Elizabeth is dead. There was no other thing this could be. She remembers what was. The moment past. She was in the heat of battle, thrusting her sword through the abdomen of a hookman and the next she was bathed in this white light. The smell of death and blood soaked sod, the excrement of the dying and heady pulse of her own adrenaline still fresh in her nostrils, but the fear was gone. The fear that fed her fight. The fear that made her step beyond the line and blindly attack foe after foe. The fear that swung her blade over and over again marveling at the ease of bone cleaved from bone, the orgasmic spurt of arterial blood as she ended life after life. With no fear to keep her fist clasped around the hilt of her weapon she feels her grip loosen and the blade fall away. She watches it fall, disappearing into the white endless mist. Next she shakes loose her gloves and unites her breastplate and with each and every article of war that touches her body falling free she feels ever more weightless. Almost naked she feels light as air. Her hand grips her undergarment, a thin rough cotton slip. As she pulls on it to lift it over her head she suddenly feels the pull of gravity. It’s crushing. She falls fast. The battlefield approaches. She sees fighting. She hears the clang of steel on steel. The scream of injury and death. Then her body laying on top of her last kill. A spear jutting from her back. A priest hovers near his mouth works the words of his God and then she crashes into her body. With a gasp all the pains of her life return.

 

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Art:

Elizabeth

by:  Dave Paget