It has been a long time since we had gathered at this fateful place. A big hole in the ground, still a mystery to most reminded the four of us about a vastly different time.

A time of instability, uncertainty and most of all, aggression. But luckily, this time was over since twenty years already. And with Lucinda’s sleep, the world became much more peaceful again.

Sure, the first few years were hard. Incredibly hard. Both elves and humans lost the ability to use magic right away which caused a lot of chaos … but we managed. So far that the republic Lucinda helped to create started prospering quickly with its democratic institutions. The elves had it a bit harder because they were usually a bit slower to adapt, but they also caught themselves.

Without a shadow of doubt left in me, I could claim for sure that this world had become a better place without demons haunting it and without a king who ruled over everything. So in a sense, Lucinda did good to this world.

But honestly, after all these years, I couldn’t tell wether it was Lucinda’s intention to make this world a better place, or that was just an accidental side effect.

Because for all I knew, she was the one responsible for so much pain as well.

“What are you thinking about?” Ellie asked, her cute little boy in her arms. She looked good, wiser and even more relaxed. Ageing didn’t make her any less sharp, but I believed she was less suspicious of anyone around and truly tried to see the good in everyone.

“I’m still … struggling with what happened all these years ago. It feels as if that chapter of my life hasn’t come to a satisfying end yet. We still don’t know what was really going on.”

“For all we know, she succeeded in whatever she was doing. Otherwise her father would have surely gotten her at this point.” If there was one thing Louis and I were absolutely sure about – besides that his little boy looked absolutely adorable – then it was that Lucinda had been the lesser of two evils. With the god of death in control of this planet … we weren’t sure what that would entail for this world. But we knew what it meant when Lucinda was here … and I didn’t dislike this normal world at all.

“Why does it matter anyways? It’s not like she is going to contact us ever again.” Schwarz did have a … rather difficult time. His relationship with the mother of his daughter didn’t hold that long and after that, he slipped into alcoholism. Not every one of us were so lucky to have found a partner for life like Louis and Ellie, but … I thought that Schwarz was doing much better now. He was an army instructor, currently very close to promotion or so I heard.

“Maybe we will meet her again. Maybe not.” I claimed while sitting down on the grass carefully.

“She is gone and so are all her accomplices. We can’t find Tom, we can’t find the twins … heck, even Albert is gone even though his inventions surface from time to time.” Surprisingly, it was Juliette’s turn to interject, but her expertise was very much appreciated.

“The power of the state has spoken …” Schwarz mumbled, even though I couldn’t disagree more. Juliette handed over the position of prime minister to another capable man after she had been elected a second time. She could have probably stayed longer as she was quite popular, but she didn’t. But that didn’t mean she had no connections to the police or military either.

“For all we know, they all could be right below us.” Schwarz said loudly and pointed towards the massive hole in the distance.

“Has anyone reached the floor yet?” I asked quietly. Since we left it behind nobody had managed to enter it very deeply. In the beginning, it did seem as if this hole stayed normal, but that changed after a certain point. And since then, it was wildly known as ‘The end’.

“No … all we know is that the deeper you go, the stranger the world becomes. We left purgatory back then … but down there … is something different by now. Something … godly … something that doesn’t want to be disturbed.” Schwarz said while his right hand trembled considerably. Concerned, I reached out to him and filled his body with life until the trembling receded.

“You can feel it?” Somehow, he still had some sort of connection to Lucinda, even thought it was a rather faint one.

“I … don’t know what I feel. I just know that we shouldn’t even try to go down again.” And exactly because of this feeling, we didn’t try it. We had lost all of our strength anyways, Schwarz struggled with conventional magic and Ellie and Louis didn’t even bother to learn it. They enjoyed their life as civil servants after all.

“So we agree that this chapter should be closed?” Everyone of us nodded slowly. It was a hard decision for me - but let’s face reality – we weren’t the young naïve heroes anymore. We were adults and we had more important matter than to hunt a fleeting ghost of our past. I for example was needed all over the country as a doctor, but the others had equally important parts to fulfil.

Just as I wanted to stand up again though, Ellie spoke up again.

“Hey, Juliette, isn’t it time to write Lucinda’s name out of our constitution?”

“She was the one founding this nation … so no, I don’t think so.” Out of all of us, Juliette was definitely the one who had the most goodwill to Lucinda, which was definitely because she didn’t see what Lucinda did behind the curtains.

“She is evil.” Ellie claimed.

“That depends on the viewpoint. To the average farmer, she was a true saint … maybe I should rephrase that, she was someone they could ask for help.” The title of the saint was no more. In fact, the church was no more. They kind of didn’t survive that the system just disappeared without any warning at all.

“She killed us. All of us.” Well, that wasn’t wrong … but it didn’t help that we were all in front of Juliette.

“And yet you are here. What does that tell about her?” Yeah … what did it tell about her? Why did she even bring us back to life? My hope was that she did value our friendship at least somewhat. But … it honestly could be everything. Who knew what went on in that mind of hers?