After the extremely satisfying moment of getting the knight arrested, Rayleen returned to her chambers and closed the door. She let out a sigh. "I can't deal with this! Just no! The people out here are fucking weird. They don't seem to listen to me when I'm talking and even if they do, they just interpret my speech however they deem to be." She jumped into her bed. "Fuck it. I'mma scoot from this damn kingdom." She decided.
The following night, she escaped the palace with no plans whatsoever. Well, earlier that day she did place her horse in the border as to escape. However, that's the only thing that she did. Even so, she escaped the palace boundaries with relative ease.
Rayleen couldn't believe it. She smelled a trap or something extremely suspicious about it at least. Therefore, she decided to wait for an hour or two looking out for any kind of activity. However, contrary to her expectations, nothing happened. Hell, she couldn't even see any guards around the palace. Hence, she decided to take off.
"Huh? Escaping that place was this easy? Jeez, how bad is their security?" She wondered as her horse galloped across the kingdom's borders to the New Land.
#
The New Land was a lawless land. Previously known as the Redcap Kingdom which fell a long time ago, the remnants became more tribalistic and barbaric since then. Well, recently it gave off a old west vibe with all its Cowboys and tribals.
"Weird." Rayleen muttered as she passed through the New Land. The fact that such a place existed alongside multiple kingdoms ruined her creative imagination of a fantasy land. For her, it was much more of a weird amalgamation more than anything.
Even though she passed by many people, she didn't stop to clear her doubts about this place since she sensed immense hostility from their eyes. Right about then, she regretted escaping the palace wearing the royal princess' clothes. However, few meters ahead, she finally saw a building and decided to stop by no matter what. It was a bar.
"I sure do hope that this body isn't underage! No that it matters, but my conscience won't allow me to drink in a underaged person's body." She sighed as she opened the door.
A bell chimed as she entered and yet again, the hostility were clearly visible in the people's faces. However, she decided not to bat an eye and headed straight to the barkeeper.
"Barkeep. Give me your finest drink." She said, tossing out a gold coin at him. She did not know the exchange rates of this place, so she deemed one gold coin to be the right amount.
"If you're talking about the finest drink of our establishment, toss in one more gold coin." The barkeeper suggested.
"Oh. Here you go." She tossed another gold coin. She was surprised about the fact that a single drink cost about two gold coins, however, she didn't show it on her face.
"Here's your drink, miss." The barkeeper slid the drink through the counter to her hand.
"Thanks." Rayleen gulped the entire drink in one go. She found the taste of it to be extremely bitter. However, with all the stares at her, she couldn't just show it in her face. Therefore, she regained her composure and glanced at the barkeeper. "Barkeep, do you know someone who could tag along with me to ride south?" She asked. She picked south that's the farthest away from the Kingdom of Caldra.
"Ask that guy there. He might help you." The barkeeper pointed at a rough looking person.
"Thank you." She turned around before tossing two gold coins towards the barkeep. "Get that guy the drink I had." She ordered to which the barkeeper nodded in silence.
Few seconds later, when the barkeeper headed towards the guy with the drink, Rayleen interrupted and took it from him. Then, she proceeded to walk towards the guy and slammed it on his table. "What is this?" The man asked.
"Can't you see that it's a drink?" Rayleen didn't know the beverage's exact name, so she talked vaguely about it.
"I can see that. But why are you giving me this?" The man grumbled as Rayleen took the seat before him.
"I heard that you could help me get to the south." She said, giving out a sweet smile.
"I could. But I won't." The man answered.
Rayleen smiled yet again as she threw in a bag of gold. "There's more where this came from." She said, nudging the bag of gold.
Now, how did she get this enormous amount of money, you ask? It was conveniently placed in Rayleen's chambers. Although, there was a note saying that the previous owner of the body saved it up to buy some expensive cloth. However, she couldn't care less about some expensive piece of garbage.
Meanwhile the grumpy guy tossed the bag of coins back at Rayleen. "Arrogant lad! I'm not gonna take that money. However, I'll give you the directions of a nice enough farm where you could stay at." The guy answered.
"Now, I asked you to help me get to the south. So, why would you give the directions to some random farm?" She asked.
"Because it's in the south. And I thought you might need a place to stay in the south since you seem like an easy to swindle idiot. And my observation stands its ground." The guy chuckled quite a bit.
"Okay, thanks. But, fuck off!" She flipped her middle finger and stormed out of the bar.
#
Rayleen made good progress south, until nightfall. She was tired and also a little hungry and thirsty. However, she decided to push on through until she reached that farm. By the time she reached the farm, her horse collapsed from exhaustion and died.
Rayleen felt sorry for the horse, but couldn't care less. Although, the random memories that flashed in her mind showed the past owner having 'fun' with this horse, which was getting beaten by its hoof every single week, she particularly didn't share this sentiment. Hence, without even giving it a proper burial, she walked towards the farm, where she met a man.
"Hello, there. Is there a room for me to sleep in here?" She asked.
The man seemed a little confused and cautious of her sudden arrival and blunt way of speech. "Well, I'll let you stay in the barn, but there's no water available there." The man replied.
Rayleen scoffed. She could clearly see a perfectly fine room out there and yet the man was hesitant to give her that. She knew the reason. "You know, there's a lot more of this for you in my hand." She said the same damn line as she tossed in a bag of money.
The man smiled and pulled out a shotgun. "Oh, I see! That would be so generous of you to give me all that money." He laughed.
"𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘶𝘤𝘬'𝘴 𝘸𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘺 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯!" Rayleen screamed in her mind as he pointed the shotgun at her head. "Well, seems like I'm fucked!" She sighed, before giving off a nervous laughter. "On second thought, I guess I'll sleep in the barn! And you know what? Take the money too. It's not like I give a fuck about it." She continued her nervous laughter as she walked away and took a look inside the filthy barn.
However, the man continued to follow her inside. He nudged her with the shotgun. "Strip." He commanded.
"What?" Rayleen was truly confused. It made no sense to her. "Why?" She cried.
"Well, it's not like it's gonna be of any use to you anyway!" The man replied as he motioned her to strip.
And strip she did. "I don't understand! You have a kink of this or something?" She asked.
"You know pigs aren't really supposed to talk. They aren't supposed to wear clothes either. They're supposed to stay in their filthy barns and get slaughtered." He replied and walked away, locking the barn from the outside.
"Did he just call me a pig?" Rather than being concerned about the man's threat of slaughtering her, she was concerned about this. Rayleen did take a look of herself in the mirror and not that she had something against people who look like pig, however she did think she was far away from what people would call a pig like appearance. She was pretty confident about her looks and this random blackmailer comes in and calls her a pig. She was furious.
However, this fury settled in once she realized her situation. She was swindled of her money, stripped naked, forced into a filthy barn in the pitch dark. She found a pile of hay to sleep on. She placed her hands behind her head and drifted off to sleep, since she was actually tired to deal with all the shit she went through that day.
"And here I was supposed to be a princess. Never should've left that damn place without a proper plan!" She suddenly clenched her fist in anger. However, she wasn't ready to give up just yet. She knew she had to get away from that place. She knew she could do it.
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