At finding Ashi curled up beside him, Aku blinked his eyes and lifted his head off the pillow. He knew she had come here for a reason. Something had frightened her, no doubt. Perhaps another nightmare about her mother.
The demon reached toward her and lightly brushed the back of his claw over her hair and cheek. But if she was sleeping peacefully, he didn’t wish to disturb her too much. Rather than carry her back to her own bed, Aku curled up around her like a protective dragon and closed his eyes.
Making a noise that could be categorized as a bastardization of GIGGLING, the sorcerer smirked. Shoulders shuddering with his quickly growing outburst, Black threw his head back and laughed. Aku was pitifully easy to annoy, so much so that he could see himself forming a habit of stepping on the demon’s toes in the future for the sole purpose of sick amusement.
Soon the eldritch calmed down, settling back into a comfortable, knowing grin.
In a way, Black almost pitied the demon. Plaged by one man and one man ALONE, seemingly impossible to defeat. Hell knows HE knew what it was like. the MWH was like a gnat he couldn’t quite swat, but they were there all the same.
Giving a sly grin, Black Hat put his hands behind his back and spoke, leaning in.
“Would you like to see ME try? I doubt it would take very long to find him and DEAL WITH him; even with deity favoritism he is still mortal.”
Oh, he would very much like to see the other sorcerer try to contend with that sword. Successful or otherwise, it would be a spectacle worth seeing. Aku, however, was not convinced that Black could do it even if he meant it. He crossed his arms and slouched, bladed shoulders rising above his head on either side like two peaks of obsidian.
“Pfeh,” he spat with a cynical glower. “Even if you did try, you would fail.”
“Yeah, I guess I am.” She acknowledged, the shield from the wind was welcome. Though the rain cascaded down, freezing her, she remained right where she was. No use going back just yet, she’ll go back eventually and say she dropped it while walking. She was covered in mud and soaked, but she refused to go anywhere.
Right now she and Aku had no where to hide, it was weird, to relate to a monster who would very well end her if he was freed. Still, she felt a connection to him, even if it was small and faint.
The trunk behind Casper, while not toasty by any means, was notably warmer than the surrounding air and rain, as if something within the thick bark was radiant with a heat source of its own. But as walled off from the world as he was, Aku would welcome the driving winds and rain outside.
‘Regardless,’ he spoke, ‘If given the opportunity, I would trade places with you in an instant.’
“Oh…Well, uh, I didn’t really think it was necessary,” she stated simply. She knew her father had thousands of monuments built in his honor across the world, but Ashi didn’t really want that for herself. “If you want, I can order a few of you; but I’m fine without any for me right now.”
“Not necessary??” Aku was startled by this revelation. Did his own daughter not think she deserved to be respected and honored by all? After all, if she did not have the respect of her people, what did she have?
“Ashi, you are an empress daughter of Aku. The respect of your people is absolutely necessary,” he said in a stern, fatherly voice. “And from what I have seen, they have NO respect for you. This simply will not do.”
“There is a lot of things bad about saying no.” she answered. Despite the horrible thoughts of darkness and death, the rain cascading around them, she just remained in the mud holding close to the other’s trunk.
“Its dangerous to say no a lot of the time. I’m too passive I guess. But saying no is terrifying. Violence is one possibility.”
Casper shrugged. “But it is what it is now. I’ll leave the ring here for a short time. See where things go.” she was treating it as her only choice in this scenario.
‘I see,’ his thoughts traveled through their telepathic connection, undampened by the sounds of rain and wind. ‘You are also imprisoned.’
In a sense. She could always run and hide. That option was available to her. But Aku knew what it was like to run and hide yet still be found by those determined to hunt and destroy him. And humans, though they lacked the power of the gods, were equally as cruel and vengeful toward those they could not control.
As he thought of the gods, glimpses of his past encounter with them, eons old, might drift across the telepathic bridge between he and Casper.
Aku’s tree prison had little to offer in terms of protection from the rain, but its solid trunk acted like a wall between Casper and the driving winds.
The pitch black pupils slowly glanced in the direction of the towering demon. As if from a silent command, a staff bearing a ever-changing runic symbol slowly materialized in the demon’s arms. Cinder’s once short and unruly hair was no more, now long and elegant, with pitch black deer antlers protruding from the sides of what once was Cinder’s head. When they finally spoke, a slightly echoing and commanding, yet haunting female voice, nothing like Cinder’s spoke.
Aku hadn’t been sure what to expect from this demon but he certainly hadn’t expected such obedience and willingness to comply with its host’s requests. In other words, this was much better than what he’d anticipated. Turning toward a wall in his lair, Aku opened a spy portal that peered into a dark and gloomy laboratory.
“He resides in the void dimension seen here. I hope you are capable of teleportation.” His gaze returned to Cinder’s demon. “What, might I ask, is your name?”
The Shogun of Sorrow 