Differential Treatment

It took Solam and the others nearly two months to reach Beauclair, the capital of Toussaint.

Beauclair was originally designed and partly built by a group of elven mages loyal to Queen Isabella. Not just Beauclair—every ancient city across the Shining Plains had been ordered by the Queen to be designed and built by elves. This included the most famous city on the Shining Plains today, Miranda, the Holy City where the headquarters of the Church of the Triad was located!

The moment Solam saw the city for the first time, he fell in love with it.

The city was not particularly large. It could not compare to Athkatla, and it was even smaller than Silverymoon, which was much younger. (Silverymoon had been rebuilt from ruins, so by the time of its reconstruction, it was indeed much younger than Beauclair.)

Yet Solam's first impression of this small city was one of refinement!

The entire city rested against Mount Chirilama. It was called a mountain, but it was really just a hill four or five hundred meters high, hardly majestic. From the summit to the foot of the mountain, it was enveloped by the castle-palace of the Grand Duke, while the city itself had been built around the Grand Duke's castle.

Every building followed the same style: red roofs and white granite walls. The city's roads had been carved deep into the ground from massive stone slabs, laid piece by piece. Thus, even after thousands of years, they remained free from collapse or damage.

The city's layout was not the neat, regular pattern commonly seen on the continent. Instead, it followed the contours of the mountain and the flow of the Beauclair River beyond the city. It might have sounded somewhat "chaotic," but once one saw it in person, one would