It rolled over itself and got to its feet, chirping animatedly. He got a good look at it and caught its scent, and it confused him slightly. It was a Drake! A rather large one, a good span longer than Chopstick or Turnkey, with iridescent green scales, reptillian wings, and a long tail. It sat on its haunches and looked at him curiously, as if it had never seen anything like him before, then its serpentine tongue flicked out of its mouth and it chirped again.
It was playing!
Tarrin lowered his back and sat down himself regarding the curious reptile. Chopstick and Turnkey had started out on his bad side, but he'd warmed up to them. They would even sleep together, in a nice warm little bundle on his bed. This one was a stranger drake, but drakes were animals, so they had broad generalities in their personalities. Drakes were generally intelligent creatures, curious and inquisitive, but they were very playful and affectionate. Phandebrass had done a good job raising his two drakes, and from the looks of this one, it was also well cared for.
It looked right at where Sarraya hovered invisibly, and he heard the Faerie snort. "Don't even think about it!" she said challengingly. "You alright, Tarrin?"
"Fine. It was just playing. It's someone's pet."
"What's it doing out in this cold?" Sarraya asked. "It won't stay active very long."
"Then it must have just gotten loose," Tarrin replied.
As if an affirmation of that, a voice suddenly called out. It was a child's voice, and it spoke a language Tarrin didn't understand. Tarrin darted to the shadow of a wall as a gate opened some distance down one of the streets, and a youthful Aeradalla exited from a manor's grounds. It was a male, looked to be only ten or so, and what immediately caught his attention was that the child's wings were bound together with leather rope, right at the main joint. Why do something like that? It must have been some kind of cultural custom. The child called out again, and the drake alighted from its seat in the intersection and flew to the child. The child caught it in his arms and laughed, then nuzzled at the reptile and carried it back into the walled manor.
"Cute kid. He must be spunky," Sarraya mused.
"Why do you say that?"
"They had his wings tied. We do it to certain children who don't have the sense to stay on the ground when it's needful," she replied. "Since he can't reach the bindings, he can't take them off without help."
"I was wondering why they did that," he told her, then they turned and moved on.
"Flight can make you too giddy to keep your senses," Sarraya added.
"Doesn't seem to wear off for some."
That earned him a smack on the ear.
The rest of the journey to the wall passed without incident, and he hesitated a moment when he reached the base of it, waiting while Sarraya looked at the ledge above to ensure nobody would see him climb over it. When she returned with news that the way was open, he shifted into humanoid form and quickly started up the wall. It had been cut by tools, and enough of those toolmarks remained to give his claws purchase on the stone. He ascended the wall quickly, slipping over the top and quickly returning to cat form, then dashing off into the shadows. It was there that he paused to catch his breath. The air was so thin, the activity had worn him out, and he struggled to regain his breath.
"Getting tired?" Sarraya asked.
"It's the air," he panted.
"I know. I've been having to land every few minutes to catch my breath myself. Let's just take a few to recover, alright?"
"No argument here," he agreed.
They lounged against the wall until Tarrin felt ready to move again, and they were off. The open space on this tier was more than the space occupied by buildings, huge manors separated by large gardens with many fountains. The tier was more green than paved, filled with grass, flowers, small trees, and many other types of plants. The paved streets wound through those idyllic gardens in a roundabout fashion, giving the place the illusion that it was on the ground rather than two longspans above a desert. Since his view was obstructed, he relied on Sarraya to guide him to the next wall, which was one of the small ones.
"There are only four more tiers," Sarraya told him as he vaulted up to the top of the tier wall. "One more above this, up another big one, up one more, then we're at the top level."
"I figured as much," he replied. "Then I get to climb up that tower in the center."
"Well, let's get cracking," she said.
Moving through those tiers was quick and easy, because the ones below the top level were just like the one he'd just left. More huge houses, like mansions, surrounded by walls, separated by large patches of tended gardens that made the upper levels of the city look like some vast park. There were no Aeradalla out on those levels, allowing him to rush through them quickly and without hindrance, letting him get up the next three tiers quickly. He climbed up the last tier just as the moons signalled midnight, and looked out on a large plateau, probably a longspan across, that held only four buildings and the rock tower leading to the strange obelisk at its pinnacle.
The buildings were arranged around the rock tower by points of the compass. The building north of the tower of rock was a large palace, from the looks of it, with an ornate fence enclosing a massive grounds and an even more massive mansion. The building west of the spire, the one he'd come up facing, was a huge monolithic structure with carved pillars, made of marble. The building to the south was a multi-storied tower with many ledges and balconies, also made of marble. He could only make out a single sliver of the building to the east, since the large columned structure and the rock tower blocked his view, but it didn't look to be very large. The land separating those four buildings was nothing but grass. No flowers, no trees, no bushes, only grass. The rock tower rose from the center of that pristine lawn like a black column, soaring overhead. The object was at the top of that spire of rock, inside that strange black-stoned obelisk that rested at the top of the five hundred span tall pillar of basalt. He was also very close to the Conduit that ran through the center of the city, and it looked to go right through the top of the obelisk and run down the center of the pillar, which rested at the exact center of the Rock Spire below.
He had no idea if anyone was watching, so he immediately shifted into cat form and bounded across that grass. It smelled lovely, and had very few other scents interfering with it as normal grass usually did. Normal grass usually had scents of worms and insects and mice and other animals, but this grass was almost sterile in its lack of other scents mixing with the smell of grass. There were smells of earthworms, but that was about it. The altitude and thin air had probably prevented any insects from migrating up to the city. The worms had probably been brought along in the soil that had been imported up.
It took him a little while to get to the pillar, and when he was standing at its base, he was impressed. He shifted into humanoid form and looked up its sheer face, seeing that it was absolutely smooth. It was like glass, and almost as shiny as glass. Putting a paw on it told him that there was nothing, not even a pore, for his claws to snag as holds to get him up the pillar.
That was unexpected, and it messed up his plan. He couldn't climb the pillar, not on his own. It was too slick, too smooth. He wasn't a spider, he couldn't walk right up the side of it. And the stone was basalt, tough and dense, and it would resist any attempt to drive his claws into the stone. More than likely, it would break his claws rather than give him a hold.
He looked up at the pillar, his mind pondering the problem, when Sarraya interrupted him. "What's the matter?"
"I can't climb it," he admitted in a growling tone. "The stone is almost like glass."