Survival has its own etiquette.

Gods colliding, ethos and mythos trying to combine. The Sacred Band caught up in a whirlwind not of any god's devising: he and Niko had wanted to save twenty-three pairs of fated Theban fighters. Now everything feels fated and fighting oversweeps its boundaries of time and place and plane.

I'm just a weapon of the god.

Painful things are quickly forgotten.

Strife brings all things into being on her battlefield. This I know. I have been there many times," says Vashanka, lord of sack and pillage. "I have died before.

There is no mercy in trading life for life. And certainly no righteousness. Mercy, once given, cannot be taken back.

You count up your dead, every one. Always. Recall them, each and all - every face, every heart.