Royal Reputation

Chapter 6

It took until late into the afternoon to step into Pikoroian borders. Dream had never been here, the architecture of the towns and cities were quite different from Evenere's, but pretty similar in wealth by the look of it. 

But the capital was a different story.

It was huge, much bigger than Evenere's capital. The city bustling with dense crowds, and roads packed with stands of all sorts. All the buildings had the same rigged red roofing, with polished concrete walls. Even with Dream's terrible eye for architecture, he could tell these were beautifully made. The walls of all the buildings were full of interesting carvings, and there was floral wildlife scattered every which way he looked. Dream felt lost just walking through it, even though his destination was in sight no matter where he was.

The castle.

It must have been at least two times bigger than George's, and had intricately sewn banners of Pikoro hanging all over it. Its stone bricks had a purple hue to them, which made the castle look very mystical. But Dream knew behind the beautiful illusion of the capital, were some pretty twisted people. Dream needed to get to work. 

He started going around, asking anyone, store clerk, citizen, guard, seeing if he could get any new information that might help. But he didn't hear anything he didn't already know. 

It was getting late. Dream needed somewhere to stay for the night. He was about to go look for a hotel, when he saw another guard. Eh, might as well try again. Dream thought as he went up to him. 

"Hello sir, my name is Clayton, and I was wondering if I could ask you something." Dream asked. The guard looked over at him.

"Sure, go ahead." The guard answered, obviously uninterested in whatever a random citizen could want.

While Dream has been wandering around, he came up with a story to not sound suspicious asking about this. 

"I'm a newspaper writer for the 'Pikoroian Scoop', and I'm writing about the rumor going around about the attack on Evenere. I've interviewed several people, but no one can seem to confirm these rumors, but so far no one can confirm if it's true. Can you?" 

The guard responded almost immediately. "My apologies, but I can't. Although, His Majesty's monthly visitation time is tomorrow, you might be able to ask him personally." 

Dream looked over at the castle. Monthly? George did his visitation almost every week. Even though George was so much younger, he was already much better at leading than this king. It almost made him not want to meet him. But this was the best hope right now, he had to figure this out.

"Thank you sir, I'll leave you to your shift." Dream said, walking off to find a hotel. 

He turned in for the night, mentally preparing for the day ahead of him.

—

Dream set the clock in the room to go off at four. If this was only a once in a month thing, there was going to be a line. He had to get there as soon as possible. 

The room he stayed in was pretty nice, and it was a comfortable stay. It had a big window that had the castle in sight. It was actually a pretty nice room for how cheap the hotel was. But he couldn't focus on that, he had to get up. 

It was definitely weird not waking up to George, but he was here to help him so it was just as important.

Not even an hour later, he arrived at the castle. Thankfully he did arrive early enough that there wasn't that long of a line. As the time passed, more and more people arrived. He was right in thinking that a lot of people would be here.