Mel’Zally, Succubus Queen and Infernal Archmage, appeared a thousand feet in the air overlooking the defensive cage and the battle raging around it. She could see several weapons infused with familiar Necromantic Mana creating a killing field at the cage’s entrance as they flew around at high speeds, shredding every Etherman they encountered.

“Well, this certainly brings back memories.” She couldn’t help smiling brightly at the sight. A smile that would have stopped the heart of any mortal human that saw it, for Mel was stunningly, magically beautiful. As was natural for one of her demonic race, she could have slain most mortals with a sultry look.

Fortunately for friend and foe alike, everyone currently on the battlefield was immune to that particular feature of her skill set. The Ethermen were barely alive and lacked anything resembling human desires or emotions, and the undead obviously couldn’t care less about Mel’s physical appearance.

Unfortunately for the Ethermen, Mel’Zally had never invested herself much in that particular quirk of her race. Perhaps unsurprising, considering her long history working with Dave in his home dimension during her younger days. She had grown in power primarily surrounded by undead, leaving her magically dangerous beauty completely useless.

Instead, Mel had cultivated her power based around Infernal magic, manipulating the raw energies of Hell to form powerful magics. That, the Ethermen weren’t immune to in the slightest. As proven by the barrier of nearly invisible, colorless, flickering flame that surrounded her and blocked the numerous attacks flung her way by the Ethermen swarming the air.

Ignoring the continuous attacks, as they did nothing more than slowly tap away at her truly massive Infernal Mana reserves, Mel took stock of her surroundings. After all, she couldn’t help much if she didn’t know where she could best leverage her strengths.

It was immediately obvious that they were in a cosmologically non-standard universe. Across the breadth of reality there were an endless number of configurations for a universe to take. That being said, most of them contained stars, planets, galaxies, and black holes. It could be considered a universe’s ‘default’ state.

The giant pillar of never-ending light on an endless horizon and an island surrounded by an ocean of galaxies and nebulas was a dead giveaway that this was not one of those places.

Mel ran a few tests on the atmospheric energy around her just to see how it affected her own magic. She’d been to universes that were inherently hostile to foreign energies, some of them so much so that her Infernal Mana detonated when it interacted with the ambient energy.

What she found was… odd. The entire atmosphere was positively saturated in an unfamiliar form of energy. The raw power she could feel was immense, easily sitting in the top one hundred universes she’d personally visited. And Mel had visited a lot of universes.

The ocean below was even worse, essentially being nothing more than an overwhelmingly densely packed collection of energy. It wasn’t even water or any other liquid, but energy so densely packed that it had liquified. Mel would place this universe in the top one percent of universes, energy-wise.

The odd part was how inert most of the energy was. There was a huge amount of it, but it wasn’t actually doing anything. Most places with this much raw power would have constant magic phenomena. Every molecule of air would possess the potential to spawn magically infused materials and energy-based lifeforms.

The answer to why that wasn’t happening was obvious. Mel focused her magical senses on the pillar of light. A moment of perusal revealed that it wasn’t natural, but rather a universal-sized artificial construct. It was constraining the ambient energy and preventing random phenomena.

“So, this is a terraformed universe,” Mel muttered, nodding at her own words. More than that, she quickly assessed that the terraformer wasn’t local. The apparent technological level of the people of this universe was relatively low, nowhere near making something like that pillar.

Of course, Mel didn’t actually need to look at any of that to confirm this universe had been formed by an outside power. She’d known the moment she answered Dave’s summoning ritual. As she crossed the planar barrier from Hell to the Material Plane, she’d felt a presence.

For a moment, Mel’Zally had caught a glimpse of burning gold that screamed in joy and pain and a brilliantly white rose whose thorns smelled of oceans of blood. Then the attention was gone, and Mel lost her grip on the concepts involved.

Even now, she shuddered slightly thinking about the experience. Not necessarily out of fear, the presence had shown no hostility at all. In fact, she could swear she’d felt amusement from the being. No, what made her shiver was the sheer age she’d felt. The being who controlled this universe was absolutely ancient.

Oddly, Mel couldn’t properly judge the strength of the being. No doubt, that was deliberate. Mel had been across existence, and she knew that there were many old things hidden in their own little universes, doing whatever they wanted. She felt like she’d just briefly encountered one such creature.

Age wasn’t necessarily an indicator of power. Dave was an excellent example of a being that had lived for eons but remained relatively weak. At least, until now. Mel still wasn’t sure how strong Dave was now, but it was a massive improvement.

All this to say that the being Mel had encountered could be anywhere from weaker than her to strong enough to snuff her out like a candle flame. The fact was, whatever that thing was had hidden its power and left her alone. For now, that was enough.

Still, Mel resolved to look into the images and sensations she’d glimpsed as soon as she got back home. Something, a vague intuition, told her that she might find some interesting results of that search.

Mel returned her focus to the situation at hand. She had confirmed that the energy in the atmosphere, while odd, was not hostile to her own. That meant she could work her spells unimpeded. But her observation of the general physical and magical nature of this universe was not the only reason she’d decided to take a look around. After all, scouting out the enemy was equally important.

That… was complicated. Again, the oddness of this universe showed in the technology present. The stabilizing effect of the pillar obviously didn’t cover the whole universe, because every single piece of tech seemed to run on those physical manifestations the pillar was stopping.

Here she could observe some more practical examples of this odd energy. Mainly, the fact that it was highly conceptually dependent. Some energies, like Mana, could be used without involving any higher concepts to get them working. Raw Mana was enough to make the kind of fly ships she saw overhead.

But that didn’t seem to be the case here. A little peek into their engines revealed a rather clever use of many concepts interacting to stimulate a Flight aligned structure of crystalized energy. A method that was far more complex than a Mana engine and something that would be completely unnecessary if they could run their tech off the ambient energy.

Then there were the two humans fighting the ships, one of which was riding on the back of a stable manifestation of the ambient energy in the shape of a bird-like beast. The other human seemed to have undergone a draconic-based transformation, and the one on the beast was manifesting clouds that blocked the ships attacks. Despite the seeming disparity between their attack methods, Mel found one obvious similarity. They both relied heavily on concept-based powers.

The one on the bird was just directly manipulating a concept and fueling it with an internal supply of the ambient energy. Clouds, would be Mel’s guess. Meanwhile, the other’s draconic form seemed at least partly natural, but its overall power was being heavily reinforced with a concept, once again fueled by an internal supply of energy.

As with anything so directly tied to a concept, the powers were overwhelmingly potent. If these two were a model for how strong humans here could get, Mel’Zally would like to leave as soon as possible. Because that was a level of power that could reach god territory if given enough raw power. Mel was strong, but she was not god-level strong.

But that didn’t seem to be the case. A casual scan of the island revealed that, if the dead were included, the humans with these powers made up less than a tenth of the population overall. Though there was a grouping of humans halfway across the island that were at a level of power very close to the god-like levels she had feared.

However, it was hard for her to truly judge their strength. They seemed oddly… suppressed. Unlike the two overhead, the others she could sense had their powers contained within their bodies. The answer to that conundrum only took a moment to answer. There was an energy field blanketing the island that was tied into the ambient energy and originated from the heart of the largest flying vessel overhead.

So, the situation became obvious, once Mel took a quick look at the attacking force. Everything was indeed exactly as Dave had described. A naturally occurring variant of enhanced humans being attacked by the unenhanced. The general destruction and suppression field showed that the unenhanced seemed to currently have the upper hand.

Of course, that was just the current situation. Dave, the two enhanced above, even the protective dome of dark chains filled with survivors of the devastation indicated a fighting chance for the enhanced. That didn’t even touch on the portals overflowing with a raw, metallic and fiery energy she could sense. Or the truly massive dragon currently treating one of the largest ships like a chew toy.

And, of course, Mel was here too.

Once more, Mel looked at Dave’s battlefield. The entire thing gave her conflicted feelings. Dave had always been an oddball. An overly talented but fundamentally weak Death Knight that was ultimately limited by the circumstances of his creation. For the entire time that Mel had traveled and worked with the undead, she had indisputably been the stronger of the two in their relationship.

Not to say she didn’t respect him. Dave was, by all accounts, a tactical genius with an unconventional and inquisitive mind that let him come up with creative strategies like the double-layered barrier he’d made below. Looking at the bone cage and barrier of Necroflame, Mel’Zally couldn’t help but feel like it was all a little…quaint. Small.

The part that had her so conflicted was what it represented. Dave hadn’t been able to do that level of magic before. She could feel the power thrumming through Dave’s new form like it was a physical force on her senses. He was borderline god-level based on raw power alone.

The only reason she could see that Dave hadn’t fully ended this battle on his own was his inexperience with his new form and plain old habit. No one could go from being near the bottom of the power scale to nearly at the top without an adjustment period. It took time to get used to that new power.

Worse, Dave was old. He had eons of habits and learned behavior to overcome to unlock the full power of his new form. Even now, he was acting as the commander he’d always been instead of the walking calamity Mel could feel from his energy signature.

When he finally managed to fully adjust…Well, Mel was glad they were friends. Because she didn’t want to see what was going to happen in the Necroverse. There were many forces that Dave had left alone purely because he knew he couldn’t beat them. Now, that whole dynamic had wildly shifted. And it would be the start of something that changed that undead universe to its very core.

“Ok, I should stop lazing around.” Mel sighed. “This might be the last time he ever actually needs my help, might as well show him why he even bothers to call me anymore.”

Really, Dave didn’t call to just talk often enough. Mel would be hurt, but she knew he was just a closet workaholic. Despite what he might say, the undead couldn’t sit still and relax.

Word began rolling off Mel’Zally’s lips. Words in a language older than this universe, one born at the same moment the first Hellbound soul died. “Born from flame, I return to myself to the source.”

Flames of an unnaturally dark red crawled over her body, curling around her limbs and snatching at the air greedily. The tongues grew more numerous and larger with every word she spoke until they seemed to freeze in anticipation of her final line.

“Infernal Incarnation.”

Every physical trace of Mel burned away as she became a pure expression of Hell’s inherent Mana. She was a vague form of a woman formed from flames. Temporarily, she was more elemental than devil. This state heightened her ability to wield vast quantities of Infernal Mana and allowed her to form spells more easily and quickly.

It also shortened any chants she needed.

“Inferno.”

With one word in a tongue this universe had never heard before, the sky was bathed in red. And the Ethermen burned.