The Shining Is Horrifying

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.