Still she didn’t scream, in her mind it was twisted, broken. But she didn’t scream.
Casper looked up at Aku, tears in her eyes despite the ever persistent heat.
“M-mercy.” she forced out from her tightened throat.
“Heh heh heh, what’s that you say?” The flaming visage of Aku turned its head as if he hadn’t heard the barely audible plea. “Mercy?” he repeated, grinning wide with fiery, flickering fangs. “I know nothing of it.”
Again, he laughed over the roaring flames. For a moment it seemed as if he might grant her request and the inferno drew away from Casper, dying down a bit. The flaming outline of Aku’s face, however, continued to hover there before her, still wearing an expression of wicked amusement.
For all her obvious pain, he had noticed the lack of screams. All other beings that had come before her in the Pit of Hate had screamed their throats raw in the first few moments. It was unusual that this one remained so silent and Aku saw it as a sort of challenge. What could he do to make her break that silence?
The fiery demon opened his maw and out slid a forked tongue of orange flame long enough to coil around her. He lashed it across her body once, twice. Then he dragged it slowly upward from her chest to her face and back down again, leaving flames and pain in its wake.
“Even worse… Not only would it emerge but I may never come back again”
“And yet you considered summoning this beast in order to protect Azura?”
His gaze narrowed with the question. Was it possible she had meant she could summon another demon? Sure. Was it equally possible that she was just a very foolish human? In Aku’s eyes, absolutely.
Her eyes became like shards of ice, her hands balled into fists as she stared at the floor coldly.
Was he thinking of destroying it?
“If it’s removed… I’m in excruciating pain… If it’s destroyed….”
Cinder began shivering as her gaze softened to that of a cautious deer.
“If it’s destroyed… I may lose everything again”
As tempting as it might be to toy with the human and her amulet for the sake of his own curiosity, she was still a friend of Azura’s and after much deliberation, Aku decided to let her be.
“I see,” he spoke with contemplation. “So the beast would then emerge?”
A traditional witch burning. Casper couldn’t deny the surprise she felt when the torture shifted to something so medieval. Suffocation, burning, what came next. Casper couldn’t help but watch the flames as they rose higher and higher, it made her heart race, yet she remained silent. Sweat trickling down her face, why couldn’t she scream?
Because she did it to herself? Was she really so far gone?
Casper couldn’t even gauge for herself why she was like this, she wanted to scream. But it just wouldn’t come, her mind only spoke time and time again that it was her fault so she should just take it.
But why?
“Why?” she muttered against the roar of the flames.
The flames were lapping at her feet now and climbing along the stake behind her until they spread along the cross to which she was bound. Before long, the fire was catching her hair and her clothes. And then it was on her, engulfing her entire body in the inferno.
But as much as the searing heat burned her skin and made the flesh bubble, her body was not reduced to charred flesh and ash. No, Aku’s magic would not allow her body to die or find escape from the pain. It forced her to persist in the face of what would naturally kill her. And it would force her to persist for as long as Aku desired — hours, days, even centuries.
But after about 5 long minutes of letting his guest roast, Aku’s jeering laughter reverberated from the Pit itself. From the flames surrounding Casper, an outline of Aku’s grinning face emerged and hovered in the burning air before her.
The Shogun of Sorrow 