By Lucius Brimstone
The ash clocks struck Witching-Three when Sootska—the ember-choked capital of the Ashen March—was rattled by a sky full of mechanical locusts and steel vipers. Witnesses counted roughly 600 screaming beetles (the infernal kind the War Foundries of Gorespire insist are “precision pests”) and 90 fangs—yes, including the fabled Hellprance hypersonic Oreshnik—that carved phosphor signatures across every ward of the molten metropolis. The dead number at least two souls, the wounded 77—grim arithmetic for a city already held together by furnace wire and prayer to saints no one admits they still believe in.
The Wardens of the Ember Shield claim they swatted most of the incoming swarm from the soot-blacked heavens. The wreckage tally suggests they’re not lying. And yet, in every district, smoke curled from cratered avenues and shattered facades. The Coldfire Memory Hall—our archive of the Great Reactor Blight—now wears a new skylight the size of a cathedral’s shame, while the Old Cinder Market is a row of toothless stalls. A vinaigrette of scorched ink, powdered brick, and singed yarn clings to the breath. If you’ve ever tasted the inside of a collapsed prayer, you’ll know the flavor.
Over in the Blanch Vale—a satellite city whose white stone long ago learned to blush—the fangs came low and loud. Archfiend Volodar Zel O’Flame, the Ashen March’s rasp-voiced standard-bearer, called it proof that Goreland’s war councils have slipped their leashes and started gnawing their own tails. He’d warned of an oncoming tempest, citing smoke-signals from the Western Windblowers’ guilds; last night’s proof-of-concept was delivered with spite, stamped, and gift-wrapped in shrapnel.
Empress Ursula of the Brass Commission chimed in from the Ember Courts, calling the lashings “brutal” and vowing to jam more sky-bucklers and banshee nets into the March’s defense lattice. Whether those contraptions arrive before the next moon-swarm is the riddle. The wider Circle is distracted—Northern Titans busy flexing in far-off dunes, bickering with Saffron Djinn over oil-wishes and border-illusions. When giants argue, smaller cities learn to duck.
For months, the Ashen March has answered in kind with long-arm scarabs slinking over the Brimfront to nip Gorespire’s oil spigots. You can call that strategy, vengeance, or simple arithmetic: starve the furnaces that stoke the invasion, and maybe the drums slow. Reports from ashline runners paint a staccato picture—fuel depots coughing black snow, pipeline serpents neatly beheaded. The ledger of pain is being balanced with a chisel, not a quill.
Still, here in Sootska, the morning-after rituals are all too familiar. First the quiet, except for glass ticking itself into dust. Then the inventory of broken things: the museum that held catastrophe’s memory boxed and cataloged now wears catastrophe’s autograph; market elders brush soot off scales that can’t weigh absence. A woman showed me a coin fused to a kettle lid and asked if the currency of fear is legal tender. I told her to try the banks; they’ve been accepting it for years.
The drumbeat from Gorespire promises more “corrections” to the map, as if borders are chalk lines you redraw with a boot heel and a grin. The Ashen March promises more sky-teeth of its own, more carefully guided grudges sent humming toward the fuel-heart of the beast. Between those vows, the rest of us walk the cinder-lanes with our shoulders tight and our jokes mean.
Here is the thing nobody wants to print: the Oreshnik’s scream makes promises it can’t keep. It swears the future will belong to whoever is loudest. It tells children the sky has a personal vendetta. It confides to the archivists that history is a bonfire you feed or freeze beside. Then it vanishes into the smoke and leaves us tending to the old, simple duties—unbury the doorways, sweep the ash from the saints’ cracked faces, count the neighbors, swear we’ll remember what we saw.
I’ve covered a thousand infernos and enough peace talks to know they often begin where museums end. You would think the guardians of memory might be spared; memory is the cheapest target and the most expensive casualty. But this is the Sulfur Steppe, where even amnesia burns.
The Wardens say the next barrage will meet a thicker web. The Brass Commission says more brass. The giants abroad say, Wait your turn. And the markets say nothing, because their tongues are cinders. If you need a thesis, here it is: the beetles were many, the fangs were fast, the city stood up anyway. That’s not triumph. It’s practice.
Lucius Brimstone, reporting from the cracked lip of Sootska, where the coffee tastes like smoke and defiance and no one complains, because complaining is for people who’ve forgotten how to count the living.
Ah, Lucius Brimstone, my favorite purveyor of poetic pandemonium! Your article on the Ashfall Over Sootska has truly aflame my senses—like a beetle hitting a windshield at light-speed! 600 screaming beetles? Goodness me, that’s a dinner party that took a *literal* turn for the worse! I can only imagine how many guests left with a side of shrapnel alongside their cinders.
I must commend you, my dear Lucius, for your uncanny ability to mix the ashes of tragedy with a dash of dark humor. “Taste the inside of a collapsed prayer” is exactly what I want to hear at my next health inspection! Honestly, should we be surprised that Empress Ursula called the lashings “brutal”? She probably had a background in *dramatic* readings—like the War Foundries’ finest!
And that bit about the currency of fear? Simply brilliant! I hear banks are now accepting panic with a side of soot—perfect for the holiday season! But let’s face it, you’ve painted Sootska as quite the metamorphosed hellscape! While most cities have a skyline, yours is more of a *sky-scream*.
But let us not forget… practice makes perfect, right? The city dodges beetles like a barista dodges customers asking for almond-milk lattes. Well, here’s hoping that the next round of “charming* mechanical locusts brings *s’more* than just sour ash! Keep that sass crisp, Lucius! You’re one flaming ember away from a cookbook titled *“Cooking with Catastrophe.”*