As is befitting for a crown jewel of the world, Vantium sits in the middle of Western Equiya. While the other four cities are made to mostly accommodate creatures of the air, water, ground, or those that burrow it; Vantium is the rgest and built to be welcoming for all of my creations.

  Wide boulevards form many concentric circles which converge towards the core of the city. From all cardinal directions, four avenues, serving as main thoroughfares, cut the boulevards, side streets, and alleys, stopping just short of the city's center. I imagine if all these roads were to form a straight line they would traverse a decent chunk of the continent. They are often lined with purple-leafed trees of maple, oak, and many pne trees, among others.

  However, the longest of trees—often several times the height of the highest oak—possessing thick, irregur, inclined trunks and spiraling bark, are mine. From a good distance, the trunks of these crystalborn trees resembled colossal twisted ropes—each of them topped with a miniature sky of often purple, bck, or red foliage.

  They are thrown across the expanse of Vantium, and beyond. Their roots often tend to burst out of the soil in tall unduting arches, like peaks of a sea snake, sticking out of the water's surface.

  Humans found little use and killed most of the pnt life I ever made. And, the vast majority of my creations are animate, therefore making those trees precious.

  Buildings in Vantium are tall, and mostly of vertical proclivity, like elegant fingers of the continent bursting upwards. A lot of them are capped with blue-gray, ste tiles, and also have an abundance of slender-looking, arched windows that let in plenty of light.

  Each of the cities has schools or other pces of learning, but Vantium possesses most of the world's universities—their gray-bck spires often form much of the skyline in the outskirts.

  Those with the will and the schorly mind are treated like royalty and given all the immense resources our civilization can muster. The goal: to expand our understanding of the world through the pursuit of knowledge.

  Dozens of colleges—essentially I see them as smaller universities, really—gracing the outskirts, are additional centers of intellectual activity and critical thinking. Theirs is the greater focus on religious matters, logic, and philosophy.

  Arts, architecture, music, and literature are omnipresent. Vantium is a melting pot of many schors. Creating, arguing, debating, learning. Inspiring each other.

  The foundation for any structure is important. For the rgest ones, long trunks of stonewood needed to be inserted full length into the ground, to make the soil more compact.

  Thousands of imposing trees were felled, processed, and transported from the far-flung East on ships and barges.

  Try as I might, accidents during construction could not be fully eradicated. Heights involved and the development of new building techniques will always carry their dangers, but compared to the way humans treated their workforces our death rates are far smaller and working conditions far superior—no one is forced to toil, there are no cracking whips or beatings. Vantium is home, and many wish to add to its splendor.

  The face of the city is ever-changing. At the bustling work sites of today, master builders use winged mounts, or, in some cases their own wings, to inspect the works. Special devices for measuring angles, as well as leveling instruments like the chorobates(and scores of other tools of iron, steel, and wood), are essential for building the edifices of tomorrow.

  Open-air lodges are found near most construction sites in the city. Used by masons to carve and shape stones, many lodges have dozens of workbenches, and some even function as learning centers for the kindred with a love for masonry. Small crowds often gather near lodges to observe skilled artisans at work. At night the workbenches become gathering spots where dice games and table games like Senet and Manaca are pyed.

  Long ago, when the first edifices of Vantium were first built; hefty blocks of granite, marble, and many other stones needed to be painstakingly pulled over rollers of ash and oak, coated in grease. My might felt wasted on lifting quill and paper alone, so I pulled thousands of blocks on my own. A drop in Alldora, compared to the combined efforts of my creations. Regardless, we brought and stacked the stones close to building locations. For years we toiled: days under the pale sun and nights under the glow of crystals, and ter the Archcrystal itself.

  Cleverly engineered architectural tools made it easier to move blocks of stone higher and higher. With the help of mighty beasts and cranes, the circur motion was transformed into a vertical one. Through a process of mechanical advantage; gears, ropes, and pulleys became a system that distributed the force from the draught crystalborn to the load.

  Strong Winged possessing a wingspan wider than that of a big whistler helped in construction by bringing the building materials and workers to hard-to-reach pces.

  Defying my moniker, I'm not really the wright of Vantium—only a minuscule cog of a wondrous apparatus.

  With little need for sleep, my progeny was prolific over the centuries. In stone and on paper, we have prospered.

  In my view, one of the most fascinating structures is a special pyramidal one that uses cogwheels, levers, and weights to power itself, telling time with impeccable accuracy.

  Forming the pointed apex of the pyramid is the face of the chronos—or perhaps I should say faces. The four triangur faces are oriented toward cardinal directions of north, south, east, and west. Each face has two long pointers, one is shorter, and both are made of pure hepatizon whose purplish patina stands out on the background of white quartzite. The dials are amarium, shaped into eborate marks and dots, and arranged in a circur fashion. Some of the dots are bigger than me, allowing for the dials to be seen at a great distance, from all four sides.

  Greedily, Vantium expands in all directions.

  Monuments in the form of statues and cubical buildings embellish squares and other prominent pces of the city. The statues are building-sized and mostly honor those who fell during the war against the humans and those who distinguished themselves in schorly pursuits. I expect Nikoos' likeness to grace a square or two, one day.

  Taller than most monuments, there is a religious statue dedicated to Acrona on top of a rocky hill, in the eastern outskirts. Made of steel frame, covered with panels of rare katadron that fit together so well not even a sheet of paper could slide through the joints. Most sculptures in Vantium are alive with colors, however, painting katadron would be simir to Maeve applying cerussa. A superfluous venture. The bck stone is pleasing to the eye; its dark-blue glowing lines are even more striking at night.

  Thrown in the far reaches of the northwestern outskirts was one unusual-looking temple, shaped like a triquetra when viewed from above. This temple had three curved wings spreading outward that ended at three equally-spaced points. The northern wing had a statue of Allmother, graced with human-sized purple crystals in the eye sockets, the southwestern wing had one of Theia, adorned with aurichalcum, and stly, in the southeastern wing stood a striking pure katadron statue of Acrona.

  Some statues of the goddess and those dedicated to her daughters in the outskirts are a bit too grand for my liking. Be that as it may, many of my progeny have inclinations toward believing in the divine, prompting me to keep my peace.

  Bath complexes can accommodate the needs of thousands, each. With colorful statues, gilded carvings, floral mosaics, blue murals, long warm pools, fountains, and painted sculptures—mostly carved or forged out of murky-purple hepatizon, white marble, khar-nogoon(whose mesmerizing diagonal lines possess every shade of green), gray-white granite, reddish-brown bronze, and such and such—the baths of Vantium rival the obscene splendor of old imperial paces. Only these paces are not to be used by just a select few.

  Floors are an expanse of granite and marble tiles, often inid with khar-nogoon to create geometrical and floral patterns. In addition, sbs of marble and granite cover the baths' walls like a fondant covers a cake. Rotundas and halls holding hot and cold pools were always full of life, always bustling with kindred.

  Most baths are in the western part of Vantium.

  Skies of Vantium are often littered with mounted and unsaddled Winged alike. Without the Winged above and the beasts coursing through the city's streets, moving through Vantium would be highly impractical for many kindred.

  Circur sunbathing ptforms are thrown here and there across the outskirts for the Winged to rest and py. The ptforms are attached to tall spires and pointed towers.

  Vantium has thousands of circur and rectangur ptforms where my creations can rest and bask in the pale sunlight, or archlight, of course.

  Periphery possesses innumerable conical structures that may seem unusual in appearance. Some of them have spiraling pathways on the outside, encircling the cone like a vine. Packed with dirt and violet grass, these paths allow many four or six-legged wingless kindred to run, walk or climb around the structure until reaching the ft top to bask in the archlight.

  Hundreds of towers and hills have ascending jumping stones winding their sides, instead of steps. These mostly accommodate my two-legged creations with sufficient strength to make rge jumps to reach their homes at the top of a hill or to reach some high chamber.

  Hives, tall rectangur constructions, are mostly found in the southern outskirts. Designed to house insectoid crystalborn, these buildings have thousands of small and big hexagonal entrances. The openings are engineered to face the sun and archlight.

  Hives are perhaps not among the grandest buildings in Vantium, often not even having any rooms or chambers inside. However, they are home to the smallest among us, and, by and rge, I was often fond of the hexagonal shapes.

  The northeastern outskirts have the main arena. Mainly used during festivals to Theia, the pce is a miniature desert otherwise, occasionally used as an oversized gymnasium of sorts, and sometimes as a staging ground for Wraith-hunting squads.

  Follies of pure marble, gilded and partly painted in blue and red, adorned many of the voluminous thousand-shaded-purple gardens sprawling the outskirts. Large and small violet and red patches of rich foliage often appeared messy and without order or any clear pn, but this was by design. Most gardens of the periphery are actually strategically pced to be in harmony with stone, paint, metal, gss, and pster.

  One of the rgest ones was a town-sized garden in the northwestern outskirts. Named fittingly: ''Everbloom,'' the variety of pnt life there counts in the hundreds of genera. The garden's blue, purple, red, and bck wildflowers swallowed most of the space there, their sweet aroma wafting throughout much of Vantium.

  Considering there is...no need for defensive walls, Vantium provides a sense of open vastness, a sense of freedom, with environs that know no border.

  Some proposed the building of massive walls around the city or even utilizing the might of the green Archcrystal to protect Vantium from behemothic attacks. But, sadly not even a crystal-powered shield bnketing the city would hold one of those grotesqueries for long. They need to be sughtered long before reaching anywhere near one of our five cities. Defending is akin to deying defeat.

  With no rge bulky ramparts, the city avoids having choke points and spreads naturally. Like a living thing.

  The movement of my creations is a glorious organized mess. The exact mechanisms involved in thousands of Winged above Vantium avoiding air collisions will forever elude me.

  Beasts of fur, scale, feather, chitin, and everything between, course above and below, blood moving through a body, obeying the rhythm of a giant ethereal heart.

  The middle of Vantium is a city within a city. This vibrant Core is an organized chaos of many pale granite hills, themselves dwarfed by superstructures of numerous footbridges, and edifices like the library, amphitheater, temple to the Goddess Creator, and other notable structures, commanding the ndscape.

  The Core has many hills of granite that are adorned with castles and paces—often pced on top or at the side of the hills. Their blue-gray roofs charmingly complement white granite walls and gilded marble sculptures, gleaming in the pale sun.

  Underground walkways, abze with crystal light, connect the grandest of buildings with each other.

  Sprawling purple gardens, sprinkled with dark red and blue flowers, often mixed alongside a stony forest of towers and spires topped with blue-gray tiling. The Core makes the outskirts seem serene and ft in comparison.

  In terms of sheer numbers, most of the amphitheaters, temples, and even a rge mausoleum are spread across the outskirts, but the majority of edifices are found in the city's center. The granite ashr masonry applied in multitudinous buildings is executed with such mastery that the resulting uniform smoothness and levelness experienced across all of them is as ft as a sheet of paper.

  The heart of the city is also strewn with small paths and roads—hidden passages leading everywhere and nowhere. I use them once a year to walk the alleys and avenues of Vantium unseen, wearing a night-blue emerized cloak. My face shrouded by the hood. It is a good way to gather impartial information, to sense the true mood of the city. I trust Maeve, of course, but I mustn't become cloistered.

  Again, for the building of most colossi, it was necessary to first embed the longest of stonebark tree trunks deep into the soil, making it compact. Foundation is often overlooked when one gazes upon a small mountain of graceful lines and polished stones but it is obviously critical if the structure is to stand for centuries.

  Creating even one grand structure is a massive endeavor, consuming sky-trees in the hundreds, at least. An army of carpenters is needed to make the critical wooden scaffolding, the wooden cranes, and hoists—given muscle by strong crystalborn whose circur movement lifts heavy stone and timber. Carpenters are also responsible for the shoring(to support the structure during its infancy), and the design of custom-made centering ribs that shape and support the vaults and arches. My schors are able to make devices for more than just war.

  Entire timbernds were felled to build Vantium.

  Over many decades, we cut down entire ancient forests of the East. Expansive heavens of purple were brought down to kiss the soil, mainly in the southern and southeastern regions of Aurum. The logistics involved in cutting and transporting the things almost made me give up on the venture.

  A rge ke and a connecting Reua river separate big sections of the Core. The river flows into the ke, exiting the opposite side. It cuts through the entire Vantium from northwest to southeast.

  Water levels can be very unpredictable and management thereof required clever pcement of smooth granite dams and several strong, vaulted bridges which partly hug the ke.

  Rough white-gray stone rises to surround much of the ke. Most of the structures in the Core have granite in their bones. Some are even carved from it entirely and polished to a high shine—they rise above the Silver Lake, the white granite shimmering upon its surface like a mirage. Here and there, the natural roughness of the stone is left untouched, making the buildings appear as if born out of the rocky hills.

  Cd in limestone and overlooking the Silver Lake is my manor. A luxurious building of towers, domes, and byrinthine corridors. Like bursting stars, filigree works of ptinum rosettes are embellishing their vaulted ceilings. The estate is fit for an imperial prince. I haven't been there in months.

  In a few pces prodigious rocky causeways, made to look nature-made, brush and slice the edges of the ke. Sometimes they form rge pool-like sections where kindred can swim or bathe.

  Sea serpents, one giant nautilus-like creature, long, wave-cutting fish-shaped beasts with smooth skin instead of scales, a rge yellow octopus, and so on, are just some of my crystalborn that found a home in this ke. There is even one lorelei—a striking kindred, having the upper body of a human female with bright green eyes, and the lower half being that of a purple-scaled fish. The eyes are mine but her swimming prowess is otherworldly. I raced her once, decades ago, across the entire ke. She beat me, effortlessly.

  Wild-world also uses the ke quite extensively. There is a blue animal, shaped like a tadpole and about an arm long. Its blue skin was that of an olm. There are thousands of them in the ke, feeding on: I don't know what.

  Silver Lake is bordering the very omphalos of the West.

  A rge, tall inselberg of pure granite rises from the center of Vantium, overlooking the ke that stretches away from its side. Jagged white mixes with slightly gray rock that ultimately gives birth to white buildings. They sprout from the colossal rocky fist like tree mushrooms across a tree trunk.

  On top of this granite fist, and well underneath the levitating Archcrystal, is a big, citadel-like structure named Bastion. It has a domed top and tall windows, often several times my height, with thick gss panels, coated to resemble stained blurry mirrors. The blurry effect is only seen from the outside, while anyone standing inside the Bastion has an unobstructed view of the surrounding area. At night Silver Lake glistens from the archlight, resembling a small emerald sea of liquid silk.

  Bastion's base is dominated by four rge dome-topped towers that are partially fused into it. Stacked with crystals, swords, spears, and the like, the towers serve as treasuries and armories.

  Bastion's domes are a wonder. They are made entirely out of stonecrete: a mixture of water, stone, lime, and pozzona. Stonecrete is used profusely throughout Vantium, even more so in the Core. Bases and capitals of columns, walls of many buildings, footbridges, temples, paces, manors, amphitheaters, arches, and vaults, all and more, owe their strength and stability to this remarkable material.

  The formidable structure is used for the Council meetings, and, occasionally as my residence.

  A long spiral is carved deep inside the inselberg, far below the Bastion. The interior of the spiral is engraved with Genesis symbols of power, precisely spaced and put in proper order, they enrage the Archcrystal, thereby turning it into a small green sun. Decades of careful research went into discovering and using the symbols correctly. Of course, the shining green jewel in the sky is nothing compared to the glory of the once-naked sun. Yet, it is an empowering beacon to the might of knowledge—and, naturally, a delight to my creations that bask in its light.

  Carved into the side of the inselberg is Baur's likeness—a statue almost as tall as the inselberg itself. He wears the flowing robes of a schor, a giant quill of pure granite in his right hand, an open book in his left, and stretching across the inner forearm. The beautifully-carved lettering on it states: ''Forward! Scream at the coldest clime and rejoice. For one day its bowels will become sshed.'' It was written on parchment, hidden below the straw of his cell's bed. I believe it was the st thing he wrote. I never grasped the meaning, however, if it was important to Baur, then it is important.

  The inselberg was fnked by two broad white bridges that encompassed almost half the ke. The bridges had very wide arches, and below each, a waterfall roared. Mascarons at the sides of the bridges portrayed the faces of my long-dead creations, a rge number of whom fought and perished for me. Many faces have exaggerated features, but done with taste and carved with great skill—chiaroscuro contrasts of light and dark give the stone a quality of living flesh.

  Much of the Core is white stone graced with just the right amount of golden veneer. Humans often disregarded gold as a useless metal since it was so abundant. Aristocracy throughout most of humanity's history generally avoided using gold, and those that were well off like the rich mercantile csses didn't use it at all due to gold being called ''poor man's shine.'' Lapidary crystals, sculpted aurichalcum, and such, were in repute.

  Some of our schors argued how Vantium is, ''Empyrean in the flesh.'' I'm not particurly fond of such notions. Humans thought of Empyrean as a pce with a neverending bounty of honey and wine. Vantium would seem like a strange pce to any of them. Grand, but strange.

  Most humans would have considered the city to be abhorrent since it was not built to accommodate their corporeal needs. Although, some religious texts described Empyrean as an expanse of divine light, a domain having no wars or diseases. And in this regard, our sublime city is rivaling that otherworldly expanse.