Atlesian Nights
A White-Rose Fiction
By Erheig
Chapter 2:
One Sprint Ahead
Ruby Rose raced through Mantle's main thoroughfare, running and dodging between people, carts, animals. Attempting to follow were a cluster of guards who believed that she had stolen a man's coin purse. They were right, of course.
"Thief! Stop, in the name of the law!" the guards shouted out.
"You'll have to catch me, pigs!" the pickpocket responded gleefully before dashing to the side of the road and scrambling up the side of a building.
While she only ever stole out of necessity, she loved to run and to be chased, ever since she was a little girl in Vale. Over her years of thieving, she had perfected the art of running, climbing, and jumping. She bounded across rooftops and bounced off of awnings, running free through the sprawling Atlesian capital. Sometimes she even hummed a little song to herself as patrols of guards failed to give chase.
Her train of harmonic thought was suddenly derailed, however, as she rounded a corner and found herself face to breastplate with General James Ironwood, head of the royal army and Lord Commander of the royal guard, with a host of patrolmen behind him.
"Get that street-rat!" she heard called out from behind her.
"Eep!" she cried out before darting into the nearest doorway. As she ran through the building, climbing stairs and searching for exits, she began to look around and figure out where she was. She noticed the lithe, exposed bodies of the men and women around her, and quickly turned as crimson as the streaks in her hair and the cloak on her back as it dawned on her; she was in a pleasure house.
"What's your rush, girl?" inquired one of the brothel's employees. The woman in question was tall, easily over 6 feet, with long, blonde hair and a purple cape. In one hand she held a black riding crop. "Need somewhere to spend that coin?"
Ruby looked down at the small pouch in her hands, her ill-gotten gains now glimmering with opportunity.
"Uh..." she couldn't think straight.
"Find her!" a gruff voice called out.
All of a sudden, Ruby's mental faculties returned to her; she remembered what he was doing here in the first place.
"Thank you for the offer, but I'm in a hurry!" she managed before leaping out of the nearest window onto the roof of the adjacent building.
Having been so close to capture, Ruby decided to play it safe rather than romping about. She sprang from rooftop to rooftop before leaping to the street below, landing in a cart of hay so that she may break her fall and conceal her presence at the same time. The thief waited there, crouching, for what seemed like hours, her knees aching still from her landing. She listened for any signs of life outside of the hay, hoping that her pursuers had given up, or at the very least lost the scent. After idling in the straw for more time than she could bear, Ruby poked her head out of the cart. The only people nearby were peasants and commoners going about their business, occasionally glaring at the strange girl in haycart.
The day's events had taken their toll on Ruby, so she decided to go home. Or at least, what had passed as her home for the last nine years. As she walked through the streets of Mantle she gazed uphill at the magnificent castle that overlooked the city, its immaculate white walls standing tall and unyielding. Ruby had heard stories about the princess that lived within those walls. Most of them were about her beauty and grace, or her skill with a sword, but the stories that stood out to Ruby were the ones about the melancholy girl whose heart had frozen solid.
Ruby was thankful that the walk back to her den was uneventful and quiet. She rounded one final corner into an alleyway on the city's east side, home of the manufacturing district. The red-clad rogue scaled the wall of an abandoned warehouse, finding purchase in the aged bricks and crumbling mortar. After mounting the roof, Ruby opened the trap-door and dropped into the attic of the warehouse. She supposed that this had been a description of break room during the warehouse's operation or at the very least the den of a more talented thief, as it was fairly cozy and fully furnished; a couch against the eastern wall, a Mistralian rug adorning the floor, even a mahogany desk in the corner. Ruby marched over to her cot at the edge of the room and flopped onto it, falling asleep almost immediately.
That night her dreams were strange; she dreamed of a massive beast in the snow swallowing her whole, followed by a phantasmagorical mess of colors and sound, and ending with an idyllic scene, two princesses in a romantic embrace.