Lyam woke up to the sun shining in his face and the sound of birds chirping outside. For a moment he was convinced nothing was wrong with this world. But then his eyes wandered back to his unconscious sister. Lyam felt awake.

He looked at the flower in the black orb. The dust bloom was only half withered. That meant his sister would survive most of the day. But he was still uncertain about what would happen in the night. So he rose to his feet and went down the hallway.

Aveline was in the small kitchen in the back. She was by the counter, chopping some berries, her back was turned to him. A window in front of her poured the sunlight all around her, encasing her in an almost ethereal halo.

“So are you going to help me save my sister or not?” he asked.

Aveline didn't turn around, didn't raise her head. For a moment, the only sound in the cottage was that of a knife gently coming down on the cutting board.

Lyam clenched his fist. “What I did yesterday was to win your trust,” he said. “I could've just used that flower myself if I wanted. No one was there to stop me. But I didn't.”

Aveline didn't stop what she was doing.

“Say something! I can't let my sister die.”

The woman finally stopped cutting the berries. She raised her head.

“Have you considered what becoming an unauthorized wielder entails?” she said.

“I'll be outlawed. I'm ready to be on the run.”

“And what about those you care for?” She looked at him over her shoulder. “If the enforcers don't find you, they'll try to find those who share your last name.”

Lyam immediately thought of Mamie Alda. His heart told him the old woman had survived and she was still out there, probably waiting for him to return. For that instance, Lyam's resolve almost faltered. But he regained his composure. “I won't let the law know who I am if they were to come looking for me,” he said.

“So you are ready to abandon everything to save your sister? Even your own people?”

“Yes.” There was no hesitation in his voice. “And if I succeed, I'll just go back to my people again.”

“Will it be that easy?”

“It's a worry for another day. Right now, all I care about is Emma.”

“Think again, Lyam Laurent, if you become a wielder today, you'll be giving up who you used to be.”

“I used to be a coward and an idiot. I don't have any qualms against giving up that part of me.”

“Very well.” She nodded before serving all the sliced berries into a bowl and carried it over to the small dining table. “Now sit down for breakfast.”

###

Breakfast was a coarse rye bread with a bowl of barley porridge seasoned with the herbs that Aveline had grown in her backyard (which was the rest of the forest behind the cottage) with a handful of wild berries on the side. And they washed it down with a tea made from the same herbs.

The sun was starting to shine brighter outside. “So, um you have an extra dust bloom?” Lyam asked rather shyly while Aveline was clearing the table.

Instead of answering him, she handed him the plates. “You should wash these.”

Lyam raised an eyebrow.

“Don't just stare at them. Take them to the tub in the backyard and clean them. If you are going to live here, you'll need to help out with the chores.”

“Haven't you figured out some kind of magic to take care of these things?” Lyam asked.

“Magic doesn’t give you an excuse to slack off,” Aveline said. “Now do the dishes.”

It took another ten minutes for Lyam to clean all the dishes. Then they headed out into the forest.

“If you don't mind, can I ask you a question?” Lyam said as Aveline led him deeper into the woods.

The woman nodded as she cleared a web of hanging vines out of their way. He caught a glimpse of the tattoos on her arm again.

“You're a shapecrafter, aren't you?” he asked.

“Does it bother you that I am?” She kept looking ahead.

“No it's just…the people that burned my village were also crafters.”

“I know.” She nodded. “I saw the smoke from my cottage. A fire destroyed an entire village in an evening. It certainly wasn't an accident and wielders can't use elemental magic. It's not a big mystery.” She shrugged.

“I thought shapecrafters weren't as organized anymore. You know…since the Great Cleansing.”

“Some crafters still managed to survive in the Cleansing,” Aveline said, “Those that survived managed to train other novices. They may not be as organized but they certainly still function in cliques of their own.”

Lyam didn't know about that. He knew that the Cleansing was a big war between the wielders and crafters that eroded the latter's numbers, organization and guilds. The same war after which shapecraft was declared a crime and everyone who practiced it was a criminal. That was also when the laws for commoners using magic were tightened further. “So, were you trained by someone or are you the one who trains?”

Aveline grinned at him over her shoulder. “Seems like you're not as perceptive as I thought. I'm a miserable novice.”

Lyam paused in disbelief. “That's not true,” he said.

“You don't know what being good at shapecraft means.” She shook her head. “When you are good enough, staying hidden from the world isn’t your biggest worry. You aren’t afraid of going up against a wielder. Those are all the things that keep a novice up at night. Truly strong shapecrafters aren’t even afraid of anything. They can hear a gust of wind approach from a mile away, make a vortex in an ocean with just a snap of a finger or summon a firestorm out of thin air. That or do something flashy with whatever elemental affinity a crafter is blessed with.” she shrugged.

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

“What's your affinity?”

“Spirit,” she said wryly. “It's an element that a soul leaves behind after evacuating a body. The training manuals say that it can be quite strong. But at my current skill level, I can do barely more than this.” She made a fist and summoned a small, black orb. She shrugged again and it disappeared. “As I said, a miserable novice. I would've learnt more than the basics if only the great Cleansing hadn't destroyed all the shapecrafting schools.”

“And you don't mind…helping me become a wielder?” Lyam said hesitantly. “Despite wielders being the reason you weren't allowed to learn?”

“Eh, wielding, crafting–it's all magic. And all magic is knowledge. I won't be any better than the crown if I stopped someone from walking the path of knowledge now, would I?” She winked at him.

Lyam smiled at her. After a moment of walking silently, he said, “Truth be told, I don't think you are a miserable novice.”

She didn't look at him. “That's sweet of you to say.”

“No I mean,” he looked up at the canopy of trees that loomed overhead, “I remember what it was like when that wolf dug his teeth into my neck. I could feel myself fading away. I'm certain that's what death feels like. And still I woke up without a single wound on my body the next day. You revived me from such a dire state.” He looked back at her. “Saying that you are a miserable novice despite saving me from certain death is a terrible insult.”

Aveline remained quiet for a long time before saying, “All I did was cast the simplest healing magic every shapecrafter learns quite early. It was nothing special.”

Lyam was about to argue with her but Aveline spoke up again. “We are close to our destination.”

They were facing a clearing. The other end of it had a dirt path that seemed to lead to a small dot in the horizon. A cave.

The air inside the cave was damp and heavy. There wasn't much to be seen except for a faint blue glow that came from a distant corner. Lyam remembered the chamber from the Shadow Castle.

The place where he'd left Emma alone before he went to face the wolf by himself. He remembered the thing that twinkled just as gently in that corner of the room.

“There it is,” Aveline said. “The dust bloom. Go and get it.”

They were still at the mouth of the cave. The sun was still warm against their backs. Lyam felt the back of his throat run dry at Aveline's instructions. “You won't come with me?”

She shook her head. “I don't want to enter its circle of scent.”

“Circle of scent?”

“It's the amount of area its dust can reach, creating a hypnotic vibration.”

“I thought it's only the flower that is plucked that emits a vibration.”

Aveline shook her head again. “The amount of emission is quadrupled when the flower is about to die. But it keeps emitting dust at all times so it can find a host.”

“What if no one comes to merge with it?”

“It withers. Just like any flower that never gets the rain or the sun.”

“So it keeps giving off that scent because it wants to live?”

Aveline nodded.

Lyam looked back at the gently glowing thing in the cavern. “Is there anything I should do to make sure the merging is successful?”

“Which God do you believe in?”

Lyam thought for a moment before saying, “Mamie Alda used to make us pray to Fahn, the God of Harvest before meals.”

“It might help to say that prayer again.”

“That's it?”

“That's all I can think of.” She shrugged. “If there is anyone who knows how to make a merge successful, it's the nobility where most full dust wielders come from. Unfortunately I don't happen to be a noble and my knowledge for the dust bloom is all that I've learned from observation.”

Lyam swallowed hard and nodded one last time. “So pray to God and hope for the best?”

“Probably the best option available to us.”

Lyam took a deep breath and headed into the cave.

###

In his mind, he thanked the God of Harvest for the green fields and clear skies and ripe fruit. For the soil that grew it all and the rain that watered it.

He felt a soft buzzing in his ears as he drew closer to the glowing thing in the dark. The sound of it was pleasant. Warm. The air in the cave didn't feel so oppressive or heavy anymore. He kept praying.

He thanked the God of Harvest for saving him and his sister from starvation. For letting his mamie be healthy despite her age.

The musty odor of the cave disappeared as a scent as sweet as that of honeysuckle invaded his breath. He was just a few feet away from the flower now. He tried to pray again, to keep his mind clear.

The words struggled to make sense in his head. His eyes were transfixed on the glowing oblong shape in the dark. Then the flower opened its petals. It was like a bonfire lighting up.

Then the next thing he knew, he was on his knees and by the flower. His head was empty except for that pleasant buzzing that was almost overwhelming.

The buzzing grew louder as Lyam leaned closer to the dust bloom. In that oddly pleasant noise he could hear something else.

“Lyam, I'm right here.”

It sounded like Emma. And it sounded so close. As if Emma really was right here.

“Look what I found, brother.” Emma was giggling. “Isn't the flower pretty?”

Lyam nodded. “Yes…it is…”

He could see her now, crouching in front of him with that smile of hers. The smile she gave him and mamie whenever she had a secret to share or a discovery to show off.

“I want you to have the flower, brother,” Emma said.

He nodded again and reached out to take it.

###

Aveline stood frowning at the mouth of the cave. She could see Lyam now crouching by the flower. He was just a shape in the darkness now.

She wasn't sure if this was going to succeed. But she was hoping it did. Death of one child was bad enough. She didn't want to witness the death of two at once.

And despite that grim uncertainty looming over the boy and herself, she couldn't help but consider the alternate possibility. She remembered his stunt from the other day. Using a dust bloom as a distraction. She wasn't sure if the boy was aware that nobles valued magic more than human life but his solution to the problem had been quite ingenuous. Not to mention what he had done after using the flower like that.

She had never heard of any other mortal, let alone a child who was able to resist the temptation of an unanchored dust bloom. The boy wasn't just quick with his ideas but also had a resolve that was almost terrifying.

“Maybe, the flower might find him worthy after all?” she mumbled to herself. Then she shrugged. “It would be a waste if it didn't.”

Before she could chase that train of thought any further, she noticed something. The dim glow of the flower was gone. An abyss stared at her from the cave.

“Oh no…”

Aveline formed a fist and focused. The tattoos on her arm glowed. A smoky black orb formed in the air above her fist. She grabbed the orb and ran into the cave.

The sunlight trapped inside the orb shone in the darkness. She saw the boy laying in the corner where the dust bloom had been twinkling. “Lyam!” She crouched next to him and tapped his cheek. “Can you hear me? Lyam?!”

###

The light was gone. The buzzing was gone. Emma was gone too. The cave was cold again. But it wasn't silent anymore. He could hear Aveline's voice coming from somewhere far away before she was yelling right in his face.

Lyam groaned and opened his eyes. He expected to see Aveline. But the first thing he took in was the gleam of a translucent screen hovering in front of him.

And brightly glinting words that said:

The [system] has assessed the [host's] affinity for dust

[Merge] potential: “Adequate”

The [system] will now initiate the [merge]