Ashen - Chapter 1: Streets of Brass

Part One: The City of Brass

Chapter One: Streets of Brass

Sulphur winds danced between buildings, and rushed down alleyways, as the residents of Madinat Alnnahas went about their business; as travelers and traders met in dark alleys, conducting darker dealings; and as tourists and other lost folk all wrinkled their noses, scurrying for the nearest open avenue - eager to escape the oppressive heat and the stench of the city.

Cerulean Crowe marched briskly down the beaten brass cobble of Market Ring. Her long, white braid trailed behind her, and she clung tightly to the canvas bag slung over her shoulder. She was a deft hand with the cutlass slung at her waist, and it ached to be held, but she didn’t want her alienation and fear to play out in her demeanor. She just wanted to get to the ship.

    This was her first time off-world; but even a backwater grounder knew the tales of danger that bled out of the Market Ring in the City of Brass. She made her way hurriedly (but not too hurriedly) past rows of ramshackle shops and storefronts; all stacked one on top of the other along with houses, burrows, and less savory little holes, all fashioned of stone and steel, or - she supposed - brass.

    The city could almost have been a work of art, if perhaps it had been fashioned in an abandoned junk heap. Every building, cross-street and alley was outlined in dark metal steam-pipes. Where they crossed the walkways and the streets (which were little more than narrow alleys, really), the pipes hung just high enough overhead not to be a nuisance. Wiping the sweat from her forehead, Ceru - as her friends and shipmates had called her back home - turned down an alley that should lead to the right dock.

    The Quelyan woman hadn’t seen another human in the three days she’d been here. There had been elves, dwarves, efreet, some dragon-men even, and coal-borne aplenty; and she even thought she’d stumbled upon a gang of kenku on her first day here, but she’d steered clear of those thieves and murderers. She wondered how the massive efreet, and the other, larger races managed to get around with all the pipes and low bridges. Then again, the two efreet she’d seen had been by the gate to the Inner City. Maybe they didn’t come out this far from the Inferno.

    She imagined she could smell it from here - the fiery pit at the heart of the city. They say it was a piece of the sun that broke off and wandered into orbit, where the efreet built their city around a massive pyre - either a mockery or an homage to The Pyre - the blazing sun at the center of creation. They also say that the efreet offer sacrifices to their Inferno: the flesh of “lesser creatures”, burnt offerings to keep the city in its orbit.

    It was hard to discount such tales. The Burning City gave off the scent of cooked meat and sulphur, forged metal, and the stink of sweat from a dozen different races crammed together in a city too small for everyone that wanted to live there, and always expanding, despite the limited landmass.

    The City of Brass was, effectively, an asteroid, hurtling through space with the planets and suns, but no bigger than the largest island on her own homeworld of Quelya. It was small, and cramped, and something was always on fire in Madinat Alnnahas; and Ceru couldn’t wait to leave. Between the heat from the road beneath her feet, the radiating warmth of cooking metal buildings, the burning light of the Pyre overhead, and that damn sulphur wind, her clothes were plastered with sweat. She wiped her brow with the back of a hand. Beneath damp, loose bangs, eyes the color of warm caramel and spring grass were shot with red and swollen from lack of sleep. Or maybe that too was just the heat.

    The only passage from her homeworld had been a merchant ship on its way here. She’d hired on as a deckhand, though she’d spent most of her time in the rigging - neither a difficult feat, really. She’d grown up on sea-going vessels back home - hell, she’d been born on the water. Literally. Peon work on a Spelljammer wasn’t really all that different from peon work on a Quelyan barque or caravel. The view was different, sure; but the pay was the same, basically.

    And now she was here; her meager earnings were running light. Since leaving the merchant vessel - which hadn’t needed an extra hand, really (the captain had only let her hire on because of her pretty face and unusual white hair - and the way his hungry gaze followed her around the ship) - she’d been stuck in the City of Brass for three days, scouring the docks, the lists, and the shipwrights, looking for another ship. Any ship.

    Cerulean Crowe was a woman on a mission, and she wasn’t getting it done cooking in an overpriced bunk in an open-air hostel in the second-most corrupt spellport in the ‘Verse.