Keep to the Road (Complete)

Part 1

Rules. A child's constant migraine. Often that term would be followed by the far more dreaded phrase, "Those are the rules." This is a phrase that Rosemary and Regan Gravely have heard numerous times before. They've heard their mother explain the rules of the house before such as no snacks before bed, do homework before T.V., wash your hands after petting or holding Slinky, and no muddy or wet shoes in the house. 

They also complained how their schools and teachers set too many rules such as no running in the halls, no games during study hours, and no cursing. They thought they could get away from their world of dictatorial laws by retreating into a darkened, lawless realm. Once they arrived the in offices of Inferno Tower their hopes for hanging out with the lawless turned into a lecture course.

"How can Hell have rules?" Rosemary groaned.

"Come on, kiddo," Their stepfather boasted. "Even a society of soul-torturing hellspawns has got to have rules too."

"That's right, loves," His sexy secretary, Lilith, chimed in. "It's what keeps us from completely cannibalizing each other, figuratively and literally."

"Ain't nothing wrong with rules!" Balthazar added. "Like don't swim in the Lake of Fire."

"Or don't dink around with the torture devices." Ghuul jumped in.

"No littering." The mighty Moloch grumbled.

"Don't feed the hellhounds, or any animals for that matter."

"Show no mercy to the condemned."

"No smoking-"

"That's not a rule!"

"-In certain areas! Anywhere else is fair game."

"And let's not for get the most important rule of all." The devil exclaimed. "Ready everyone?"

"Ready!" All his demon friends repeated as they stated their last rule in unison. "Always, always, ALWAYS, keep to the road."

"What does that mean?" Regan asked.

"See that road there?" Lu pointed at the window. The Gravely sisters peered out and saw a long, winding stone road paved before the tower. Its pattern was as twisted and unusual as its denizens with a straight forward path that led to a series of loops and upheavals. Much of the road was littered with cracks and ripples with small magma pores seeping through like blood from a cut. 

Near the insane roadway were dark, steep caverns that led to places unknown. The caverns were so dark not even some of the fires could completely light them. It was impossible to tell if there was a bottom or one would fall continuously.

"That road connects to every aspect of the Inferno. From this office to Legion's hut, and even to the city of Dis. You must always stay on the road, and never wonder off into the caverns below. Those caverns are off limits."

"Why?" Regan asked again.

"Let's just say that there are nightmares down there that scare even us, and for the sake of your sanity we'll just conclude right there."

"Like what?" Rosie asked this time, hoping for more answers. Her investigation was cut short when a frightened shrill erupted inside the office space.

"SCAVENGERS!" they heard a loud screech.

The little demon, Scrugs, burst open the door and flew towards his higher level colleagues. His impish wings flapped frantically in Hell's cold air. He flew so fast that he crashed his short, stubby abdomen right into Lu's giant desk, his talons digging deep into the wood frame. 

"SCAVENGERS! SCAVENGERS! SCAVEN-" Scrugs tried to relay his fraught warning yet was cut short when Lu's diamond-crested cane slugged against his head.

"Why don't you shout that even louder?" The devil scowled as he cleaned away his ears with his finger. "I don't think we heard you the first time."

"Sc-sc-scavengers!" Scrugs stammered. "Watchtower... they... they said they s-s-s-spotted scavengers... just outside the city limits."

The whole office fell silent like a tomb. Balthazar and Ghuul spat out their coffee and Moloch crushed his mug into porcelain splinters. The Gravely sisters watched as their stepfather's face crunched together into a scowl. His burning eyes flashed into a more reptilian glare. A beastly growl uttered under his breath as more wrath boiled inside his tainted soul. Lilith tapped at her respected boss to which he quickly snapped out of his odd trance.

"Damn scavengers!" Balthazar cursed under his breath. "Givin' demons like us a bad name."

Ghuul agreed. "As if we weren't already bad enough."

"Alright, I'm going to head down there and check it out." Lu barked to his disciples. "Scrugs, lead on. Balthazar, Ghuul, Moloch, back me up. Lilith, get a call out to the guards. Tell them to increase security around Dis, load up on weapons, get anyone with magic to cleanse the area, and send in the hounds to draw them back. Report back to me in case you hear of any other outbreaks."

"Anything we can do?" Rosemary asked, following the demons towards the door.

"You two can stay here." Lu growled.

A knock at the door caught everyone off guard. Scrugs strapped himself to Lu's leg. "They found a way inside the tower!"

Lu seized the imp's throat and roared. "Since when do scavenger's knock, you idiot?"

The door slowly creaked and the demons readied themselves. Lu and Moloch ignited fireballs from their palms, Ghuul and Balthazar pulled out jagged daggers from their belts, and Lilith armed herself with her dangerous stapler. Scrugs and the girls hid behind the unnerved adults as the giant door flew open. Dominic walked in and nervously greeted the frantic adults. "Uh, hi everyone!"

"Hey Dominic!" Rosie welcomed her demon friend.

"Hey Rosie. Hey Regan. I was just wondering if you're ready to play ball with me and my brothers and sisters?"

Both Rosemary and Regan looked to their stepfather for his blessing. Their puppy eyes begged for an answer. Lu rolled his eyes and sighed. "Just stay within the premises of the tower. If you're going to play outside, keep to the road. Let's go!"

The children cheered and rushed down the stairs, joining the playful mob of Dominic's twelve younger siblings. The older demons stormed out of the tower and traveled on the long road to this suspected outbreak.

"Hey Moloch." Ghuul jested. "Guess this makes us damage control, huh?"

"Yeah." The behemoth snarled. "You're the control. I'm the damage."

Part 2

Outside Inferno Corp. Tower, the children played on the roadway, chasing back and forth after Rosemary's soccer ball. It was quite a sight seeing two human children laugh and play with thirteen young demonic spawns. At each end of the crooked road were a pair of implanted pikes connecting with a wide net. Severed human skulls stuck through the pointed spearheads on top. The ball bounced around on cracked, paved road with the children trying so hard to kick the ball into the nets.

The ball came to little Regan and she kicked it as hard as she could. It almost flew into net but it stopped and toppled away when one of Dominic's sisters blocked it with her telekinesis.

"Foul!" The lively skulls judged, watching the game closely with their hollow eyes. "Use of telekinesis during game!"

"Tattle-tale!" The sister mocked.

Their game continued on. The ball rolled to Rosemary, which she passed over to Dominic. Dominic then set up his shot and kicked. The ball went right over everyone's heads and even over the net, dropping off into the dark caverns below. All the kids paused their match and walked to the end of the road, peering down to abyss. It was so dark not even the hellfire's light could illuminate the pit.

"Ball out of bounds!" All the skulls cried out. "Game over!"

"He's right." Dominic sighed. "Game over everyone."

"No it's not." Rosemary corrected the demon children. "We can still get it."

"Are you kidding me?" One of Dominic's brothers squeaked. "The ball's off the road and into the caverns. It's lost. I'm really sorry, Rosie, but the game's over."

"Come on, what's down there?" Regan hesitantly asked.

"The worst things you could never imagine." Another brother muttered fearfully.

"Like what? Scavengers?" Rosemary joked.

Dominic popped over and covered Rosemary's mouth with his hands. "Don't mention them! I swear they show up whenever someone mentions them."

The smaller, younger demon siblings gathered around their older siblings, quaking in fear.

"There's no scavengers here, right?" They all whimpered. "Please say it's true."

"Don't worry, they wouldn't dare come this far." Dominic reassured them. He and the older siblings cradled their younger kin in their safe arms. Rosie and Regan watched as fear swept through their faces like a flu virus.

"You guys are really afraid of them, aren't you?" Rosemary softly spoke, her tone very sympathetic.

"You have no idea what they're really capable of." Dominic explained. "They do things so horrible we dare not speak about them. It's been said by the adults that they stick to the shadows, and these caverns are full of shadows. That's why it's forbidden to venture through them. I once thought I could short cut through one of those caverns. Let's just say the stuff I saw I needed therapy afterword."

One of Dominic's older brothers tapped him on his shoulder. "Dominic, it's getting late. We should be heading home."

"Right," The small imp boy assured. "See you later Rosie! Bye Regan!"

"Aren't you forgetting to give your girlfriend a kiss?" One of Dominic's sisters jested.

"WHAT?!?" Dominic nervously hollered. "She's not my girlfriend. Well, she's a girl, and my friend. There's nothing related there!"

The Gravely sisters chuckled and waved their goodbyes as Dominic and his siblings walked down the winding road, overhearing them tease their blushing brother. "Dominic and Rosie sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G!"

After Dominic and his siblings ventured off to their home, Rosemary peered once more into the abysmal cavern below. She really wanted her ball back. For her, the memories of she, her sister, and their father happily playing with it was not worth abandoning to some haunted cavern with a few rumored monsters. 

Building up enough confidence, she carefully started to make her descent into the caverns below. Her sole sister gasped when she caught her slowly ascending down.

"Wait, Rosie!" Regan cried. "You can't go down there! What about what Lu said?"

"We can't leave that ball behind." Her older sister reminded. "It belonged to Dad."

"But what about scavengers?" Regan said. Her fears and worries growing more and more as Rosemary continued climbing.

"It'll be fine. I'll just have a quick look, grab the ball, and then get outta there. You can stay here if you'd like."

Regan shuttered. She was more afraid to be left alone than any monsters or bullies. Mimicking exactly what her sister did, she too began her long descent into the darkness below.

"Tread carefully, mortals." The skulls warned as the girls continued their climb down. "For it's not the dark you should fear, but what lives in the dark."

Part 3

Rosemary and Regan Gravely finally touched down on the surface of the nebulous cavern. Darkness engulfed all around them. They could barely see each other if not for a few steam vents spewing from the walls and ground. As very little light help shine for them it looked as though the cavern extended for miles as if all other caverns were all connected to one giant cavern at the core.

"Wow," Rosemary nervously said. "It looked a lot smaller from above."

Rosemary whipped out her cellphone and shined a light from an app. She and her sister held hands as they carefully navigated through the dark unknown looking for their lost soccer ball. They walked what left like for miles only to find that they hardly left more than ten feet from their starting point. The light from Rosemary's phone and a couple vents revealed a vast graveyard of bones of unknown hell beasts littering the soot-stained surface. The girls felt unnerved as they noticed numerous teeth marks bore deep into the remains. The bigger bones were snapped in half for the marrow while the skulls were crushed for the brains.

"I want to go home!" Regan whined. She tried so hard to pull her big sister back but didn't have the strength.

"Just a two more minutes and then we're outta here." Rosie said, still scoping for her ball. Her eyes lit up when she at last spotted it a few feet away. The girls ran to the ball, ready to get out of the vast cavern. Regan leaned to pick it up but dropped it when she felt something off about it. Rosie shined the light on her sister's hands, revealing a shiny, black ooze smeared on her hands and the ball. Regan wiped them away in disgust as she tried to claim the ball again. Then Rosie's light caught something more in the dark.

The series of tree roots embedded above the dead soil. The roots were black as tar and looked very fleshy. The girls rarely saw any plant life down in the Inferno, but these roots from a tree felt wrong to them. Rosemary raised her phone a little higher as they both saw a giant, towering tree nearby amidst the darkness. 

The tree looked very sick, almost caught in a forever cycle of decay. Leaves in the form of hands of various different species, some human others not, hanged on the thin limbs. The most disturbing feature of all was the bulk of the trunk marked by the screaming faces of trapped souls.

The Gravely sisters felt sick to their stomachs as an aroma of rotting corpses was emitted from the tree. Then a noise made the pair flinch. It sounded like someone or something chewing loudly. Rosemary shined her light to the direction of the most noise and found an unusual creature hunched over by the dead tree. It looked almost human, looking hairless and freakishly thin, so thin its leathery skin exposed every bone connected in its shriveled, naked body. It was also very pale, even paler than the condemned souls left for torment and servitude. Long, gnarled fingers that resembled spider legs wrapped themselves around a long, narrow femur body. The creature viciously gorged at the juicy marrow inside.

"Hello?" Rosie muttered, slowly raising her light up to get a better look at the strange being.

The creature froze. It halted its feeding frenzy and perked its pointed ears up. The unsoundly popping and cracking noises emitted as it slowly turned its head around. Its head faced itself towards the girls and sniffed the air with its hollow, skeletal nose. A forked tongue like a snake's flickered, sensing the presence of two mortals. It looked straight at the pair. It had no eyes but the girls felt it staring at them. A soft wheeze came from its toothy maw, enveloping into a horrible, loud shriek. It then arced its body around and leapt at the girls.

Rosemary and Regan jumped out of the way, dropping their soccer ball as the sickly imp pounced on it. The creature's rotten teeth punctured into the ball, instantly deflating it in seconds. The polyester skin tasted awful to the demon. It spat it out and scurried after the Gravely sisters. The feral demon released a loud screech that echoed all around the cavern, attracting more of its kin to the hunt as they scampered out from the corpse tree and popped out from hidden burrows.

"RUN, REGAN, RUN!" Rosemary shouted. The two screamed and quickly ran away as the hungry feral demons started to follow behind. They ran for the wall but could barely see any sign of it. They felt they were running in a continuous loop. The scavenger horde howled as they tracked their helpless prey. More and more hungry scavengers popped out of the ground and lurked their ill bodies toward the frantic girls. A disgusting hand sprung out like a weed and grabbed Regan by her ankle and caused her to trip.

"ROSIE! HELP!" She screamed. Tears rolled down her eyes.

The scavenger climbed out of its burrow and licked its diseased lips as it readied itself to feed. Rosemary smacked the predator away with a small bone. She smacked it again only to break the fragile bone piece in half. The creature screeched as it wiped away the blood oozing out from its fractured nose. Its kin lost their focus on the sisters and started a feeding frenzy on the bleeder. The wounded imp howled as its brethren violently feasted on what little meat it had. They stripped away the skin with their nails and gouged out the organs with their rotten fangs. Others focused not on the available meat but more on the girls. The girls hugged each other tightly as the hungry horde circled them.

Suddenly, a massive fiery spiral then erupted, surrounding itself around both Rosemary and Regan. The shocking blast forced the feral demons to repel back a few steps. The girls shielded themselves from the blinding blast of the intense, hot flames. Rosemary summoned the courage to briefly peak out in hopes to witness their savior. Standing inside the flames she thought was the shadow of a man, but the man's shadow then morphed into some kind of enormous mass that stood as tall as the flames themselves.

The scavengers hopped and hissed around the blazing twister. They snapped their feeble jaws for the chance to strike at the meat hidden inside. Their nostrils then caught a familiar smell. The smell wasn't any prey they smelt before. They knew this smell. It smelled like danger. It smelled like death. Suddenly giant, hoofed foot cut through the spinning fire, which shook the very cindered ground it stepped on. The flames extinguished away as a hulking, dark shadow cast over the fearful scavengers and the terrified sisters.

Rosemary and Regan looked up as a much bigger, deadlier monster towered over them at least twenty feet tall standing on its hoofed legs, four times the size of the feral creatures. They thought they were both looking at some kind of monster that looked like a cross between a wingless dragon and a mutated Tyrannosaurus. From the tip to its pointed snout and the edge of its spiky, arrow-shaped tail, it ranged fifty to sixty feet in length. Its whole scaly body looked as though it was armored from very burning brimstone of Hell itself. Massive, muscular arms carried set of large five-fingered hands with razor-sharp claws on the end. Six pale crystals petruded from its back with some sort of molten light blazing through. An unusual brand was marked on the monster's chest that resembled a trinity of sixes intertwining each other.

The beast's face truly frightened the sisters the most. Its face as very large and triangular in shape with snake-like slits on the end of the snout. Its massive maw with rows of sharp, jagged teeth gleamed, ready for blood. Both its cheeks supported a pair of smaller mouths with more abnormal fangs and forked tongues. Small, hate-fueled, red eyes pierced through the darkness. Above its eyes were two large horns, nearly as long as its skull, that prodded forward and a crest of spikes were crowned on the back of its enormous head. The beast glared at its inferior kind and unleashed a ground-shattering roar, which forced Rosemary and Regan to hide their ears.

The scavengers hissed at their new meal. The satisfying thought of endless meat quenched their rotten lips. The enormous dragon-monster charged forward, fangs and claws at the ready. The starving horde scurried and pounced on top of the lumbering brute only for some of their numbers to be knocked back by one swift swing from the beast's mighty tail. They ripped and clawed at the behemoth's tough hide, digging deep into its flesh with their gnarled fangs and fingernails. They bit and tore into the red dragon's hide as it roared wildly, violently repelling the attackers with its hands and teeth. It grabbed and squished them with its mighty hands, and stomped and crushed their frail bodies beneath its giant feet. Its jaws filled itself with the bitter taste of their tainted blood as it severed their heads off in swift chomps.

The starving predators all regrouped before the beast for another deadly assault. The beast sucked in all the air it could as the branded sixes began to glow a hot red. A powerful fire blast shot from its large mouth, obliterating the demons caught within. Flesh, skin, and bone all incinerated in seconds as many of the horde were caught in their helpless death. The beast fired a second time only to blast away the corpse tree from a distant. The tree lit up like a matchstick as the unholy fire burned it into ash. 

Fearful what the great red dragon would do the remaining scavengers retreated back further into the shadowy abyss, shrieking and whimpering with the constant ache of starvation. The red dragon-monster roared victoriously over their kin's charred remains marked by its fire, proclaiming its dominance over the feeble creatures.

Now that the cavern was clear from any scavenger presence, the beast's enormous head then turned towards Regan and Rosemary, who both still frozen in fear from bearing witness to the violent brawl. Its eyes leered at the pair then lumbered its way over to where they laid. The sisters still could not move. They feared that this new monster could still threaten their lives as well. Yet they watched with stupefied gazes as the monster's shadow morphed into a man. The red, scaly skin turned into a red, torn suit. Its tail vanished into nothingness. The clawed hands now normal human hands, and the beastly face now shared the face of someone they know. There standing before them, not a monster, but there stepfather, tired and wounded. He looked at his stepdaughters with disappointed eyes.

"That..." He deeply exhaled his words. "Is why...you always, always keep to the road."

Lu groaned in pain and dropped to his knees. His hands clenched his left ribs where blood seeped from a long gashes along his body. Loosing consciousness the devil fell face down. 

"BOSS? ROSEMARY? REGAN? WHERE ARE YOU?" A series of voices called out from the darkness. The girls turned around to see shadows moving from the caverns to the positions where the three laid. Out from the darkness came some familiar faces from the tower Scrugs, Lilith, Balthazar, Ghuul, and Moloch. 

"There! I see them right there!" Scrugs cried out to the search party. 

Scrugs flew ahead as the other demons followed behind. The Gravely sisters noticed that their stepfather's friends were not alone, accompanied by Doomsguards, the elite demon soldiers decked in steel-cased fiber vests and ominous face masks, and armed with the biggest guns they ever saw. Lilith out ran all the others as she approached the frightened sisters. Regan picked herself up and jumped into Lilith's arms, crying into her shoulders. Lilith hugged her tightly and leaned down to hug the still stunned Rosemary too. The soldiers positioned a perimeter around the two human children and their unconscious leader, scanning every rock and canvas with the barrels of their guns. They made sure that no scavenger was present. 

"Oh thank all that is wicked you two are safe!" Lilith frantically said, trying so hard to hold back her tears. The demonic soldiers gathered around their fallen leader and closely examined him, checking his pulse and listened for signs of breath.

"Is he... dead?" Scrugs nervously uttered.

"No, he's alive." the guard captain reassured as lifted his claw away from the devil's pulse. His distorted voice gargled behind the mask's breathing apparatus. "But he's badly wounded."

"My god, scavengers did a number on him." Another demon soldier radioed in.

"Looks like he delivered more." Another one spoke up once finished inspecting the scorched remains of the scavengers and the tree. 

"Alright everyone, enough chit-chat!" the captain bellowed. "Clean this area from their filth and get the boss to Legion right way. Lilith, take those humans back up to the surface. They look like they've seen enough for one day."

Lilith nodded and led the Gravely sisters away with Scrugs, Ghuul, and Balthazar safeguarding them. Rosemary looked back at the demon soldiers as she saw them gently lift him into Moloch's giant arm. Rosemary watched the demons, surprised that a species thought to be known for their selfishness and cruelty willingly aided their injured king. They could have finished him off, let someone else rule their dominion, but they were helping her stepfather instead. She saw their loyalty before, even witness their fear of him, but never actually aid him. Lilith noticed Rosie still staring at the loyal demons and gave her a soft smile.

"Don't worry, loves." Lilith said sweetly. "Your pops in good hands. After all, what'd we do without our king?"

Part 4

Rosemary laid wide awake in the safety of her own room. The horrible images of the savage scavengers and the ferocious monster her stepfather was still haunted her thoughts. She remembers the blood-curdling sound the creatures made when the beast tore into them and the splashing of fresh blood all over the soot covered ground. She remembered Lilith escorting her and her sister back to the warm embrace of their tearful mother as they waited together for Lu's recuperation. When at last he returned later that day, perfectly healed from his wounds, they were all relieved, but she still feared what was inside him, what he became.

Rosemary jumped when she heard a creaking sound outside her room. The creak was then followed by a series of light stomping that proceeded down the hall. Rosemary quietly climbed out of bed and sneaked towards the door. She opened it and saw nothing. She tip-toed down to her parents bedroom to further investigate. There she saw only her mother and her little sister sleeping soundly, yet her stepfather had vanished. She figured Regan was too scared to sleep alone so she crawled into bed as they slept. Rosemary remembered when she did that with her mom and her dad, her real dad. She lost him not to long ago, and now she almost lost her new father to a pack of vicious monsters. Worst yet was when she realized that her stepfather was more of a monster than the Bible ever let on.

Another noise came from downstairs. Rosemary rushed down the hallway and leaned on the stairway. From a corner she saw Lu using his dark magic to summon a fresh portal in their living room, stepping inside as it formed around the fireplace. Rosemary slowly sneaked down the stairs, careful not to make any of the wooden steps squeak. She then scurried and entered inside the portal to where she found herself in a torch-lit corridor in a place of the Inferno that was unknown to her. She never saw anything like this place at the tower or even in the outskirts of Dis. This chamber was hollow like a dead trunk, untouched by the hellfire. It was also so quiet and peaceful unlike the rest of this dark realm where she could sometimes barely hear herself think over the screams of the damned.

Lu proceeded to walk down what appeared to be the end of the chamber. Rosie inched her way down and saw something unusual, even for this place. Centered at the core was a vast, vacant room. The only thing present in this room was a large, rounded, blob-like mass, almost as big as an elephant, that hung above the floor with a series of elongated roots implanted within the walls and above. The mass looked as though it was made from an assortment of earth and flesh molded into one. Rosie saw the weirdly artifact compress itself, squeezing its molten shell into what looked like a contorted prune. Then it expanded out back into its original state to repeat the process each minute. A rhythmic two-step beat echoed throughout the chamber every time the bloated mass performed its routine ritual with floods of fluids filling its roots above.

"What are doing down here?!" Rosie flinched when she heard her stepfather shout. She looked to the devil, who in turn was glaring viciously at her intrusion.

"I had trouble sleeping." Rosie stuttered. "I saw you were out of bed, and you walked into a portal. What is this place? What is that thing? Are you okay?"

"Easy on the questions." Lu interrupted. "I'm feeling fine. Those potions Legion cooked up are doing wonders, and my healing is functioning just fine. Then again I would have been like this if someone listened to me in the first place."

Rosemary lowered her head, shame filled her heart. Lu lured her over by wagging his finger toward him. Rosemary complied and slowly dragged her feet over to her angered stepfather's position. The closer she drew to the Fallen One, the louder she heard the beating sound of the living artifact. Its bellowing rhythm matched her saddened, beating heart. Rosemary stopped in her place before Lu, averting her eyes so that she did not look into his furious gaze. Lu growled and said, "Rosemary Gravely, I am very, very disappointed in you. You deliberately disobeyed me. What's worse, you put your own sister in danger."

"I'm... I'm sorry." She stuttered again. Her throat clogged itself as she tried to hide away her emotions.

"You both could have been killed or worse! Why would you do something so stupid-" Lu paused his rant, his rage swept away from his face. He noticed water was starting to fill around Rosie's eyes and she started to sniffle. Her sad state reminded him when his father was enraged at him for his disobedience when he was young long ago, and how often he feared his wrathful punishments. 

Lu calmed himself by exhaling a silent sigh and continued. "I am not just a parent," he added, "I am also a king. I set certain rules for the safety of my people, and for you. It's with these rules that separates us from... what you saw down in those caverns."

"What were those things?" Rosemary asked, this time feeling more relieved from his harsh scolding.

"They're like us, but far worse." Lu paused, turning to face the great artifact. "Rosemary, let me ask you something. What is this place to you? Another realm? A giant prison? For many this place has been known only to be one thing: evil or, at least, the source of all evil. I've spent so long down in the fire to know that this world is not evil, it's corrupted."

The devil then placed his hand on it, closing his eyes and listening to the rhythmic beats coming from its core. "Can you hear it?" he asked Rosemary, "So quiet here it's almost peaceful. This place is considered to be holy ground to the likes of us demons. I come here often to escape the screams and the agony of the damned. It's like you can feel its connection to all life here. In a way, this realm, Hell itself, is like a living creature. It feeds, it grows, and it can even bleed."

Rosemary walked up to the massive artifact and placed her hand on it as well. Its abnormal surface felt like she was touching icy needles, making her pull away. She placed her hand on it again, but the ice cold surface faded, now warming itself around her hand. Rosemary felt the connection Lu mentioned. Everything living and dead, every rock and wall, every soul and beyond, she felt it all.

"It feeds off the torment and suffering of all the souls condemned down here; and it's capable of corrupting them in incredible and disturbing ways. It preys off the weak and hopeless, breaking them down until they've molded into something far more twisted and monstrous. Those creatures, the scavengers, are the result of this corruption."

"What about that... thing you were before?"

Lu fell silent. He mustered the only explanation he could, "I've been called many names in my life: Devil, Satan, the Fallen One, even Old Scratch. Yet the one name I've always despised, the one name even I shutter when I hear it, was being called the Beast. 

"After I fell I wanted to gain power and rule this realm for myself. It came to me but at a price. I had to relinquish my angelic self to become a fully fleshed demon. 

"That... animal... made me more powerful than I could possibly imagine, but it took away my soul. It takes away any sense of rationality or conscience until all that remains is nothing more than a predator driven by the most basic of animal instincts. What scares me the most is that sometimes, whenever I have take its form, I'm not sure whose really in control. Me or it."

"I never thought the devil could get scared." Rosemary said.

"Of course I get scared." Lu reassured, "Even today I was scared."

"You were?"

"Yes." Lu knelt down and placed his hands around Rosie's shoulders. His fiendish eyes were filled with more sympathy than ever before as he gazed into Rosie's eyes, which were partly covered by her raven-dyed hair. "I was afraid I would lose you and your sister, two of the good things that truly matter to me."

Rosemary smiled and said. "I was scared too. I was afraid I'd loose another father. But you know what, Lu?"

"What?" Lu asked.

"I think Scrugs was more afraid of those scavengers than any of us." she jested, a smile grew back on her face.

"That's because Scrugs is afraid of his own shadow." Lu said with a brighter smile and chuckle. "Wait, do you seriously wear your beanie to bed?"

"I like this beanie." Rosie exclaimed.

"Who wears beanies anymore? Let me see that!"

Lu swiped off Rosie's beanie off her head, twirling around in his wicked fingers. Rosemary laughed as she tried to jump and grab it from his clutches.

"Hey! Give it back!" she demanded.

"Yeah, what are you going to do about it?" Lu playfully teased.

Rosemary jumped as high as she could only to come short from the devil's grasp. She then tried to push him down to no prevail. Then she tried as series of light punches to his thin belly. The soft blows only tickled him inside.

"You know I think boys only wear beanies," Lu proclaimed. "So I was convinced I actually had a son this entire time. But I guess you're still just a girl since you hit like one."

Rosemary then tackled into her stepfather's stomach, forcing him to topple over into the ground. The pair laughed until their sides ached too much. Suddenly Lu felt Rosemary's arms wrap firmly around his neck. Her head placed itself on his shoulder. Lu smiled and imitated the same kind gesture with an even bigger squeeze around her back. They sat there and hugged each other for the longest time, neither one wanting to let the other go.

"By the way, you and your sister are totally grounded this weekend."

"Ah man!"