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Chapter 5 - Death By Vine

Cities in the sky are incredibly difficult to access, especially when you want to hijack a mission and get up there without anyone noticing. I was standing outside, hidden of course, with my jacket on and hood up, trying to seem inconspicuous.

I watched from afar as some kind of winding staircase ascended from a long way up in the sky. I should have been freaked out, but, then again, I had seen a kid turn invisible and back in front of my eyes and another guy make his fists almost as big as a semi. So I thought this was pretty normal.

Merlin stayed on the ground as Ruby and Tristan walked up the stairs. I waited until Merlin had left and they were a substantial amount of distance from the ground before running over and climbing the stairs myself.

When I stepped on a stair, where my foot collided with the weird material rippled in a rainbow. The stairs seemed to be made from some kind of water vapor condensed into a solid cloud form. I didn't have time to gape at it because I was losing them.

I carefully stepped up the stairs and I soon wished that I had brought water. I may have been a super, but after a minute or two I was slowing down exceptionally and breathing heavily. Stairs were my ultimate weakness.

"They honestly could have some kind of elevator, but no. Stairs. Why does it have to be stairs?" I muttered to myself, breathlessly. Well, I thought, at least it wasn't a latter. I had to agree with myself on that one.

I didn't know how far up I was, nor did I want to look, or how much time had passed, but I soon saw the bottom of a cloud that we seemed to be ascending toward. Tristan and Ruby were merely specks some distance ahead of me, and I sped up a little to catch up with them.

Suddenly, my left foot fell through the stair and I almost fell to my death if I hadn't had a strong grip on the railing. I quickly looked back to see the agency building below me, very tiny might I add, and the stairs I had previously climbed dissolving. My heart picked up its pace and my hands were beginning to sweat. I could feel the current stair below me start to dissolve, so I ran up as many stairs as I could. The only problem was that I went up one at a time; I had always lacked the skill to run up stairs two at a time.

The staircase began to dissolve faster the higher I went, and I looked up and saw that Tristan and Ruby were gone.

"Shit, shit, shit, shit, I'm gonna die," I muttered as I sped up the stairs. Soon enough, I saw a small opening in the bottom of the large cloud. That was also starting to close.

"Why don't they have sensors? This is incredibly dangerous," I groaned to myself. I went faster up the stairs, feet moving fast, breath getting rapid, and heart pounding way too fast from adrenaline and exercise.

Just as the opening nearly closed and I almost lost my footing, I shot through and fell onto solid, but soft, ground. My face was smashed into a fluffy substance, and I found out it was cloud. I groaned as I lifted myself off the ground and dusted myself off.

When I looked back up, my eyes were met with a complete utopia of white marble buildings and people flying around. They all had wings, and I guessed that these were the Penna. Fountains dotted squares and shot out misty vapor. Families of adults with large wings and children with smaller wings were scurrying around without a care. I stood, dumbfounded and wingless, in the middle of everything while some Penna who passed by gave me weird looks.

I would've stood there for a good couple of hours if it wasn't for the creature that crashed through the fountain in front of me. It roared and I froze in my place.

"Uh oh," I whispered, realizing that this was probably the mutant that Merlin was talking about.

The monster locked onto me with glowing yellow eyes and snarled. As I decided to play statue, I got a good look at the thing.