[He looks down at her with his countenance placid but touched by melancholy, as a pond in spring is touched with ice just at the edges. How strange it is to know that you are seeing someone for the last time, but he wonders if it is better to know in advance or only in retrospect, as with Patroclus, his father, his son.]

No longer do I fear death, if that is what you ask. I would think it a far unhappier fate if I were to creep into old age without Patroclus, dearest and most faithful of my companions, by my side - cursed to a life long but empty. Jason met his life's end when the bow of his rotting ship, the vessel by which he gained glory in the bygone days of his vigor, collapsed atop him. But I shall meet death at the hands of a deathless god and a mortal both, there in the bloody jaws of battle, as befits a warrior of my status.