Defeat.

Breath stutters.

Fingertips tickle snow.

Just beside, a body.

Not deceased, no, not yet.

Depressed perhaps, and languishing in doubt.

He sees his reflection in skies above.

Like the stone he is, he remains patient.

A spear extends from his chest, a war wound.

As he breathes shallowly, he hears the sound of battle.

Soldiers more fortunate lay around him in lakes of merging blood.

In skies above, he hopes to see the valkyries descending to Earth.

In the biting wind, however, the only presence detected is that of fiendishness.

There is no paradise waiting for him far above this broken plain.

Fingers grasp desperately at the last vestiges of reality surrounding him.

Darkness invades the aperture of his final act on Earth.

As time passes, sensations of mortality transform to void.

The deep black covers the warrior’s static visage.

Wind sways the spear marking his death.

A pendulum, it ticks away time.

The wind ceases to blow.

The battle fades away.

No one mourns.

Earth spins.

Eternity.