After a few minutes of more discussion, I exited the tent together with Luna. We didn’t go too far as I was asked by Arthur to come back sooner than later, but it was enough to make sure nobody was listening in on us.

“Why are you so interested in this time?” Luna asked a difficult question I couldn’t easily answer. Telling her the truth was out of the question, as such, I had to find some believable lie rather fast.

“It impacts my family. There was someone who lived during that time and we need to find out what he did as there wasn’t written much down.” I explained enthusiastically. On the inside though, I was dying. I didn’t like lying to her at all. It kind of freaked me out that I felt these weird emotions in respect to everyone with a seed of life, and yet there was nothing I could do nor wanted to do.

“I see… it will not help you much in this case, but I still want to tell you everything.” The moonlight shone on her face, and yet this wasn’t the only source of light. Her eyes seemed to glow again in a deep blue. She seemed calm but also determined to tell me the truth.

“Do you believe in gods?” She asked while I raised an eyebrow. What had the gods to do with it?

“Yes?” She got slightly uneasy due to my answer, but still chose to believe in me and continued.

“What do you think about non-believers?” I frowned as she wasn’t really telling me what she wanted. I didn’t know what she wanted to imply and I was honestly a bit impatient to know why everything changed so drastically around the time I came to be.

“Everyone is free to believe in what they want.” It wasn’t the official stance of the church that represented every god, but it was my own belief. I have read a few teachings from them and even one about Aska. How should I put it … it was very far from the truth. As such, I truly thought that everyone had the right to believe in the gods or not.

“The gods are dead.” I couldn’t follow anymore. I knew that at least one was alive, so claiming that all of them were dead was quite far fetched, at least in my opinion. Luna noticed my questioning gaze and continued her explanation. “The church burned every book they could find around two hundred years ago. They forbid every historian from writing about the past, hoping that we would forget how it was before that time. The world changed two hundred years ago because the gods, almighty as they were, died and left this planet.”

“How are you so sure that they all died?” I asked, not really believing what she just told me. She didn’t lie, at least out of her perspective, but that didn’t mean it was the truth. It just didn’t fit what I knew about the gods at all.

“It is the only possible explanation. Why should they leave this planet otherwise?” The gods were the gods. Possibly all of them thought differently from a normal person, so figuring out what they thought was quite hard. I had my fair share of problems figuring out Aska alone, so I doubted that anyone was capable of doing so with other gods.

“I see … how do you know about that?” I asked.

“My mentor told me … he was burned at the stake a few years later and I … I was thrown out of my family because I followed him till the end.” Luna teared up as soon as she mentioned her late mentor. Immediately, I patted her back and pulled her into my embrace. I felt so bad for asking her about it, that I felt it as my responsibility to cheer her up. And yet, I didn’t know how. I knew what I shouldn’t do which was pressuring her even more into talking about the past, but that was basically it.

I couldn’t let her walk to the carriage alone and as such, I accompanied her back, always making sure to distract her from the past. In the end, we already laughed together again, but that was quickly shut down by a certain mage who still didn’t give me her name. Her eyes shimmered in a light blue until they turned slightly red as soon as she spotted me. I frowned as I saw that and couldn’t exactly say why I was the reason for her mood change.

“Are you willing to give us your name now?” I asked in a slightly aggressive tone. Her unprovoked rude behaviour got on my nerves.

“You two aren’t worthy. Luna, you risk being found out and you, Lucinda, you spread chaos wherever you go. Both of you, get inside the carriage. Now!” Neither Luna nor I moved a single centimetre. There was so much tension in the air that my hand automatically wandered to the sword on my hip. “Luna, as your superior, I order you to get inside the carriage.”

Luna gave up on her resistance. I doubted that the other mage really had the right to order Luna around like this, but Luna didn’t. Sadly, I let her go. I should have stayed with Luna, but I couldn’t stand the sight of this woman anymore. She impersonated everything I hated. Rules and strictness were just part of the reason why I wanted to behead her right then, but I didn’t want to do it in front of Luna.

Instead, I turned around and left Luna with her to visit Arthur once more. I knew that she was safe there, so while I absolutely hated the woman´s attitude, I had no worries as I walked back to the tent and asked for directions more than once.

The screams were already audible as I stood in front of it, but grew even louder as I entered the second compartment. Just like last time, a whore was whipped by Arthur while I took a seat and enjoyed the spectacle. Sadly, I couldn’t look into her eyes easily as she laid upon the table and didn’t face me.

“Hey, Arthur, I heard that organs fetch a nice price if we sell them to a necromancer. How about we start a business?” I said jokingly, although it would certainly be profitable. We just had to find a necromancer …

“What are we going to sell first? Your heart? I heard that it doesn’t beat at all.” Arthur replied while whipping the woman one last time.

“True, it doesn’t beat, but I still rather keep it. Growing internal organs again is always a hassle.” Or more importantly, it hurt like hell to remove them in the first place.

“Alright … I think I am finished here, you can have her.” Arthur said, completely drenched in sweat.

“Thanks for the meal!” I didn’t wait any further and dug my canines deep in her nape. Just like last time, she didn’t resist much as she was already quite exhausted. I sadly couldn’t finish my meal completely as an officer entered the tent and loudly reported his arrival. Annoyed, I let the woman fall to the side and cleaned my chin up with a simple cloth. Arthur already went outside the second compartment, so I did hope that my presence wasn’t necessary.

“Lucinda? We need your knowledge here.” Apparently, I was wrong. Arthur didn’t even care about the impression the three soldiers must have had as I came from the back of the tent. Needless to say though, he didn’t ask me to attend for nought.

A man laid down in front of me, surrounded by Arthur, an officer and two normal soldiers who carried the corpse. The dead man was similar to the last one packed with muscles which made everything even stranger. There was a large wound on his chest, inflicted by a sword strike that was above average in the strength department.

“Are this many murders normal within such a short timeframe?” I asked, beginning to get slightly curious about these murders.

“No, it isn’t. Do we have a serial killer in our army?” Arthur asked, clearly worried about the morale of the army.

“No … this one was done by a tall, strong person who uses a longsword.” I claimed and looked at the dead body once more. There was nothing out of the ordinary with him, and yet I couldn’t help to think that we missed something. “Did he fight?”

“Nobody heard anything.” So it was another murder where both parties knew each other.

“Have you controlled the swords of his friends?” I asked, not really hoping to get a satisfying answer.

“Yes, but nothing was out of the ordinary.” Told the soldier.

“I suspect nobody saw anything?”

“That is correct.” This murder seemed physically impossible for a single person. How did someone manage to meet this guy alone, kill him and flee without anyone noticing? Either it was a group of murderers, or there was an inhumane murderer like me. I scratched my cheek, but Arthur was apparently more than unhappy with my interest.

“Lucinda, let it be. We have a unit that deals with such things.” If they did, then they were utterly unprepared if I needed to inspect every corpse. “You three can go now. Tell your superiors Lucinda´s assumptions. That’s all.” Arthur waited until the three left the tent until he talked to me again.

“Why are you so worried? It is just a murder.”

“It probably is …” And yet there was something incredibly fishy about the murders so far. Whatever it was, I knew that it wouldn’t stop, not after whoever did this managed to murder two times without even getting suspected. But Arthur was also right. It wasn’t my job to investigate these murders, although I had a very bad feeling about them.