The journey back to the Jorailian capital was fast. Alaric was impatient. He had no time for the traditional, slow, meandering pace of a royal procession. He had new toys to put in his toybox, and a war to prepare for. His war-carriages, their wheels glowing with faint runes of Haste and Celerity, set a pace that left the Strathmore guards sweating and panting to keep up. They cut the travel time in half.
They arrived at the capital, a massive, black-toothed fortress-city carved into the heart of a mountain range. King Reginald and his entire court gaped at it like country bumpkins seeing their first city. The scale of it was obscene. Strathmore's walls were stones and mortar; these walls were polished black obsidian, fused with magic, soaring hundreds of feet into the air. Gleaming arcane towers, crackling with barely-contained energy, punched the sky. The power rolling off the city was palpable, a heavy, thrumming weight in the air.
