Perspective

**Written by:**  Maplesquid

Sunlight is almost at dawn, with the light still caressing the Dukedom's streets in a beautiful glow. A handful of Shigu Peacekeepers are walking down the street and stop in front of a terraced daycare center. Few of them trail off and part ways from the group after exchanging pleasantries. A fairly spry but showing of age Southerner remains behind and seats himself on a nearby bench, watching the Eltus children at play.

He opens up his side pouch and pulls out a cigarrette and lighter, flicking the contraption a few times before finally bringing the flame up and lighting his smoke. In the meantime the kids nearby noticed the Peacekeeper sitting down for a rest as he was unfastening his helmet, placing it to his side. They all looked to each other and nodded before making a beeline for him.

"Hey mister Ringo~!" A sergal youngling adressed him, whilst the other Agudners giggled and chortled.

"My name is Kayr, little ones, you know that by now." He replied with a smile.

"We knoww... But you come from the Gold Ring place!! Tell us more stories!" the same sergal interrupted, almost anxious.

"Yes Yes~! Tell us more stories mr Kayr, we'd love to know why you moved here from the city of Gold Ring." A more polite Agudner boy asked, clutching his hands together whilst sitting down alongside the rest.

"Well.. I guess it is true that sometimes, youngsters like yourselves ask me about my tenure in Gold Ring. What was so horrid about that Utopian City that everyone clamours about that made me leave for the Dukedom.."

The grizzled southerner takes a drag out of his cigarrette and stamps it out, being careful not to blow the smoke towards his audience of young, impressionable eltus folks listening in to the 40 something year old.

"The southern most part of the Sailzane Desert.. You know the part below the Lower Magoe.. It's an irradiated wasteland. Home to none." He seemed to trail off in thought and interrupted by an Agudner, politely at that via raising a hand shortly afterwards:

"But what's the desert itself like? Is it anything like the Tatla?"

"No.. Not anything like it. The Sailzane is white hot, sand dunes as vast as the eye can see and covering the horizon.." The elder quickly gazed back and the younglings and offered them a pictoresque description. "And within it.. Lies a City.. Unlike any other. Outside the walls of this city, is this desert, a cursed earth if you will. Filled with Sand Worms, similar to the Talyxian Leeches within the forests here, but fairly more voracious as they've got little to no food to prey on outside of wandering travellers or other Dondokos."

The small gathering of children gasped and quietly whispered between themselves before turing their attention back with awe at the elder, eager to hear him continue his tale.

"Now.. The City of Gold Ring.. Paradise as many call it. Built around a lake known as ColVilous.. It stretches around it.. constantly expanding. At this point in time, it almost looks like an unbroken.. sandstone concrete jungle. Much like the Talyxian Forests themselves, only towering in arrogance. Scant few million or so, living within the ruins of the old domains outside of the city walls, ghettoes remnant of the old Sabi No Wa days.. And the Megastructures of the new age, towering sky scrapers that many have adopted as their new abodes."

The children, now dead silent, obviously enraptured and maybe even slightly frightened by the prospects of living out there, their minds obviously trying to paint a picture and imagine themselves there as the elder continued:

"The problem however.. Is that the structure of the city itself is convulsing.. Choking. Some would say due to how fast the city is expanding and engulfing more and more land it is breaking under it's own weight. And eventually it lead to the GRVC being unable to cover everything...

No one takes the time to talk about the citizens living in fear of the streets, cases of rape and theft running rampant on the outskirts of the city because folks don't get enough food or water rations due to the heat or nobility taking a bit too much of a fair share..

Gangs get formed, awful practices like Vore shows thrive within the undergrounds, we stamp out a few, more pop up the next week.. The only ones fighting for order within this chaos are the people themselves and the GRVC members that willingly sign up for it, but it's not enough.

That's why most folks, like me, leave for the North."

The Southerner gets up and ruffles the hair of the Agudner boy that asked questions earlier.

"Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to be on patrol for a bit and don't forget curfew starts in 3 hours."