That seemed all well and good, but it made him curious as to how they got all those goods up here in the first place. If they were too heavy to carry up the tiers, how did they get them up into the city? It was a puzzle, a curiosity, and he would probably skulk around for an answer while travelling to his destination. There were too many things about this city that didn't add up, and his curiosity as to how things worked was starting to override his duty to simply take a look at the object and leave. He'd probably never get another chance to find out, and those things would nag at him for the rest of his life if he didn't find the answers.

He concluded that the platform had not been magically created. The lava tube had brought him out here, and by doing a little surveying, he realized that he was outside of the perimiter of the Rock Spire. The tube had sloped up and out, all the way across the spire. He had entered on the eastern side, and he could tell that he was now on the western side of the city. It had spiralled a little at first, then settled into a long, straight angle that obviously went west. That meant that the platform had to be part of the original stone, and the rest of it had been either worn away by weather or removed. The magic had made it in a sense that it only protected so much stone, and then the rest of it was removed.

That staggered his imagination. This had to have been a mountain at some time, but magic had somehow removed the rest of the mountain, leaving only this behind.

They had always joked that magic could move mountains. Now he was sure that it was no jestful exaggeration.

He couldn't see too much of the buildings above, since the tiers were rather deep, and other buildings got in the way, but he could see all the way to the center of the city. It was on a raised tower of natural rock that was elevated over the highest tier by several hundred spans, and atop it stood a curious black obelisk of sorts, a very large one. His inner senses told him that that was the exact center of the city, and the exact center of the Rock Spire. It was also where the Conduit ran through the spire, and his sense of that object told him that it was located within that curious obelisk.

Of course. They couldn't have made it easy and put it somewhere where he could get to it. No, they had to go and stick it on a pinnacle in the very center of a city designed for creatures with the ability to fly. What would take an Aeradalla about five minutes of flight would take him nearly half the night in gruelling ascent of tier after tier, then a murderous climb up that towering rock tower to the obelisk at its peak.

"What do you see?" Sarraya asked. She knew that in the night and in humanoid form, Tarrin's sight far outstripped hers. He enjoyed the best of both worlds in that regard, gaining both the cat's night vision and the human's clarity of vision.

He quickly explained the layout of the city to her, then turned and looked back to the farmland below. "This isn't going to be easy, Sarraya," he grunted. "I'm going to have to do alot of climbing."

"I noticed. Strange that nobody seems to be out," she said. "I could fly by this light."

"You can hover and go slow, too," Tarrin told her. "It'd probably be alot more dangerous for them."

There were Aeradalla out. He knew that. His sensitive ears had picked them up all around them, but he could tell that they were walking instead of flying. That explained the streets. They didn't fly at night, so they had made streets so they could move around on the tiers during the night. That also meant that the general layout of the city wasn't absolute, as well. There had to be shops, inns, festhalls and taverns on every tier, since moving from tier to tier would require flying. But they were probably small affairs, open only during the night for those land-bound Aeradalla that wanted to go out, while the ones on the tiers below were probably much larger and better stocked.

Tarrin turned and looked up. By his count, he had to go up about ten or so tiers to reach the tier surrounding that rock tower. Some tiers were only twenty spans or so high, but others were around forty or fifty spans high. Those had to be major boundaries, with a significance to the Aeradalla who lived here. He stood on the edge of one such major tier, so perhaps he stood at the border of, say, another district of the city. There were three major tiers above him, but he couldn't tell how many were below him, because of the sloping of the city and the buildings that were in his way.

Ariana. She had to be up here somewhere, the tall woman with blue hair, chiselled, muscular features, and a generous nature. He had warm memories of her, of their brief conversation with her, how he had uncharacteristically opened up to her, when she was a complete stranger. If he could somehow find Ariana, it would make all of this much, much easier. She owed him a debt, and she could repay it by flying him up to that obelisk and let him take a look, then fly him back down to the ground.

He remembered her scent. He never forgot a scent. He could wander around and try to find it…

Or he could arrange it so she came to him.

It wouldn't be that hard. He had no doubt that Ariana remembered him, remembered him very clearly. If rumor began to drift across the city that he'd been seen, he might be able to lure her out to where she could find him. She knew he was a Were-cat, so if she saw him as a cat, it was a good bet that she'd make the connection. It would cost him a couple of days, though. That was the drawback. He'd have to get himself noticed and then hide until those rumors reached Ariana. It would only take him a night to get to the obelisk… but if he did it that way, all his questions about the city would probably go unanswered. He was starting to waver between doing what he came to do and exploring a little bit.

Regardless, the idea of climbing back down didn't sit well with him, not when a much faster and easier way down was at hand. His impulsive climb up hadn't taken into consideration the long, gruelling ordeal of getting down. Ariana could fly him down in a matter of moments, where it would take him an entire day of exhaustive work to get down on his own. He knew he was on something of a schedule, but delaying a day or two wouldn't be that great a layover.

"Sarraya, what would you say if I said we were going to delay a little?"

"What's on your mind?"

Tarrin glossed over his sketchy plan. He didn't want to get halfway through this one before blundering into it. For once, he was going to think through a plan before rushing headlong into it. "It'll cost us some time, but Ariana could fly us down easily. I really don't want to climb down, and I don't think you do either."

"It's got possibilities, but how are we going to find her without giving ourselves away?"

"Easy," he said. "This is a closed city, and in a place like this, I'll bet that rumors fly. If I let myself be seen here and there, by just enough people, the rumors of it are going to spread all over the city like wildfire. Ariana probably remembers me, and she knows I'm a Were-cat. She'll hear the description, know it's either me or a relative, and her curiosity should bring her right to me. All I have to do is stay in one area without getting caught until she wanders over."

"We can't do that here," Sarraya said. "These houses are too large and too far apart. We need an area congested with buildings and with lots of places to hide."

Tarrin nodded. "One of those areas down there would suit us perfectly," Tarrin said, pointing to the areas of small houses on the tiers below.

"It sounds workable, but from the sound of it, you want to do it now," she said. "Why?"

"Why not?"

"Simple, silly," she laughed. "We still want to see what's up there, don't we? What if we find this Ariana, and she won't let us go there? Maybe it's a holy place, and it's against her religion to allow us in there."