tossing Victor a newspaper.

“Local Hero Captures A Notorious Killer - the Monument Structure’s legacy?” Victor muttered as he read the title. “What the hell is this?”

“Don’t think your good deeds go unnoticed. How did you know that the criminal would run through Monument Park?”

“I did not!” Victor spat, juggling the copious loaves of bread he failed to resist. “I wanted to knock the stupid Monument Structure to hell!”

The baker rolled his eyes. “Sure, sure. You destroyed that monument just to be a little bastard. I got you.”

“I’m glad somebody understands,” Victor grumbled. “Is that why the city center was empty?”

“Did you not get the notification on your thincom?” The baker asked, pulling out a sheet of thick gray material, the glossy surface reflecting the harsh light emanating from the ceiling. He tapped the flat purple stone embedded into the rim and a cluster of icons jutted marginally out from the screen. He pointed at a red bulge in the screen. When he pressed it, letters materialized on the screen, each symbol raised almost imperceptibly.

LVL 5 CRIMINAL ESCAPED FROM FACILITY. DO NOT ENTER CITY SQUARE.

MESSAGE EXPIRED 17 HOURS AGO. THX TO THE HELP OF VICTOR SANTOS.

“Well, that explains things,” Victor muttered. “Where did you even get a thincom? Are they not prohibitively expensive?”

The baker cocked an eyebrow. “I mean, they’re pricey, but you go on a payment plan for these babies.”

“I did not know these were dispensed to the general public,” Victor muttered, flopping the material between his fingers.

The baker swiped the thincom from Victor’s hands. “Careful, now. It’s a flexible material but let’s not get too excited. What do you mean? Everyone has one of these nowadays.”

“Really?” Victor said.

“Where were you in the last two years, boy?” the man laughed.

Victor rolled his eyes. “I was locked away, slaving away at my dark arts, confined in the throes of self-isolation!”

The baker pressed a warm hand against Victor’s head. “You’re a good man, Victor.”

Victor recoiled. “Absolutely not.”

Without another word, Victor slammed several silver coins onto the table and whisked out the door, stepping into the soft pavement. The sun spilled over the fabric roofs jutting from each building. The city square was once again bustling with activity. As Victor stormed down the street, several people waved at him or called his name, to which Victor responded with a reluctant greeting.

“When you made a contract with me to become a supervillain,” Taro the demon said, his translucent form falling in step with Victor, “I expected you to at least have the foundations of evil.”

“Silence, demon,” Victor snapped. “I contracted with you to become a supervillain because I am clearly having trouble with doing it by my — oh, good morning, Cynthia.”

Cynthia, a bright-faced woman, bounded toward Victor, black ponytail bouncing against her shoulders. “Thank you for catching that terrible werewolf! He had killed twenty people over the course of a day without even being transformed!”

“I keep trying to tell all of you foolish people that I had no intention of appealing to any sense of morality! I merely destroyed the statue and the werewolf happened to run beneath it.”

Cynthia laughed. “Yeah, yeah. You keep telling yourself that. If you didn’t want to be discovered as a hero, then you shouldn’t have revealed yourself! But you’re the only person in Seer City who has experience with daemonics.”

“That can’t be right,” Victor said.

“You’d be surprised how few people can practice daemonics. It usually hurts too much for most people to pursue it too deeply.”

“But I knocked down the Monument Structure. Isn’t it a major landmark in Seer City? Why do you not despise me for my treacherous act?”

“Honestly, nobody really cares about that stupid thing, man. And you didn’t destroy it completely. You just busted the base. They’ll be able to fix it pretty quickly.”

Taro flashed Victor a look, though Victor’s expression remained unchanged.

“Right. Well, I am going to continue devising nefarious plots. Begone, fool.”

Cynthia laughed and said, “I’ll see you later, then, Victor.”

Victor, mood plummeting with every passing second, stepped off the sidewalk and into the street. Monument Park sprawled across the landscape, flowers blooming along the periphery, mesh fence abundant with shimmering ivy and vines. The grandiose Monument Structure lay in tattered fragments along the radius of the circular park. Red “DO NOT CROSS” tape had already been draped along the periphery of the affected area. City Parks employees were already at the scene, scrambling to collect the shattered material. As Victor passed through the park, the workers stood up and waved, grins taught across their faces.

“I gave you more work to do!” Victor cried out. “You should be chucking that concrete at me, not being all friendly like this!”

The workers laughed and continued their progress.

“You could be a villain easily, you know,” Taro said.

“I try to be rude to them,” Victor said. “But at this point they just accept it as my personality! They don’t even care!”

“This situation mirrors exactly your foolish attempt to blow up a building,” Taro said, examining his long, black nails, angled into claw-like spikes. “You were also unable to detonate the remaining crystallics. Are you, perhaps, losing your grip? You could very easily detonate all of them if you just used my abilities.”

Victor glared at Taro as they approached the rickety, wounded church stationed at the edge of the forest.

“Oh, you would like that, wouldn’t you?” Victor snapped. “Don’t think that I failed my Intro to Demonic Possessions class. The more I use your abilities, the faster my body’s energy will be devoured. The faster I will perish.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Taro said. “What is the point of contracting to me when you won’t use me?”

“I will use you when the time comes,” Victor said, pushing open the heavy metal doors of the church, the ornate design weathered with age.

When Victor stepped into the dilapidated building, a strange sight assaulted him. Madeline was sitting at a table fixed with a doily and teacups she had positioned behind the pews, chatting animatedly with a stranger. The stranger was a young adult of short stature, round face betraying his youth. With a white collared shirt and black suspenders, he could have expressed a dapper disposition, were it not for the black booty shorts and knee-high boots. The chin-length powder-blue hair further defiled his suave aesthetic, though the dead eyes revealed his dangerously tranquil temperament.

Victor could have accepted this image. Madeline was known for bringing strange guests over. Nothing could surprise him after she released a swarm of lizards into the church for no discernible reasons. Were it not for the obvious, Victor would merely shrug and clamber up the ladder back to the attic.

Red eyes. Dark maroon wings folded over his back. A scarlet tail with a heart-shaped end. The marks of a demon.

“Oh, Victor, you have to get a load of this guy,” Madeline laughed. “He is really the coolest fella I’ve ever met.”

“That’s right, Victor!” the man affirmed, a smirk sprawled across his features. “I really am the coolest fella you’ve ever met! You heard the girl.”

“Madeline, what the hell is this demon doing in here?” Victor exclaimed. “This is an incubus, Madeline, you fool!”

“God, I don’t want to deal with an incubus. They’re quite terrible,” Taro groaned.

“Oh, I know that. An incubus is a sex demon, right?” Madeline said.

“And a demon of dreams. We preside over two realms,” the man supplemented. “The two genders, sex and dreams.”

“Yeah! Well, this guy’s name is Lukas,” Madeline said, nodding toward him. “He apparently is the demon that injured Rohan and he was just trying to check up on him, I guess?”

Lukas nodded encouragingly. “Yep! Couldn’t be more right.”

“I noticed he had the deformities of an anti-enerium creature. I assumed it was a demon, and looks like I was right,” Madeline said.

“Go on?” Victor prompted, eyeing the demon with hate.

“And I immediately shot him with my gun, as one does,” Madeline said.

“How silly of you,” Lukas giggled.

Madeline returned the laugh. “How silly of me indeed! I totally did it on impulse. I forgot that demons can’t be killed by guns. They can only be affected by magic, right?”

“Now, now, don’t go revealing all my secrets! There will be none left to tell.”

“I truly hate this man,” Taro snapped, narrowing his eyes. “He’s so pretentious and condescending.”

“He sounds just like you,” Victor mumbled to Taro before returning his focus to the rest of the group. “That does not explain in the slightest why you would stoop so low as to serve him tea? You never serve me tea!” Victor exclaimed.

“Well, I mean, I couldn’t kill him so I figured, let’s just get to know him,” Madeline reasoned. “I was super bored so I mean, what else was I supposed to do? Find another way to kill him?”

“Or chase him out at the very least!”

“Now, now. You’re not being a very welcoming host, are you?” Lukas pointed out with a pout.

“Why did you attack Rohan?” Victor demanded, closing the space between himself and Lukas, glaring at him through slits.

“I wasn’t the one who attacked him,” Lukas said.

“What?”

“Why, Rohan attacked me.”

Victor hesitated. “Why would he do that? I did not think that he fraternized with demons in any capacity.”

“Because he is a Devil’s Fragment,” another voice supplemented.

Victor turned around to see Rohan standing beside the ladder dangling from the trap door to the attic, fiery eyes glaring at Lukas. Bandages snaked under his hair.

“A Devil’s Fragment?” Victor scoffed. “What the hell is a Devil’s Fragment?”

Madeline and Rohan exchanged glances. A slight note of frustration flitted through Madeline’s eyes. She turned to Victor and said, “You don’t know what a Devil’s Fragment is?”

“Well, there’s no need for him to know, I guess!” Lukas pointed out. “Well, you must at least know who the Parasite is?”

“Of course I do.”

“Really?” Lukas cooed. “Because at this point I’m not sure if I believe you.”

“I don’t have to prove anything to you,” Victor snapped. “The Parasite is the devil that has taken over the Kingdom of Drakyn.”

“Where we live,” Lukas said.

“Where we live,” Victor confirmed.

“The Parasite doesn’t interfere with daily life necessarily,” Victor said. “But it requires regular sacrifices of the public to feed it, right? What is a Devil’s Fragment? Why have I not heard of this…?”

“The truth is that this kind of information is kept secret,” Rohan said. “You wouldn’t have learned it in your daemonics classes. I only found out about this recently.”

“Is it really a secret though?” Lukas replied, drumming his fingers on the table. “I mean, it doesn’t matter if anyone actually knows or not. It's not like you can stop us.”

Frustration was biting at Victor. “Will you actually tell me what Devil’s Fragments are or not?”

“Well, you know how demons can make contracts with humans?” Madeline said.

“Why do you know about this and I don’t!” Victor exclaimed. “Madeline has the least to do with any of this at all! But just to let you know, demons can contract with other humanoids as well. And beastoids. It's not just humans.” Victor clearly was attempting to regain some semblance of his intellectual dominance in the field of demons, his domain.

“That’s exactly the point!” Lukas exclaimed. “Great job, darling. You’re getting somewhere now. Us demons can also make contracts with other demons.”

Victor stared at Lukas. “I mean...I suppose they can. But the demon has to be extremely powerful to be able to do something like...this…”

Victor’s eyes widened.

“Did you figure it out, then?” Lukas said in a sing-song voice.

“The Parasite is a devil...and they contracted other demons?” Victor began pacing across the church, making tight circles through the pews. “For what purpose?”

“To have a squad to smoke weed with,” Rohan grumbled. “Why the hell do you think a devil would make a contract?”

Victor rounded on Rohan, towering over him. “Do not treat me like a child. I am just

surprised that there is a devil powerful enough to contract different demons living in this country. It is not even that important.”

“I mean, it’s quite nice here,” Lukas said. “The reserve of crystallics beneath this kingdom is quite incredible. Anyone would want to invade this country.”

“But we are too powerful enough to invade. That’s why we must live in isolation. To keep anyone else away.”

“But that’s not the point here,” Madeline said with a pout. “What exactly is a devil anyway? Are they powerful or something?”

Flaunting his commands over daemonics, Victor said, chest extended in pride. “Well, a devil is merely the most powerful demon below the Anti-Eldritch.”

“Ugh, I was not paying attention to this black magic stuff,” Madeline whined. “What the heck are the Anti-Eldritch?”

“All you have to know is that they’re basically the gods of black magic,” Rohan said. “What is all this damn exposition? Why are you here, Lukas? Are you here to kill me?”

Lukas laughed, tail swishing faintly behind him. “No, I just want to help you so you can destroy my competition. That’s why I sought you out to begin with, Rohan. You’re hunting us, aren’t you?”

Rohan limped towards Lukas, eyes adopting a dangerous quality. “The Parasite is using all of you to spread their reign of terror. The Parasite does not want to out itself, so it feeds using other demons. And you let all that energy go to this parasite. I don’t understand you at all.”

“There is really nothing for you to understand,” Lukas said with a shrug. “You’re not a demon. You’ll never be able to understand our plight. But listen to the offer that I’m going to make you.”

“Oh, sure. Let me just waste precious seconds of my life talking to a crackpot twink who eats babies for breakfast,” Rohan said, rolling his eyes. “You’re worth nothing to any of us. Your opinion is worthless and I am going to find a way to kill you.”

“In the state you’re in now?”

“Don’t be so mean to Lukas. He’s kind of nice,” Madeline said, reaching over and giving Lukas a pat on the head.

“Don’t patronize me,” Lukas said through gritted teeth. “I could snap your neck with a thought.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Madeline said, forcing Lukas to endure two more seconds of aggressive petting before she returned to her seat.

“Listen, you want to eliminate the rest of the Devil Fragments, don’t you?” Lukas drawled. “So what would be the problem if you used some of my advice?”

“What a fool you are to believe a single word that escapes your cruel jaw!” Victor exclaimed. “We cannot verify any of the information you give us.”

“Okay. I will say that’s fair,” Lukas said, rising from the ornately carved garden chair pressed against the table. “I won’t deny that I am not a very reputable source. What if I present to you a lovely bit of information that you would, indeed, be able to verify?”

“I think that sounds good,” Madeline said brightly. “It is probably a trap. I mean, obviously. You’re setting up a trap, aren’t you?”

Lukas laughed. “Most certainly. But I wouldn’t really call it a trap. Once you heed my advice, you will have no more use for me, and then you would kill me. That’s why you kept me alive, Rohan, didn’t you?”

Rohan looked away.

Victor turned to Rohan. “What is he talking about? There is no way the likes of my archnemesis would simply let himself get caught in such a pathetic way.”

“I literally could care less about your opinion of me or your beliefs surrounding me,” Rohan sighed, rubbing his fatigued eyes with the palm of his hand. “The truth is that during our fight, he revealed some information to me that…” He tapped his fingers against his own thigh. “Well… I don’t know if I can believe it.”

“What information?” Victor said.

Lukas sprung into the air, catching a draft with his wings as he rose. “This city is going to undergo a purge.”

Madeline rose to her feet, concern springing into her eyes like a rabbit springing into the gaping maw of a hawk. “What? No way. You can’t be serious. How could that possibly…?”

“It’s true,” Lukas said. “Whether you want to believe me is up to you.”

Without another word, Lukas soared through the frame of a shattered stained glass window and vanished in the seamless blue sky.