-town in the crimson waist-The guards dragged Annika and Clara out of the tower and pushed them onto the sandy ground. Luckily they quickly got up and shook off the sand on their clothes.

"Hey, was that really necessary?" Clara yelled towards the guards and crossed her arms. "Well, at least we can something that to our failure list." she added sarcastically and pulled out the list of the royal families.

"No, wait." Annika stopped her friend while looking back at the tower.

"Why? They were very clear about not wanting to help us." Clara wondered.

"But that's it. The only one disagreeing to the plan was the king. The other ones barely said something and I think the prince hasn't decided yet. If we could convince him, maybe he'll talk to his father and we won't have to leave them alone." Annika explained her plan enthusiastically.

Clara looked at her and put the list back in her shoulder back." Alright, this might work. " she agreed.

" Great, now all we need to do is talk to the prince without him being influenced by the king. " Annika looked around the tower to find another entrence, but didn't find anything.

"Maybe there's a connection to the inside around the tower." Clara suspected and Annika followed her behind the tower.

The girls searched for the expected entrence, but couldn't find anything. Just as they started to give up and return to the market, Annika suddenly heard a giggle.

Her cat-ears appeared again and she started to go towards the walls where the giggling came from.

Clara followed her friend and watched her inspecting the wall. Suddenly Annika stopped on a point of the wall where the giggling was the loudest and kneeled down to touch the wall.

"Did you find an entrance?" Clara whispered the question and kneeled next to Annika.

"Shhh..." Annika warned the princess and tried to pull on one of the bricks of the tower. Then all of a sudden something from the other side pushed the brick towards the girls and they fell back.

Annika who still had the brick in her hands looked up and saw the reason why the brick moved. It was the daughter of the king who the two girls saw inside the tower.

The little girl didn't seem older than 6 and had long straight hair. While she crawled out of the wall with a smile on her face, Clara also sat up straight again and saw the girl.

"Haha! Your faces looked funny!" the little princess laughed and clapped in her hands, while Annika and Clara needed a moment to understand what was going on.

"Uh... Hey, you. You're the princess of this town, right?" Clara asked friendly.

"Yup! And you are princesses too!" the girl said while smiling at the two older girls.

"Oh, no no no. She is a princess. I'm just the daughter of She Ra, so not acually a princess..." Annika said, putting a hand behind her neck. The little princess looked at her confused.

"Really? But you are beautiful like a princess. Also I like your ears." she complimented Annika, who froze for a second and then put a hand on her chest. Clara chuckled about her friend's reaction and then turned back to the princess.

" Well, we didn't get your name down in the tower." Clara asked the little girl.

"My name is Idalia. Come on, I wanna show you my room." the little princess said and tried to drag Annika and Clara back to the hole in the wall.

"Would...that be okay with your family?" Annika asked innocently.

"Oh sure! I finally have some non-animal friends to bring home." Idalia agreed happily and crawled back into the wall.

The older girls followed her into a small tunnel inside the wall and closed the wall with the bricks again.

"Why is this tunnel even here? Your parents don't seem like they would build this just for you to crawl fro the tower to the town." Annika noticed.

" Oh, this is such a cool story! My brother once found this loose brick in my room and instead of fixing it he build this little tunnel. He said I could use it if I didn't tell mommy and daddy." Idalia answered excitedly.

" That could mean he doesn't want to be kept here. Maybe you were right, Annika." Clara suggested and received a nod from Annika.

After a short time the girls arrived at a wall with an x on one of the bricks. Idalia pulled it and the wall opened. Idalia crawled out of the tunnel and immediately ran off. "I need to show you one of my pets." she yelled excitedly.

"Yeah, so, what kind of animal are we talking about? A dog? A little mouse? A-" Clara guessed while she and Annika followed Idalia out of the tunnel.

Before Clara could say her next guess, a scorpion was before her head. She gasped but wasn't as scared as she was in the dessert and then her eyes lit up. The princess whispered Idalia something in her ear, who nodded at her.

Annika just got out of the tunnel when Idalia held the scorpion right towards her eyes. Annika wanted to take a step back, but hit her head on the wall over the tunnel.

"Haha! Now we're even." Clara laughed and helped her friend get up afterwards.

Meanwhile, Idalia heard a knock on the door and put the scorpion back into its habitat to open the door. When Annika and Clara saw that they were shocked.

"Idalia no!" Annika yelled across the room but it was too late. Teh little princess already opened the door.

To Annika and Clara's relieve it wasn't the king. It was the prince. When he saw the two girls, he just stood still. Then he glanced back at his sister.

" You... brought them in... Without asking mom or dad..." the prince tried to understand the situation.

" Prince... Azar, was it? We need to talk to you." Annika began calmly.

"If it's about that thing you talked about earlier in the throne room, then I have to disappoint you, but my father already said no." Azar refused even though Annika could see he wanted to talk about it.

"Come on! You don't have to stay in this town your whole life. And we know you don't want to." Clara stated confidently and caused Azar to be a little more open.

"Even if I wanted to, my parents wpuld never allow it. They think I might get hurt outside this town. You know what, not even the town. Did you know they let us go out for like one hour a week?! It would have to be some kind of miracle to get them to agree." Azar comlpained about his parents.

"Well, we have a magic sword and a princess with teleporting abilities. Do you have something like that?" Annika asked.

"Yeah, well, acually..." Clara began, but was suddenly cut off by Azar.

"That's it! Idalia, do you remember the story of the secret cave in the dessert?" Azar remembered and grabbed a book on Idalia's bed.

"Sure! It says that there is a magic lamp which will grand you three wishes." Idalia said smiling and seemed very proud of herself.

" Not exactly. Two wishes were already granded by the people who got inside the cave. If you do get to the lamp you only get one wish. One wish per person. If we find it I could wish for my parents to accept the world outside of this town!" Azar suggested excitedly.

" Why didn't you say that in the first place? We can totally do this! " Clara agreed bravely.

" Do you... Have a map or know where that cave is or do we have to search the whole dessert. " Annika asked a bit concerned.

"I think so... There should be one in the book." Azar suspected and flipped the pages until he found a map of the dessert. "Got it." Azar ripped the map out of the book.

"We have what we need, but do you wanna do this?" Clara asked Azar.

"I want to." the prince said confidently and them turned to his little sister. " Idalia, if mom and das ask you where I am, you tell them I'm in my room practising speaches."

"Okay." Idalia answered innocently and climbed onto her bed to play with some stuffed scorpion dolls.

"I guess we'll take the same way out as in?" Annika said and went back to the tunnel, followed by Clara and Azar.

-outside the tunnel-

Annika first opened the wall with the brick and crawled out of the tunnel. Behind her Clara and Azar came out of it.

"I should get one of those in my room." Clara suggested as she stood up and looked back at the tunnel which Azar just closed again.

"Come on, we better get going if we don't want anyone to find out. It seems room be a long walk to that cave." Annika reminded her friends and took a look at the map of the book again.

"Walking? Did you girls walk here?" Azar asked suprised.

"Yeah, what else would we do?" Clara questioned also in suprise.

" You could have just rented a camel. Just like we'll be doing now..." Azar said uncertainly while Clara stared at him in shock.

"We could have... rented... a camel?!" the princess cried out. Annika and Azar watched her compassionately.

After they got some camels, the three of them began their journey rhrough the dessert. They traveled a few hours until it became night and the little group quickly became very tired of the heat there.

"I thought the dessert was supposed to be cold at night?" Annika wondered while she rested her head on her camel's neck.

" Oh, it is. Well, it's complicated. You see, in some desserts the sun doesn't warm the ground at night, but here it's always warmed up. I really don't know all about it. This is all I can explain to it." Azar tried his best to give Annika an answer.

"Why don't we rest in that cave over there..."Clara suggested before she realized where they were. "Wait, a cave! Annika, is this it?"

Annika took out the map and it really was the cave on the map. Now in a hurry the three teenagers lead their camels to the entrence of the cave that was shaped like a snake head.

Annika pushed a heavy log she was carrying on her camel into the sand so they could leash the camels there.

Once that was done they all slowly walked towards the open mouth of the snake.

Even though the lamp was supposed to be in there the three hesitated to go inside.

"Hey Azar. Someone did come out of here alive right?" Clara asked, trying to sound positively.

"I mean, if they didn't we wouldn't have the story...Right?" Azar said even though he clearly had no idea. Clara looked at Annika and then they all looked at the entrence-snake mouth.

"Then let's hope we get to tell ours." Annika forced herself to step forward and entered the cave. Clara and Azar waited for a second but followed quickly after Annika.

Once they were deep inside the cave and couldn't see the entrence anymore, the mouth of the snake closed and its eyes started glowing golden.