This was something for which he wasn't prepared, and it was a bit eerie. So eerie that he had to ask Sarraya. "Sarraya, is it me, or does the air seem different to you?"
"Air thins as you get higher off the ground," she said, which affirmed his suspicions. "It's natural."
"Good. I was starting to wonder if I was imagining things. It's quite a view, isn't it?"
"I may be a flier, but this is a little bit too high for my taste," Sarraya admitted. "I get dizzy looking down. I do my flying a little closer to the ground, thank you."
Tarrin actually laughed. "A flying Faerie, afraid of heights," he said. "What an amazing thing."
"It's more than that," Sarraya said defensively. "My wings have to work harder up here, and it'll tire me out if I have to fly too far. That gives me all the reasoning I need not to like being up this high."
"Sure," Tarrin said with a slight smile. "Look, you can see the Great Canyon from here," he said, pointing south, towards a black slice across the sand-colored terrain.
"That's not the Great Canyon, Tarrin," Sarraya said. "That's that gulley we saw two days ago."
"You're sure?"
"Trust me. We're too far away to see the Great Canyon, at least from here. Maybe if we were higher, but not from here."
"Whatever. So, what's for lunch?"
"Since you're doing something strenuous, you're going to have bread soaked in honey," she told him. "You need to keep up your energy, and honey is perfect for that."
After a meal that was entirely too sweet for him, they started again. It was past noon now, and he had no idea how far he had to go, so he was starting to get a little worried. If he couldn't get to the top before sunset, he'd have to climb back down below the cloud and wait until sunrise. The idea of spending a night clinging to the side of the spire was something that he absolutely did not want to experience, so he started off again with a sense of urgency, and a swifter pace. He spent less time looking for the easiest path and started moving almost purely vertically, scrabbling over areas of smooth stone by clawtips and brute strength to save precious time.
He reached the edge of the cloud about half an hour after eating lunch, and it was like climbing up into thick fog. He could barely see past his own paws, and the stone suddenly became wet and slick. That combination was enough to make Tarrin's heart race, and make every step up the spire something to worry over and take carefully. He was surrounded by misty white, a mist that was surprisingly cool, nearly cold, and it isolated him and reflected back the sounds of his own climbing. The barest whisper of claw on stone was a ragged scrape to his ears, and a whisper seemed to boom across the foggy, surreal, vertical landscape. Even the sound of his own breathing, which was more rapid now in the thinning air, seemed to reverberate back from the fog, and he wondered if they could hear it on the ground for one irrational moment.
The fog did more than make his sounds louder. It caused him to forget just where he was and how high he was off the ground, causing him to lose his sense of fear of the dizzying height from which he was off the ground. He could barely see past his own feet, and it reinforced the illusion that he was not far from the ground. The wet stone was slick, but the sense that he had somehow climbed into another world didn't make his heart jump if his claws slid on the stone.
He had no idea how long he had climbed, or how far. The cloud-or the fog, as he thought of it-blurred his sense of time and of distance, making him feel like he was climbing the same wall over and over. He simply kept moving, aware that when the filtered light in the cloud began to dim, he was going to be in trouble.
He kept moving until his paw hit something solid above his head.
That startled him. He looked up a bit more carefully, and then pulled himself up enough to get whatever it was into view through the foggy cloud.
It was a shelf of rock that extended out horizontally from the rock spire, and it was absolutely smooth.
What was it? He couldn't see very far to either side, but it was apparent that it was not a natural feature, just by looking at it. It was too smooth, to level. The sense of the object, and of the Conduit that ran through the middle of the Cloud Spire, had dulled his sense of magic, but now that he was close, he could sense that this shelf of rock had been magically shaped.
Was he at the top? Was this the lowest edge of the dwellings the Aeradalla had made? No, it couldn't be. They wouldn't be crazy enough to put dwellings inside the cloud. They wouldn't be able to see to fly. This had to be something else. Some kind of brace or support, or something he couldn't imagine.
On the other hand, it could very well be an Aeradalla dwelling. For all he knew, the cloud's upper edge was only spans above him-going by pure altitude-and all he had to do was either go around this obstacle, or find some way to climb out onto it and get high enough to get above the cloud.
Going out onto it seemed insane. It was smooth, wet, and it was horizontal. He had no way to climb out onto it, because there was nothing for his claws to snag. He had to go around it.
A thought reached him. If he was caught above the cloud by the Aeradalla, his spire-climbing career may be cut brutally short. He had no idea how they may react to an invader climbing up into their domain. He realized that he might have to wait just inside the cloud until darkness, and then continue up by the light of the Skybands and the moons. But that was an issue to take up once he found the top of the cloud.
He almost chuckled inwardly. He did it again. The Cat did it to him again, made him form a half-baked plan that he'd have to abandon early, and continue on by the seat of his pants. The cat was a creature of impulse, and planning things out was an alien concept to it. It lived in the moment, and thinking ahead required going against that instinctual concept of life. One of these days, he was going to sit down and think one of these wild ideas all the way through.
Then again, if he did that, he may not be willing to do things like this.
"What is that doing here?" Sarraya finally asked.
"I have no idea, but we have to go around it," he told her.
"It looks like it was made," she said, peering through the thick fog.
"Magic," he told her shortly. "Now keep quiet, if you don't mind. I don't need to be distracted right now."
But moving along the base of that horizontal barrier proved fruitless. It seemed to extend as far as he went on both sides, and he realized that it had to be something placed there to do exactly what it was doing to him, keep him from going any higher. He had the sneaking suspicion that it went all the way around the rock spire.
Since he couldn't go around it, he had to go over it.
"Sarraya, I need you," he said after realizing that.
"What do you need?"
"I think this is a barrier put here to keep people from getting up there," he told her. "I can't climb over it myself. Do you know any spells that will help me get over it?"
"Um… yes, I know something," she said after a moment of thought. "A spell that will make your paws and feet stick to the stone, like a spider. It's not an easy spell, so I can't maintain it for more than a few minutes."
"Sarraya, I have no idea how far we have to go," he said in protest. "I'm not going to hang my tail out there unless I know we can get back to safety."
"Well, it was a thought," she said glumly. "It's the only thing I know to help you climb out there."
Tarrin looked at the rock. And he got an idea. "Sarraya, can you look into the rock and see if there are any caves in there? Something that goes up to the top?"
"Clever," she said in appreciation. She got off his head and hovered in the air over his head, her little wings beating frantically at the thin air to keep her stable, as he felt her probe the rock with her Druidic abilities. "Clever boy," she laughed. "There's a small lava tube about a hundred spans into the rock, and it goes pretty far up. I think it may go up to the very top. But it's too small for you."