Brightly burning

Summary: When Archer and Nelda Chitward moved their family from a small rural village to the bustling city of Haven, it was cause for great celebration. After all, Archer's success as a cloth-merchant and Nelda's achievements as a fine needleworker had brought them the wealth to buy a fine townhouse in an exclusive section of their nationa's captial. And their skills had made them leaders among their Guilds, welcomed into the highest of Guild social circles. But not everyone in the Chitward home was happy about this 'improvement' in the family's position. Lavan, their middle son, had no desire to be a cloth-merchant, needleworker, cloth-dyer or anything related to his family's Guilds. He didn't really know in Alserscroft! Lan longed for the wild, unconfined woods of his boyhood home, for the friends with whom he had fished and hunted and played at being Heralds fighting the Karasites ot Guards capturing bandits. To make matters worse, his parents had enrolled him in an 'exclusive' private school. It was a place where the arrogant older students were expected to keep discipline, and, unbeknwnst to the school staff, did it through humiliation, physical abuse, and even floggins. As a lanky, undersized, sixteen-year-old newcomer, Lavan quickly became their primary scapegoat. It didn't help the whenever the Sixth Formers caught him he turned a bright scarlet with suppressed rage - a rage which left his skin feeling sunburnt and tender, and so filled his mind that he was unable to see, hear or even to think. For days on end Lavan was overwhelmed by blinding headaches and was unable to attend classes, yet even his pain was a welcome respite from the daily torture he suffered at school. But nothing could have prepared Lan for what was to come. Enraged that he's escaped their clutches by being ill, several Sixth Form boys had prepared a special 'lesson' for Lavan. Lying in wait after school, they dragged him into an abandoned classroom and prepared to flog him. As the lash fell, his ice-cold panic was vaporized by white-hot rage that blazed up uncontrollably in Lavan's mind - and a Gift unlike any known in Valdemar was born in a fiery conflagration which Heralds and Healers alike would be hard-pressed to contain.

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