An hour later, we finally rolled into the town of Solmire.
It was considerably smaller than Helianth, that much was immediately evident. The two towns were incomparable in terms of scale and historical influence, yet Solmire was clearly a well-tended, proudly maintained settlement. The townspeople had never let the symbolic weight of its past be forgotten. Even after a thousand years, even in the shadow of far larger and more prosperous towns scattered across Helios, Solmire's name endured, etched permanently into the annals of history by the blood spilled upon its soil.
At the town's main gate, only two guards stood watch. They were not conducting rigorous inspections, merely observing the flow of incoming carriages and waving most through after signaling them to slow their pace. They would occasionally halt a particularly suspicious vehicle, but nothing more stringent than that.
