"Why did you do this?"

She had torn out the throats of a thousand men, had left a thousand women slaughtered. Her hunger had left a hundred children spattered in the gutters, victims of a nameless horror. Impossible that she lay there now, the ground awash with the blood of the men and women who had driven her to her final stand. Impossible that she now lay at my feet, her white throat arced upwards against the steel of my blade, her perfect face fixed in a serene smile as her tiny hands reached up to make me her final victim. Those sultry eyes flickered up at me, lips pursing slowly before uttering the one phrase which would define a nation.

Eight words, backed by the sickening sound of metal shearing through flesh and bone, which explained every horror the age would reveal.

"Such is the cruelty that the gods permit."