When Leo and Iris got their first look of Heliantis, they were both dumbfounded. While the city Lawrence was big, and the dwarven city Tirdaral was amazing, they didn't even come close to Heliantis in size. The walls stretched out, and there were towering castles in the city. Leo isn't spend all his time gawking though, he was looking at the layout, and various other things he would need to notify the dwarves of when they attacked. After a couple more hours of walking, the two finally arrived at the walls.
"I.D.s" the guard said in a lazy tone as they approached. Iris kept her hood down as they walked up and they both presented their I.D. cards. The guard waved them through, not apparently caring about iris's hood, not that either of them were complaining. After they entered the city Leo said,
"First let's find a decent place to stay, then we'll just wander around a bit and scout the area." While the dwarves mined, they found silver and gold veins and used some of the ores to make more currency for when they had to travel. The rest was used to make their own Asdargian currency. It was the same values, but one side of the coins had a mountain, while the other side was an image of Leo's wolf form. He was adamantly denied using it, but he was overridden during the meeting.
"Ok, I heard from Felix that there was a decent inn in the shopping district called 'The Healthy Hearth'." Leo nodded, and the two set off for the shopping district. They had about a month and a half to gather information. He had about three different locations he wanted to scout; the stadium, where there were slaves that were forced to fight to the death for entertainment, the slave market, where the most slaves were processed and sold to their new owners, and finally the high class district, where they had more slaves than residents in each house. As they were walking, suddenly heard a commotion,
"Hand over your coin purse, or I'll gut you like a fish!" A man was being robbed. Leo gritted his teeth, and pretended like he didn't notice. He didn't like ignoring people who needed help, but he needed to keep a low profile and couldn't draw attention to himself. His fists clenched, Leo walked the other way. After nearly an hour of walking, the two finally arrived at the shopping district, and a nearby vendor was more than happy to tell him the location of The Healthy Hearth. Nearly another hour and they found the building, as Leo walked inside he found a warm atmosphere, and even this early many people drinking. They were all laughing about this or that, and didn't seem to mind Leo or Iris as they walked up to the counter.
"How much for a room?" The innkeeper looked at him and said,
"A silver a night, or six for a week." Leo's brow twitched at the steep price, but he still handed over the coins for the next month and a half. After he received their money, the innkeeper handed Leo a key and told them what room was theirs. The two went to their room, and crashed for the day after traveling so hard.
***
Princess Alice sat in the Royal library reading the last page of her book, before going to put it away and finding another one. She thought, 'What do I want to read now?' As she looked at the thousands of books around her. She had already read all of them, but had nothing else to do so she was going to read them again.
Her sole role in her royal life, was to become Arthur's bride in a few months after she turned seventeen. As such there was no way anyone in the castle would let her do anything that might harm her, lest they risk Arthur's wrath. The only places she was allowed to go to, was her room, the kitchens, or the Royal library. As such she had already read all the books available for her. There were books about almost any topic imaginable, studies about monsters, histories, policies in different nations, everything. What Alice liked the most though were the fictional stories, fairy tales.
She loved the idea of a princess being in trouble and her Prince Charming saving her, fighting dragons, witches, or any other kinds of monsters, all for her. She would spend hours daydreaming, that her Prince Charming would come to save her from her future, beating Arthur and taking her away to his castle to live happily ever after. Her favorites of these were actually tales collected from lost people, Cinderella, Snow White, sleeping beauty, and so on. But Alice knew this would never happen to her. The closest she ever found to her Charming, was the champion of Athena, Alex. He only ever looked at her as a conquest though.
She had learned early on, that there were two kinds of love stories, fairy tales, and tragedies. Her life was unmistakably a tragedy, as she would spend the rest of it, hundreds or even thousands of years being Arthur's toy. In tragedies the girl would always lose either her freedom or her life, and the only options left for her were one or the other. But if she lost her life then Arthur would kill the entire country, simply because of her selfishness. She had seen the way he treats his "wives", when on his last visit he brought a fox girl with nine tails, and paraded her nude throughout the castle. It was one of his games, everyone else could look but not touch, and it helped to break them to lose any thoughts of self importance left.
She knew that after he "married" her, it would be her turn to be paraded around the castle, taken by him whenever and wherever he wanted. No one in her family cared though, she was the daughter of concubine, so she more than acceptable to be used as scapegoat for the kingdoms existence.
"I just want one day..." Alice whispered to herself. It was all she wanted, one day to walk among people, to act like a girl and not a sacrifice. She thought to herself, any free will she had would be taken from her in about four months, she wanted to have at least one day. Alice decided, in a month she would break out of the castle, and spend a day among the people. She recalled seeing a couple of princesses in her fairy tales do that. She then also decided that she'll read books about famous thieves so that she could study them. She quickly found one, and started studying it, preparing for her own escape, before resigning herself to her life of tragedy.