You watch him in silence as he strides along the field, shoulders back and head high. Crunch. In the distance, you can hear faint screams, some agonized, some triumphant, all terrible. Crunch. Beneath him lie the bones of the fallen, centuries upon centuries worth, those who had won and those who had lost, but had nevertheless suffered the same fate. Crunch.
"FIGHT! FIGHT YOU COWARDS!" Ares snarls at the soldiers on the battlefield below, kicking at the skulls at his feet and sending a dust-like spray into the air. His sword cleaves haphazardly through the air as he yells, swinging back and forth like a rogue pendulum.
"Why do they not fight?" he spits. "Why do they not throw themselves into it, shed their blood and sweat and tears to save themselves? Why do they not even try?" He finishes in a howl, rage and anguish mixed in one awful sound. His face resembles the sunset consuming the horizon, angry crimson quickly on its way to unbecoming.
You think he will make another lap along the hill's edge, but then he's off, skidding down the hill, tripping over limbs and bodies, all the lost things of war. He falls several times, but gets up each time, more determined than the last to make it to the bottom. You follow at a more gradual pace, knowing you will always catch up in the end.
He reaches the bottom and sprints off. You watch from the edges as he tears through the lines, throwing a hit here and lashing out with his sword there, no rhyme or reason to his madness. He injures and kills with no discrimination, his only care being extending the carnage, extending the bloodshed. You absorb this mockery blankly. You catch brief glances of the Furies, cousins of a darker kind, snapping down to take souls more willing to part.
The sky has faded to a deep blue by now. Though Ares does not seem to notice, the sounds of battle are dying out, and the screaming is becoming scarcer.
Lord Ares, do you not know a lost cause when you see one? You ask gently. At your side, your own sword is sheathed, and you rest your hand on its hilt ever so carefully.
Panting, Ares turns to face you full on, eyes wild and unfocused, shaking from his previous show of exertion.
"Of course it is a 'lost cause,'" he sneers. "All battles, all wars, are 'lost causes' if you think of them in terms of who has come out on top and who has been defeated. No, that is not the purpose of war. They fight, we fight, to give something to be remembered by. We fight so that we go down in the histories as those who fought like hell for something we believed in. We struggle on to win against over only one enemy, and for that, this will go on into infinity. And that is why I need them to fight!" He ends in bloodcurdling yell and turns back to the battlefield, ready to continue the fight. And as you spot a white flag approaching, he throws his words over his shoulder at you one last time.
"War is immortal."
