Vyral

Chapter 3: Part 2 - Is it really that important to you?

--------------------------------------------------
Expedition 163
Members partaking:

Warden - Stephanie Myrellie (Female)
Kohen Alcatraz (Male)
Orton Cromwell (Male)
Nali Heisenberg (Male)
Lilith Ketler Reid (Female)
Myra Stryder (Female)

Current Status:
Exploring.
---------------------------------------------------
Their long journey begins.

It's always enjoyable to exchange moments with each other in trips like this. Talking, joking around, discussing topics from light to heavy, even bickering more than usual. It takes them back to simpler times, when they were just kids.
Although... The times weren't simple at all. Full of sorrow and grief brutally implanted in their young minds by the unforgiving world they inhabit. The only commonality they share is their fruitful attempts at burrying the past underneath dense layers of humor.
It's the most they can do, since those events are still so fresh. Still so difficult to accept.
Even after all this time, the past doesn't let up.

The view of the environment is phenomenal. Even though these are only remnants of the Old World, they have been overrun by the new sickening, yet beautiful laws of nature. It has transformed the once melancholic, gray cities of the Old World into thriving forests full of colorful life, despite the conditions of its upbringing.

Nali and Kohen go around the neglected debris like children in a playground, free-running along the decaying metal beams, jumping from a chunk of concrete to another, grabbing onto ledges, pulling each other up to places they can't reach. They've turned this into their turf.
Like responsible women, Myrellie and Myra constantly keep an eye on them, to make sure they don't fall to their deaths.

Lily doesn't want anything to do with them, if they die, it's their own fault. She finds a much bigger appeal in simply conversing with Orton for a while, sharing a story regarding her parents, and how they used to take her on walks just like this one. She reveals that it was one of her favorite hobbies until they got caught up with work, and stopped paying as much attention to her.

Orton sympathizes, holding her close upon embracing her with his arm.
He understands her, makes her feel accepted, something she believes she can't receive from the person she spends the most time with, Kohen.

....

Around 3 hours into the walk, they decide to take one of many breaks throughout the trip. They happened to stop before crossing a bridge that stands high above a massive crater, that splits the mountains as far as the eye can see. Apparently, this place once had a striving city within it, with buildings as tall as Thibillith's walls, but because of the massive tectonic plates' movements, it has been destroyed beyond recognition, all because a select few caused 'The of the Catastrophe of the Old World' all those years ago.

So many places destroyed...
So many lives lost...
All because of greed.

Unfortunately, ever since the incident, the city never saw brighter days, and it has perished into neglect and sorrow, much like the lands that surround it.

It is now called "Karaboon. The city split in half", where the inside of the buildings, as well as the looming dark pit underneath it, that consumed all the life this place had to offer, is visible all the way from the bridge.

Lily: "Can you believe people used to live in those cramped up spaces? All on top of each other like that... They couldn't even be loud." She crosses one leg over the other and leans onto Kohen, who is sitting back to back with her, eating a bar of chocolate.