After watching him leave, the merchant starts tending to Flum’s face. Not only was her face burned, but a special dye on the branding iron ensures that the slave mark will be a curse Flum will bear for the rest of her life.
The man handed Jean a steel rod with a large lump at the end. “Anyway, you can decide where it goes.”
Jean took the rod in his hand and summoned up Heat—his fire spell. Ever so slowly, the heat ran up the shaft and caused the chunk of steel at the end to glow red.
“You should be happy, Flum. I’m going to assign you a role that you can actually fulfill.”
“I-Is that…?”
“It’s a branding iron—the mark of a slave, to be exact. Even a lowly creature like yourself must have seen it before, right?”