Subject: Lost among the dead 1
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 23:37:38 PST
From: "Stana Hierspiel" <happydoodl@hotmail.com>

This is getting too long so I am chopping it and sending it in two
parts...sorry if this is a little...disturbing.

Stana
______________________________________________

     "See" said the disembodied voice of Sullam cheerfully."It's all in
finding out how. I told you we'd get in. This is the underground
entrance Rashka told us about."
     "Great." Stana replied, unimpressed and brushiing the dirt from her
hair. She looked glumly upward to the hole in the ground the three had
toppled through. It was more than out of any of their reach. Even if
they stood on each others' shoulders and stretched the edge was more
than three times the height. The walls were smooth with no chance for
climbing out.  Stana got to her feet and stepped forward into the arms
of death.
      A grouping of skeletons and half rotted corpses grabbed at her
clothes with lifeless tenacity as she struggled back, breath hitching
into a scream of pure outraged sensabilities.
      At her first move, Sullam had lunged forward. He slipped his hand
over her mouth with a muted clapping sound and absorbed her shriek into
his palm. Moments later Clip slapped his hand over the healer's
apparently of the same mind to quiet her.
      The two pairs of eyes met for one moment over her head in dual
acknowledgement. Then Stacey tugged angrily at the hands covering her
lips. Gauging that she was over her initial fright, they released her.
With an expression partly of disgust and fear she gazed at the dark
eyesockets for a moment and shuddered.
      Sullam was looking around with concealed anxiousness. He could see
the tunnel exit lit dimly ahead of them, but the cadavers blocked the
path, and judging by the stench they were not all fully decomposed. He
was sure they were set there on purpose, a detraction or a warning of
the previous attempts to enter this way. Getting through to the opposite
side made for a gruesome prospect.  And it was becoming more and more
apparent that that would be the only way.
       He still hesitated, reluctant to give voice to the neccessity.
His mind flashed with the impressions their deaths had left on the earth
around him. He could hear the echoes of their screams crying out from
the very dirt and stones. The scent of blood very real and muted in the
small tunnel.  Clip had a snarl that was eerily foreign on his human
features, Stana looked like she was more and more removing herself from
reality. He had to get the group moving before they never would.
      "Well." he forced out with more calm then he felt "looks like we
have a tunnel ahead of us. That would be the underground entrance we
were looking for, and Clip was good enough to find with his head. Let's
go people."
      "You don't mean you expect us to go through..that..." Stana's
voice dropped to an appalled whisper as she half gestured to the
grinning deaths before them. At Sullam's nod she shook her head with a
sharp, panicked movement.
      "No." she stated flatly, folding her trembling arms over her chest
and trying to glare. Her defiance faltered on his resolve. "no." she
repeated.
      "We have to." He answered. "It's the one way in that gives us any
chance to succeed." He could be very pursuasive if he chose. He didn't,
there were some battles that charm wouldn't win. Sullam kept his voice
flat and his arms stiff at his sides.
       She looked at the corpses strung out on stakes and scattered on
the floor. She imagined herself trying to go through there and felt her
mind shearing free of all sanity.
       "Stop!" Whispered Sullam sharply. "Don't think about it, either
do it or don't."
       Clip was drawing his lips back as if there was a bad taste in his
mouth. He was mortified at the prospect of going anywhere hear those
bodies. To be shoved face to face with the death he had alway scorned.
It was appalling. But...the princess was on the other side... . He shook
his head with a snort of anger. Someone would pay for this.
        "Do you trust me?" Sullam asked, judging that she was the one
that needed to be convinced.
        "That's not fair!" she shot back angrily.
        He didn't answer. That wasn't his question and she knew it. He
waited with outward patience for her to get over her outburst.
        Stana looked at Sullam with a frustrated helplessness. He
couldn't be asking her to do this. It was all a horrible nightmare and
she would wake up back in KU and this would be nothing but a laughable
dream. She restrained the urge to pinch herself because her nose told
her all too well that this was not in her head. She wanted to be sick.
Stana veered her mind away from thinking of those things as once living.
She tried to consider them as inanimates, objects and not people.
Without quite feeling it, she held her hands out, one to Sullam and the
other to Clip.
         "I do't want to do this." she murmurred.
         "None of us do." Sullam answered, leading the way. He held out
his other hand for Clip's sword and The Unicorn gave it after a moment
of thought.  Stana restrained the urge to once again vomit as she
realized what that blade was to be used for.
         "Look at me." Sullam told her. She lifted her gaze and met his
eyes. There was an intense focused look in that blue gaze that scared
and reassured her at the same time. "We HAVE to do this. Don't think
about it, don't think about anything at all. Just follow my lead, and
I'll take as much of it as I can."
          An odd phrase, and one she didn't have time to wonder about,
for with his last word he lifted the sword and she averted her head.
The dull thud of the blade hitting the flesh made her stomach churn,
bile rise in her throat. She gagged and her hand clamped down hard on
Sullam's. His fingers squeezed in acknowledgement and he repeated his
statement not to think about it. She tried not to.