A stalwart princess must sort out her rebellious sister.

The glittering capital Antioch was charged with weeks of anticipation.

Even upon the walls of mighty Castle Antioch were festooned lanterns and candles. Perched atop a hill overlooking the ocean to one side, and an artificial sea of stone to the other, she was lit like a beacon, a shining symbol of defiance against the coming harsh winter.

Harvests were fruitful in the outlying counties, and villagers traveled for weeks to share, filling the streets with joyous subjects and the bounty of a whole nation united in song and dance. Antioch was awake at all hours, and night could find no purchase against the peal of bells and the laughter of children.

Rarely one for pageantry, the crown princess of Antioch, Lucianna Caiatia V, spent the daytime before the start of formal festivities reviewing the Royal Guard. They were toy soldiers eager to please, but at least it was something she could do.

The fiery, freckled redhead in a puffy, ruffled billowing white armored dress wasn’t even allowed to help with arranging the festival. She would normally be in it up to her exceptionally wide, childbearing hips.

Mother and Father were planning every detail.

Leaving their two daughters to their own devices, which in turn meant that Lucianna had to check up on her excuse for a sister, young Mariasole. Unsurprisingly, this meant investigating the castle’s exceptionally well-stocked tavern and bar, which served ministers and common soldiers alike stock even from the cavernous royal wine cellar. It was a rowdy, raucous place soaked in the smells of a thousand common things, the most common substance on Inryo being of course exceptionally powerful, thick, dark-brewed drinks.

There was a raucous cheer in the midst of the bar, but on Lucianna’s approach, noise ceased. Activity was frozen. Eyes that saw her burning, bright red hair and matching ruby-red eyes were wide.

Their behavior was like naughty children caught with one hand in the cookie jar. A total contrast to Lucianna’s target. The blonde, pear-shaped girl at the center of it. The only person who kept singing some obscene sea shanty they’d all embarked upon, swaying helplessly, which only emphasized the sheer obscenity of her gigantic, stool-crushing ass.

In that yellow-black royal robe drawn taught with a golden sash, she looked wide enough not to fit through the castle’s already-widened-by-physical-necessity cobblestone halls. Certainly, when walking, others had to get out of the way or be knocked aside. Her hips wiggled with abandon, and many tended to stare, for such enormity could not help but take up the eyes.

Though at the approach of angry stormclouds in the form of Mariasole’s older sister, many took the herculean step of willpower necessary to avert their eyes.

Finally catching on that trouble had arrived, Mariasole turned, having to crane her neck upwards to meet eye-to-eye, though her gaze was fogged over with the telltale glass stare of a woman intoxicated. Her cheeks had gone past rosy into emulating Lucianna’s complexion, though presumably not from the potent cocktail of humiliation and anger.

Just the very natural effects of far more potent actual cocktails from the bar.

“Ah, dearest sister. Here to loosen up before the big day?”

Lucianne’s lips became a thin line of frustration, and she stamped an armored boot onto the floor of tavern, striking sparks in the warm torchlight. “You of all people should know, dear sister, that the festival starts tonight. Not tomorrow. In other words, a few hours from now.”

Brazenly, the pear-shaped girl, whose ass even somehow far overwhelmed a figure that otherwise dwarfed her own, reached for an open bottle of rum, and downed it straight without bothering with such formality as ‘a glass’.

“So why are you drunk as a lord?!”

Mariasole looked with a drunkard’s honest incomprehension. “Because I am one…? Er, a type of noble, anyhow. Same as you, Luci. Except I was never Mother’s favorite...”

I can’t imagine why.

“This is conduct highly unbecoming a member of the royal family,” Lucianne said, trying to keep her cool even as she felt an inferno brewing inside of her. Little did she know, soon enough, Marisasole would feel that internal storm, though it had more to do with the blend of rum she was downing like the eponymous drunken sailor. That was trouble enough, considering that the moment the festival began, certain particular public facilities were immediately closed off, to prevent anyone from sullying the holy night.

Really, more like holy week. Two weeks, in fact. Certain rationing of access could be permitted to avoid full-out riots in the streets, but girls were going to quickly change their tune before the end of the Festival of Life some two business weeks hence.

“What are they going to do about it?” Mariasole scoffed, honey-gold eyes glinting with a swing of annoyance. “Leave me out to dry? The ship has sailed on that one, dearest Luci. Hey, ship sailed. Not bad, huh? Arrr, matey!”

There was a moment’s laughter through the tavern, until Lucianne silenced it with a soul-piercing glare. Even actual drunken sailors in the back there knew that things were serious, and in theory every man jack of them could be implicated in allowing the royal family to be so deeply humiliated in public.

Many of those thick sailor girls had just come in from port on their own long journeys, so they well understood the truths of the sea; rum, sodomy, and the lash.

Among them, the only punishment fitting for a princess was the rum that Marisole was already swigging down.

“I suppose those villagers from the outlying towns are right,” Lucianne sighed. “They have a saying out there in the sticks, sister. ‘You reap what you sow’. Do you suppose there’s enough time, or competent enough mages about town in the middle of such revelry, that you could be smartened up by sundown?”

“Probably not? But what’s the big deal, I’m not needed for any dumb ceremony-”

“Except for the part where we'll be forbidden to use the bathroom!”

Yelling out that kind of thing was not becoming for a princess either, but Lucianne was being dragged down to the level of a drunk, bratty child. However, this particular remark wasn’t some threat, but just a simple observation. A reminder of the roles of their holy order. Something that even Mariasole had known in the back of her mind, but which one came flooding back.

Flooding as hard as the sloshing fluid now starting to press her bladder.