"Ah, yes. The shield of faith to hide atrocities behind." He was a man of God himself, or at least still had faith in the Lord. He was cursed by evil, it would be foolish to believe otherwise. But he'd both heard and been witness to horrible things, monstrous things done in 'the name of God'. Genocide. Torture. Evil excused as being done to evil, so it was clearly not evil. Faith allowed for people to ignore their own hypocrisy. At least his own acts of horror were done with foresight in what he was doing and why.

He sat there with Sharon, listening to the sounds of the night around them, to the sound of pain and anger in her voice, and he wished he could do more than just listen. Sometimes it was enough. Sometimes it wasn't. He sighed at her question, thinking of Mehmed and his arrogance. "They followed their leader. They were not given free thought to think for themselves. Mehmed... thought himself infallible, thought himself above the rest of the world. We were his toys, his subjects. I don't think he was capable of seeing his own actions as a sin or as anything but the way it should be, because he'd sunk himself in the illusion of being something he was not. Untouchable." Vlad had shattered that illusion rather violently.

"You've suffered, Sharon. Would you change what you'd done in response?"