Alaric stepped back through the shimmering, bruised-violet vortex of the portal, the sensation washing over him like a bucket of ice water followed immediately by a blast of furnace heat. The spatial compression squeezed his atoms, then snapped them back into place with a nauseating lurch that would have emptied a lesser man's stomach. He didn't stumble. He stepped out onto the stone floor of the secret residence in the Celestial Dragon Empire with the steady, heavy tread of a conqueror returning to his forward command post.
The air here was different. It crackled with a denser, more aggressive ambient Qi, a sharp contrast to the smoother mana of the West. It tasted of iron and ancient dust.
