He looked around his domain. He was quite high up and there was something round in front of him. Had this always been there? He’d expected a military camp, although he knew a landslide had damaged the north wall at Salzgries, but this didn’t look like a camp. He looked over to the lady on his right. Now she had been there for a while. He should really ask her name at some point… After all they were neighbours. He looked to the bathhouse to his left. Wait a minute, the bathhouse was gone… There were just some stones, piled on top of each other like a column…. How long had he been asleep?
He realised: Things around him had changed. He saw the street was named after him. Funny. Why would you name a street after a person? “That’s really unhelpful”, he thought. “How would you know where to go? What important profession, or geographical feature was housed on that particular street, if the street wasn’t named after it? How would you know, where the market was held for example?
His first curious considerations soon made way to something else however. A dreadful feeling that filled his whole body. It felt…foggy, grey and it sucked the life out of him. A feeling of division. A grumpiness, Grant as the locals called it. A feeling… he couldn’t quite put his finger on it… of war. War. That’s what it was!
War was in the air. Something he hadn’t felt for almost 2000 years. Mind you, it had crept up on him in a similar way back when… When he was lying in a Roman Fort in Vindobona. Or was it Sirmium? He couldn’t quite focus with all these… feelings….
He had been chosen to be emperor and adopted (together with his adoptive brother Lucius Verus). Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus, is what they called him. It was a political decision to give the highest position of the Roman Empire to the one thought most fitting for the job, not the biological heir. He was the last one however. After him, his biological son Commodus, took over.
Back to this feeling… War. Destructive for everyone, even those who led it. He could not believe it was coming back. But he felt it clearly. Peace was the thing to seek. That was clear. The Pax Romana had to be upheld. He had had help, back in the day. The Guild of Monster Hunters had always been hard at work, to prevent war, and to end division. Bringing people together, across nations – a difficult feat.
That’s when he could sense a…presence. One that had all the right signatures of… a monster hunter! Just like that, the grey fog lifted! Gone his uneasiness and the feelings of division and destruction! He could see clearly now.
He decided to join the brave hunters and investigate the ancient city of Vindobona. He could already feel two traces of himself, one at the high market and one at the Graben. But they could wait. Now a much more pressing matter had to be dealt with: The Grant – the clear sign that signalled the presence of other monsters in the city.
