After several minutes of running, we arrived at the tree and I sprinted towards a nearby torch. I immediately grabbed it to the displeasure of a nearby guard and swiftly set the whole tree on fire. The area was completely devoid of any military personnel, exactly as I asked Arthur for the day before.

“Are you sure this is alright? The fire could spread out quickly, just like it did in the year 405. It was also just a single fire there …” Did she like history that much? If that was the case, maybe she could help me out with the mystery I found as I went through the history books.

“What happened around two hundred years ago? Was there something notable?” I asked, breaking the flow of the conversation completely. She opened her eyes wide and nervously tipped from one foot to the other.

“A few kings were born there … Luis the 56^th for example …” What kingdom has 56^th kings with the same first names? Who is ever going to remember these? Anyway, she averted her eyes and seemed rather evasive all of a sudden.

“Luna … please.” I didn’t play the ‘I thought we were friends’ card or similar which would have definitely changed her mind on said question, just because I didn’t want to be such a person for an innocent child like her.

“… I´m sorry… I can´t.” I sighed and turned to look at the burning tree again. If she didn’t want to tell me, so be it. It wasn’t as if I necessarily needed the information right now and if she knew it, others would too. And if that wouldn’t work out, I could just ask her again in the near future. She may have changed her mind at this point after all.

“It´s alright … hey, I thought you were a mage and not a historian?” I asked, curious about her knowledge of history.

“Uhm … that is kind of linked together. I specialize in magic that uses history as a basis most of the time.” She said while I frowned as I had zero ideas how such magic could look like. Did she catapult history books at her enemies or what was it?

“And that magic is?” I asked, hoping to get a satisfying answer.

“It´s a secret. Only the higher-ups in the army are supposed to know.” She said while giving far too much information away. She was a strategic asset, but not in an offensive way or she did have weaknesses the enemy could exploit if it became known. I shrugged as I still had absolutely no idea about her specialisation and turned around as I heard three teenagers cheering behind us. One of them was … the boy with the weird name. I didn’t know the other two, but that was to be expected. As soon as they stood in front of us two, everyone waited for me to introduce them to each other.

“Luna this is … this issss … ähm … Kata … Kataschama?” The poor boy seemed incredibly frustrated that such a beauty like me couldn’t remember his name. In my defence, his name was shit.

“Just call me Kat next time. This is Joel,” he pointed towards a well-fed ten-year-old, “and this is Julius.” He was on the skinny side and seemed to have a strange fascination with the tree I set on fire. I nodded towards my fellow arsonist but soon turned around to watch the spectacle. Luckily the fire didn’t spread far and we could watch it in relative peace as only a few soldiers drank beer nearby. I even knew one of them from a poker round and waved to greet him. He was too drunk to notice though …

“Soo … what are we going to do now?” I asked while I wondered why I haven’t thought about this further.

“I thought you had some kind of plan?” asked Luna, completely in the right. I did gather all of them here … but I honestly just wanted an excuse to set something on fire.

“No, not really. In all honestly, I just wanted to watch a huge fire.” That, and my dress that was placed in the tree and was now burning satisfyingly.

“We have an arsonist among us! Well then .. how about we tell each other scary stories?” asked Kat who seemed rather eager to start. I wondered what they perceived as scary at all and as I didn’t want to scare them too much, I held back from telling a few of the horror stories I experienced in purgatory. As nobody had any better idea, we sat on the grass and watched the burning tree while Kat ordered his thoughts.

“Have you ever heard about the prophecy of doom?” started Kat while I laughed about the name.

“That’s just an urban legend.” Luna said albeit I could see that she was already feeling unwell.

“That makes it even scarier, doesn’t it? Alright then ...

Out there in the woods, there is a monster with an unimaginable amount of intelligence and might. It escaped purgatory through vile means and is now plotting to overthrow every government in the world. As a master of disguise, it can be everyone and thus hides among the elite of the world. But this isn’t even the worst part … it drinks … the brains of us humans to get even stronger until it is ready to devour the whole world.”

I laughed. I knew it was a bit mean and ruined the whole atmosphere he wanted to build up, but drinking the brains of humans seemed too comical to me. How would this monster even do that? With a straw through the ear?

“Wow, you told it completely wrong.” Claimed Luna with a stern gaze.

“Then do it better.” Said Kat, a bit sad that he completely failed to scare us.

“Alright …

Two hundred years ago, an oracle made a prophecy about the end of the world. The daughter of a god will come to this world and will try to open the gates of hell for every monster there is. She is supposed to look human, but she isn’t. She feeds on us, has no mercy, and will be responsible for thousands of thousands of deaths if the heroes that will come forward to stop her don’t succeed. If you ever see her … run, because she will be the end of the world.”

Oh … fuck. I´m already a celebrity here?