Subject: FARPG The beast within
Date: Tue, 19 Jan 1999 16:06:53 PST
From: "Stana Hierspiel" <happydoodl@hotmail.com>

Stana slowly uncurled around her tight little ball of pain. Tears drying
on her teeth. She saw Sullam looking around grimly and the now restored
Clip scratching the ground anxiously. He gave an enquiring snort and
listened for an answer that did not come.

She flexed her leg very cautiously, expecting another spasm to seize her
up. When nothing happened she unfurled more, not trusting an inch.
Sullam spared her a brief glance, and seeing her moving swept his eyes
for another pan around the room.

"Gone." Clip murmurred tragically, shifting into human form briefly
enough to utter the statement. Then he was back to digging up the rock
with a cloven hoof. In all teh gloom, he was the one thing that shone.

"The wizard loses poorly." Sullam agreed "I felt him shoving
her...elsewhere..." he let his hand drop from his abdomen. Already the
wound was disappearing. He smiled ruefully as Stana stared.

"Easy come, easy go. Now that he's gone, all evidences of his prescence
will fade. Some taint taking longer to disappear than others." he
finished, indicating the dankness around them.

Stacey tried not to breath, still smelling with her mind the rotting
corpses. She wondered how long that stench would haunt her. "The
princess?"

"The Wizard took the child and thrust her elsewhere." he offered to
Stana. He appraised her once more, dishevelled hair, half-dazed
expression, and despaired.

::Rashka she isn't ready.::

 Then that part of him that was relentless rose and stated that she had
no choice but to be. Or fail. And if she did...he would face himself in
the morning knowing he brought this about and led her to the death
within reach. Madness, inhumanity, all within grasp. They were standing
on the precipice. And he jumped.

Sullam wheeled and abruptly pointed at her. She resisted the  urge to
cross her eyes down his finger and stared into his eyes, stifling a near
hysterical laughter that may have been more tears than anything.

"There is within each of us a delicate level of positive and negative.
The desire of self and the desire FOR others. The terms Good and Evil
would suffice in most cases, not here. Think beyond those concepts."

She was listening intently, he was trying desperately to convey
something she knew was important. The meaning was evading her mental
grasp. She sent a silent appeal for help.

"You are who you are, not who you present to me, or Clip, or even
yourself. In defining that, in the becoming, the task lies in moving the
focus of your mind from one end of the Positive\Negative spectrum to the
other.  But never completely. Humanity can be lost in Seraphic as well
as Demonic. Right now you are the balance out of control."

Clip seemed to be struggling to say something as well. She sighed in
frustration, why wouldn't they just tell her what they wanted? These
games were past amusement.

There was a more thoughtful part that was mulling over what Sullam was
saying. If he was speaking in riddles it must be because he could not
speak any plainer. That meant that the answer had to come from her. He
could tell her sure, and she could obey; but unless she herself came to
the conclusion then there was nothing of worth in it. You could only be
a good soldier to a point. Then you just became mindless.

::What's he trying to lead me to? Yin and Yang it almost sounds like.
Good and evil...but he said to look beyond that...*IS* there anything
beyond that? Well, God is beyond good, so beyond that some believe that
He is out of touch with what it means ...:: she was losing the point and
tried to desperately to steer back, time seemed to be rushing by too
fast ::he is saying that good and evil reside inside in an uneasy
alliance, and I have to shuffle the balance from one to the other. But
that  I can't be one without the other...::

She didn't realize it but she spoke he word "One" aloud.

Sullam's hope leapt into his eye, she was reaching for it..but there was
so little time left. Like a fading echo he could hear the princess' cry
growing fainer. Clip was nearly prostrating himself with grief. He
seemed to have forgotten his previous defiance to his princess, and had
fallen hard.

She stood in the center of the blood and the death. And listened hard.
It was Sullam's voice, but her mind speaking.
::We are both two seeking to be one. We all want to be whole, not to
feel like we are always missing that last piece of SELF that would make
the lonliness go away. And There are those that deny this, fearing the
consequences and the pain of trying. Birth is never easy, not even the
second time around. Those few that try to define themselves often fail,
falling back to hide within site of the goal. Many fear to take that
step, knowing that they lose as much as they gain. They see the end of
the journey and they are more afraid of the winning of it then they are
living life like the rest; blindly and lost. Some become something elses
in the attempt, turning in to shadows, or into beacons. But for the very
few that hold out the struggle, and hold on to their humanity, there is
Balance in Control...not because we fight to keep it there, but because
it is there, and always has been, merely shuffled to the side and
discarded.::

She looked into his eyes with a terrible awareness of what he was asking
her to do. He didn't deny it, but she received no sympathy. For the
first time she saw him not as a warrior, but as a human like herself
struggling towards his own humanity. And he was trying to give hers
back. Besides those few moments of extreme emptiness she had conned
herself into believing she had been real her entire life. The lie was
exposed and the void was vast before her. She closed her eyes.

He had been right about one thing. She was very afraid.

But...she had been afraid before.

He had jumped hoping she would find teh path to follow. And she did, not
because she was a good soldier, but because she knew what waited for her
if she didn't. And she knew what was waiting for her if she did.

With a silent wail, she gave up fighting and let loose the beast within.
Dark and light exploded, fragmenting on the air around them. Shimmering
around her like so many crystal stars.  Then silence.

In the background they could hear the tinkle of metal on the stones.
Then:

"Stacey! Clip! Sullam! You came for me!"