“Have you seen my sword?” he asked her.

“You don’t need a sword,” she replied.
“You need to go home to your family and leave all this behind
you.”

“But I’m a warrior! I can’t just leave
and desert my comrades!”

“Do you think I Healed you just so you could go out and do
this all over again?”

“But I’m a soldier. It’s my duty to
fight.”

Gabrielle wanted to argue the point, wanted to convince him he
should be home with his family, but there were too many others that
needed her help.

“Go home!” she told him in her most authoritative
godly voice, and turned to the next man.

This man she recognized. She had Healed him only a month ago.
Then it was an arm that was cut to the bone and he was bleeding to
death. This time it was a severe gash just above where his ear used
to be.  Without a word to him, she did her Healing then moved
to the next one.

For half a day she laid her hands on them, Healing and
comforting them. But she began to realize just how many of them had
been helped by her. Some as many as four or five times before.

 Then came the one. Gabrielle knelt down for the fiftieth
time to save a life. The man was bleeding badly from the neck where
an axe had been buried deep. He was holding his wound with one
hand, his sword gripped tightly in the other.

As Gabrielle gently placed her hand over the gash, she heard him
whisper, barely able to gurgle, “Goddess, we meet
again.”

When she looked at his face, she recognized him. She had done
this for him a half dozen times before. His sword was stained with
the blood of the many lives he had taken.

Gabrielle knew she should not save his life again. But it was
hard to fight against her own conscience. She was the Goddess of
Healing, how could she let this one die but not the next, nor the
next after that?

And if she did let him die, where would his spirit go? Where
should it?  As a brave and loyal warrior, the obvious answer
was the Elysian Fields. But what if he had killed innocent
villagers – women and children? Then he should be sent to
Tartarus. But what if he killed innocents by accident, or
hadn’t at all?  How was she to know?