I Slay

"It wasn't al'ays like dis. Their used't be these things called flowers and they were all different colors and their petals was's soft as anything you'd ever touch'd. And they as beautiful as the eyes of a young pretty lady."

The scruffy young boy looked up at the old dark colored man who sat atop a barrel.
"That sounds mighty nice Jonesy! Have you ever seen them before? Like in your life time?"

The mans chapped lips curled into a crooked smile,
"Why o'course I has. And you will too if you sail across the sea to the 'glory lands' . Its the complete opposite of this here place. It colorf'l an ther's green everywhere. Forests and animals and the air is so fresh it feels like your breath'n in clouds. "

The boys blue eyes lit with even more excitement as he listened to the man go on.
"Won't you take me there some day Jonesy? Won't you?"
The old man smiled although his eyes screamed sadness, "some day..."

It was raining the day they buried the old dark skin man he called Jonesy. The boy fell on his knees in the muddy ground.

Loneliness fell upon him as he stared at his body being lowered into the ground in a wooden box. They dumped the mucky dirt over it.
He was gone out of his life forever and all he had left for his future was this dream he had left behind for him.
'The Glory Lands'

Quarin looked dazed as he stared out the window at the now rainy city.
Different lights of advertisements flickered and blinked along the walls. Quarin stared at all of them with confused eyes.
'What is this place?'

This place has an ere feeling about it. Not like the slums. If you saw someone dying on the side of the road you would help them up, get them cleaned and feed them a bowl of soup or whatever you had to make their last hours less tragic. But here it feels as if you saw someone dying you would walk right past them and continue on with your day.

It made him sick.

They landed on top of a regular business building, no where near the large tower where the goddess recited.

"You guys can't get into the tower unless you have code, we haven't injected into a Sōzō for over ten years so the code has changed immensely since then. That's probably why it's not working on your blue haired friend here. We'll extract it from him, and give all three of you an
older dose of code. "
The captain said as they walked down inside the building.
Quarin looked frustrated and uneasy, " how old?"
"You're old enough to remember aren't you? It's not the failed dose from ten years ago. This one is from five years ago. That was the last time we saw a Sōzō. "
Quarin glared and they were lead to a room that looked like a hospital room with two bunk beds and a bathroom. They laid Serein on one of the beds and informed her she would have her new wheel chair soon.
They laid Vince in the other one.

Soon they were alone and Quarin was staring out the window his mind heavy with thoughts.