"Rise, Alfarnin!"
The voice--a woman's, he thought, an old woman's--seemed to come from a great distance. Alfarnin tried to open his eyes, but he was tired, so very tired...
"There is no time for this, elf! Get up! Skuld commands you!"
He felt a pair of age-weakened hands tugging on his arm. He tried to pull away and roll over so that he might shrug off the old woman and give himself up completely to the darkness she was so determined to drag him away from. But he found himself able to turn only part way. Something was blocking him.
He opened a weary eye and found himself staring into the horrid, twisted face of a troll. With a cry, he sat up, right hand instinctively groping for a weapon.
"Don't bother, elf," said the old woman disdainfully. "It's dead. Everything's dead here. Save you, that is."
Alfarnin saw she spoke the truth. The troll's eyes were wide and staring, its hairy chest a ragged ruin. He lifted his gaze from the fell beast to see he sat in the middle of an endless expanse of corpses, all clad in battle gear. A vast array of weapons protruded from the bodies--spears, pikes, swords, axes--and blood covered the twisted, still forms like a crimson blanket.
He looked down at his own simple tunic. Once it had been the plain gray of an elven farmer; now it was a stiff, dark red edging toward brown. He touched his long silver hair and found it clumped and matted with dried blood. He ran a hand across his chest and stomach, searching for wounds, but those he discovered were, for the most part, minor, though they hurt like blazes.
"Your weapon, warrior." The old woman sneered this last word.
Alfarnin turned to look at the woman for the first time. She wore a black robe, hood drawn forth to cover her head, completely obscuring her features. If it hadn't been for her quavering, cracking voice--and for her wrinkled, age-spotted claw which held forth his hand scythe--he couldn't have guessed at her age.
He took his scythe, noting that the dulled blade was caked with flaking red-brown. "I was working in my fields when I heard Heimdall's horn," he explained. "I had little time to prepare before the battle was joined." The final battle: Ragnarok.
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