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They reached the top of the wall, Minerva and her Alliance escort, and for one instant her step faltered. Knowing they’d be here didn’t prepare her for--her countrymen staring back at her, their skin like hers, their eyes vibrant like hers, weapons raised. The wind picked up, blowing smoke from smoldering heaps of magitek into her eyes, whipping her long red hair back--a convenient excuse, at least.
“Ser?” the Ishgardian asked, voice quiet, concerned--he was normally such a difficult man, hardened by years of healing reluctant temple knights drunk on bravado.
She smiled grimly, and wiped at her eyes with her sleeve--too much blood on the backs of her hands--”Well, let’s put an end to this.”
They formed up around her, familiar enough by now that they needed no direction, and broke into the lines of Mhigan refugees wearing Alliance colors, desperate pretenders. She permitted herself no more tears--they were right, but they were wrong. She’d been so close , so close to finally forming up the Alliance to do something, and now--
They broke out onto a platform that looked like a launching point for the flying armors, the mysterious symbol her people had fallen in standing before them, surveying the carnage below. As always there was something haughty in his stance, some familiar angle in the cant of his shoulders that worried at the back of her mind--she knew the Griffin, even if she could not place him. Her taunts died on her lips as he turned, regarding them with those cold, familiar eyes, with one hand pulled free his mask and the other swept back his hood.
Minerva’s heart skipped a beat, another, pounded so hard in her chest it felt like it might rip itself free--but it had, hadn’t it? It had, years ago, with her hands bound behind her and the blood from Raubahn’s severed arm splattered across her face. Emotion welled up in her, the instinctive release of chakra opening, and before conscious though registered the name Ilberd she launched herself across the platform, fist raised, screaming, “YOU SON OF A--!”
Her cestus cracked across the flat of his blade, and he pushed , the force of it coiling in the muscles of her arm. “I’d hoped you’d join me, my darling. You were there when it began; you should be here when it ends.”
Minerva’s brain caught up to her instincts, and she struggled for clarity inside her rage. “Don’t you dare call me that, you traitorous bastard! ” One knee shot up on a perfect trajectory with his midsection, but he release his block, leapt away from her. “What gives you the godsdamned right to be here? Doing this? Telling our brethren to kill themselves for a lie?”
She followed, twisting her momentum into a high kick at his head--again he caught her on the flat of his blade and they strained against one another. Sickly nostalgia welled up in her breast for the days when they’d sparred, how well they’d grown to know each other’s style before one would throw the other to the ground and--”What right have you to judge me? You’ve done nothing for them--you gave your life to Eorzea , your strength their reward for sitting on their laurels for decades . At least they’re dying with purpose, not begging in the streets of Ul’dah!” He threw her off, reversing her momentum, and dove in with his sword.
Minerva spun up in time to catch the flat of the blade between her palms, and an arrow sailed over her shoulder--a massive axe sailed in from the edge of her vision--and her heart seethed but her mind calmed. Her soldiers. Her squad. Ilberd pulled away to avoid the axe and she let go of his sword, blade slicing the finest lines in her palms.
How fitting, she thought. No one else had ever made her bleed so beautifully.
She clenched her fists, blood oozing out around her cesti, and channeled all her years of longing, regret, anger, and love into her blows. Minerva did not stop, not once, until his sword slipped from his grasp and he could go no further.
Oh, had she but understood what he meant by dying with purpose. All she could do when he threw himself off the spire was pray to Rhalgr, and she watched--she watched as he hit the ground, and his aether coiled up through the air rotten and sick with Nidhogg’s influence She’d already mourned the man she’d thought she’d known, not the one he’d actually been.
And she mourned the lives she knew were yet to be lost.