It was becoming something else.

What was once the small capital of an unimportant country had been transformed due to the war. Weapons needed to be made, things needed to be learned, soldiers needed to be trained.

The streets were paved now. Materiel needed to be shipped to the workshops, where it would be fashioned into swords, and armor, and mecha. The steam hissed out of the factories night and day, and there was never a sound so sweet to the city’s growth than the pounding of steel.

The towers hummed with the chants of the magi, where mysteries revealed their hidden secrets to the wizards of the nation, to be codified and refined into the ars magica. The sages of the nation had begun to be renowned in the world, and it pleased the city to be thought of as learned.

The barracks groaned with the burgeoning ranks of young men, hungry for glory and honor. Their families would be made noble, their enemies brought low, the state made larger. The city swelled at its heart.

It was becoming something else.