The long march to the headquarters was a very silent one. Yes, there were the sounds of the metal armor on the Meltokio soldiers that were clanking as they walked, but somehow, Lloyd and his nine companions were able to drown out those sounds completely. Right now, they had the most important battle since the one with Mithos right ahead of them.
Lloyd and Zyn were standing side-by side each other, and their other eight allies were standing behind them in a horizontal line. Standing behind them were all the hundreds of Meltokio soldiers all lined up very neatly and in an organized fashion.
The headquarters was now just in sight, and Lloyd took a deep breath. He stopped, as did everyone else behind him. Lloyd slowly turned around and looked at his friends.
"This is it, guys," he said. "There's no going back after this. You all ready?"
"Yeah," Colette said nervously, not knowing what else to say. "It's time to save the world once again."
"Ready as I'll ever be!" Genis said excitedly, throwing his arms up into the air.
"As I've said before, I'm ready to accept whatever happens in the coming battle," Raine said in a soft, nervous voice.
"Yeah, I'm ready," Sheena said nervously. "Time to show all of Mizuho that I can truly be a great chief."
"Well, I don't know much about you guys," Zelos started, "but I'm ready to show that Tiberius punk what happens when you mess with the great Zelos Wilder!"
"If we fail, then Tiberius will come back and destroy our world years from now. We have to stop him now while we still have time," Presea said lifelessly.
"Indeed," Regal said. "Tiberius almost succeeded last time. We cannot allow it to happen again."
"You know, normally I wouldn't care so much if the world was in great peril, considering I've always got Derris-Kharlan to return to," Yuan said. "But there are some boundaries you just can't cross, and Tiberius has crossed them."
"And I'm doing this for myself," Zyn said. "Words cannot express my remorse for once working for that man and being his second in command. I hope to defeat him and become leader of Tiberia and rule it better than he did."
"Yeah," Lloyd said. "And I'm doing this for Kratos. He gave his life to stop Tiberius's plan from succeeding, and I can't let that go to waste!"
Lloyd turned around and was facing his front again. "All right, guys. Let's go!"
Everyone continued marching again towards the dark looking headquarters. However, all of them were soon extremely disappointed.
"W…what's going on?" Lloyd asked.
The headquarters was completely deserted. The doors were unlocked, but there was absolutely no one inside. All the Tiberian troops had been moved out, apparently. But to where? The most disturbing part was that the weapon the group had seen just the night before was gone.
"Well, there's one last location I supposed we could check," Zyn said. "If Tiberius is anywhere, he's probably in Tower Tiberia now."
"You mean that tall, skinny building?" Lloyd asked.
"That's right," Zyn said. "That's the only place I can think of where he'd be."
"All right, I guess we're going to Tower Tiberia," Lloyd said confidently.
Once again, the troops were marching and heading to the final battle. Sure enough, Tower Tiberia was soon in view, as was a nasty surprise for the group when they got there.
As soon as they were just several yards in front of Tower Tiberia, they saw all the Tiberian troops lined up in attack position and ready to charge. Standing from a very high balcony on the tower was Tiberius, and he was giving Zyn a very nasty look.
"Zyn!" Tiberius shouted down, his black bangs getting knocked back and forth. "You traitor!"
"Tiberius!" Zyn called up to his former boss. "You gotta give this up! These guys are no different from us. They were living peaceful lives and didn't do a thing to us!"
"It's not about what they did, Zyn," Tiberius called down. "It's about what Mithos did 4,000 years ago."
"Tiberius, the ones living today had nothing to do with that war. There's no point in killing them for something they had no involvement in, and I can't believe it took me that long to realize it. All you're doing is putting hatred into the hearts of our people for no good reason at all."
Tiberius smirked. "And I'll show you what happens when I harness that hatred. Soldiers-attack!"
Instantly, all the Tiberian soldiers drew their weapons and started charging at Lloyd, his companions and the Meltokio army. It was like an oncoming ambush. A slaughter.
"Here they come!" Lloyd instinctively yelled.
The Meltokio soldiers jumped to the front and instantly pulled out their swords. The two armies clashed as blood started flying through the air and soldiers started dropping at a very rapid pace.
Lloyd unsheathed his material blades and started charging through all the Tiberian soldiers that got in his way, simply slicing them across their abdomens and across their throats and killing them instantly.
Yuan, Zelos and Zyn also pulled out giant swords and were becoming very destructive with them. All of them were practically annihilating all the Tiberians that came their way. None of them even stood a chance against the trio.
Regal and Presea fought side by side. Presea was deadly with her giant axe as Regal was deadly with his greaves. No soldiers even came close to the two as they kept battling and knocking them down.
Genis and Raine stayed as far back as possible and casting their defensive magic. With Genis's indignation and eruptions, he was knocking off handfuls of Tiberians at once. Raine occasionally cast her photon, but a lot of the time she was healing any wounded Meltokio soldiers who she could safely reach.
Colette also stayed pretty far back and threw her chakrams at any Tiberians who tried coming at her. She also had her angel powers to defend herself in case things ever got really bad.
Lloyd continued fighting brutally until he heard a loud roaring sound coming from behind. He turned around and saw one of the giant monsters that attacked him and Colette when they got stuck on the island.
Lloyd started slashing savagely at the monster, but the monster was able to dodge all of Lloyd's swipes. The monster actually got a good hit on Lloyd when it slammed him in the side of the head with it's giant paw.
Lloyd got knocked on the ground and had a trail of blood clearly flowing from his face. This just motivated him to fight harder. He pushed himself up and tried his best to ignore the pain, and it finally worked.
When the monster was about to attack him again, Lloyd gathered up every ounce of strength he had and jumped over the monster when it attacked. This confused it and when it was staggering temporarily, Lloyd stuck his flamberge through the monster's back until it came out the other side.
The monster howled in pain as Lloyd then proceeded to stick his vorpal sword in it, making the monster scream even louder in pain.
Lloyd ripped both of his blades out of the monster and watched it slowly lose its strength. It promptly fell frontward on the ground, dead.
"That's what I should have done to you the first time we met back on that island," Lloyd said coldly as he stared at the monster's dead body. (although it was very hard to hear him say anything, due to the sounds of the clashing of swords and the sound of men screaming as they died)
Meanwhile, Genis and Raine were still doing their best to fight from the sides, but they were soon attacked by the second monster that Tiberius sent out on the islands to scavenge for the crystal.
Genis let out a terrified cry, but Raine seemed to have a plan.
"Genis, I'll distract the monster," she insisted. "You cast indignation on it."
"But Raine, what if the indignation hits you?"
"Genis, if you're the greatest sorcerer in Iselia like you claim to be, then you shouldn't accidentally hit me," Raine said softly.
Genis nodded his head, and Raine jumped right in front of the monster. "Hmmm…not much of a specimen."
The monster growled as if it knew Raine were insulting it and started chasing her. Raine wasn't all that fast, which proved to be a huge problem for Genis.
"I call upon thee in the land of the dead to unleash thy fury of thunder…INDIGNATION!" Genis cried.
Suddenly, a giant ball of energy started forming above the monster's head. When it looked up to see what the light was, a giant blast of lightning shot down and literally blew it to pieces, causing its limbs and parts of its body to go flying all over the place.
"Eww…" Genis said as he saw what the result of his blast did.
With two monsters down, the final one headed towards Yuan and Zyn. Neither of them looked to worried about it.
"Heh," Yuan said. "I'd almost think this was funny."
"Enough talking," Zyn said. "Let's just kill it."
The monster growled and picked up Zyn by the throat, causing Zyn to drop his sword on the ground.
Knowing he couldn't attack the monster in an instant-kill spot without wounding Zyn as well, Yuan decided to take his sword and go for the monster's legs. He made a quick cut across its legs and caused it to drop Zyn.
Zyn fell to the ground hard, but he looked up at Yuan. "Thanks," he managed to choke out.
Yuan let out a soft "hmmm" sound as he sprouted his angelic wings and flew right in front of the monster's face.
The monster made several attempts to swipe at Yuan, but Yuan just kept flying out of the way of them. This monster wasn't posing much of a challenge to him.
When the monster was clearly getting tired, Yuan whipped out his sword, and in once clean cut, he slashed it right through the monster's neck. The monster's head was severed. It fell onto the ground as the remainder of the body lifelessly collapsed onto the dark brown, blood stained dirt.
With all the monsters now dead, the group could focus more on killing all the Tiberian soldiers. Lloyd was horrified when he looked around and saw what he did. There were still literally thousands of people battling, but the even more alarming part was the people that were killed.
Lloyd saw that there were several hundred bodies on the ground, smeared with blood and some of them even being mutilated or dismembered. All of these soldiers-Tiberians and Meltokians alike, were murdered. And for what, an influence of something from thousands of years before?
As if that weren't horrifying enough, Lloyd looked up at the top of Tower Tiberia. Now he knew what happened to the top secret weapon from the headquarters. Tiberius had his men move it from the headquarters and to the top of the building. (it was probably through the use of cranes or some other sort of technology.)
"Dammit!" Lloyd cursed. "If the weapon's up there, then Tiberius will be able to fire it across a much wider area. I gotta stop it!"
"You're not going alone," said a voice from behind.
Lloyd turned around and Yuan and Zyn were standing there. Both of them looked tired and slightly wounded from the massive clash that was taking place between the two armies.
"Guys, if Tiberius has that weapon on top of the tower, who knows what kind of damage it could do? It would be able to fire at a much further and wider target than if it were on the ground!"
"Yes," Zyn said. "We need to go in there and destroy it from there. With any luck, we'll find Tiberius in there and finish him as well."
"Very well, then," Yuan said with no objection. "Let's go."
"Wait a minute!" Lloyd yelled. "What about everyone else?"
"They can fight for themselves on this battlefield," Yuan said. "For now, we three just need to get into that tower and stop Tiberius and destroy the weapon from the top of the tower."
"All right," Lloyd softly said.
Lloyd, Zyn and Yuan all ran inside Tower Tiberia, ready to stop the weapon and heading into the final confrontation with Tiberius.