Tarrin stopped for a moment to rest inside one of those vertical gullies, so wide that he was climbing up the inside of it. It opened and shallowed about a hundred spans above him, and from there he would decide which path to take after he could get a good look at the rock. He turned and looked at the sunrise absently, and felt the sudden warmth of it against his back. "I wonder if the Selani have noticed by now," Tarrin mused as he looked down. The ground wasn't nearly so far away as it had been when he looked down into the Great Canyon, but it was still such a formidable height that it gave even him just a bit of pause.

"Maybe. Want me to scout up ahead and see if there's an easy way up?" Sarraya offered.

Tarrin pulled his waterskin from the cord tied around his waist, then took a deep drink. "I'll settle for you refilling this," he told her.

"No problem. How are your claws holding up?"

"So far, so good," he replied. "My pads are starting to wear down a little, though. It's a good thing I regenerate, or my paws would be a bloody mess about now. This stone is coarse, and some of its edges are like knife blades."

"At least it gives traction," Sarraya said.

Tarrin held out the skin, and Sarraya filled it with water using her Druidic magic. He stoppered it and lowered it, then let it go so it could hang from his waist. "Thank the Goddess for that," Tarrin grunted. "If we can find a good ledge somewhere around here, I think we'll stop for some lunch."

"It's a date," Sarraya chuckled, and he reached up for the next handhold.

That ledge was an elusive prey, but he finally managed to find one about an hour before noon, well after the sun had risen above the massive cloud that hung over their heads. The heat from the sun hadn't diminished, but he had noticed a definite cooling of the air as he climbed, as if the cloud above were absorbing the heat. The rock too at first was noticably hot-black stone with that sun shining on it would doubtless be hot-but it too cooled as he climbed higher and higher, either protected by the cloud or having its heat drained off by the cooler air, one or the other. That cloud had been getting closer and closer, and when Tarrin pulled himself up onto the narrow ledge of rock, about three spans wide, he guessed that he'd reach the lower edge of it in about an hour. He looked down, and the astounding height separating him from the ground reached out and grabbed him by the throat. He was now even higher up than they'd been when they stood at the edge of the Great Canyon. The air at that altitude was cool, curiously cool, and the first damp smells of the cloud were beginning to reach his nose. That wasn't all, the air seemed… thinner. That was the only way he could describe it. It didn't have its usual sense of weight about him, and his ears had popped more than once as he climbed upwards. He found himself breathing faster than normal, even though he wasn't winded.

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.