The executioner held it in the air for a few seconds before approaching Keleah. She couldn’t see anything yet. But the executioner soon stepped out in front of her, presenting her with an impalement stake.
Keleah’s eyes widened until they almost popped from her head. Immediately, she began to shake. Tears spilled down her bruised cheeks. But as Jularra watched, Keleah tried to hide her fear from those nearby. She looked up and away from the stake, and into the eyes of the executioner. Her shaking reduced from her entire body, to only her lips and chin.
The executioner turned towards a few guards and beckoned at them to approach.
“It doesn't look like we'll be drugging her or anything, so I’m going to need you to hold her steady as I hammer the stake in,” he instructed.
One of the guards looked to the others hesitantly. He swallowed. Just before declining the executioner’s request, the guard peered out across his smoldering home and the corpses littered throughout. He turned back to the executioner and nodded.
The queen had gone back to the chest and returned with two buckets. One was already filled with pitch, and the other was empty. She handed the empty bucket to a nearby guard and yelled for him to fill it with mud. He jogged down the few stairs and quickly scooped up double handfuls of mud. He returned and set the now-full bucket down beside the other.
The crowd was still screaming in judgment. A few had begun to share particulars of what they knew was about to happen.
After another trip to the chest, this time by the executioner, he returned with a gigantic mallet and motioned for the guards he had spoken with to hold Keleah down on the floor of the platform, on her side. The executioner leaned down with a knife, and cut away Keleah’s skirt.
As the guards restrained Keleah, Jularra stepped into her line of sight and came down to her knees, looking directly at her as the event unfolded.
One of the guards held down one leg by kneeling on it. While hovering over him, another guard held the other leg up and away so that her legs formed a 'V'. After he'd finishing cutting away her clothes, the executioner quickly began to slice Keleah from behind.
Keleah's agony pierced the air. Her scream was shrill, and rattled with vibrations of horrific pain. The queen stared at Keleah as the despair of her impending end registered on her face. Jularra smiled at her.
“I had to go through something similar, once,” Jularra said softly.
Within seconds of making the cuts, the executioner grabbed alternating fistfuls of pitch and mud and stuffed them into the traitor’s newly enlarged cavity. The substances would prevent Keleah from bleeding out too quickly.
The insertion of the stake was next. Clearly familiar with the process despite never having witnessed an impalement before, one of the guards reached with his foot to roll the stake within reaching distance. He held it in place. The sharpened point of the stake was closest, with a small seat carved from the stake’s original length of wood, to prevent the victim from sliding down and dying too quickly.
The executioner stood up, measuring the mood of the crowd before looking to the queen. The crowd's volume had grown, finally covering up Keleah’s tongueless screams. The queen, still focusing on Keleah’s eyes, nodded at the executioner to continue. He reached for his mallet.
The guards holding Keleah looked up at him and also nodded. The executioner flexed his fingers around the handle of the mallet, lifted it, and swung. It was a heavy, solid swing, powerful and accurate. The stake stabbed into Keleah’s body. She screamed again, and this time it was full-voiced and sickening.
A cold wave of uncertainty stabbed at Jularra’s nerves immediately following the first slam of the executioner’s mallet. Not knowing how to interpret what she was feeling, she remained focused on Keleah. The traitor.
The executioner swung again. Keleah’s screams stopped, then sounded again, weaker this time, and different in tone and timbre. The stake was surely doing internal damage. With a third strike, the carved seat of the stake reached Keleah’s bottom. The executioner tossed the mallet to the floor and motioned for the guards to lift her, along with her spike, and set it vertically in one of the nearby holders designed for the purpose.
The queen stood up and followed her men to where Keleah's stake would rest. The girl's screams were low in pitch and volume now, and couldn’t be heard at all over the crowd. Most of the chanting now consisted of, “Die! Die! Die!” with a few outbursts of, “Suffer!” and, “Traitor!”
Jularra smiled no longer, but stood before Keleah and looked at her straight on. Keleah’s head dipped. She looked about to pass out, but Jularra grabbed her chin and held it up so they were looking at each other again. While holding her chin in place, Jularra reached back and slapped some wakefulness into her. Keleah’s body shook obscenely on the stake.
Without warning, Jularra’s nerves also began to shake in response. She had ordered a horror into existence that she would never have thought herself capable of. Her earlier lust for revenge was supplanted by another feeling, though she knew she could show her people no sign of wavering.
Jularra's stomach turned; her throat grew acidic, and nausea overcame her. But she forced it back, arguing with herself internally. She had to maintain her role in that moment. For her people. For the sake of those all around her who had lost friends, family, and fellow soldiers, she had to unequivocally maintain her composure
