<div class="floatright">(http://i47.tinypic.com/359idsp.jpg)</div><br/>Her eyes flew open, dilated and blurry her sight was obscured by her own fingers as her hands covered her face as if she'd been weeping. A breath escaped in a cold mist as she looked down, instead of the chasm, she was kneeling on the ground behind the beam. Licking her lips she reached up her unbound hands and touched them tenderly to her mouth feeling the cracked dry ridges of the once smooth plump skin. The eerie sound of a voice made her blink and she lowered her hands from a jade colored gaze and stared at the porcelain figure ahead of her.<br/><br/><em>“Have you prayed for Hahrutyne to save you?”</em><br/><br/>A gasp escaped her as she struggled for breath when the voice made sense in her mind finally, the icy puffs coming from her as a seemingly soundless scream opened her mouth without sounding. Turning her head she stared at the beam that hung over the chasm seeing a bound woman, with lank red tresses falling across her dirty battered form. Head tilting the jade eyes widened, fear circling the pupils. Was she outside her body? She was still hanging over the pit that was to be her doom. Another gasp left her and she fell at the death-seers feet, grasping for the hem of his goatskin pants, he seemed just out of her reach. Dust from the ground paralyzed  her tongue and any words she had wished to speak were deadened by the feeling of the earth filling her mouth. Tears leaked from the corners of eyes that had not cried in years. She stared up at him, her voice echoing in her own ears, yet sounding so far away as if the words had never actually passed her lips.<br/><br/><strong><em>"Have you come then Death-Seer to see me to Her?"</em></strong><br/><br/>This was it, what the Orcs and the Barbarian Witch had wanted. To break her so completely, that they could strip Maeryn of her belief, and in doing so  her power would be theirs. She could not breath, deep gusting gasps escaped her as she stared up at the figure. There was belief and insanity riding side by side, the Queen was allowing her suffering to overtake her. But really she had held out so long already, how could she not be tainted with madness while awaiting a King who had yet to come.