Xiumin shuddered when he peered into the maroon darkness, feeling like he was being watched and half expecting to find bright red eyes staring back at him.  He shook his head to clear himself of the thought and spoke up to Luhan through his mind.

"So, do you know where we're going?" Xiumin asked, though the snowball had been the one to randomly choose a direction and set off towards it.  They were approaching low-rising hills jagged with rocks and boulders, some rising high and crookedly looming over their path.

"Hm.. not really," Luhan admitted, "I feel like I've traveled in this direction before, but I was probably just inside Lord Chanyeol's collection at the time, so I don't recognize anything."

"Oh, that reminds me," the snowball perked up, glad to preoccupy himself with the conversation to take his mind off of other scarier thoughts, "I've been meaning to ask, why do you call the Fire Demon 'Lord Chanyeol'? And how does the whole collection thing work? All I see is Chanyeol pulling things out of nowhere."

Luhan chuckled, his antlers slightly shaking so that the quiet tinkling of Chanyeol's flame bell could be heard.

"Well, to answer your first question, most demons here in Hell are Lesser Demons, but Lord Chanyeol is a Fire Demon of lord level. He himself doesn't really care too much about proprieties and doesn't mind if you call him just 'Chanyeol,' but it's generally more proper to use his title. Lesser Demons will almost always call the Demon Lords they serve with their title."

"So are there a lot of demon lords other than Chanyeol?" Xiumin asked, having decided that keeping proprieties in hell was laughably ironic, so he wouldn't be calling anyone around here "Lord."

Luhan giggled at Xiumin's unspoken remark and answered, "Oh yes, I've heard there are quite a handful of Demon Lords, but Hell is a vast place and they all usually stay near their own territories, so Lord Chanyeol is only close with a few others, like Lord Suho and Lord Kris. But all Demon Lords have considerable magic powers, much stronger and diverse than those of Lesser Demons, which brings me to your other question."

"Chanyeol's invisible knapsack?"

"Haha, yes, actually you're quite close. Lord Chanyeol can do a lot of things with his power over fire, but he had to ask his friend Lord Kai to make him the Shadow Bag he carries with him. The Shadow Bag is like a knapsack that exists in another dimension and Lord Chanyeol can access it through his own shadow. He can keep as many things he wants in there and it will always be with him as long as he has a shadow, so it's rather convenient for Lord Chanyeol who likes to travel a lot."

"I see, that makes sense," Xiumin nodded. "So is that Kai a demon lord who has power over shadows?"

"Ah, no, no, he's not a Demon Lord," Luhan replied, "he's a Reaper Lord. He's a Reaper of Tainted Spirits specifically."

"What are Tainted Spirits? Actually, can you explain the different kinds of creatures and beings that live here?" Xiumin asked, figuring he should just get Luhan to tell him about everything while he was at it.

"Well, I'll tell you about the Hell Dwellers I know of, but I don't know everything. Like I said, Hell is a vast place," Luhan reminded him. "So you've already heard about Lesser Demons and Demon Lords. The demon class make up a good chunk of the beings living here, and they're like the original residents of Hell, born and raised here. The Demon Lords are in charge of running their own territories and mainly have the job of punishing the Hellseekers that land in their territories."

Sensing that Xiumin would ask about it, Luhan beat him to the punch. "Hellseekers are humans that commit acts in the Living World that are so bad that it's as if they wanted to go to Hell, like they were seeking Hell, hence the name."

Xiumin nodded, wondering whether the hunter that killed Luhan when he was a reindeer would be a Hellseeker.

Luhan answered his thoughts, "Well, he did kill me just to get my antlers and didn't value my life at all, but I don't think his acts were bad enough to make him a Hellseeker. It would have to be something worse, like the Hellseeker Lord Chanyeol punished the other day, a farmer who tortured his animals for fun and ate them alive."

Xiumin abruptly froze with his mouth hanging open in shock, appalled that humans could even think of doing such things hellish things.

"And that's not even the worst of it," Luhan added grimly, as Xiumin shook his head and slowly resumed their trek up the rocky hill.  The snowball spotted a large stone slab that jutted high upwards at an angle and would provide a nice overview of the area.  It was far and would take a while to get there, but Xiumin thought it would be worth the climb.

"I agree, it might give us an idea of where to head from here," Luhan spoke into Xiumin's mind. "And just to make sure, you really don't mind me reading your thoughts, right, Xiumin? I mean, I really can't help it, but if you don't like it, I'll at least pretend I can't hear them and try not to respond to your thoughts unless you're saying them to me."

Xiumin chuckled appreciatively, "Don't worry, Luhan. If I didn't like it, I'd have told you already. And besides, I would be telling you all of my thoughts, but I'm just not in the habit of doing it yet. But I really don't mind that you can hear my thoughts, especially because it's you."

"Because it's me?" Luhan asked incredulously. "Why?"

"I dunno," Xiumin shrugged, "I just feel like I can trust you. Even though I haven't known you for long, we're so.. connected that I can sense that you're similar to me. You're.. good. And it helps that I know you're a Loved One's Artifact."

"Ah, that's true," Luhan giggled, emitting a warm and pleasant aura. "Oh, right, so there's Loved Ones and their Artifacts, like you and me, here in Hell. Loved Ones are very rare and Artifacts are even rarer, and we're only a tiny portion of the Hell population, but as you know, we're from the Living World and get cursed here through no fault of our own."

"Yeah, tell me about it," Xiumin interjected with a sarcastic grunt.

Luhan hummed in agreement, continuing, "Loved Ones are able to move around on their own in Hell, but Artifacts are immobile on their own, though they can speak the same as Loved Ones. All Artifacts have some kind of magic power, like me, but it's usually not that strong or useful, so we're treated like trinkets and most Demon Lords other than Lord Chanyeol don't bother with collecting us, since they've got their own magic powers and all. But like how you're a Loved One and you're using me now, Artifacts can be used by anyone who finds them, even against their will. The only defense we Artifacts have against that is to not tell the person what our power is or how to use it, but if he figures it out on his own, too bad."

"I see," Xiumin nodded solemnly. "But you were happy with Chanyeol? You were never used against your will?"

"Oh, of course not!" Luhan denied enthusiastically. "He just came to me during my Fall, asked no questions other than if I wanted to be protected in his collection and that I'd be able to leave whenever I wanted, so I accepted, and he just waited for me to tell him on my own what my power was. I let him test my power out after that, but he never used me for anything. He's a good lord."

Xiumin couldn't help but roll his eyes and deadpan, "He's a demon lord."

"Well, okay," Luhan relented, stifling a chuckle, "He's a good demon lord. You'd agree with me if you met some of the other Demon Lords."

"Oh, I believe you," Xiumin singsonged, "I just wanted to set the record straight that we are talking about 'good' in the context of demons in hell."

"Hahahaha, alright, you win," Luhan chuckled openly in defeat, making Chanyeol's bell ring and echo against the surrounding rocks. "But if you look over the fact that demons are just doing their job when they punish and torture souls in terrible ways, they're really not that bad. Though, that's not to say that there aren't anarchist demons who go out of line and sneak up into the Living World to spread their evil ways. But if any of them get caught, they'll suffer something worse than the torture Hellseekers get."

"What, like death?" Xiumin tried guessing. "Is there even death here in hell?"

"Yeah, ceasing to exist completely is the equivalent of death in Hell, but while getting your existence extinguished does , it's an easy way out," Luhan pointed out. "It's a whole other thing, though, if you get stuck in Nothingness, which I've heard is worse than physical torture, because you're just floating endlessly through dark Nothingness forever. You lose all sense of time and space, and apparently anyone who's lucky enough to be retrieved from Nothingness comes back as a hollow shell of who they were before. But usually, once you get stuck in Nothingness, you're never coming back."

"Wait, then how is that different from ceasing to exist?" Xiumin questioned.

"Because when you 'die' in Hell, that's the real end, you don't have consciousness anymore, you're just gone. But when you're stuck in Nothingness, you're fully aware, you exist, just not somewhere anyone else can see you. So you're truly left with just yourself. And as we like to say here in Hell, you are your own worst demon. Though some demons actually take offense to that."

The snowball and antlers laughed out loud in unison, but Xiumin quickly quieted down because he felt self-conscious about breaking the eerie silence around them.  Hell's sky had no sun nor moon, but it was constantly aglow in a dusk-like orange-red that overlay the black space beyond it.  Wisps of clouds, or smoke, or dust--whatever it was--drifted about, causing the shadows between the rocks to shift ever so slightly, and though he could not see anyone there, Xiumin could not shake the unsettling feeling that they were being watched.

"Hmm, I don't see anyone either, but we should keep an eye out, just in case," Luhan's soothing voice entered Xiumin's thoughts.

"Yeah, and hopefully we can get out of this shadow-filled rock field as soon as possible," Xiumin added, still warily eyeing the dark crevices in the boulders they passed. "By the way, how do you get stuck in Nothingness? I hope there aren't random patches of it lying about that we could fall into."

"Oh, you wouldn't have to worry about that," Luhan assured him. "A portal to Nothingness can only be opened by a Reaper through one of his shadow vortexes, and a really high level Reaper at that, like a Reaper Lord. Reapers do most of their work through shadows, traveling up to the Living World through them to drag souls down to Hell. I mentioned Lord Kai to you earlier, right? Lord Chanyeol's friend who made him the Shadow Bag?"

Xiumin nodded.

"Yeah, well, Lord Kai is a Reaper of Tainted Spirits, which are souls of dead humans that linger for too long in the Living World and get plagued with evil. Since Lord Kai is of lord level, he's in charge of the particularly vicious ones and the ones that keep escaping their Pits to go back up to haunt humans. He's also powerful enough to open a portal to Nothingness through his shadows, but it apparently takes a lot of energy and he wouldn't bother doing it unless he's ordered by the King of Hell."

"The King of Hell? You mean Satan?" Xiumin asked cautiously, imagining a nightmarish face of hollow eyes and a jagged mouth stretching across a giant blast of flames that would loom over you and devour you in a second.

"Uhh, Satan doesn't look anything like that," Luhan snickered, "or at least, the current King of Hell doesn't. Lord Chanyeol is actually friends with him."

"Satan has friends?"' Xiumin thought he should really be getting used to the absurdity of this place by now.

"Yes, haha, but he's not a particularly gregarious type, so he's not close with many and hasn't held any parties at his castle either," Luhan explained. "He's an Earth Demon and he used to be a regular Demon Lord before he became the King of Hell. When he was just Lord D.O., he would sometimes come over to Lord Chanyeol's parties and when Lord Chanyeol too much, Lord D.O. would threaten to sink his mansion into the ground. Those were good times."

Luhan trailed off, reminiscing fondly, while Xiumin shook his head, quite sure that Luhan's definition of "good" was definitely not the same as his own.

"So what does D.O.- I mean, Satan, or King of Hell, or whatever he's called now, look like?"

"The current King of Hell has a humanoid appearance like Lord Chanyeol, but he's much shorter in comparison, has bronze skin, horns and a tail, but his horns are much larger and his tail has a rock at the end."

Xiumin couldn't really picture him, especially given the unexpected fact that this Satan was smaller than Chanyeol the Fire Demon.

"But you said he wasn't always the King of Hell? Then how did he become Satan? Who was it before?"

"Well, usually Demon Lords would challenge the Satan in office to a duel in whatever category the challenger desired and the victor would be crowned King of Hell, but when Lord D.O. challenged the previous Satan, Kyuhyun the Game Demon, to a physical fistfighting duel without using their powers, Lord Kyuhyun immediately gave up his seat willingly. And for good reason, because Lord D.O. was known to be the greatest in physical strength, even amongst all the Earth Demons who are naturally strong. Lord Kyuhyun was formidable when it came to his magic powers in creating hazardous terrains and terrifying monsters, but Game Demons usually depend on their magic powers to protect themselves, and Lord Kyuhyun was no exception to that."

"And D.O. took advantage of that fact, huh," Xiumin commented. "So what happened to Kyuhyun after that?"

"Oh, well it's not like Lord D.O. had anything against Lord Kyuhyun personally, so he just demoted him back to being a Demon Lord, and he's probably going around spawning monsters and performing maintenance on destroyed landscape as we speak."

"Ah, so Game Demons are the ones to blame for this lovely view we've got, aren't they," Xiumin remarked snidely, as he scanned the bleak horizon from the top of the stone slab they had finally reached.  They could see that beyond the hilly rock field lay a dense forest in one direction, but it looked dark and ominous, and Xiumin swore he could see purple flames flickering here and there every so often.

"You know," Luhan spoke up, "I've heard of there being a Forsaken Forest where Forsaken Ones seem to gather. That must be it."

"How do you know? And what were Forsaken Ones again?" Xiumin frowned, feeling like he had heard the term before but being unable to recall anything about it.

"Ah, that's right, I might have mentioned them before, but I forgot to tell you about them," Luhan admitted. "Forsaken Ones are the souls that have ended up here in Hell because they either had no love for themselves or no love for others and life. In a way, they're like the opposite of Loved Ones, feeling forsaken because they didn't receive enough love, and in the end, taking drastic measures to abandon their own lives or to unleash their misery and hatred onto others."

"But then doesn't that mean Forsaken Ones sorta end up in Hell through no fault of their own, too?" Xiumin pondered. "It's not like they could have controlled how much love they received, and everyone deserves a lot of love."

"I agree, everyone deserves love and it's a sad thing when they don't receive enough simply because of the environment they landed in, but they still have a choice of what to do with their lives," Luhan reasoned. "Some choose to accept their bad experience and try to do something good with their lives or make the world a better place, while others blame it on the world and give up on life or harm others in payback. That's when they become Forsaken Ones, destined to become Hell Dwellers at death. And Forsaken Ones have a purple glow while they're here in Hell."

Xiumin looked back toward the gloomy forest to try to catch a glimpse of another purple flicker. "So they come down here and just hang out over there?"

"Well, some don't come down to Hell so willingly, but we have Reapers for that, too," Luhan explained. "You know, you've got a glow, too."

"Me? You mean this whitish bubble?" Xiumin extended an arm to point at the boundaries of the sphere. "Isn't that because of your protective barrier?"

"Well, yes and no," Luhan answered, "You're the one who's glowing white, but you can't see yourself. My protective barrier's just reflecting your glow off of you, so you're seeing it as white, but it actually probably looks gold from the outside."

"Gold? Why gold?"

"Because that's my glow," Luhan said, not without a hint of pride, "You can't see it but my antlers are glowing gold, and my barrier glows gold, too, because it's from my power."

"And, uh, why exactly are we glowing?" Xiumin asked warily.

"Because you're a Loved One and I'm an Artifact. Loved Ones glow white and Artifacts glow gold here in Hell," Luhan finally clued Xiumin in. "That's how Lord Chanyeol knows when Loved Ones or Artifacts are Falling, because you can see the color of the glow as soon as the Fall starts. So you'd be able to avoid Forsaken Ones that glow purple, Tainted Spirits that glow black, and Hellseekers that glow red."

"Huh.. And how, uh, dangerous are these Forsaken Ones here in Hell?" Xiumin asked, unsure of whether he wanted to be roaming around in the so-called Forsaken Forest filled with the souls of those who had commited acts of self-harm or harm to others.

"They should be harmless now,' Luhan assured him, "Forsaken Ones mostly keep to themselves, but if you come across one, it'd probably just dampen your spirits, or show you an illusion of your most despairing moment, but it can't hurt you physically."

Xiumin sighed, partly in relief, partly in consternation. "Well then, I guess we can head over to the Forsaken Forest to check it out. If that doesn't work out, we can continue to the mountains behind it."

Before Luhan could express his approval of the plan, Xiumin caught movement amongst the rocks below them out of the corner of his eyes and whipped his head over to see what it was, but it seemed just to be a small whirlwind kicking up dust.  Worried he was becoming paranoid, Xiumin shook his head and began to turn his head back, but he noticed something else amidst the rocks.  He couldn't see it well from where they were, but it was bright in color, maybe pink or silver, but it was a stark contrast to the dull browns and greys of the boulders it was lying between.

"Let's go check it out?" Luhan prompted, and Xiumin nodded, immediately turning around to descend the stone slab in a nearly sliding fashion.

The antlered snowball reached the vicinity of where they had seen the bright object, but they were having a hard time finding it from the ground.  After circling the area quite a number of times, they finally came across the thing, neatly draped along a crack where two boulders met.

It was a tassel.  A white tassel that was dyed bright red at the ends and the whole thing was shimmering gold.  Which meant it was an Artifact.

Xiumin climbed up one of the boulders and approached the tassel cautiously, not wanting to alarm it.

He put on the most friendly tone he could muster. "E-excuse me. Hello, uh, I'm Xiumin and I'm a Loved One, and this is Luhan."

"Hi there, I'm an Artifact," Luhan introduced himself cheerfully, "just like you. We're going around, trying to help any Loved Ones or Artifacts that need help, so we were wondering if you needed any help. Maybe a lift somewhere?"

"..."

"W-we're not bad people, I'm not trying to use you," Xiumin flusteredly explained, not having expected to be met with absolute silence. "I just got dropped in Hell not too long ago, but I got a lot of help from.. uh.. someone really helpful, so I thought I could maybe do the same for others."

"..."

"You don't have to tell us your power, I promise," Xiumin tried again, exasperatedly. "Just your name? Or just whether you want us help you? Or leave you alone? Or just anything? Please?"

"..."

Xiumin let out a disappointed sigh before telling Luhan telepathically that the Artifact must be dead and they should just leave.

"No!" Luhan startled Xiumin with his outburst. "I mean, uh, even if it's dead, we shouldn't just leave it here. And besides, it's pretty. I think it'll look nice on my antlers."

"You want it as decoration for your antlers?" Xiumin asked in mock derision, but nonetheless acquiesced, picking up the tassel in newly-formed arms and tying it on his left antler, since Chanyeol's flame bell was tied on his right antler.

"Well, I guess that's that," the snowball commented with a withered look of defeat.  He maybe had a small expectation that finding an unclaimed Artifact would mean being greeted by grateful tears and being treated like a hero and if not fanfare, at least he'd call Chanyeol and they'd have his phoenix provide some sort of pyro-celebration just by being there.  But this was just a big letdown.

"Don't let it get to you," Luhan comforted him softly, "I'm sure we'll eventually find someone who needs our help and we'll be making a difference. Besides, we've only just started on our journey."

"That's true," Xiumin sighed. "Alright then, to the Forsaken Forest?"

"To the Forsaken Forest," Luhan confirmed, and the antlered snowball, along with its new tassel decoration set off in the direction of the forest.

A/N: this chapter was just dialogue, which is boring, so i'm sorry for that ;-; and the line-spacing is being weird, too TAT