Michael flew through the sky, rapidly covering ground. He quickly reached the peak of his arc and gravity began to pull him downwards.

“Grow.”

Michael visualized, and his clothing, a set of living vestments, responded.

Vines spread and connected between his arms and legs, growing a thin, strong film.

With a loud whoomp, his makeshift wingsuit caught the air, slowing his descent while keeping his forward momentum sleek and strong.

His flight under control, Michael glided over the suburbs below at high speed, making for the city in the distance.

The orange glow of fires and haze of dust reflected in his eyes. Everywhere he looked, people scrambled out in the streets, as though all of Chicagoland had turned into a giant, disrupted anthill. Traffic had stalled everywhere, blocked by either broken roads or crashed vehicles. Some homes laid in partial collapse. Others burned.

“How do I find my father?”

Michael clenched his teeth. Without more information, he had few options.

Nature’s predators held many ways to track prey, and all were at Michael’s disposal.

Yet his problems were twofold.

First, the environment he was headed for was a nightmare for tracking. With the full powers of nature’s senses at his disposal, finding one man among millions of people just standing in an open field could perhaps take hours, like a needle in a haystack.

But finding one man among millions of people dispersed in a concrete maze made up of tens of thousands of buildings and hundreds of miles of streets, most of it barren of vegetation and wildlife… all in the middle of chaos and devastation no less…

Michael grimaced.

The task would be profoundly difficult. Possible, but difficult. Especially with so little time.

But a hunt always had to start with something. A trail. A sign. A feeling. A taste. A sound. A sight. A smell. An intuition.

But he couldn’t remember.

After over a decade, even his strongest association with his father, the sight of him, was a vague blur in his memories. As for everything else? It was all from a time before he could access senses hundreds, if not thousands, of times more sensitive than his own. He couldn’t use those senses on his memories retroactively.

The overall issue felt insurmountable.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

But he had a more immediate issue.

If he waited a few more seconds, gravity would finally crash him into the street below.

Michael’s gaze latched onto a large tree. He adjusted his trajectory, gaining speed towards it.

“Loosen! Bend!”

His pulse of magic outpaced him in a flash, infusing the tree with newfound energy and purpose.

The tree swayed downwards until the tops of its branches brushed the ground. They wove themselves into a soft cradle.

The next part was critical, and the slightest mistake would be fatal.

But Michael only increased his speed.

He was the wingsuit guiding him through the air. He was the tree primed and ready to release.

Nature was All. Nature was One.

“Release!”

Michael tilted his wings upwards, giving him a sudden pocket of air that lifted him as he neared the tree.

The tree released all its stored energy, whipping over 30 tons of weight back upright.

The cradle of leaves just managed to catch him, working with his wingsuit to kill the rest of his downward momentum while slinging him back upwards.

Michael briefly braced himself at the sudden forces prevailing on his body, then relaxed as he once more found his flight, continuing his trajectory towards the city and hopefully towards his dad.

But how to find him…?

With a thought, a few of the vines making up his vest unraveled, revealing the cellphone he had taken earlier.

With the vines serving as his fingers, he redialed his dad and brought the phone to his ear.

The line didn’t ring. The call dropped.

He took a second glance at the phone.

There was no reception.

“Cursed technology,” he snarled.

He almost tossed the phone with a thought, but hesitated.

Now’s not the time to be rash.

He returned the phone to his vest and refocused his gaze on the city ahead.

Somewhere in that maze of metal and concrete, among millions of people, was–

One of the skyscrapers began to crumble.

Michael nearly lost his focus flying as one of Chicago’s largest buildings collapsed in on itself in what felt like slow motion. Story after story disappeared in an expanding cloud of dust and debris. And with each second that followed, hundreds of other, smaller buildings followed in a wave that headed towards Michael.

After less than fifteen seconds, the wave reached the neighborhood Michael flew over.

The land bucked, shook, and crumbled. The earth roared.

Michael’s trajectory took him straight towards a collapsing apartment building. People scrambling in the nearby parking lot lost their balance, falling to their hands and knees.

The collapsing building swallowed any who had dared to stand close to its walls, and a giant cloud rose in Michael’s path through the air, blocking any view of the city beyond.

“Grow, protect.”

With a small pulse, Michael’s clothes fed off of his energy and adjusted once more, encasing his body in thick, vegetative armor.

Just as the armor finished forming, he dove through the cloud.

While virtually blind, his speed and momentum ensured that any random pieces of debris merely bumped off and away from his armored body.

After a couple of seconds, he was free of the cloud once more.

As the deafening roar of the earth passed and grew silent once more, screams and car alarms finally made themselves heard. As far as Michael could see, small clouds of dusty debris rose towards the sky, culminating in an enormous cloud of darkness that had taken the skyscraper’s place on the scenic Chicago skyline.

Michael took a shaky breath. Yet he didn’t slow.

“Why me?”

He dove towards another large tree to repeat his launch maneuver. However, as the tree whipped him into the air, this time, it altered his course, throwing him straight towards the latest earthquake’s epicenter.

There was no way around the issue.

Without knowing where his dad was, there was only one way to increase his odds of survival.

He needed to end the danger at the source.

He would have to face the heart of the catastrophe, the one who brought an entire city to its knees within minutes.

For all of his strength, Michael trembled as he flew.

He would have to face a Steward.