Blaecwyn lay in a small alcove, held in her place by a rock. She did not know how much time has passed and she truly did not care. She only wished that she could see the sky. Her fight with the Gorothryg had not been an easy one. Certainly, she had the advantage of being smaller than they, thus she was able to duck between their legs as one or another swung a club or a fist. Her darting around had led to them giving each other several injuries on her behalf and yet it had ended as she knew it would. Two had fallen and only one remained. The one turned on her. That was when the fight had truly begun. Her strength and skills matched against a creature more than twice her size. Exhausted from her journey, battered from the glancing blows sustained earlier in the fight and drained, both emotionally and physically, from all that had happened to bring her here, it was only a matter of time before she misjudged. She knew it. She welcomed it, but still she would go down swinging. She managed a few hefty blows to the gargantuan beast with both her shield and spear, wounding it in several places, but ultimately she knew that she could not win here. A badly timed jump to avoid the club brought it into direct contact with her heavy metal shield. Already airborn, she flew backwards with ease and crashed into the cliff face some distance behind. The impact winded her, dazed her, and down she came to the floor. Through her one bleary eye she looked up to see the Gorothrog bearing down on her, club raised for one last crushing blow and she smiled. This was it. At last. Her battle was finally over. Suddenly, the dust swirled up around them, blinding her for a moment before a strong gust of wind flung her prone body into the alcove. Here, where she lay now, was where she had come to rest, watching helplessly as one of the biggest drakes she had yet seen swooped down, drawn by the smell of blood, to attack the wounded Gorothrog. "No," she whispered, a tear coming to her eye, although whether it was from the dust or the thwarted end to her life she did not know. "No.." A short fight took place between the Gorothrog and the drake, but in the end the drake emerged victorious. It did not see her where she lay as it lumbered nearer and dipped its head to tear chunks from the three corpses, but she felt it. The heat it gave off was intense, scorching most of her right side through her conductive metal plating. The drake had eventually flown away once more and she had tried to move, but found that she could not. Somewhere in her fighting, possibly in the falls, she had sustained many injuries. She had lain here since then, staring at the rock above when she was conscious and wishing hopelessly for one last glimpse of the swirling crimson sky before death pulled her away into ever-lasting rest. Even that was taking too long, she considered. Why wasn't she dead yet? Why couldn't she just let go? This may not be the perfect warriors demise, seeing as her foes lay dead and she was stuck in this overhang instead of having been killed outright, but it was the next best thing so why was she still waiting? She drifted away again, the pain throughout her body drawing her down into blackness. She knew not how long she remained unconscious, nor what happened during that time, but when she awoke once more, she was lashed to a makeshift stretcher and being dragged behind a horse. She could hear its hooves on the hard ground, smell its comforting scent. It reminded her of home, of being a child again and helping calm the steeds as her father hammered a shoe into place. "Hold on, lass," she heard a familiar voice grumbling from somewhere behind her, presumably on the horse. "I'll get you home, you'll be right as rain in no time." "No," she tried to reply, but no words escaped her throat. "No, leave me to die." She tried to roll aside, to force herself off the stretcher, but to no avail. Siward had strapped her in place tightly and she had neither the strength or ability to break her way free. "Don't you give up on me, lass," she heard him say. His voice sounded pained, strained, as if he too were less than healthy. "It was blind luck that let me see you where you were, glint of your armour and that red hair, blind luck that led me to where you were. We're going back, you and me, we're going back to the manor and we're going to be fine." His ramblings continued and she tuned them out. They were making less and less sense to her anyway. Nothing made sense anymore. Why couldn't he just let her go? Why did he have to save her? Why did he have to find her?
You failed again, the imagined words, spoken by her husband and two children, were the last that she knew before darkness took her again.
