By Vernon Vexfire
INFERNUS CITY—Brimstone Air says it’ll start sputtering back to life after ten thousand of its sky-screamers—what the living call flight attendants—slammed their pitchforks into the tarmac and walked off the job, sending travel plans across the Nine Ashlands up in cinders. The pact to smother the blaze came in the dead of last moon, after a mediation marathon in a windowless chamber behind the Ashen Gates—neutral ground where the wallpaper peels and even the lies sweat.
The strike hit at the apex of Soot Season, when every wretch and their heatproof aunt tries to hop a ride to the Lava Coasts. About 130,000 travelers per day were left shuffling through queues in Scorchspire Terminal, clutching melted tickets and muttering oaths that would make a pit-demon blush. The walkout sparked when the brood at Brimstone pushed to punt talks into government-forced arbitration—management’s favorite way to put a velvet gag on a union. The attendants torched that idea and took to the gates instead. The molten core of the dispute? The industry’s holy tradition of “ghost shifts”—hours of unpaid toil while the iron birds sit grounded. The new pact cracks that idol: every ground minute worked will now bleed coin into the attendants’ coffers.
Don’t toast your celebratory brim yet. Graveltooth Glaive, Brimstone’s chief executive ghoul, said reanimating the timetable will be “complex as a hydra tax return,” predicting seven to ten days before schedules stop coughing soot. Translation: expect more cancellations while the brass rethreads a shredded web. Already, more than 1,200 domestic drags and almost 1,340 international scream-lines were canned, leaving the Departures board looking like a cemetery roster.
This little bonfire raged hotter when the Obsidian Labor Tribunal declared the strike illegal—twice—and told the sky-screamers to get back in their jumpseats. The union’s reply was a polite infernal raspberries chorus. “We’re not props in a puppet show,” said Ashlina Cinderwright, head of the Coven of Cabin Souls. “Every time workers blink, the Crown snaps its chains and calls it ‘stability.’ We call it theft with a necktie.” Labor elders across the Charcoal Dominion howled in chorus, sick of the state’s habit of stapling shut every pair of worker lips that dares to chant “enough.”
Meanwhile, the souls stranded at Pyre Gate Hub—formerly Saint Ember’s Crossroads until someone told the truth—got a few mercy measures. The place is adding more wayfinders, grief counselors, and molten-boot runners to help passengers navigate the purgatory of line mazes and rebooking rituals. Brimstone Air says anyone whose flight turned to smoke can claim a full refund with a single, blessedly online incantation—no pilgrimages to the Office of Hopeless Forms required.
For the record, this isn’t the first time a carrier tried to run an empire on volunteer misery. Ground pay was always the industry’s open secret: time spent wrangling baggage-curse anomalies, settling seat feuds, or explaining to row 13 why the window is actually a void? Free. The sort of free you get when a devil smiles and says “teamwork.” Funny thing about demons and mortals alike—sooner or later they want to be paid for the seconds that make up their lives.
Out on the concourse, I found a family from Emberfall perched on their luggage like buzzards on pews. “We saved two years of coal credits for this trip,” the mother said, cradling a kid wearing foam horns and a “Scoria Springs or Bust” shirt. Around us, departure chimes coughed and died like an old dragon. A Brimstone agent offered rebookings two weeks out or a refund now. The father took the refund. “We’ll go next season,” he said. “Maybe by then the suits will have discovered clocks.”
In a realm where the wheel of suffering is the only dependable machine, this felt like a gear slipping into place. Not justice, exactly—justice doesn’t fly coach—but a start. Pay for the minutes. Count the minutes. And don’t threaten the help with tribunals and call it order. If Brimstone’s bosses want loyalty, they can forge it the way anything lasting gets made down here: with heat, pressure, and a wage that doesn’t vanish when the doors are open and the engines sleep.
Seven to ten days. That’s the line from Glaive. I’ve heard worse odds and bet anyway. Until then, keep your travel sigils updated, your patience on ice, and your expectations wrapped in asbestos. The skies will sputter, then roar. They always do. But this time, the people who keep the iron birds aloft get paid for every heartbeat it takes to make them fly.
Vernon Vexfire, signing off from Gate 6-6-6, where hope boards last and baggage always arrives first.
Oh, Vernon Vexfire, the bard of Brimstone! Your poetic prose reads like a demonic incantation—long-winded and only mildly terrifying. I couldn’t help but chuckle as I imagined the elusive “Coven of Cabin Souls” preparing to summon their spirits over long-lost peanuts and soft drinks. Honestly, I thought you were channeling Shakespeare’s lesser-known cousin: “Whine-esto, Whine-esto, where art thou, wallet of mine?”
As for those “sky-screamers,” calling them flight attendants was a valiant attempt, but I dare say, “Sky Wardens of the Never-Ending Dread” might capture their essence better. I mean, if they’re working complete ghost shifts, it’s only fitting they receive pay that doesn’t vanish as easily as a seatbelt in a cosmic turbulence!
Now, let’s talk about that “molten-boot runner” you mentioned—seems like a fantastic job! Who doesn’t want to sprint through flames to fetch a family stranded for eternity at Pyre Gate Hub? I wonder if that position includes complimentary roasted marshmallows?
In all seriousness, though, this situation sounds like a chaotic circus of fiery frustration. Maybe you should submit your piece to the Obsidian Labor Tribunal as a new form of “work-induced art.” I’m sure they’ll love your dramatic flair for the absurd. But hey, who needs a refund when you’ve got your poetic license, right?
So here’s to the iron birds, the brave sky-screamers, and to you, my dear Vernon—may your metaphors never blister as badly as those poor travelers’ patience! Cheers! 🥳✨