Board & Conquest 137: The Dragon Queen

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The universe shivered at the arrival of Wepwawet’s ultimate creation. 

His three dragons turned into balls of light that joined together from across the board at an intersection point between their various locations. Their mass and souls merging together, their draconic strength harmoniously fused by divine power into a creature as majestic as it was terrifying. 

“Behold, my ultimate Champion!” Wepwawet boasted in the throes of triumph and madness. “The most powerful mortal creature in all of B&C!”

His Champion took the shape of a two-hundred foot long dragon with deep orange scales, at least up until their shoulders; for three familiar necks and heads now sprouted from between them. On the right was white Insupportable, grumbling and snarling; in the center was golden and determined Glatisant; and on the left was Soumis’ goofy red face. Three minds, three elements, all united in one behemoth of draconic majesty with great wings casting the land below in shadow. 

“Rank 12 Ultimate Elemental Zmey!”

All heads roared and breathed fire, ice, and lightning across the sky.

After a brief moment of pure existential horror, Kronos quickly recovered some of his bravado. “This mad play won’t change anything!” he shouted. “You forget I have already fusion summoned my own Rank 12 Champion: Lemures, the Civ-Killing Fortress!”

He was right about the latter part; the colossal machine Kronos had forged with his Miracle was a most monstrous entity.

Future Starship Hermocrates had already been a massive warship, but its fusion with Advanced Machine Emperor had transformed it even further. It had nearly doubled in size until it could cast an entire town in its shadow when passing overhead. Its central mast-tower had transformed into the upper torso of a black, mechanical robot armed to the teeth with cannon fingers, missile-launching battery shoulders, and a single cyclopean eye shining with otherworldly light. 

Worse, it had flown up to such a high altitude that it could likely bombard the armies below without risking itself. 

“It will wipe you all out once and for all,” Kronos boasted, “And unlike your Champion, mine obeys orders!” 

“He’s not wrong, Wepy,” Ganesha said with a worried voice. “A single dragon’s ego is colossal, but three of them fused together? There’s no way the zmey will listen to you.”

“It won’t listen to me,” Wepwawet conceded, though he had already anticipated this problem. “Only a true princess with an iron will can guide this monster.”

And what would you know, his zmey was holding one in their hand.

“I now spend twelve of my remaining mana to cast Underworld Escape!” Wepwawet played his card and put all of his faith in his Champion. “Return to me, my Victoire!”

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What did Goreville say about death again? That it felt like a dream? 

If so, this was Victoire’s worst awakening in her entire life. She woke up with her body pressing against coal-hot scales, her body feeling hot and sweaty all over. She wanted to throw up, and the wind blowing in her face didn’t help matters. 

“We can’t be a zmey!” Insupportable’s familiar and all too grating voice complained above Victoire. “It just… it cannot be!”

Was that… was that fear she heard in his voice? Victoire gained the strength to look up and gasped in shock. 

She was still in a dragon’s palm as far as she could tell, but rather than being held by Glatisant or Insupportable, the two had apparently fused with Soumis into one giant reptilian abomination. Their three heads were joined onto one body like a hydra, except that they apparently retained their individual personalities from the way they argued between each other. 

“We aren’t a zmey,” Glatisant’s head said reassuringly. “We are a tri-headed dragon. That is a very important and clear distinction.” 

“How can you prove it?!” Insupportable all but begged her. 

“Zmey are inbred, tri-headed dragons are unrelated.”

“Soumis is so happy to have his first threesome,” Soumis’ head said with a shiver of pleasure. “Soumis feels complete…”

“I admit that being sandwiched between two younger males is a new experience for me,” Glatisant replied. “A pleasant one too…”

Insupportable’s head squinted at the others. “If we lay eggs in this state… would the dragonlings be born with three heads too? Wouldn’t that make them zmeys?”

What the… did they… did they fuse? Victoire shook her head and tried to contact her god. “How long was I dead?!”

“Less than an hour,” Lord Wepwawet replied calmly, which shocked Victoire. “The situation has changed a lot. Kronos’ virus decimated us, but we’ve destroyed one of his ships and are turning things around.”

“Why did you raise me in particular? I thought you could only do that once per day, so why not–” Victoire’s thought process came to an abrupt halt as she looked up to the three scaled children arguing above her. “No…”

“I’m sorry, but there’s no other way,” Wepwawet apologized. "I need you to take charge of those three and go destroy Kronos’ flying fortress. All they do is argue rather than fight, and we have a battle to win.”

Would Victoire have signed on as a Champion if she had known her role would involve becoming a glorified dragon handler? Probably yes, out of duty, but she would have complained more!

Swallowing her pride and annoyance, Victoire rose to her feet and pointed her spear at the three heads. “Hey!” she called out to the dragons and finally caused them to acknowledge her presence. “Stop wasting time!”

“Mistress, you’re alive!” Soumis rejoiced.

“Of course Minion Wepwawet would see the wisdom of preserving an endangered species,” Glatisant added with a happy nod. “I ought to make him my Chief of Staff. He has more than earned the honor.”

“Her revival does not invalidate my fury at these titans’ assault on princessness!” Insupportable complained. “Revenge shall be ours!”

“I believe we are all in agreement,” Glatisant replied.

“Yes!” Soumis’ head grabbed Victoire by her cloak, then gently began to lift her up while speaking through his closed mouth. “Mishtresh can ride on our backshs!”

“Wait!” Glatisant protested as Soumis’ head moved Victoire above them. “Soumis, think carefully about this!”

“I did not consent to th–” Insupportable stopped mid-sentence the moment Victoire landed on the fused dragon’s back, his head letting out a gasp of sudden pleasure. “Oh… oh…”

“My, that…” Glatisant began to hyperventilate. “That… that hits the spot…”

Victoire wished she was dead again. At least the saddle she used to ride Soumis remained in place and intact in spite of the fusion, so she managed to attach herself without risking plummeting into the void below. 

“See, see?” Soumis moved his chin up and down so fast his movements whipped up a faint wind. “Soumis was right! To bear the weight of princessness is the ultimate pleasure!”

“That… that is…” Insupportable wanted to argue, but he instead continued to make weird moaning noises. “That’s… oh…”

“Stop it!” Victoire snapped at the dragons, her spear pointed at the enormous machine-ship above them. That fortress had begun to rain projectiles upon the world below, each resulting in an explosion upon hitting the ground. “Focus! We need to take that thing down from the sky!”

“She’s… she’s right,” Glatisant said in-between moans, “We must… protect the princesses of the world!”

“Soumis will guide you!” Soumis said upon taking the lead, largely because he was the only one of them capable of focusing right now. “Together!”

Victoire held on tightly to the fused dragon as they flew upward at a speed greater than anything Soumis could have achieved on his own before. They quickly ascended through the clouds above, with Kronos’ fortress firing what appeared to be fire-propelled metal arrows at them in response. 

“Attack!” Victoire ordered.

Her three dragon heads opened their mouths all at once, and unleashed destruction across the sky. 

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It was extremely rare for a Champion’s very essence to change.

Such a rare event usually happened when a unit evolved into a stronger form, like a larva transforming into a cocoon and then a mighty insect monster, though it could also happen when they achieved extraordinary feats. A normal Champion could become a Commander, for example, if they gained the power and will required to bend mana to their will. 

It seemed Victoire’s time around dragons had rubbed off on her, whether she liked it or not. 

Victoire Fleuret, Blade of Winter, has become Victoire Fleuret, The Dragon Master. Her Innate Perk has changed from Outlander to Dragonlord.

Dragonlord: Take no penalties from Terrain and Weather effects. You can ride a Dragon creature without splitting your attention, allowing you to attack at the same time, and you cannot be dismounted by force. Buffs and debuffs affecting you spread to your Dragon mount. 

Riding a Rank 12 near-divine dragon to battle did that to a woman. 

Wepwawet concluded his turn with the knowledge that his gamble had paid off. Victoire and her new mount absolutely decimated the missiles Kronos’ Lemures fired at her. Each head fired their own elemental breath, but with far greater potency than what they could achieve individually. Insupportable’s blizzard, Soumis’ inferno, and Glatisant’s thunderstorm set the heavens alight and caused explosions to ripple across the sky. It was a great and cataclysmic duel that would rival Wepwawet’s own clash with Whiro’s Avatar.

The situation on the ground was mixed. Artemis’ followers and Goreville’s troops had completed the destruction of Kronos’ ark and torn apart his mechanical beasts, leaving him with no way to replenish his army’s strength. Their ground forces had begun to move north to claim any Altar location in their way, while Artemis’ remaining flyers were ascending upward to eventually join up with Victoire. 

On the other end of the board, Kronos’ Dreadnought continued to down one mimicship after another from miles away thanks to its enormous long-range cannons. Wepwawet’s fleet had been forced to spread out in an attempt to avoid complete annihilation. However, the magmorian army under Sultana Alexandrite and Ganesha’s giants were moving to trap the Dreadnought in a pincer maneuver, forcing the battleship to leave its current position atop a hill in a quick retreat to the east. 

Kronos’ Dreadnought can only fire in one direction at time, Wepwawet realized. It can either strike my fleet or hinder our ground troops’ advance towards it, but not both. This could be our chance to reinforce Victoire.

He glanced at Ganesha, who had received eleven mana from his mana surge. His friend immediately guessed what was on his mind. 

“Send them up,” he said. “My troops have it, and taking down Kronos’ Idol is our priority.”

“You’re sure?” Wepwawet asked. “My fleet won’t be able to provide air support for you.”

“I’ll create an opening,” Ganesha reassured him before playing a card of his own. “I set a Rank 5 Prophecy and activate my Power Dice! Now I’ll roll a dice, and my Champions will gain a damage boost equal to the result for one minute!”

Kronos grunted in annoyance as Ganesha rolled a four and a five on his second try. Realizing what his friend had in mind, Wepwawet ordered his remaining ships—including the Expensive—to abandon their current pursuit and take altitude to strike at Lemures. 

Kronos’ Dreadnought pointed its cannons at the fleet to shoot them down… only to drive away as a rain of tree-sized arrows nearly skewered it. 

“What?!” Kronos glared at Ganesha’s army. Thanks to the elephant god’s terrain-ignoring Doctrine, his surviving giant archers had quickly taken position atop various hills and had begun to fire at the Dreadnought across the board. “How can they reach my Critias?! They’re still over three miles away!”

“Thanks to my Power Dice’s damage bonus!” Ganesha replied with a chuckle. He sounded quite pleased that his strategy worked. “Since my Champions’ power has increased, their projectiles ignore air resistance better and reach farther!”

Power Dice only worked for a minute, but their bombardment was enough to distract Present Dreadnought Critias at a critical juncture. Wepwawet’s remaining fleet managed to fly out of its firing range on their way to Lemures.

Wepwawet didn’t need to be a god of strategy to see the tide had turned. Lemures was powerful and unbothered by ground troops, but it was facing a Champion of equal power that would soon be backed up by flying reinforcements. His Dreadnought would soon be cornered too, leaving Kronos with no anti-air defense remaining. 

Kronos could still turn things around with the right Miracle, and his aging-inducing Providence would make destroying his Idol difficult, but his odds of victory had taken a hit. 

“I draw!” Kronos shouted as his turn came up. Although he gained seventeen mana from his surge, the look on his face when he drew his card didn’t exactly scream confidence. His annoyed expression alleviated when he checked his hand, which let him regain some confidence. “I pay two mana to keep Machinemorph in play and then cast the Rank 6 Artifact Timebox. This lets me remove a card from my deck and allows me to add it to my hand at the beginning of my next turn!”

Wepwawet knew the card the old titan had picked before it even appeared in front of them: the Divine Avatar. The idea of Kronos adding that card to his hand on his next turn was a worrisome prospect, but also a show of desperation. The titan was concerned his Lemures couldn’t protect his Idol on its own for long, and he lacked the mana reserve to make full use of the Miracle anyway. 

“Feeling the pressure, old man?” Artemis taunted him. “The future is now, and there’s only defeat for you!”

“The only future that awaits you is the kitchen sink, woman!” Kronos snarled back as he played a second card. “I’m sending you back to your household! I play the Rank 10 Artifact Apocalypse Arrow!”

Wepwawet’s eyes widened as he recognized the name from among Miss Athena’s list of banned cards made playable in the current System. He looked at each of his allies’ home bases, and quickly confirmed that none of them had the defenses required to stop the incoming attack. 

“One of us…” Wepwawet grit his teeth. “One of us is about to lose.”

“What?!” Artemis choked in outrage, while Ganesha had grown eerily quiet. “Why?! What does his Miracle d—” Then she remembered. "Oh..."

Their death sentence materialized right above Lemures in the shape of a great, technologically advanced missile the size of a castle tower. It floated above the fortress like an arrow waiting for a target. 

“Yes, it…” Wepwawet gulped. “Summons a nuclear warhead to aim at a given target at hypersonic speed.”

“You’re damn right,” Kronos said with gleeful malice. “And guess which place I’m choosing for ground zero?”

He raised his finger and pointed at a horrified Artemis. 

“I pick your Idol, my granddaughter!”

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A/N: we're reaching the end of this arc. Hope you've enjoyed it ;)