The dim candle light barely lit the child's face as he stared at the damp ground far beneath his dangling feet. He had stopped screaming hours ago, possibly days, it didn't matter any more. His arms were numb from the chains around his wrists that held him suspended against the wall. The cold stone wall was jagged and dug continuously into his back, but it didn't matter anymore. He had stopped struggling some time after he lost consciousness from blood loss.
Why he was alive, let alone awake, was anyone's guess. The steady maddening dripping of some liquid into a puddle below kept his attention until the heavy rusted creak of the doorway above him broke the quiet, followed by footsteps and the door closing.
He knew these footsteps. These were the last sounds many had heard before being cast in alchemical fire and burned into nothingness for the pleasure and entertainment of the new king's pet torturer.
If he still had the strength he maybe would have raged against the chains that bound him, maybe tried to use the blood on the wall behind him, his own blood, to his advantage. Maybe he would have screamed insults at the creature that stepped coldly into the sickening orange glow of the low candles.
As it was, he did not have the strength to lift his head to look.
"Do you remember why you are here?" The voice echoed painfully around the dark stone chamber before letting more silence permeate his ears. His jailor waited patiently for any response, but all he could make leave his broken lips was a plea.
"Kill... me..."
"You are here because you were caught scheming against the King." The words were deliberately chosen, mocking him for being careless, slow, getting caught. "The King has mercifully placed you in my hands to take care of. Do you understand what comes next?"
Once again, the echoes faded before he could make any breath move through him with sound. He wanted to curse the being before him, wanted to swear and spit and thrash, but the word that left his lips surprised his defiant self.
"Please..." Begging for a quick death. He thought he saw the briefest glint of a smile across the torn and disfigured face that sat opposite him before his head lulled back towards the floor. His swollen eyes released more tears, he thought he had run out long ago but they dripped down his face and stung in the bloody cracks of his lips.
He heard the footsteps approaching him, but he didn't care anymore. A scarred hand lifted his head by the chin to look at him, staring into him with eyes that bore deeply into him. One was amber, the other what dead milky white and surrounded by scars that bubbled the skin.
"Do you want to die so badly? I thought you wanted to fight? How old are you?" The voice hissed, gurgling the last question as the jailor let his head fall again.
"...Fifteen..."
"Fifteen years old. You were five when this all began. So young." In his delirious state, he thought he heard regret in the statement before they continued. "You have been sentenced to death for treason, but I disagree. I think you have been told to die to satisfy the queen's lust for screams. She's just outside that door, waiting to hear it."
There it was, the ending he knew was coming. He had known it as soon as they captured him, as soon as his wrists were bound to this wall, as soon as he was left to rot, forsaken. Not forgotten, just waiting.
"Are you ready to scream?" The creature waited for a moment, seemingly hoping for a response before sighing and continuing loudly, letting the lady on the other side of the door finally hear something from the chamber below. "Alphonse De Flaubern, you have been accused of treason against King Petre and Queen Habryana. For your crimes you have been sentenced to death. Do you have any final words?"
He could not bring sound to burst from him, but every thought in his mind screamed about the injustice in the streets he saw every day of his life. In his entire memory he had only seen the horrors and cruelties of the people who had conquered them. It was all he had ever known, but he raged in his heart.
He did not want to die, but more than that he still wanted to defeat them. He still wanted to bring peace back. He still wanted to resist these tyrants and their puppet king. The king who had knelt and taken a giant bride, the princess daughter of the mad giant king, and killed his own brother and nephew for the privilege.
No words, but every thought in his mind was screaming for a second chance.
His jailor watched him agonize in silence before speaking once again.
"Alphonse De Flaubern, your death will be by alchemical fire. Your flesh will be burned away and all that will remain of you here will be ash. May the Thousand Gods witness your suffering and rend your sentence carried."
He tried to pull his head upright to watch the face of his executioner as it moved closer with a large bottle of glowing liquid. He knew from the stories the guards had shared in taverns when falling over drunk, he knew this would be the most painful experience of his life and all that would be left of him in this world would be ash.
As promised, as soon as the liquid was poured on him, starting at the wrists holding him hanging above and dripping down his body, everywhere it touched was fire. Burning, searing into him, tearing his flesh from the bones and charring those as well.
The sounds that left him were inhuman in their pain, but the beast continued pouring, eventually bringing the liquid to his head and covering him in the fiery death that awaited him. It was an eternity before the pain quelled long enough that he knew he was meeting death and the world became darkness.