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Grendel’s mother crumbles to ash under the bite of her own blade. It’s jarring; one moment, they are fighting, and Beowulf is swinging wildly with a sword that rejects his grip, burning his hands in protest, and the next, Beowulf is alone in the mere.He tumbles to the ground, expecting resistance where none meets him. The sword flies out of his grasp, clambering across the ground with a sharp screech of metal and earth meeting. He hears a snap, and he knows the sword has broken itself in two.His own sword broke itself on the beast’s hide before drawing even a line of blood, abandoning him to a fight he should have lost. The cave is quiet where only moments ago, there had been screaming and yelling and the sounds of violence. Now, he can only hear the rhythmic drip of water and the unsteady staccato of his labored breathing.He pulls himself onto his knees, bleeding, bruised, and bloody. The cold of the cavern floor soothes his burned hands as the pressure irritates the flesh.He doesn’t know what to do, whether to scream, or to flee, or to celebrate. His body decides that it wishes to do none of those things and stubbornly stays on the floor, with the heat of battle seeping out of him and the cold of the mere seeping in. He can feel the ashes of his foe on his skin, dirtying his wounds and clogging his throat. He tastes the bitter remnants on his tongue and gags.Abandoning his efforts to stand, Beowulf drags himself over to the cavern wall, propping himself against it. He unsheaths his dagger, which he had not used during his fight, with trembling hands. The dagger is plain but well-balanced, not particularly suited for battle but well-suited for a boy learning to handle a blade for the first time. He twirls it idly, the motion coming easy to him despite his battered state, and allows himself to breathe.In, out.His heart is still racing, climbing up his throat and threatening to spill out.In, out.He nicks himself with the dagger with a sudden jerk of his hands, stopping for a moment before starting again, this time with a measured and cautious pace.In, out.Grendel’s mother’s ashes form a pile in the center of the mere, only disturbed by his own movement. There’s a trail of ashes leading to where he sits.In —Beowulf realizes, with a start, that he doesn’t know the monster’s name. Did the monster know his?— Out.The monster’s ashes stick to his sweat-slicked body like a second skin. He abandons his twirling of the dagger in an attempt to get it off, but it’s already on his hands when he tries to clean his wounds. He only succeeds in rubbing it in, the remains sinking beneath his skin. Maybe it will kill him, he thinks idly, the remains of the monster mixing with his lifeblood in some sort of unholy creation.He abandons his desperate scrubbing and buries his face in his hands. His breathing has become frantic again, he realizes detachedly. His wounds bleed sluggishly, stinging in protest to the rough treatment.Death is not an unfamiliar foe to Beowulf — in fact, Beowulf would hesitate to call it a foe at all. Death is a constant companion, lingering in his peripheral at all times, coming just close enough to make its presence known yet never close enough to be seen in its totality. If he looks up now, he is sure he will see it looming over him, a hair’s breadth away.He has always denied Death what it is rightfully owed. Beowulf has long since outgrown his fear of it; that is not the reason he rejects its embrace — it is time that he fears. There is so little time for what he must do, for the great feats he must accomplish. He must become a great warrior, he must become a leader of men, he must protect and provide for his people, he must inherit his father’s will, he must lead his people to greater heights. There is so much to do and so little time, not when Death seeks to embrace him like a lost lover, one he reunites with every time he grips his sword and dons his armor.He does not regret killing Grendel.Grendel forfeited his life the moment he entered combat with Beowulf’s allies; their fight was one between warriors, both of which had experience in the art of war and had slain countless others. A warrior learns very early on that the enemy may have a cause as righteous as their own, but that is simply the way of the world. Warriors die for what they believe in, and while it is regrettable, to mourn them is a disservice to their will and strength. Grendel was a fiend and a villain — this is true. However, at the same time, he was a warrior with a strength almost on par with Beowulf’s.He does not know if he regrets killing Grendel’s mother.Grendel’s mother was a warrior. Beowulf hesitates to place that label on a woman and a mother, and yet he finds himself unable to proclaim her to be anything else. This alone should rid him of any guilt, and yet it does not.It does not, because Grendel’s mother did not come to face Beowulf as a warrior; she came enraged, besieged by fear, and bitterly determined. The monster faced him as a mother, and that granted her a strength greater than any warrior Beowulf had ever faced.Beowulf does not remember his mother. He has only stories of his mother’s love, of how excited she was to bring him into the world. Beowulf’s mother died, bold and fearful, as he was born. Her blood was the first he had ever drawn, and she had died before she could ever hold him in her arms.But still, he does not know if he regrets killing Grendel’s mother.If he had not killed her, then she surely would not have hesitated to strike him down in the name of her beloved son. Just as he knows the sun will rise and set, so too does he know that Grendel’s mother and Beowulf could not coexist. There is no path where Beowulf does not defend Hrothgar’s hall, and thus there is no path where Grendel’s mother does not grieve and avenge her son.From the moment he set out to vanquish Grendel, this was the only outcome possible. A fight and a death. It could have been him. By all the Gods, it should have been him. But it wasn’t.Beowulf stands. His breathing has evened, and though he can feel his legs trembling, it is not visible to the naked eye.He does not know if he regrets killing Grendel’s mother, but he knows that he does not regret living. If this is a sin, so be it. It is one he will willingly bare.The future warrior-king leaves, the mother’s ashes remain.The monster has been defeated. We move on.