"Stale sulphurous stench"

Nice Alitteration and Hendiadyoin. Your story is worth being read for the nice vocabulary and rhetorical eloquence alone.

But the story is the Heart of course, and the "silent" war and Krusher9 "game" very much resembles our current time period, I think. War doesn't necessarily involve weapons and uniforms, it can take place on many levels, and wars beyond the physical level very often can be much more devastating.