37. Chaotic Bloom

Flowcasting belonged among the most desired and feared groups of classes. A good flowcaster could scatter or cripple dozens with a single well-placed attack, especially if they were given the time to shape the flow properly. The same need was also their obvious weakness. Flow had to be gathered, bent, and held until it became useful. Even Alistair, who knew little about the practice beyond tavern talk and simple observation, understood that much. Flowcasters rarely worked alone. They needed protectors, space, and time. Attacking before their cast completed would stop them.

Seeing one here was unexpected. Flowcasters were rare, especially on an island like Emerier. Most would stick to larger islands where there were more shards, better access to flow-touched supplies, and powerful people able to afford their services. Even their tools were not simple. The robed man’s staff was powered by cores, not shards. He stood well above the sort of threat Alistair had expected to find in the flower hunt.

The first sphere of fireflow exploded on landing and sent dirt, brush, and men who had failed to move quickly flying in different directions. Still, the results fell short of the legends around flowcasters. The open ground gave people room to scatter, and most of the intended targets were too far from the impact point to be caught directly. The effect still froze the whole field for a moment. Then another command cut through the pause. The attackers closing on the camp adjusted quickly, increasing their pace and clearly trying to reach the flowcaster before he could shape another casting.

This time, the robed man formed something different. Instead of another sphere, the concentrated fireflow stretched into a narrower spear-like shape and shot forward much faster than before. Apparently, others had also identified the man issuing orders among the advancing fighters. The lance hit a few steps off the real target, but it landed close enough to do damage. Its effect was different from the sphere. Rather than spreading outward in the same violent bloom, it struck tighter, injuring several men and throwing the supposed commander backward so hard that he hit the slope and kept rolling before stopping.

Then the attackers reached the camp line, and open fighting began.

Closer to the flower, the five camp fighters were still engaged in a precarious struggle against the earlier group of stragglers. A few had already fled, or at least fallen back so far that they stopped being relevant. Half of the remaining intruders were wounded, while only one of the five camp men seemed to have taken serious damage. Left alone, the outcome there was already becoming obvious. The five would eventually win. Alistair decided to interfere then.

Since Shade was too important to risk on the strike, he used Pebbler. The clone had already shifted closer to a position from which the center of the clearing was barely within reach. He raised the flow-engraved crossbow, settled into the hold, and reached for Skimming. The skill answered immediately. Unlike Framer’s lines or Carver’s cutting sense, it pressed in the hands, guiding angle, release, and flight through instinct rather than conscious precision. Rationally, Alistair knew the shot was poor. The range was long, the targets were moving, and he had nothing like a true marksman class. But the skill still pushed his handling toward the sort of awkward line it preferred.

The first shot missed, though only by a little. He adjusted immediately, abandoning the first target, which was now moving too erratically, and shifting to one of the five camp fighters who had overcommitted near the bloom. The second shot landed in the man’s leg. He cried out and bent toward the wound in a reflexive, foolish motion. His opponent was on him immediately, and the camp’s previous edge vanished with him. The shot did not reverse the fight, but it restored some balance.

Alistair turned his attention back to the camp. The flowcaster had retreated slightly after the first exchange, and the fighting there was taking an even messier turn. The defenders still had the strength to hold, but only because the robed man kept casting to level the field. Once Pebbler had repositioned to a safer angle, the flowcaster started drawing fireflow again, only to have the cast interrupted by an arrow. One of his protectors dropped a second later. The others closed the gap without hesitation and pushed him deeper into the camp. He shaped another lance anyway, then a sphere after that. With each casting, the advantage shifted. The camp was still outnumbered, but the difference no longer looked insurmountable.

Pebbler interfered twice more, always choosing moments that would deepen confusion instead of handing one side a clean victory. Then the island alliance arrived, and with them came the widespread collapse Alistair had been trying to provoke. They identified the greatest threat immediately and approached from a wider angle, trying to keep outside the flowcaster’s easiest line of fire. Their arrival forced both foreign groups to re-evaluate. Instead of continuing to press each other directly, they began turning toward the locals. The alliance responded by splitting into smaller formations so a single casting would not catch too many men together, but that only froze the battle into a tense stalemate.

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Alistair had dragged them there for more than staring at one another. So he moved Pebbler again and started picking at targets from both foreign sides, always favoring men who were slightly exposed or poorly positioned. It only took two shots to push things further. After that, the foreign groups reacted as though some silent agreement had passed between them. They turned their pressure more fully toward the alliance, treating the locals as the immediate obstacle while postponing their own conflict. At first the alliance held. They had the numbers and the levels to avoid collapsing right away. Then the flowcaster started raining fireflow onto their clustered positions, and holding turned into surviving.

Alistair kept shooting, not often and never from a rhythm that could be noticed. A hit to a shoulder here, a glancing shot to a thigh there, always enough to make one side suspect the other of treachery or hidden support. In a fight already full of greed, fear, and suspicion, small pushes could do the rest. Small misunderstandings became strikes. Men turned to shout warnings and exposed themselves. Others struck too early because they thought they had been betrayed. Before long, one of the alliance’s formations crumbled under combined pressure, and the field tilted faster toward chaos.

The yellow star above pulsed more strongly. Even from a distance, Alistair could feel the tightening in the air through several bodies. Then the Acclamation reached its local climax. The star sent down its stronger burst of starflow, and the clearing changed in a single breath. The brush around the center shivered visibly. The air flashed with a faint golden distortion. And there, where Seeker’s pull had always been strong, the Vitalicious Flowbloom opened.

It was smaller than he had expected. A pale flower growing low among thick leaves, its bloom unfolding in luminous layers that caught the Acclamation wave and held it like liquid light. For one breath the whole field seemed to focus on it. Then everyone moved.

Amid the chaos, Alistair started picking targets of his own.

He avoided the strongest fighters and made no attempt to decide the battle for either side. Instead, he focused on men who drifted too far from their allies, the ones left slightly exposed by the confusion. This kept his own presence hidden. In a field like this, an isolated fighter dropping to an unexpected bolt could still be blamed on the general disorder. Repeated shots against the most important people, however, would draw attention too quickly.

So Pebbler kept moving, changing position after every shot and firing only when the target’s place on the field justified the risk.

At some point, the foreign force that had started the attack at the camp was finally pushed into retreat. The survivors dragged themselves away, hauling whoever they could still save with them. The earlier stragglers had stopped being relevant long before that. Only the alliance and the camp remained as real forces around the flower.

They clashed again near it. Metal struck metal and bit into flesh. The ground near the center was already torn up, uneven, and dangerous, and the confusion made every movement dangerous. In that exchange, the flowcaster became the decisive difference.