The God-of-Everything forbids killing? How do his worshippers conduct war? This new god is endlessly baffling and contradictory. Achilles wants to pose more of his questions, but they could be here for hours and the boys don’t seem particularly confident in their answers.

He settles into a seat on the ground, at a better height for talking to the children. Another polite sip of coke and he places the can beside him.

“You said ‘the first of you?’ By that you mean boys who went to war?” Achilles is positive that Pyrrhus’ survival to adulthood is owed to his divine blood. Though, ironically, that same blood is what cursed him to a life of war in the first place. “For what cause did you lads fight?”