Wings of Fire Ch. 22 - Teaser (Patreon)

“You asked for a path,” she said. “Did you find one?”

“I found the one I was already afraid I had found,” Nadine answered, looking toward the fading fire.

“That is often how it happens,” the elder answered, nodding.

Another elder leaned forward. “And if this takes ten years?”

“Then it takes ten years,” Nadine told him.

“Twenty?”

Nadine hesitated only slightly before answering. “If that is what the work requires.”

“And if Chimera disappears tomorrow?” the man asked.

“Then I find out whether it truly disappeared,” she stated, and that earned the smallest hint of approval.

The elders had already discussed what they had seen during the rite, though none claimed revelation in any theatrical sense. Nadine had not entered seeking permission for something she secretly intended to do, regardless. She had submitted herself to examination, accepted silence without trying to force meaning from it, and answered questions without polishing herself into something nobler than she actually was.

The eldest woman finally looked around the circle and found no objections.

“The spirits do not appear to stand against your path,” she said carefully. “Your ancestors gave you teachings enough to understand what service costs, and you have not treated those teachings lightly. We see no reason to deny what you have asked.”

Nadine felt something inside her loosen, but it wasn’t excitement or relief.

“Now hear what comes with it,” the elder continued. “A Wayfinder is not simply a Pathfinder allowed to wander farther. You are not being released from obligation, but accepting more of it.”

“I understand,” Nadine replied, smiling faintly.

“Not all of it, not yet, but you will,” the male elder told her.

“Your charge is not to chase every rumor until you die exhausted,” the lead elder said, her expression softening. “It is to find the path by which this threat can be understood, exposed, weakened, and eventually ended. Chimera entered our city, our homes, and our institutions. It stood beside people who trusted it without knowing what it was. That cannot be permitted to happen again simply because we become tired of looking.”

“The Vengeance is already following that path,” Nadine acknowledged, nodding slowly.

“So it seems.”

That was the practical consequence everyone understood.

Remaining aboard Michelle Greyheart’s ship was no longer simply Nadine choosing adventure over returning home. The Vengeance possessed contacts, mobility, pilots, intelligence connections, enemies, and a disturbing talent for stumbling into exactly the kind of problems Nadine was now charged with pursuing. If Chimera scattered across borders, the Vengeance could follow where local authority could not.

The decision would also change things at home.

Nadine had already written to her family before the rite. No formal answer had returned yet, although informal word traveled much faster than letters. Her mother had heard, and from what Nadine understood, she was not pleased with how this turned out. That surprised absolutely nobody, least of all Nadine.

Within Nadine’s family, her mother had always been the gravitational center around which plans formed. Nadine had reached the stage of life where everyone assumed Pathfinder service would eventually end; she would come home, and the next sensible chapter would begin. There would be family obligations, community responsibilities, and inevitably conversations about settling down that Nadine had successfully avoided for years.

Apparently her mother’s response to the news of the Wayfinder petition had been a long silence followed by several questions concerning whether Nadine had lost her senses. Then she had begun asking whether the rite had been properly arranged. That was how Nadine knew she had already begun accepting it.

Her mother would not suddenly become delighted. She would not pretend that the years of assumptions between them had vanished. There would undoubtedly be arguments when Nadine eventually returned home. But there had been very few Wayfinders, far too few for what their people needed, and that mattered.

If the spirits did not reject the path and the elders gave their blessing, her mother could disagree with her daughter’s choice without dismissing the duty attached to it.

Perhaps that was enough, for now.

The eldest woman rose, and Nadine rose with her. The formal words that followed were brief compared with everything that had led to them. Her Pathfinder service was acknowledged rather than erased; everything she had learned remained part of what she would now carry forward. The elders placed their blessing upon the new path she had chosen and recognized her, before the gathered council and community witnesses, as a Wayfinder.

Nadine stood quietly while the weight of that settled over her.

Nothing in the world visibly changed as the trees remained trees, and the sky remained clear. Chicago remained somewhere beyond the horizon, full of people trying to rebuild their lives. But Nadine Forestwalker knew that when she returned to the Vengeance, she would not be returning as someone postponing the life everyone expected her to begin.

She had chosen her own path, and however long the trail of Chimera proved to be, she intended to follow it to the end.