War's balance will prevail.

Don't forget, Riddler, how I love thee. Or all we shared together. Or that this sea and all other seas can lead you back to me.

In this new world, this day and forever, then, we are not only Thebans - we are all Stepsons. We are all one Sacred Band. If you will have us. And mine will fight by yours, henceforth, as brothers.

The heavens listen to what is said on these cobbles. Laws of man and nature come together here. Here you must be firm. Here you must be true.

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.

Wars don't bring lasting peace, only lasting death.

Men live, and then they die. It is the quality of the process of living which matters, that and that alone.