Tame The Flame

War in the Etherworld

The dimensional rifts tore through reality like wounds in the fabric of existence itself, but instead of healing, they began to spread and merge. What had started as uncontrolled tears from the Covenant's collapsing ritual evolved into something far more dramatic—a complete dimensional displacement that pulled both the island and King Aldric's entire kingdom into the space between worlds.

Keal felt it first, his enhanced magical senses screaming warnings as the ground beneath their feet began to shift in ways that defied physics. "We're being translated," he said urgently, grabbing Seraphina's hand as reality warped around them. "The failed summoning is pulling everything connected to the blood bond into the Etherworld."

"What does that mean?" Ava demanded, her head guard instincts flaring as she moved to protect both Keal and Seraphina while scanning for new threats.

"It means we're no longer in our reality," Lima replied with grim understanding, her beta queen training having included study of dimensional theory. "We're in the space between worlds—where the Great Devourers exist naturally."

The transformation was both gradual and sudden, like falling asleep and waking up somewhere else entirely. The island's tropical vegetation began to take on an otherworldly quality—trees that seemed to grow in impossible directions, flowers that bloomed with light instead of color, and vines that moved with their own intelligence. The ocean around them shifted from blue to something that had no name, a color that existed only in spaces where normal light couldn't reach.

But they weren't alone in this strange new reality. As the dimensional displacement completed itself, they could see in the distance something that made Seraphina's blood run cold—the massive stone walls and towers of her father's kingdom, transported wholesale into the Etherworld along with every citizen, soldier, and servant within its borders.

"The entire kingdom," she whispered, staring at the familiar skyline that now existed in an alien landscape. "He pulled his own people into this nightmare."

King Aldric's voice boomed across the dimensional void, magically amplified so that it could be heard throughout both the displaced kingdom and the island. "Seraphina! You have corrupted yourself with revolutionary poison and allied with forces that threaten the natural order. I give you one chance to surrender yourself and accept purification."

"Purification," Keal repeated with dark amusement. "He still thinks this is about saving you from corruption."

Seraphina stood tall despite the alien landscape around them, her queen's authority asserting itself in response to her father's challenge. "And I give you one chance to end this madness, father. Recall your forces, admit your mistakes, and we can find a way home that doesn't require anyone else to die."

The response came not in words, but in action. From the displaced kingdom's walls, war horns began to sound—not the ceremonial trumpets used for royal announcements, but the deep, resonant calls that meant total war. Magical banners unfurled along the battlements, each one glowing with protective enchantments and offensive capabilities that could level buildings.

"He's not interested in negotiation," Lima observed, her strategic mind already analyzing the approaching threat. "Look at the formations."

Indeed, the kingdom's military was deploying with the precision of forces that had been preparing for exactly this scenario. Elite cavalry units moved in perfect coordination despite the alien terrain. Mage battalions established defensive positions that could support both offensive magical strikes and protective barriers. Most ominously, the banners of the Crimson Covenant flew alongside the royal standard, indicating that whatever remained of the war-mages had been fully integrated into Aldric's forces.

"How many soldiers?" Ava asked, her head guard responsibilities including tactical assessment of enemy capabilities.

"At least ten thousand regular troops," Lima replied after a moment of calculation. "Plus magical support units, siege engines, and whatever Covenant members survived the ritual's collapse. And that's just what we can see from here."

Keal extended his magical senses across the Etherworld landscape, feeling for the power signatures that would tell him what they were really facing. What he found made his expression grim. "The Etherworld is amplifying everyone's abilities. Magic works differently here—stronger, but also more unpredictable. Your father's forces are more dangerous than they would be in normal reality, but so are we."

As if to demonstrate his point, Seraphina raised her hand and felt power flow through her that was both familiar and alien. The magic she could access in this place was vast, fed by the dimensional energies that surrounded them, but it carried undertones of something hungry and vast that made her skin crawl.

"The Great Devourers," she realized. "Their presence in this dimension means all magic here is touched by their influence."

"Which means every spell cast, every enchantment activated, feeds them a little bit," Keal confirmed. "The longer this war goes on, the stronger they become."

But they had little time for philosophical concerns about magical contamination. The first wave of King Aldric's assault was already approaching—flying cavalry mounted on creatures that looked like crosses between horses and shadows, their wings beating with rhythm that seemed to pull light out of the air around them.

"Shadowhawks," Lima identified, her beta queen training including knowledge of exotic military units. "Fast, magically enhanced, and nearly invisible in this environment. They're scouting our position and capabilities."

Ava's response was immediate and professional. "Defensive perimeter. They want information, we give them misdirection." Her hands moved in complex patterns that created false magical signatures around their position, making it appear as though they had defensive capabilities they didn't actually possess while hiding their real strengths.

The shadowhawk riders swept over their position in perfect formation, their mounts' alien cries echoing strangely in the Etherworld's atmosphere. But instead of simply observing and reporting back, they began dropping enchanted projectiles that exploded in bursts of force designed to test their defenses.

"They're probing," Keal observed, deflecting one of the magical grenades with a barrier that shimmered like oil on water. "Trying to determine our response capabilities before committing to a full assault."

Seraphina's royal training kicked in as she analyzed the tactical situation. "This isn't random harassment. It's intelligence gathering for a coordinated attack. Father always preferred to have complete information before committing his forces."

The shadowhawks made three more passes, each time testing different aspects of their defenses—magical barriers, physical fortifications, and response time to aerial threats. Then they wheeled away toward the distant kingdom, their reconnaissance complete.

"How long do we have?" Ava asked, already beginning more substantial defensive preparations.

"In normal circumstances, maybe six hours for them to analyze what they learned and plan a proper assault," Lima replied. "But in the Etherworld, with magical enhancement and the pressure of dimensional instability..." She paused, calculating. "Three hours, maybe less."

Keal surveyed their position with the eyes of someone who had spent years thinking about defensive warfare. The island gave them certain advantages—difficult terrain for large-scale assault, natural magical amplification from the ley line convergence, and defensive positions that could be enhanced with the right magical support. But they were also drastically outnumbered and cut off from any possibility of reinforcement or retreat.

"We can't win a conventional battle," he said bluntly. "Ten thousand soldiers with magical support will overwhelm us regardless of how well we fight. We need to change the nature of the conflict."

"What do you mean?" Seraphina asked, though her queen's instincts were already providing possible answers.

"We turn their advantages into disadvantages. Use the Etherworld's properties against them. Make this about adaptation and innovation instead of raw numbers." Keal's expression took on the focused intensity that meant he was formulating a plan that would require perfect execution and considerable risk.

"The Great Devourers," Lima said suddenly, understanding flooding her face. "They're drawn to large concentrations of magical energy. A ten-thousand-man army using combat magic in their native dimension..."

"Would be like ringing a dinner bell," Keal confirmed. "If we can make the battle chaotic enough, destructive enough, the entities will be drawn to investigate. And once they're actively present on the battlefield..."

"Everyone becomes prey," Ava finished, her protective instincts immediately grasping the implications. "Including us."

"Including us," Keal agreed. "But we have advantages they don't. We understand what we're dealing with. We can prepare for entity contact. Most importantly, we work as a unified team while they're operating under traditional military hierarchy that won't adapt quickly to supernatural threats."

Seraphina felt the weight of command settling over her shoulders as she contemplated a battle plan that would deliberately invoke the attention of beings that existed only to consume. But the alternative was conventional defeat against overwhelming odds, followed by whatever her father considered "purification."

"We do it," she decided with royal authority. "We turn this into the kind of battle where courage and adaptability matter more than numbers."

As the alien sun of the Etherworld reached its zenith, casting shadows that moved independently of the objects that created them, four people began preparing for a war that would determine not just their own survival, but the future of leadership itself—whether authority would be based on domination and fear, or on cooperation and freely chosen loyalty.

In the distance, King Aldric's forces completed their preparations with the efficiency of professionals who had trained for exactly this kind of operation. But they had trained for conventional warfare in normal reality, not for battles in dimensions where the rules of engagement included entities that could unmake existence itself.

The war was about to begin, and everyone involved was about to discover that in the Etherworld, victory belonged not to the largest army, but to those who could adapt fastest to conditions that made normal tactics not just useless, but actively suicida

The attack came exactly two hours and forty-seven minutes after the shadowhawk reconnaissance, beginning with a coordinated magical bombardment that lit up the Etherworld sky like a festival of destruction. King Aldric's mage battalions had positioned themselves at maximum range, launching spell-projectiles that screamed through the alien atmosphere with trails of energy that hurt to look at directly.

"Incoming!" Ava shouted, though her warning was almost unnecessary—the magical artillery was impossible to miss, each projectile leaving contrails of distorted space-time that announced its approach long before impact.

Keal's response was immediate and unconventional. Instead of creating defensive barriers to absorb or deflect the incoming spells, he began weaving enchantments that would amplify and redirect their magical energy. "Let them through," he called to the others. "We're not trying to stop them—we're trying to make them bigger."

The first wave of spell-projectiles struck their position with devastating force, but instead of creating craters and destruction, Keal's redirection enchantments caught the magical energy and fed it into the island's ley line convergence. The result was a massive pulse of power that radiated outward from their position like a shockwave, visible even to normal sight as ripples in the fabric of reality itself.

"What are you doing?" Lima demanded, her beta queen training telling her that allowing enemy fire to reach its target was tactical insanity.

"Advertising," Keal replied grimly. "The Great Devourers are drawn to magical energy. The more power we release, the faster they'll come to investigate."

As if summoned by his words, the alien sky began to darken with presences that had no physical form but still managed to blot out light. The temperature dropped by twenty degrees in as many seconds, and the air itself seemed to thicken with a presence that pressed against their minds like the weight of infinite hunger.

"They're coming," Seraphina said unnecessarily, her queen's authority allowing her to sense the approaching entities with crystal clarity. "Multiple contacts, moving fast."

King Aldric's forces noticed the change as well. The magical bombardment faltered as battlefield commanders tried to understand why their successful strike had resulted in environmental conditions that made their equipment malfunction and their soldiers report feeling watched by invisible eyes.

"Second wave incoming," Ava reported, her head guard responsibilities including maintaining awareness of all threats simultaneously. "But their formation is looser. They're reacting to whatever they're sensing in the sky."

The second bombardment was notably less coordinated than the first, with individual mage units firing at different targets and timings as field commanders tried to adapt to conditions they had never trained for. Several spell-projectiles went wide entirely, their casters apparently unable to maintain proper focus under the weight of alien attention.

Keal continued his redirection strategy, but now he was being more selective about which magical energies to amplify. Instead of simply feeding everything into the ley lines, he began creating harmonic resonances that would attract the Great Devourers toward specific areas of the battlefield.

"The cavalry advance," Lima observed, pointing toward movement from the kingdom's main force. "Elite mounted units, moving in formation toward our position."

The approaching cavalry was impressive even by royal standards—a thousand riders on enhanced warhorses, their armor gleaming with protective enchantments and their weapons crackling with offensive magic. They moved with the precision of units that had trained together for years, maintaining perfect formation even across the Etherworld's unstable terrain.

But as they advanced, the shadows cast by their weapons and armor began to move independently, stretching and writhing in directions that had nothing to do with the alien sun's position. Several horses began to shy and buck as they sensed predators that existed outside normal perception, and the riders had to fight to maintain control of mounts that had served faithfully in dozens of conventional battles.

"They're entering the influence zone," Keal explained, his magical senses tracking the Great Devourers' approach with growing precision. "The entities aren't fully manifested yet, but their presence is starting to affect everything magical within a mile radius."

Seraphina made a decision that combined royal authority with desperate tactical necessity. "We meet them in the middle. If we're going to fight in this chaos, we do it on our terms."

"The four of us against a thousand cavalry?" Ava asked, her protective instincts warring with her professional assessment of impossible odds.

"The four of us plus whatever Great Devourers decide to join the party," Seraphina corrected. "In conventional terms, we'd be slaughtered in minutes. But conventional terms don't apply when reality itself is becoming unstable."

They moved out from their defensive position with the fluid coordination of people who had learned to trust each other completely. Keal took point, his magical senses extended to track both enemy movements and entity manifestations. Seraphina and Lima flanked him, their queen and beta queen authorities creating a command structure that could adapt instantly to changing battlefield conditions. Ava moved in a protective pattern around all three, her head guard training allowing her to maintain security for multiple principals simultaneously while engaging enemy forces.

The cavalry charge that met them was magnificent and terrifying—a thousand enhanced warhorses thundering across alien terrain while their riders leveled weapons that could punch through castle walls. But as the two forces closed, the accumulated magical energy from weapons, armor, and enhancement spells reached the threshold that brought the Great Devourers from potential to actual manifestation.

The entities appeared not as shapes but as absences, places where light and sound and even thought seemed to be consumed before they could fully exist. They moved through the charging cavalry like sharks through a school of fish, and wherever they passed, horses and riders alike simply ceased to be—not killed or destroyed, but edited out of existence entirely.

"Scatter!" the cavalry commander screamed, his voice carrying across the battlefield with the authority of someone accustomed to being obeyed without question. But scattering required abandoning formation, and abandoning formation meant abandoning the coordinated magical protections that were the only thing keeping his troops from being consumed wholesale.

Keal's strategy was working perfectly. The conventional military force was being forced to choose between maintaining tactical coherence and avoiding supernatural predation, and neither choice offered acceptable outcomes.

But the Great Devourers were indiscriminate in their hunger. As the entities fed on the cavalry's magical energies, they also turned their attention toward Keal's group, drawn by the concentrated power of four individuals working in perfect magical harmony.

"Contact," Ava called out, her weapons appearing in her hands as something that existed primarily as hunger materialized directly in front of them. "Entity manifestation, close range."

The Great Devourer was impossible to look at directly—not because it was bright or dark, but because the human mind simply couldn't process something that existed as pure negation. Ava's response was immediate and instinctive, her head guard training translating into combat patterns that treated the entity like an enemy that happened to violate several laws of physics.

Her weapons passed through the creature's non-substance without effect, but the magical energies coating the blades created resonances that seemed to cause it pain—or at least discomfort. The entity recoiled, its attention shifting from active predation to defensive maneuvering.

"They can be fought," Lima observed with satisfaction, her beta queen analytical skills providing tactical assessment even in the middle of supernatural combat. "Not conventionally, but they're not invulnerable."

Seraphina's royal authority manifested as something approaching command presence over the entities themselves. Her voice carried tones that made reality ripple when she spoke directly to the Great Devourer. "You want magical energy? There's an entire army behind us loaded with enhancement spells and combat magic. Why waste time on four people when you could feast on thousands?"

The entity's attention shifted, its alien intelligence processing the concept of efficiency in hunting prey. After a moment that felt like hours, it simply faded from their immediate vicinity, moving toward the larger concentration of magical energy represented by King Aldric's remaining forces.

"Did you just negotiate with a Great Devourer?" Keal asked with something approaching admiration.

"I pointed out superior hunting opportunities," Seraphina corrected. "Royal authority works on anything that understands hierarchy, even if their hierarchy is based on hunger instead of politics."

The battlefield around them had transformed into something beyond conventional warfare. King Aldric's forces were fighting a three-way battle against Keal's group, the manifested Great Devourers, and the increasingly unstable reality of the Etherworld itself. Formations that had held together through dozens of campaigns were dissolving as soldiers faced threats their training had never prepared them for.

But Aldric's forces were adapting faster than Keal had expected. Instead of trying to maintain traditional military formations, the surviving commanders were breaking their units into smaller, more flexible groups that could respond to supernatural threats while still maintaining offensive capabilities against their original targets.

"They're learning," Lima warned, her strategic assessment identifying the adaptation in enemy tactics. "Give them another hour and they'll figure out how to fight effectively in these conditions."

"Then we don't give them another hour," Keal replied, his magical senses tracking the positions of both enemy forces and Great Devourers across the entire battlefield. "We escalate again."

He began weaving an enchantment that was part magical working and part desperate gamble—a ritual that would destabilize the dimensional barriers keeping the Etherworld separate from normal reality. If it worked, it would create conditions so chaotic that only the most adaptable fighters would survive. If it failed, it would likely destroy everyone involved, including themselves.

"What are you doing?" Ava demanded, her protective instincts screaming warnings as she felt the dangerous energies building around Keal's working.

"Changing the rules of engagement one more time," he replied. "If we can't win through conventional tactics or supernatural maneuvering, we make the battlefield so unstable that survival becomes more important than victory."

As Keal's working reached critical mass, reality itself began to fracture around them. The war was about to enter a phase where the difference between victory and annihilation would be measured not in tactical superiority, but in the ability to maintain sanity and purpose while the fundamental nature of existence became negotiable.

King Aldric's army was about to discover that when you wage war in the space between worlds, the greatest enemy isn't your opponent—it's the assumption that anything you thought you knew about warfare still applies.