The sun didn’t shine on the day they were to leave Washington. That’s how it would stay for the coming years too, Victor knew, barring a few exceptions here and there. There were some stories he’d heard of groups of Wielders able to part the skies, but he hadn’t seen them himself.

He’d wondered where those people were on the final day.

“Chin up, Vic, we’re going,” Amadeus slapped him on the back.

“The kids are all packed up?”

“Just about. I’ve had to wrangle a few of them down, but they listened eventually,” Amadeus replied.

Their group of survivors stood at the edge of the city with raised stone walls surrounding them. Inside of that little cut-out section lay the EVs they’d be taking with them back to Los Angeles. They were lined up in rows, a few dozen of them for everyone and their belongings.

More than a few people had decided to follow Victor out of the city, and he was glad for the extra help. Those that did were now surrounding their little encampment and warding away the monsters that approached near them.

Jared and Lillie were among those, while Yvette helped to bring the children inside. In a few moments, the walls would drop and their cars would take off from the city.

“It’s going to be a long trip through the country,” Amadeus remarked.

“We have some stone Seed Wielders with us. If push comes to shove, we’ll make our own way,” Victor told him.

“Hoping it doesn’t. You’ve got your bullets?”

“As many as I could take,” Victor smirked. He was going to make those bullets last a good long while too.

Victor bade the city one last farewell as he jumped onto one of the cars. His own had Jared and some of the smaller orphans inside while the driver was just another survivor.

“Should I go slow?” she asked him as she looked outside the window.

“No need! I’ll hold on,” Victor told her.

He needed the freedom of movement to use his abilities, in case anything unsavoury appeared on the road.

When the rest of them had loaded in, Victor gave the signal through his Wind Whisper.

The walls fell around the EVs as they sped up. They didn’t make as loud of a noise as normal cars either, which was a boon for him. The cars followed in a procession, Victor leading them from the front. Behind him, he could see Amadeus, Lillie and many of the stronger Wielders on their own cars, protecting them from dormant threats.

The group travelled along the roads single file, passing through small towns and plains southwards. Plenty of times, Victor and the others would grow sore or hungry, and they stopped besides the road to eat their rations. All around them Gates lit up the far distance, and they saw hulking Titans moving about the land, changing it with every footstep.

Then they’d take off again, driving once more to reach the other end of the country. And then they had to stop again, because Victor noticed in the distance a Vintaric.

But it wasn’t from the Stolkatan Hive or the Mariticide Hive. No, it was one of the giant monsters that had taken up an entire street back in Oakland when Victor first saw it.

It was a giant beetle-like creature that had large pincers and was currently feasting a pile of corpses piled on an overpass. It had a glittering shell and looked swollen with energy. It had fed, and festered from the feast.

“Cover the kids’ eyes!” Victor told the driver as she stopped the car. The other vehicles behind him stopped in turn, and the Wielders went to the front.

“That thing’s going to crush us if we don’t make it move. Let’s drive it away from the road and then take it out,” Victor ordered them. they split into two groups then, with Victor leading the Distraction team while Amadeus and Lillie were in the Ambushers.

****

The beast fed on flesh like nothing else around it existed. Victor was slowly creeping up alongside it. When he noticed a smaller Vintaric scrounging around, he popped a blade.

He beheaded the monster before it could raise an alarm. But again, the giant Vintaric didn’t notice.

Its abdomen was covered in the chitinous shell, with a slit down the middle that spoke to some abilities that Victor would rather not consider.

When he found no other Vintarics around, Victor whispered through the wind.

Raise hell.

He jumped back as several blasts hit the shell of the Vintaric. It let out a shrill scream and spun around on the overpass. Concrete placements cracked around it as it fixed Victor with its large beady black eyes.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Victor started running. The Vintaric chased him across the road and knocked over cars in its wake.

That’s right, just keep following you idiot. And it did, right into the second ambush they’d prepared for the monster.

Victor jumped over the overpass and landed on a car. Below. The Vintaric wasn’t as dextrous, and when it reached the same spot, the overpass fell under it. It collapsed, raining rubble from the road and columns on the monster.

Victor jumped away to rejoin the rest of his team. They kept their powers handy to rain on the monster. But before the dust had a chance to clear and they could get a clean shot, something lunged upwards.

Their eyes darted to the skies, where they saw the Vintaric darting around quicker than possible.

What the hell? It wasn’t that quick!

Fire first, Victor Whispered to the Wielders who had access to lightning. Theirs was the quickest attack, and landed on the monster with ease. But as the electricity spread across its skin, it seemed to not react.

The beast then took even further to the air, leaving Victor to think that it was leaving. But then it stopped, and came back down like a meteor.

Run! Victor Whispered to the others.

The Vintaric landed with a deafening crash. Cars flew in the air while others raised their alarms. A crater formed in the middle of the road with the Vintaric at its centre. It looked unblemished, and its wings parted to take flight once more.

Victor had landed on the dirt beside the road. When he saw the Vintaric rising, he stood up. He pulled out his guns and shouted for anyone who was left alive.

“Don’t let it take to the skies!” he fires his twin pistols on its carapace, only for the bullets to ping off. The only effect it seemed to have on the monster was that it brought Victor to its attention.

It rose up again into the skies, smaller this time, and came flying down again. Victor ran to avoid, but the shockwave knocked him over. He looked up behind him and saw a car about to land on his face.

Before it could reach him, a pane of light appeared ahead of him and stopped its assault.

Lillie was on him in an instant, and Amadeus behind her.

They both launched normal and red lightning at the creature. The red did some work, sapping the creature of its strength, but not enough to prevent it from taking flight. Lillie moulded a pane of light to cover the hole the Vintaric was climbing out of while Wielders shaped the earth to grab the creature.

Its legs were entangled in the rocks and it pushed against the pane of light above it to escape. Lillie’s hands wavered, struggling to keep the monster contained.

“You can do it, Lil! Just keep it down!” Victor urged her. It was all he could do while the monster was trapped.

Another scream escaped the beast and it cracked through the barrier. Lillie grunted in pain and the Vintaric escaped to the skies.

Victor held up Lillie while the monster continued its assault on the other Wielders. Several more craters appeared around the roads and Victor had to take shelter behind a group of cars.

“It’s a walking cannonball! How are we supposed to beat it?” Amadeus growled, wiping the sweat from his brow.

Victor considered too. The monster always rose to the skies again and Victor took another look at it. He noticed then that the monster never seemed to look away. It would fly backwards facing them the entire time. It was a bit of wisdom that Victor remembered from some history lessons.

You shouldn’t show your back to the enemy. And a bug’s weakest point is…

Aim for its back. The abdomen’s the weak point. Hit it there! Victor Whispered through the winds to anyone he could remember. There were a lot of them, so the command took a lot out of him to execute but it worked out.

The other Wielders started spreading across the area, surrounding the monster from all sides. Victor popped out of hiding with his friends and they ran in different directions. When the Vintaric next landed, he ran towards it.

Victor popped blades through his forearms and dug them into the dirt. He braced against the shockwave and started running again. The Vintaric was rising from its crater and turned to face him. Victor jumped onto its face.

He grabbed one of the pincers and pulled himself up. Then he slammed down his fist and pulled all the power he could from his Timewalker’s Origin.

Slowdown.

The monster’s wing beats slowed immediately. Its shell opened to reveal a soft interior. The Wielders took aim at it and fired a hundred blasts into it in a moment.

A deep guttural scream came from the Vintaric, even that slowed by Victor’s powers. It shook its head and Victor jumped off.

He pulled out his guns and took aim at the monster’s eyes. Firing both of his guns, he blinded the beast and it fell back into the crater.

Victor’s slowdown ended there, but he didn’t cease. The monster’s limbs went crazy, moving and shaking while it tried to climb out. Whenever it did, more blasts hit it and knocked it back down into the centre.

Victor emptied an entire magazine into the monster before it finally stopped moving. He lowered his guns and took a deep breath.

But others didn’t. their hands were ready to start firing if the monster took so much as another step.

When a Seed popped out of the Vintaric’s back, Victor knew it was finally gone. He regrouped with the others, and they assessed their damages.

****

“A few injured, and Tom lost his legs, but otherwise we’re fine,” one of the other survivors told Victor.

“Get Tom first priority from a healer, see if it can’t be fixed,” Victor told him.

The cars had set up camp around the body of the dead Vintaric. They’d buried it under the road after excavating the Seed from its body. Now they were recuperating from the fight, and waiting to take off further down the road.

Wonder how many more of those we’re going to encounter…

“Sir!” a man ran up to him, gruff and middle-aged.

“Sir?” Victor replied. I guess I am older than him.

“There’s a dust storm coming in from down the road!” the man told him, pointing back where they were supposed to drive.

Victor ran past him and jumped up onto the unbroken overpass. He took a look at the coming storm, a large wall of dust that seemed unform all around.

The man had been right, but Victor thought he saw something else inside of it. The storm approached quicker, blanketing the road and preventing any eyes from looking inside. He heard it before he saw it, the roar of a diesel engine that was barely overshadowed by the storm around it.

And then, something burst out of the middle of the storm, surrounded by cars on all sides. It was a black Ford Interceptor, helming the entire group that travelled down and beside the road.

What in the…

There were people in cloaks standing on top of the cars around the centre one. They moved their arms, and the sand travelled along with them as they made their way down.

When they jerked their hands down, the storm stopped immediately. And Victor bore witness to the largest procession of vehicles he’d seen after the Fall.