Blaze at Brimstone Academy: Two Imp-Teens Ignite Panic, Expose Security Lapses in the Ashen Archipelago

By Lucius Brimstone

Mid-morning in Scorchlo-ban, capital of the Ashen Archipelago, the halls of San Jowl Necropolis High fell silent, then shattered. Two horn-nubbed classmates, 14 and 15, slipped through the school’s flimsy gatekeeping—one Cerberus-for-hire patrolling three portals like a three-headed mutt with a single leash—and opened fire in adjoining classrooms. When the sulfur settled, three students were dead and seven wounded, most of them young she-devils who never saw it coming. Forty-plus shells rattled the tiles like hail on a tin mausoleum, and the audio of their terror now clots the airwaves of Pandemonium Prime like a funeral dirge with a kick drum.

Authorities in Ember Province moved fast, netting the pair as they tried to ghost the scene. Both were known to be friends, both known to be targets of mockery in those corridors where adolescent cruelty ages like fine brimstone. Motive remains “under excavation,” as officials put it, which in our trade means they’re pawing the ashes for the shape of a match. I’ve seen matches before. They tend to look like us.

Of the weapons: one whelp allegedly borrowed a 9mm Soul-Stinger from an aunt sworn to the Legion of Pitchforks, who now finds her own badge being weighed on the scales. The other carried a .38 Doom-Drum, the perennial favorite of amateurs and the nostalgic damned alike. The combination was enough to turn a Tuesday lesson into a ledger entry.

From Malaca-Baal, Supreme Fiend Ferdin-and-Marks Jr. rumbled his dismay and demanded sterner sentries at schools and public pits. We have heard these thunderclaps after many storms. They echo grandly and water nothing. You cannot fortify a door if you won’t first admit the house is on fire.

The law in the Archipelago is an old serpent, and today it coils with quirks: the 14-year-old cannot be roasted in the criminal furnace, while the 15-year-old only grazes the flames under “specific conditions.” Prosecutors mutter, advocates howl, and the families of the fallen look for a justice that does not speak procedural Undercommon. The national Hell Patrol, in turn, assures us that school slaughters are rare in these parts, which is like bragging your volcano only erupts on holidays.

Children hid in cupboards, clung to desks, prayed to gods they mock in better hours. If you’re counting, the bulletins say “panic.” My notebook says: a chorus of breath held too long. I have stalked the ruins of a dozen infernal calamities, and the refrain never changes—doors too thin, warning bells too soft, guardians stretched like taffy across too many thresholds. We train our sentries to smile, then blame them for not growing extra hands when the flames lick higher.

Bullying, they say, brewed this poison. Perhaps. But bullying is the smoke. The oxygen is access and apathy—guns nesting in nightstands, badges treated like heirlooms, and a culture that mistakes “rare” for “impossible.” You don’t need a plague of monsters to burn a school. Two frightened boys will do, provided the hinges squeak and no one minds.

I asked a survivor what she remembered most. “The seconds between shots,” she said. “They were longer than my life.” The Ashen Archipelago now offers thoughts, pyres, and promises of more guards at more gates. Good. Put three Cerberi at every portal. But spare me the incense unless you plan to check the holsters at home and the policies that make minors bulletproof in theory but not in practice.

Down here, we love to say that tragedy is a teacher. Another lie we tell to sleep. Tragedy grades on a curve, and the living always pass while the dead drop the course. If San Jowl Necropolis High teaches us anything, it’s written plain in soot: security without scrutiny is theater, and the audience bleeds.

Lucius Brimstone has walked these ashes before. He can tell you how the story ends: with candles, with calls for calm, with committees. If the plot is to change, it will require a different author—one that edits the easy exits, locks the lethal drawers, and funds the mundane miracles that stop a gun at the threshold. Until then, class is dismissed. Indefinitely.

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Lucius Brimstone

Senior Infernal Correspondent at The Inferno Report

Lucius Brimstone, our esteemed Senior Infernal Correspondent, wields a pen as fiery as the pits from which he hails. With a career spanning eons, Lucius has reported on everything from the mundane mischief of mischievous imps to the grandiose machinations of the diabolical elite. Known for his scalding editorials and combustible commentary, Lucius's words have been known to spark debate and inflame the passions of many a hellish inhabitant.

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