Disclaimer: I don't own anything!

Author's Note: My new job gives me plenty of time to write when it's slow. Wrote most of this chapter there.

Working on a stop-motion project for my computer animation class based on the book my brother and I wrote, The Sanctum Files. Progress and details on the project and the book itself are up on our tumblr page.

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Right and wrong are not what separate us and our enemies. It's our different standpoints, our perspectives that separate us. Both sides blame one another. THere's no good side or bad side. Just two sides holding different views.
-Squall Leonheart (Final Fantasy VIII)

"Told you this would happen!" Yuan shouted as he ducked into a corridor. He poked around the corner and thunder exploded down the hall with a word. Even that spell wore him out more than it should have and he was underground, well away from the magitechnology that pervaded the capital. "Just being pessimistic, my ass."

Kratos cut the legs out from under one of the soldiers with a sword he'd picked up from one of their fallen. Even if he wasn't dead, there was no way he was going to be able to follow them. "Y'know—if you stop complaining, we might be doing better!"

"Shut up! I'll zap you next!"

Yuan's next lightning bolts did get precariously close to Kratos—close enough to make his hair stand on end.

They'd been persecuted. Apparently, Russell and Peter hadn't considered that the soldiers would be on the lookout for suspicious activity—or even just out of the routine because they caught sight of them searching one woman's bag of groceries—and that they would follow them, alerting the other guards and getting what felt like half the military down after them.

"Close your eyes!" Martel told them. They obeyed instantly, even as they turned away. "Photon!"

Not only did the spell itself hurt those she was aiming for, but after fighting for a while in darkness, that sudden flash of light—not as natural or quick as lightning—was blinding.

"Quick, c'mon!" Mithos was easy to spot in the darkness of the tunnels with his pale hair and bright eyes. As they ran past him, a spell circle flashed beneath him. "Grave!" Walls of stone rose from the ground to cover their escape. Not quite a wall, but neither would the soldiers be getting through it anytime soon.

They'd lost Russell and Peter. Not to death—hopefully—but they'd gotten separated in the fighting. And they were relying on their own memories of the tunnels they'd seen on that map. Yuan and Mithos had damn good memories, but they weren't perfect. At some point, they'd be running blind.

"It was…left, right, straight, right…" Mithos was muttering as he led them through. A ball of witchlight hovered around and in between them; thanks to the Exspheres, their night vision was good enough that they didn't need too much light.

"Think that'll hold them?" Kratos asked Yuan.

The half-elf considered it as they turned another corner. "Depends on whether they wanna run the risk of the tunnel collapsing on them. They can chip away at it or try and shift the rock—which, good luck with that 'cause Mithos' spell won't budge—or they can get some dynamite and try blow it up and maybe bring the whole system down."

"Maybe, maybe not. The dwarves are excellent builders," Kratos reminded him. He wished he could stay and study the walls. There were inscriptions there, in dwarvish. He couldn't read it, but he could try and figure it out via the illustrations. "I would think it'd be sturdier than that."

"Yeah, but these tunnels have been neglected. And who knows when they were built? Maybe even pre-war era. I don't care how well it's built; eventually, it'll fall."

It might have been minutes, it might have been hours when Martel spoke up. "Do you feel that?"

Kratos didn't, but that was nothing new. "What is it?"

"The air. It feels…cleaner. Not so earthy. Fresh. Which means—"

Mithos grinned back at them. "A way out."

Indeed, not long after, Kratos could feel the effects. It was easier to breathe and see, the witchlight becoming unnecessary. Their feet ran into worn steps that were essentially a ramp now. The entrance to the tunnels was an opening in the mountain—dwarves worked directly with their material—and if there had been doors or gates to the entrance, they were long gone.

They weren't even entirely out of the tunnel before the smoke bombs went off. They covered their mouths and noses, but it wasn't just smoke. Something was sinking into their very skin. Their bodies wouldn't obey them, limbs stiffening up until they were completely paralyzed.

Kratos felt like he couldn't even move his eyes from where he'd fallen, but he would know the voice of his father anywhere.

"Don't kill them. The King wants a more public execution. To the prison with them."

The control of his body came back slowly for Yuan. He lay there, feeling the magitechnology in the bars of his cell and grimacing at how it made his stomach turn. He couldn't hear the others—not that he expected to, since the paralysis would still be getting through their systems—but neither had he been able to see where they'd been taken.

It felt like hours when he managed to sit up, leaning back against the wall as a wave of nausea rolled over him. He tried to speak, his mouth creaking open, but his mouth was dry and his throat felt a little swollen. The General was good, he'd give him that. However he'd managed to figure out about the tunnels, he'd also figured out a way to neutralize the gap between them. The four of them could have done quite a bit of damage against his soldiers before, if, they even took them out. But the gas had poisoned them, left them weak enough for transport. Crafty son of a bitch.

Yuan was beginning to get full movement back—his joints were horribly stiff, popping and cracking with every shift of his body—when the footsteps sounded. Two pairs. One pair was sharp, measured, militaristic. The other, decidedly not. A cell door opened—not his. Close by though—and one of the two people walked inside. There was no click of the lock turning and Yuan turned his head to face whoever it was.

And his breath left his body.

"Zaren?" he managed, pushing himself to his feet. (He doesn't register it at first. Doesn't register the lack of chains, the lack of any of his brother's rebellious nature. Doesn't register the way that Zaren's eyes are pointed at the ground)

His brother flinched a little at the sound of his name. (This is a trick. It has to be. A hallucination. A side effect of that smoke gas…)

"Zaren, what're you doing here? How did you—?" Get all the way over here? He'd been going to his family's village, to get them away from the humans. And Zaren wasn't an important prisoner, to be transferred past any ranches to come here, to the capital. He wasn't known to the higher-ups in the human military.

"Small world, isn't it?" Yuan finally registered General Aurion's presence. "I found it in a ranch. My guard informed me that it was close to one of your half-breed generals." Yuan should have been used to being thought of as less than alive, as an object rather than a person, by a lot of humans. The General made it feel much more personal. "That's when I knew I had something."

Yuan's spine froze at the implication and he looked over at Zaren, who still wasn't looking at him. "You never escaped that ranch, did you?"

Zaren's voice, when he spoke, was quiet. A little hoarse. "…He promised to keep me safe."

Any leash on Yuan's temper snapped. "You sold us out—sold Viren out—just to save your own skin?!" The mana inside him rose in reaction to his temper, making him dizzy in the presence of so much magitechnology.

"…Yes."

Yuan rounded on the General, fists white-knuckled. "And you used him. Like he was nothing."

The General stood calm in the face of his rage, a mountain, unyielding against the wind. "Don't misunderstand. The both of you are nothing. Your entire race is. Nothing was forced. It was an agreement and I've upheld my half. It hasn't been harmed much more since that ranch. It could walk out of that cell right now, for all the could it would do."

Not a prison cell, then. Not for Zaren. A holding cell.

Yuan didn't look away from him. He could stand up to this old man, could take him in a fight. He was no longer a starved little slave or one of the prisoners in a ranch. "So what do you plan to do with us now?"

"That's none of your concern, half-breed. It's not as if you can affect the outcome." The General about-faced, his footsteps sharp and precise until they faded away.

Silence reigned in that windowless room. Yuan had searched with his eyes for weak points, but now he used his hands, checking the corners and looking for hollow spots in the walls.

"You don't understand," Zaren said suddenly.

Yuan had been calming down, but his brother (the traitor's) voice snapped it right back. "You're right! I don't! So why don't you explain it to me?"

(Zaren doesn't recognize this creature of indignation and fury that his little brother has become. Little. It's hardly appropriate anymore. Yuan is taller than him now, stronger than he could ever have been)

"…You were in a ranch for, what, a few months? I was in that ranch," Zaren spat the word out. "For six years. If it weren't for the General, I would still be there."

Yuan was trying to find the logic, was trying to find anything to redeem this man. And he couldn't find anything. "Ignoring the fact that you betrayed me, betrayed Alstan and Myra, betrayed all of us, why would you do that to Viren?" Viren, his best friend, his brother, his leader?

Zaren exploded. "Because I'm not you! You got the lucky draw, alright? I'm not brave, I'm sure as hell not strong. I couldn't stand to be in that place for another second. So when the General came with his offer, I took it. And I got a few people out with me, Viren included."

"And all it took was selling your soul and information to him."

Zaren's arm clenched, the numbers stark on the strong muscle, temper deflating a little. "You can't understand, can you? It's literally impossible."

"No, I can't. You don't turn your back on people! Your friends! Your family, for Sylph's sake!" His palm slammed against the cell bars; the physical release of temper helped a little, even though Yuan had to pause to get his breathing back under control. The room was spinning, though whether it was from the magitechnology or from…this, he didn't know.

"Family? I thought you were dead! Or worse!"

"There's nothing worse than death, Zaren! Sorry to disappoint you, but death's it, the end of the line."

"You're wrong about that. There's a lot of things worse than death, Yuan." There were shadows swirling in his brother's eyes, but Yuan didn't agree with him.

"And I wasn't talking about me when I said family. I was talking about Viren. The men under his command. Your comrades. Your brothers-in-arms. The men under your command—shit. You've been sending your men out to die. Knowingly sending them out because the humans were waiting for them. On your information."

"It's not like that," Zaren said, paling. "I didn't—"

"Of course you did. And you've been lying to yourself about it because you're a damn coward. Your wife, did she get out with you guys?"

"…Yeah."

"Does she know? That her husband is a—a blood traitor?" (The slur tastes like poison in his mouth, but it feels better than whatever rot is currently spreading inside him)

Zaren's eyes went hard. "No. No one knew."

"And now no one ever will, is that it? The secret dies with us? Because lemme tell you something, we're front of the line for death row. How'd the General know about the tunnels? You couldn't have told him that part."

"No. He figured that one out when his men reported seeing you guys going underground."

"So you're just going to let us die. Watch us get executed and hung from the city walls—all because you were afraid? And what happens when you're no longer useful, Zaren? Did you even consider that? You'll be next in line on that executioner's block. What about your wife and kid, and Viren? You're going to let them think you just—what? Died in combat? Were killed on the way? Where did you tell them you were going?"

"A mission. It wasn't a lie."

"Lies of omission are still lies." Yuan sighed, running a hand through his hair. So far, no weak spots to escape. "Do you know a way out?"

"Even if I did, I couldn't tell you that."

And he didn't even need a way out. Zaren's cell door had been left unlocked. But then, where would he go? What would he do? No need for locks and chains then. He was keeping himself prisoner. "You'd do that to me? Now?"

Zaren met his eyes for the first time. Behind the stubbornness, there was complete terror. "I'm not going back, Yuan."

Yuan let out a bitter sound that wasn't a laugh, but an approximation of one. "I'm not going to argue anymore. Clearly, you've made up your mind. I'm just gonna say one last thing: it's thanks to you that we've been losing this war. We might've started winning. Hell, we might've won. But thanks to you, the war that killed Poppi, and Dehua, and Kail is still going."

(It's a deliberately cruel shot, bringing that up. Twisting the knife because Yuan can tell that however much Zaren might be sticking to his actions, he doesn't want to do them. But Yuan can be very cruel when he wants to be and right now, he absolutely wants to)

Kratos heard Yuan's voice. Not clearly. It was muffled and a little distant, so maybe a few hallways over. The anger came through loud and clear though, even if Kratos couldn't tell what he was angry about. He waited for the shouting to die down and for the paralysis to fully leave his body before he leaned against the bars, angling his head to try and see out the hallway.

"Yuan!" he shouted.

There was a momentary pause. Kratos tried again. His throat felt like sandpaper; was he even making a sound?

Then Yuan's voice, shouting back, a little louder than before because Yuan could project his voice pretty far, like you could hear thunder when the storm was still far away. "Kratos! That you?!"

Kratos wanted to be sarcastic about it, but he knew that there were probably guards on their way to stop the not-so-stealthy conspiring. "Yeah! You alright?!"

"Mostly! You?!"

"I'm fine! Any sign of Mithos and Martel?!"

Martel's voice called out, "I'm here, guys! I'm okay!"

"And Mithos?!"

"No idea!"

"Martel?!" That voice was more distant than Martel's. Kratos could barely hear it. But she could.

"Mithos! You're alright?!"

"Yeah! I'm fine! Anyone having any luck with the bars?!"

There was an echo of 'No' down the hall.

"Any ideas?"

A second chorus of 'No'.

"Great," Kratos muttered to himself. They were going to be publicly executed, probably on the morrow, their bodies hung from the city walls and they were stuck here. Kratos and Yuan had the best chances of using magic to get out—Yuan because he was more used to magitechnology than the other two and Kratos because he was too human for it to have that full effect—but then they would have the guards on them and they wouldn't be able to fight through them all.

"Don't think of trying to escape. Save yourself a headache," a guard said.

Kratos glanced up at the guard. There was a hand axe on his belt, the standard issue sword and gun on the right hip. So either he was left handed or he preferred the axe and wore the other two because orders were orders. The guard was large, stocky with the bulk of muscle. His hair was cut military short, but there was something vaguely familiar about his face.

"Yeah, well, I'm dead by morning anyway."

The guard didn't answer, continuing his rounds. Kratos leaned his head back against the wall, mind still going a mile a minute. He'd checked the bars for any structural problems, looked for a loose tile in the floor, anything. And there was nothing to be found.

"Y'know something, Yuan?!" Kratos finally called. If this was his last night, it wasn't about to be spent in silence.

"What?"

"I'm getting really tired of getting put in prison."

The answering laughter was bitter and staccato. (The sound is wrong and Kratos wants to know what happened over there…) "Me too, Kratos."

The guard was back, staring down at him. "Kratos," the guard repeated. The swordsman looked up automatically at his name. "Kratos Aurion?"

Kratos frowned up at him. There was familiarity there, not just repeating a name seen on a wanted poster. He hauled himself up to his feet, limbs still kind of heavy from the gas. He studied that vaguely familiar face, but no name came to mind. "Do I know you?"

"'s been years. Wouldn't expect you to remember me. Though I was kind of surprised to see the wanted posters. Didn't think you'd ever actually rebel."

Kratos blinked at him, slowly taking in the voice, imagining it less deep, mentally erasing lines from the face. "Abernac?"

The guard grinned, just a little. "Got it in one."

"Thought you wanted a soldier. What're you doing being a prison guard?"

Abernac's eyes went dark. "Got drafted. Went to the front lines. Some magic spell started a landslide up in the mountains, broke my leg in three places. That was five months ago. My leg won't ever heal all the way back. At least, that's what the doctors say. But I'm still useful, so I got stuck here." (And he hates it. Hates the routine, hates the blank eyes of the prisoners, hates the unchanging view and he hates, hates how his leg still trembles if he stands or walks too long)

"I'm sorry," Kratos said, genuinely feeling it. He couldn't fathom why Abernac had ever wanted to be a soldier, but to be told that he was unable to be one now—there were few things worse than that.

"I'm getting over it. What happened to you? Last I heard of you, you ran away from the school." Or, that had been the rumor. No one had really known where the bookish son of General Aurion had disappeared to. Or why.

"I'd had enough," Kratos told him. It wasn't really a lie.

"And you did—what, odd jobs—for all these years?"

The wry twist of Kratos' lips could almost be a smile. "Joined the military. Just on a different side."

"Why?"

There was a blank moment of confusion. He honestly hadn't expected Abernac to ask that. "Why what?"

"Why join the half-breeds?"

"Half-elves," Kratos corrected. "And…because they're not what our textbooks and the teachers and—everyone—says they are. They're not savages, they're not evil. They're people. Just like us. Good sides and not."

Abernac snorted. "Trust you to make it make sense."

Kratos hadn't been this confused in a long while. And he said so.

The former soldier smiled, a bitter, lopsided thing. "…After that landslide, the first people to find me weren't humans. And they could've left me there. I wouldn't have blamed 'em. But they didn't. They pulled me out, one of them patched me up a little. Just enough to stop the bleeding. But some of our platoon was starting to come up the debris and they made a break for it. But they saved me. And they didn't have to. So, I started thinking...maybe we were wrong."

"So why are you still here? Why don't you—"

"Fight back? I'm not you, Kratos. I don't know when you changed so much, but I'm not strong like you are. I just want to do my job, make a living, bring food home back to my wife and daughter."

"You have a daughter?" The idea seemed so foreign to Kratos, but then he remembered that he was—what, twenty-five? Twenty-six? That was perfectly old enough to have children. "How old is she?"

"She's seven. Most beautiful girl I've ever seen, but don't tell my wife that."

Kratos curled his hand around the bars, leaning his face between them. "Abernac, listen to me—unless something changes, she's going to grow up just like we have. Hating people she's never met, seeing them as—as sub-human for a reason that we don't know. She's going to grow up, probably marry a soldier and one day, likely as not, some colonel is going to come to her door and tell her that her husband was found dead on some battlefield. And she's going to be a widow at twenty-something, probably with a kid. And the military won't give a damn about her because there's thousands more just like her. Don't let that happen to her."

"And what do you propose I do?" Abernac demanded before lowering his voice. "Rebel and be executed for my trouble? Let my wife think I'm a blood traitor for this?!"

"Let me go," Kratos told him. "Let me and my friends go. We're working on a way to stop the war. Peacefully. With as minimal killing as we can get."

"That's impossible. We can't get peace."

"Not if we don't try for it."

Abernac stared at him, unable to quite look away from the stubborn look in Kratos' eyes. (He's having a hard time reconciling this strong man with the short kid who'd helped him with math. The warrior with the kid who'd had a hard time picking up a sword. But it isn't hard to believe that that kid became the tenacious dreamer in front of him)

After a long moment, he sighed and got the keys from his belt. "You're lucky," he muttered, unlocking the door. "That those half-breeds that found me that day were the good kind. Otherwise, I might have just left you here."

"If the half-elves hadn't rescued you that day, you might not even be able to stand right now," Kratos pointed out. "But thank you."

"C'mon, let's find your friends, Aurion. Wait—" Abernac went back into the guardroom and came out with four spheres in his palm. "These were confiscated from you."

The Exsphere hurt as Kratos reinserted it into his skin, but he was grateful to get them back. There was a good chance that they wouldn't make it out of here alive without them.

It didn't take much to find Yuan. The half-elf looked sick, so Kratos was willing to bet that he'd tried some magic to get out, but the amount of magitechnology in this prison was astounding. Then he followed Yuan's eyes across the hall to see Zaren, sitting in an unlocked cell.

"What—"

Yuan stood up from where he'd been leaning against the wall, as far away from his brother as he could get. His eyes were hard as he looked at Zaren. "He's a spy, Kratos, and a traitor."

Perhaps Zaren didn't want to even try to fight Yuan with that kind of rage in him. Even Kratos could feel it, the mana inside Yuan, vibrating and waiting for an excuse to escape. Or perhaps Zaren had lost the will to fight any more.

Yuan glanced at Abernac—there was no recognition on his face. It might have been the anger or it might have been the long years between them—and said, "Lock this cell. Throw away the key. Leave him locked in here until the day he dies for what he's done."

Abernac looked between Kratos-and-Yuan and Zaren. He nodded, locking the cell door. (He doesn't understand fully what's happening, he can't. But no one likes a traitor, even if he's kind of one right now) "I can do that."

Martel and Mithos were several corridors down, three cells away from each other. Abernac would walk the hallways first, searching for guards. After making sure the coast was clear, he would whistle twice and they would follow him down. Both of the siblings looked sick, pale and drawn, their eyes glassy.

The sight of Martel in such a state snapped Yuan from his anger. He helped her to her feet, letting her lean on him. "What's wrong?" he asked.

"It's—it's this magitechnology," she managed. "It's…like a poison."

Kratos hoisted Mithos up. The kid may have had a lot of muscle on him, but he was still skinny and still shorter than him, so it wasn't a problem to haul him around. He took Mithos' hand, reinserting the Exsphere. Mithos was too tired to even flinch. "How do you feel?" Kratos asked the boy on his back.

He buried his nose in the back of Kratos' neck. "How d'you think?" he muttered venomously. "Let's get outta here."

Kratos looked to Abernac. "What's the easiest way out?"

"There's not many exits. But there is a guard barracks that isn't used very often. I can lead you there."

Still half-supporting Martel, Yuan followed them out. He saw Kratos glance back at him a few times, a question in his eyes—and Yuan already knew the questions he was asking, but he didn't want to answer them. It was down the stairs and two rights and a left—Yuan had to make the mental map, just in case—before Abernac let them out. The magitechnology was suffocating; Yuan could feel it in the back of his throat, thick like when he was sick and his voice didn't want to work. He could feel it under his skin, crawling and writhing like something alive.

"And so traitors beget traitors."

They all froze on instinct. General Sandor Aurion stood behind them in the doorway to the barrac shadow stretching across the room as if it had a mind of its own. There was a sword at his waist, a gun aimed at them.

Yuan had always seen the General in a position of authority. He knew that the man was a very capable strategist—a trait that Kratos had inherited—and that he had to be very intelligent and a survivor to have gone into the war in his youth and come out on the other side. This, however, was something he'd never really thought about. The General as a soldier, as a warrior, just like his son. Perfectly capable—and more than willing—to kill.

"The other generals said that I was being ridiculous, that no one breaks out of this prison. But I decided to stay out here, just in case. I'm glad to see that it wasn't for nothing."

They didn't even have a chance to run. Kratos watched it happen in slow motion. His father fired the gun, the sound echoing off the walls. He moved before he knew what he was doing, shoving himself in front of the others, the mana in his body rising in reaction to the adrenaline. (He forgets that he has Mithos on his back, forgets that it's not just him)

His heart stopped as Kratos watched the bullet come straight at him, but he stared as it stopped short, several inches in front of him.

There was a barrier—pale green and net-like—and it was gone as soon as Kratos had a chance to marvel at it. General Aurion raised the gun again, but this time, Kratos wasn't afraid. He leaned toward Abernac. "Take Mithos. Get the others out of here. I'll hold him off."

He felt Yuan's expression, though he couldn't see it. "Kratos—"

He didn't let the half-elf finish that sentence. "Go. I can do this. I'll meet up with you." How exactly he was going to do that wasn't the point. That part came later.

Abernac traded him his sword for Mithos, who was too tired and queasy to do more than glare warily at the human who had him in his arms. "Be careful. That gun's no joke."

"It is now." Kratos met his father's eyes, fighting the old, instinctive flinch of fear in his stomach. "That's a Mertle 270. Lots of power, but a long reload time. Used to be standard issue before we upgraded."

Abernac readjusted his grip on Mithos before turning to leave. It took Yuan a long moment before he followed, still helping Martel. (She wants to stay, wants to push Yuan away and tell him not to be so stupid, to not leave Kratos here, to fight his father of all people. But there is no matching Kratos' stubbornness at times like this, she knows and she is in no shape to help him).

Kratos forced himself to forget them, to focus on his father and only him. The father who was now drawing his sword and Kratos had to make a conscious effort to steady his legs. (He is no child, he reminds himself. He shouldn't have to, but here he is. He's and adult. Independent. Powerful. There is no reason for fear)

"You're going to hold me off?" Sandor repeated. "You may have improved your swordsmanship, but you can't defeat me."

Kratos readied himself, let his muscles relax, clearing his mind as much as he could. This was battle. He could do this. He was good at this. "I don't believe that. And neither do you."

A grunt of acknowledgement. Kratos never saw him move—even as accustomed to fighting half-elves as he was, his father was fast—and he blocked in time only out of instinct. His arm went momentarily numb from the power behind the blow. He pushed back, darting away before swinging the sword back around because his father might have been fast, but he was faster. Maybe not stronger—not with his Exsphere having been confiscated—but he had magic. Kratos grinned a little despite himself at the irony; he had to fight his father like a half-elf.

So when he rushed back in, his father parried and they clashed back and forth, each trying to get past the other's guard. Glancing a strike off with the sword hilt, Kratos quickly stabbed towards his father, mana singing in his blood. "Lightning!"

The force of the strike was nearly enough to send Kratos backwards. It had been badly aimed, just barely zapping Sandor's arm. It was, however, enough to loosen his grip on the sword. Kratos pressed his advantage. Sandor was getting tired, but he dodged well, constantly keeping too close for Kratos to use the sword effectively and continuously circling, making Kratos readjust every time he tried to strike.

Sandor threw out a punch. Kratos—still recovering from a well-placed kick to his knee—was sent sprawling with the force of it. The human army was taught basic hand-to-hand, but it had been a long time since Kratos had seen it.

Sandor scooped up his son's sword with the other hand, since his sword arm still had occasional spasms. Kratos jumped back to his feet, but he had to scramble to defend himself against the onslaught that his father was unleashing against him. Kratos shot a fireball, the spell hurried and messy. It sputtered to life, but it was enough to distract Sandor and let Kratos start fighting back. He used another lightning spell, this time better aimed. His father dropped, the electricity coursing through his body.

Kratos stood above him, breathing hard. (This is him. Powerful and triumphant. But the person lying there is not the awe-inspiring figure of his childhood. It is an old man, broken and knocked from his pedestal)

Sandor didn't flinch away from the sword that Kratos picked up, aimed at his throat, didn't break his gaze, didn't grovel for his life. He was too proud for that, had been a warrior for too long to be afraid of death. "You may have killed before," he panted. "But this isn't a battlefield. Are you to kill a downed man? Does your honor and morals," The two words were sneered. "Allow for that?"

"You've murdered and enslaved thousands," Kratos began, his grip unwavering. "And you think you're still human?"

"More than you are, with that heathen blood in you."

There was no remorse anywhere inside him. Some tiny part of Kratos had been hoping for it, that there was some good to this man. But there wasn't. He was a monster.

"You're not human," Kratos told him, strangely calm. "You're not even a person. You're a monster and you deserve to die for what you've done."

"And you're going to play judge, jury and executioner?"

With a jerk of his hip, Kratos' arm thrust forward, stabbing straight through his father's throat. He waited several more moments, watching the blood spill onto the floor into a growing puddle. Now that it was over, nausea started swimming in the back of his mind, a reminder of exhaustion and the magitechnology that was everywhere.

"Yes," he told the corpse. "I am."