The Immortal Impaler

I address this letter to you, Helena, though you may have succumbed to the wrath of Valache, the Immortal Impaler. This letter may just be my thoughts screaming out into the void, but I pray someone hears my message of hope. I’m escaping from the jaws of the beast itself, the crown castle of Vallia, where Valache himself dwells, and despite the horrors I’ve seen, I have also witnessed one unthinkable moment.

Valache the Immortal Impaler has been dealt a mortal wound before my eyes.

As you know, Valache has spent the last two decades uniting the world under the Vallian Empire’s flag. Once, we merely whispered rumors of how he tortured prisoners and impaled his foes, but as his ambition spread across the land, we soon learned these rumors were reality. And my dear wife Helena, I remember the tears in your eyes as you pleaded to run away with you instead of going out to fight for Harkena, our bountiful country. But even then, I knew there was nowhere in the world to run to.

 So, I rode off. I fought. I murdered. I bled. For nothing. Then I was caught. Ultimately, that’s all war against Vallia boils down to; either your body dies in battle, or your spirit dies in prison. Regardless, the home you left to defend dies. My greatest hope is that you, Helena, live to read this, but if that can’t be the case, then I hope you died a swift death.

As for me, Valache’s men broke my arms and legs, mere routine for them, and then piled me and other miserable souls onto a cart. We were driven to the Hook of Madness – I’m sure the Vallians have a different name for the northern curved shaped peninsula where Valache’s castle stands, but the swirling storms above it and the raging waters around it truly punctuate how right we were to think of it as a womb for madness and cruelty. Before my eyes could even adjust to the darkness of the damp prisons, Valache’s men grabbed me and two others. We were dragged along, screaming as our broken bones scraped against the stone floors.

We were taken before the Impaler himself, adorned in his billowing dull crimson coat, rumored to be stitched with the skin of his own father, the last emperor. He stood looming over his own throne, a giant map of the world hanging behind him with the empire of Vallia at the center. His long hair was darker than raven feathers, yet so greasy, sweaty, and tangled. His skin almost matched the color of the gray stone, and his eyes were gaunt like a corpse.

He gazed upon the three of us, his dead eyes weighing our souls and valuing them according to his twisted inner calculations. Just like that, he picked the man to my right. “You,” he uttered with a voice deeper than the low roar of a starving bear. He snapped his fingers and his guards picked up the man and hung him by his broken arms to a chain dangling from the ceiling. They spread his misshapen legs apart and chained them to the ground, and that’s when the three of us realized beneath this tragic man’s dangling body was a wooden circle.

A mechanism was by the circle’s side, a wheel of sorts. One of the guards opened the wood panel upward, and the other began spinning a lever on the wheel. And as the chained man stared downward, he began to scream and beg as we all saw it slowly rise from the hole.

The tip of a stake.

“Now then,” Valache whispered as he looked right at me. “Tell me everything about your war generals. Your tactics. Your weapons. Your motivations to fight,” he knelt down in front of me, his breath hot and revolting, his fanged teeth far too close to my throat. He gently lifted my chin so I was forced to look at him. “Tell me the reasons why you people keep resisting me.”

I swear to you Helena, that I adored you and I was loyal to our beloved country of Harkena. And I wish I could say I stayed silent from bravery and I defended the pride of Harkena to my last breath. But I'm still here, writing this letter, knowing full well Harkena has been devoured by Vallia. There is no pride left in my body, so I admit I stayed silent from fear, my body trembling at his touch, my bladder loosening at his gaze and the knowledge of the wooden stake slowly rising behind me.

The other two prisoners began to erupt with information, like someone gutted their minds and all their secrets just spilled out. Valache turned away from me and listened intently, attendants in the shadows furiously scribbling every detail they could on parchment as the men spoke. But nothing they said stopped the guard from operating the machine. Each turn brought the stake closer and closer to the chained prisoner. Until…

There is no humane way to describe what I witnessed. The slow impaling of a man whose only crime was loving his country. As the tip of the stake became visible once more, I realized no one had said a word to Valache in a while, even after the screaming had stopped. I shivered, watching as Valache walked over to the defiled corpse. He admired it like a portrait as an attendant brought him a goblet of liquid and a rag. Valache took the rag and wiped off the blood and the sweat from the corpse, still dangling, still twitching. He then wrung out the rag into the goblet, letting the blood and sweat mix with the drink. He then casually walked the goblet back to his throne and claimed it, taking an elegant sip from the vile concoction.

“I now offer you both a choice,” his voice echoed from on high. “You can mutually agree to live and serve as my slaves to do with what I please,” he hissed as we trembled. “Or you may bet against one another. An even wager, roll of the dice. Winner leaves back to Harkena. Loser…” He didn’t finish his statement, merely took another sip of the goblet as his eyes pointed us to his hellish artwork behind us.

“Wager!” my companion yelled. “Wager! Send me back home!” His pleas for freedom were cries for my cruel death. My dear Helena, my heart despaired at the thought of never seeing you again, but my wretched body trembled with anger at the thought of being impaled over a game of chance.

“Slavery!” I demanded. I looked to the other prisoner, a fellow soldier of Harkena, but I felt more hatred toward him than Valache. “You’d gamble one of our lives away?” But there was no changing this deranged man’s mind.

I dragged my aching body over to him and I flung my fist with all the force I could muster toward his face. I yelled as my bones continued to fracture, but I kept beating this man until he couldn’t speak again. With blood on my hands and the prisoner’s raspy breath below me, I turned to Valache, letting my eyes repeat my answer without speaking a word.

He set his goblet down and stood, clapping his hands together and smiling a wicked toothy grin. “Oh, you deserve a bit better than slavery.”

Helena, or whoever may have found this bleak message, I promise you there is hope at the end. But I am deeply ashamed of what happened over the years after that fateful day.  Valache had decided that I was to be in charge of operating the impaling mechanism. As soon as my bones had healed enough, I was standing in his throne room, right there at the heart of madness, watching as more Harkena soldiers were brought in. The same pattern repeated itself: prisoners in groups of three, one selected to die slowly, information gathered, then the same deal was presented to the remaining two.

The first time I operated the machine, I saw Valache staring at me intently, the threat being clear that I had no choice. Just by meeting his gaze, I sold him my soul, and I looked away from everyone. My fingers clenched the steel lever as I turned it slowly. Every pull and push I made eroded away my conscience.

That first time, the two surviving prisoners chose to gamble. It didn’t matter who won the die roll; my fate to kill another was sealed. Eventually my eyes stopped focusing on my hands as I turned the machine. I drowned out the screams and my actions by focusing on the world map behind Valache’s throne. Sea serpents adorned the borders of the large tapestry, eating one another. I soon lost myself in thoughts of being devoured by the waves, finding sweet relief in the thought of throwing myself off the Hook of Madness and into the violent sea. It wasn’t truly sinking in that my face was becoming more and more corpse-like, and the prisoners who saw me and recognized me as a slave became motivated to escape.

Valache knew having me as an accomplice to his impaling was in fact causing more and more people to be impaled. My very existence betrayed my countrymen in more ways than one.

One day, Valache spoke to me after I had just finished impaling another loser of the gamble. At this point, years had passed. The prisoners were no longer Harkena soldiers; Valache had moved on to other countries.

“Tell me,” he commanded, never using my name. “Why do you always stare at my empire?”

I was confused but realized he meant the map behind him.

My plan had once been to escape to Harkena, but with each new batch of prisoners from other countries, my statement to you, Helena, became more and more true. There was nowhere left to run in the world. So, I told him the truth.

“All the world is Vallia. All of it is yours.”  

He laughed, taking it as praise from a sycophant… perhaps I was pathetically loyal at this point. He then caressed my shoulder, touching me for the first time since the day we met. “You know, I let so many prisoners escape because I want them to spread the word of my… inevitability,” he explained, landing on a word that pleased him. “But whether or not they returned home with all of their limbs was another matter,” he laughed. I held my tongue as I remembered there was a chance that could’ve been me.

He walked away and drank from his goblet. In all the years I knew him, he never seemed to age. He looked up at the world map. “This world needed a single voice, louder than the rest, to command it and bring order. A voice like that needs to inspire fear. Everyone who hears it must know it’s futile to resist. My name, my will, shall be immortal.”

Suddenly, the throne room doors were slammed open. A small girl, drenched in water, was thrown by guards onto the floor in front of Valache. She was ten years old at most. Her dress was covered in strangely colored patterns, but her skin was an even stranger darker color. She looked around confused, but as soon as she made eye contact with my miserable face, hers became… resolute. She was determined to not look as pathetic as I did despite being far younger and frailer.

This was the day. I didn’t know it at the time, but this was the day I would escape. This was the day Valache would be dealt a mortal wound before my eyes.

This girl was the one to end the Immortal Impaler.  

“We found her amidst wreckage that washed ashore just north of us at the peninsula,” a guard cautiously told Valache. He then gently handed him a large leathery bag. “These were with her. She’s not speaking and carries nothing to tell us where she’s from.”

“You, child, with skin like night, where were you hiding that Vallia has not seen the likes of you?” Valache wasn’t looking at her as he spoke, instead opening the bag and shifting through her possessions.

The girl remained silent, looking around, ignoring my withered body and instead beginning to study the world map behind Valache’s throne. Her head began to tilt as Valache pulled out what looked to be a rolled-up parchment from the bag. He then laid it out on the floor, revealing it to stretch far on the ground.

It was a map, but not one that resembled the one I had grown familiar with. The oceans were far too large and the islands far too giant to make sense. No sea serpents adorned the borders. I saw Valache’s face contort with confusion, a new look for him. Then his pointed finger slowly touched the map and traced something out.

It was the Hook of Madness. The curved peninsula that sits as a crown atop the Vallian Empire was here upside-down from where Valache was kneeling. But not only that, but upon readjusting myself to see Vallia as I was used to it, the Empire was actually in the corner of the map. The land was one of the smaller masses of lands on the map, not even close to the giant landmass in the center.

Valache’s finger began to tremble the longer it touched the map as if it was burning him. I saw his eyes wildly dart across the map, traveling what must have been thousands of miles back and forth in the span of seconds. And the girl – she just knelt there glaring at Valache, no fear toward the Impaler. None of us dared to break the silence as the realization fell on all of us except the girl.

“Leave us!” Valache shouted, still fixated on the map. The guards knew better than to question him, so they fled at once. I turned to follow but he snapped his fingers. “Wait!” He looked at me with despair in his eyes. “Stay and… chain her up…”

I was dumbfounded. I had executed women before but never a child. The guards were still the ones with the keys to the chains and castle, so one threw them at me before leaving. But I failed to catch them because I was staring at the girl. She was tracing the outline of the largest landmass on the map, possibly her homeland. Valache didn’t look at either of us, his head bowed down toward the map.

My body felt a flood of emotions return to it after being numb for so long. I grabbed the girl’s shoulder, not even sure how I could bring myself to impale her under Valache’s orders. But as I did so, I noticed her ankles had been cut by the guards to prevent escape. She winced when I tried to pick her up and she resisted, but that pause was the moment I noticed Valache.

A tear had fallen from his face onto the map, right at the Hook of Madness.

I could feel it in my soul, still in his greedy possession, that something within the Immortal Impaler had died. He only wanted to impale the girl to run from the truth, the dark twisted joke that all his fearmongering amounted to nothing in the face of the true world map. None of his actions in the past two decades meant anything to this girl, completely unafraid of him. And then, as he was fully absorbed in his despair, I realized why fate kept me in the castle.

I picked up the girl, still silently resisting, but instead of taking her to the chains, I slowly backed out of the throne room, keys in hand. I had never been left unattended before this moment, and at this point, with keys in hand and almost a decade spent in the castle, I was a common sight, a known loyal servant to Valache. I tried to hush the girl to let her know I wasn’t a threat, and I was mapping our escape in my head.

Valache still never looked up – he might as well have died on the floor and I wouldn’t have known the difference. That was the last I saw of the wretched man, pathetically whimpering at the loss of his immortality across the world.

As I write this letter, I still have the girl with me, having successfully escaped from the castle. She’s beginning to trust me but still hasn’t spoken. Until I can learn her language, I’ve taken to calling her Harkena – I failed in my duty to protect my country, but I vow to not fail to protect this girl.

Helena, oh how I wish we could be reunited, even in death. But I write this letter just in case; I need you to know that even if you live, I cannot return just yet. I must return Harkena to her country across the sea. And along the way, we will spread the truth to anyone who still longs for hope against Valache…

He was always doomed to die an insignificant death in the corner of the world. Now, he knows it, and there aren’t enough stakes in existence for him to impale the whole world.