March 5th, 1800
...
Thousands of innocent lives were lost during the invasion.
It began with a misunderstanding... One of those stupid, pointless, lousy things that just seem to happen sometimes. We thought our men positioned at Melda Arch had control of the situation. Certainly, the King of Burmecia took pride in his men, he said that our army was strong enough to defeat anything.
They all perished. Years of training lead to nothing but their deaths. As the troops marched across Gizamaluke's Grotto, no one was left but the badly injured. A Moogle sent us a message written by a soldier before the casualties. He too may be dead, or paralyzed on the legs, or unable to move any of his limbs, we don't know. The letter had no name, it was written in a rush and had slight burn marks on the edges.
Our Majesty, however, declared that no one would invade his domains as long as he had enough of his men available to protect it. He was wrong, utterly wrong, but we did not question any of his words. The King was very well-known to exile people who opposed his opinions, and thought it was a rare occurrence, it only happened when he was put on the edge and we did not want to upset him at the cost of living the life of a hermit.
They arrived at Burmecia's main gates on January 19th. They went to the markets, to the suburbs, to our homes, to the churches, to the parks, they spared no one and killed everyone. Men, women, children... It did not matter to them. Our fountains gushed blood, the deceased floated above the river's surface, I saw bodies everywhere. I still see them whenever I'm awake or about to sleep. They were not satisfied with just killing our people, but our culture, our customs, our arts, our entire legacy left by our ancestors, efforts of generations reduced to nothing. I saw very few Alexandrian soldiers and more of those Black Mage abominations roaming around, uttering the word "kill" as if we were deaf.
When I stabbed a few of them with my partisan, their last breath sounded painfully human, but I did not mind.
Meanwhile, with our side suffering the majority of losses, the King ran away like a coward. I heard rumors that he dressed himself like a woman to not be noticed in the crowds, but with everyone yelling and the world falling apart, why would he do that? We know he fled to the village of Cleyra, located atop a giant tree on Vube, a desert west of Burmecia. Well, it used to be. All that remains of Cleyra is a hole in the ground. The Black Mages were only a sample for Alexandria's real power.
They summoned Odin, a single blow of the eidolon enough to wipe out the Cleyrans from existence. It's like they left Burmecia with ruins and corpses around as a sick joke. I did not have time to grieve because I had to accomplish a mission. Burmecian lives were at stake. My personal feelings were irrelevant to the matter. I felt irrelevant as a whole, like dust drifting in a wind that I had no control over its direction.
After several days, when I heard about Alexandria losing control over their precious eidolons, Bahamut's attack on their kingdom, the same Bahamut who turned against the Queen and mortally wounded her, I almost said, Reis forgive me... Well, they deserved it. What are a few dead civilians compared to a genocide of millions?
It was inevitable, but someone else said it to me. The feelings conveyed by most of my people are those of scorn, contempt, revenge, eye to eye punishment, and I regret ever having to borrow these, even for a split second.