"I think I'd like that very much," Yena replied.
"We'll have to get something pencilled in as soon as possible," Sirea added, "as well as some more detailed conversations about what kind of relationship our two nations could have, and how we might best help each other out."
Outisde the freeway descended into they city of Ciria proper and the flat roofed, rainforest-gardened houses of the poorer citizens began to be replaced with the architecture of wealth from the modern day (the banking distance rose, glittering, to the west) through the 19th century neo-Varsan grandeur of
Cata pulea, the new town (the domed roof othe
Mena Parlid towered above the embassies of
Vallano Parlid to the South East), to the ancient Varsan and Varsan-Gothic stones of the old town,
Cata vanyea, which lay crouched in the valley beneath Syarkho Qenarid's original fortress,
Draqin Syarkhod. As the road headed in that direction it became possible to see where the old town opened up around the massive square of
Vallano Menad and the curious structure of the
Mena Tacirid, the Temple of Creation, at its heart.
The
Mena managed to look both imposingly solid and impossibly fragile at the same time. Built of the same white stone that gave Ciria its ancient name (
Cata cirea, white city), it was made of impossibly light gothic arches, scissor arches and vaults, stacked together to form an organic step pyramid which rose, like the boughs of a twisted mangrove tree, to three spiralling points entwined around each other in a short, fractured spire. Though the architecural style was similar to the rest of
Cata vanyea's most ostentatious buildings, and the shape mirrored that of the pyramid temples across Erinor, there was no other building quite like it in the world.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" Yena asked as it came into sight briefly from the main road before the way wound down into
Cata vanyea proper and the view was blocked with ancient, white stone buildings stretching along the winding street.