Brightly Burning

LAN had stopped thinking some time ago; now all he was doing was feeling. It was pure fear, and barely contained rage that consumed him, the ice of panic, the heat of anger, contending for his mind. There wasn't much room left over for thought.

He struggled to hold in the rage; somehow he felt dimly that if he couldn't keep control over it, something terrible and irrevocable would happen. But the part of him that tried to hang onto a little rational thought was also the part that hurt. The blinding pain of the worst headache he had ever felt without passing out entirely was slowly eroding his ability to hang onto his anger.

Abruptly, with a final shove, Tyron's bullies sent him sprawling at the ringleader's feet. He panted, both with exertion and the flush of heat that consumed him, on his hands and knees.

The pain was excruciating, the fear held him paralyzed still, and the anger raged against the bonds containing it.

His ears filled with roaring, very like the thunder of a river in full flood. He barely heard Tyron say, 'Strip his shirt off, and strap him down.'

A haze of red clouded his eyes. When two of Tyron's henchmen grabbed him and pulled his shirt off over his head, they exclaimed as they grabbed his bare arms. 'Tyron—he's as hot as a branding iron!' said the one on his right. 'If he's got a fever, maybe you should leave him alone for now—'

'I've left him alone for long enough,' Tyron replied with irritation, and to punctuate his intentions, he took his first stroke on Lan's bare back while he was still held between the two bullies, the cane whistling through the air with the savage force that Tyron put behind it.

The pain of the lash was worse than anything Lan had ever felt. It cut right through the headache, broke his paralyzing fear, and left him with only instinct.

He had to get away! He had to get away, and now!

The fear joined the anger, and together they destroyed the last of his rapidly eroding control over that overpowering rage—and the terrible thing that his rage had summoned.

A moment of utter silence as Tyron pulled back for a second blow.

It fell.

The entire room erupted in flames.

The three who were the closest, Tyron and the two bullies, Loman and Derwit, who were holding his arms, went up like oil-soaked torches, screaming with agony. Tyron blundered backward and into the wall, hitting it, and dropping to the floor. The boy to Lan's right howled and whirled in circles aimlessly. The one to his left ran straight into the fireplace.

Lan himself only noticed this with a tiny part of his mind that was numb and frozen with horror, unable to act or think, only able to observe. The rest of him was consumed with flame, was the flame, and existed only to feed itself.

It reached for the nearest source of fuel; the chair, the three bodies already afire and silent now, the other boys, who were trapped. He was between them and the door, and the fire was hungry... and very, very, angry.

Flames blossomed all around him, sending his hair rising upward, propelled by tiny flames that licked the air savagely, a nimbus of fury that nevertheless did not touch him. One of the boys tried to dash past him, making for the door.

The fury inside him recognized the attempt at escape, and intercepted him before Lan realized what was happening. The boy exploded into flame like the other three and dropped like a shot bird to the floor.

The others shrieked in uncomprehending terror.

Their reaction only fed the fire further; it pulsed out to fill the room, as the boys backed up in a pathetic attempt to evade it. One of them shouted the first actual word that any of them had spoken until that moment, staring past the flames to Lan.

'Please!' he screamed, as the fires touched his flesh. 'Please!'

Something snapped inside him again. With an agonizing wrench that sent him to his knees, Lan wrested back some control from the thing that was consuming them.

The flames receded, pulling back just enough so that the burned and blistered boys could stumble past him and out the door to freedom.

Lan wrestled with a force that didn't want to be controlled, that resisted him with his own strength. The flames flared again, and the walls of the room began to smoke.

Outside, someone had caught sight of the flames and sounded an alarm. There was shouting, screams, a confusion of noise. Lan ignored all of that, battling with the rage inside himself, grappling with a thing that had taken on an evil life all its own.

Now it was even turning its fury on its host; it was Lan's turn to scream in agony as the flames licked his flesh. But that was the power's undoing.

Lan simply could not bear anymore. He slumped over as darkness, a cool, welcoming darkness, beckoned to him to fall into it. His eyes cleared once before that final dark, and saw without comprehension, the flames around him flickering, and dying out, leaving only a few spots of sullenly burning fire in the room itself.

He did not want to think what fueled those fires, for there were four of them.

But the hold that the anger, fear, and fire had over him was gone. Obedient at last, his mind gave itself up to darkness and his body toppled to the floor of the burned-out room.