Board & Conquest 136: Fusion Games

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Never since Whiro had Wepwawet’s forces taken such a hit.

Only a few of his Humanoid Champions had survived the Miracle. Alpine and Mistouffe managed to take antidotes in time; Rapoleon and his wererats were immune to Disease by their very nature; Goreville’s torc-powered transformation briefly removed the Humanoid typing while he was in wolf form, and Grudu lacked it entirely, so they avoided the virus; Cynisca’s innate disease resistance let her shrug it off, though Jarlack failed to do so. 

Everyone else perished. 

Even Victoire.

Her soul floated back to him alongside Filou’s, Lourson’s, and a dozen others. Their spirits floated around him, waiting for Underworld Escape to bring them back to the land of the living or for Kronos to devour them all should he win. 

The demise of his Champions was only the tip of the bloody iceberg. Wepwawet could revive them, given time and mana, but his other mortal followers had no such luck. Half his giants had been decimated, and a much larger number of his werelings had suffered the same fate. Thousands of people had perished and would not return, leaving weeping and devastated families behind. The long-term demographic, economic, and cultural impact would be tremendous.

And that was just his civilization. He only had to take a look at Ganesha and Artemis’ grief-stricken faces and devastated board states to tell that they had taken big hits too. Ganesha’s giants were hardy enough that a good half of them could simply shrug off the divine bioweapon, but that still meant the other half had been decimated, and a large amount of Artemis’ werescales had perished. 

“Why the long faces?” Kronos taunted them. “You’ve got dirt in your eyes?”

Wepwawet’s anger swelled with cold fury. “You’ll pay for this, I swear!”

“How can you find this funny?!” Ganesha’s voice wavered with heartbreak. “So many died…”

“I’ll put an arrow right in your eye,” Artemis replied, her teeth gritting together. “I promise you that, Grandpa.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, boygirl,” Kronos replied as he played another Miracle. “Since I don’t have enough mana left to bring out the big guns yet, I’ll go easy on you youngsters by casting my rank 5 Doctrine Machinemorph.” 

Past Ark Timaeus had spawned six ranks worth of animals at the end of each turn so far, which resulted in dozens of beasts surrounding it. Each of them underwent a sudden and unexpected transformation as liquid metal coated their skin and fur. Veins turned into circuits, eyes into silicate glass, teeth and claws into razors. The ark’s motley collection of dinosaurs, monsters, megafauna, and wild beasts transformed into a pack of mechanical abominations.

“Machinemorph gives all my units the Artificial type, which allows them to benefit from my Advanced Machine Emperor’s buff!” Kronos boasted. “I’ve freed them from their weak flesh and perfected them into elegant machines!”

“An army with no loyalty nor spirit, only programming,” Ganesha countered.

“An army with no fear nor doubt, both of which your mortals will show you soon!” Kronos shrugged. “I set a Rank 3 Prophecy and conclude my turn.”

Wepwawet scowled, but took some solace in the fact that Kronos’ cruelty might have been an error on his part. While it made sense to target the most numerous unit type on the board, it would have been far wiser to wipe out the most dangerous one. Kaijus, monsters… and a certain group of flying reptiles his actions had only incensed. 

“Barbarian!” Glatisant roared as she gently cradled Victoire’s body in her hand, her outraged voice echoing with booming thunder. “Murderer! Princessbane! Her species is endangered!”

“In the Elder Wyrm’s name, I shall freeze you for eons!” Insupportable roared in agreement as the two furious dragons flew straight towards Past Ark Timaeus faster than the wind could blow. “Even your wealth is unfit for a dragon’s hoard!”

Had there ever been a more scathing insult in the history of wyrmkind?

All your dragons are fired up with righteous rage and have received a stat boost!

Wepwawet closed his eyes as he sensed the prayers of his surviving followers and Champions reaching out to his spirit, sending prayers for the fallen, begging him to raise their allies from the dead, or demanding answers for the death toll. 

“My father died!” “Lord Wepwawet, the corpses…” “Why are you sending us this ordeal?!” “Half our team is down, what do we do?!” “We’re all going to die!!!!!”

There were so many of them that he could hardly filter them out while also focusing on the board. Wepwawet focused and steeled himself. 

“My children.”

His voice reached all of his followers through telepathy, his solemn tone silencing them all. 

“The enemy has used his foul magic to slay many of our own, and though we did everything in our power, my fellow gods and I could not stop it in time,” Wepwawet replied earnestly. “My heart weeps with you, but take solace in the fact that their souls are safe with me.”

It was… well, a white lie. His Champions’ souls were within his grasp, but his followers would reincarnate back into Elphion should they win. Otherwise… Wepwawet didn’t even want to think about it. 

“But we have faced worse together!” Wepwawet declared with sincerity. “We’ve demolished Whiro and cleaned his poisoned sea from the face of Elphion! We’ve exterminated the Hive, defeated the wicked Hastur, and crossed the gulf of space to conquer the moooon! And the reason how we did so is the same reason our enemy seeks to kill you today: we don’t back down!”

They had survived three Incursions, and they would win this one too.

“All we face today is fear and cowardice!” Wepwawet declared, his voice carrying through the hearts of hundreds. “Whereas we gods believe in you, the titans fear your potential! Kronos knows you can build wonders that will survive the test of time, push beyond the impossible, and pull off miracles of your own, and it scares him! Will you let him break your spirit?! Or will you show him his fears are true?!”

One by one, he could feel spirits bolstered by his words through the divine connection he shared with his followers. They broke through the cloud of fear and uncertainty because Wepwawet believed in them himself. He used to pretend to be confident when he first arrived on Elphion, relying on preformatted speeches and fighting only to impress his father, but two years leading his civilization had steeled his resolve. 

He would fight with his people to the bitter end.

“So rise and push forward!” Wepwawet ordered his troops. “Your deceased friends and kinsmen look on from the heavens! They thirst for victory! Let us give it to them!”

A flow of responses followed, with the first being Goreville’s enthusiastic howl and then a flow of responses from various Champions. “Glory to Verglane!” “My genius will carry us to victory!” “You’ve heard him, tighten the ranks and let’s push forward!” “Crush them!”

Their resolve warmed Wepwawet’s heart. 

Kronos glared at the board, as various armies resumed their marches. “Ugh, why aren’t your mortals cowering in fear? I swear, it’s like a coin toss whether they give up or keep on pointlessly fighting!”

“Because you didn’t make our mortals scared, you made them angry,” Artemis replied icily once her turn came up. “With your damn pension plan is finally down and my soldiers claimed an Altar, so I get two surges! Eight mana!”

“Eight points?” Kronos sneered. “What are you going to do with them, summon a toothpick?”

Artemis glared at her grandfather. “Tiamat didn’t tell you about my Providence?”

“Of course she di–” Kronos froze, his eyes darting to the board as he suddenly realized his colossal mistake. “No way…”

“I was holding out since you fielded beasts and other time-warped creatures, but since you just turned all of them into the exact same type, I can finally let loose!” Artemis grabbed a card off her hand. “First, I play the Rank 6 Shaman Protection Miracle, which grants all my Champions a temporary stat bonus proportional to the number of dead Champion souls I have stored! And thanks to you killing seventeen of them, that’s quite a lot! Then I activate my Providence, Lady of the Hunt! It lets me select a unit type and grant all of my followers’ weapons a Slayer effect against them for the rest of the day!”

She pointed a finger at Kronos.

“I pick Artificial.”

Kronos’ expression was worth a thousand words. 

—----

There were only three crimes a dragon could not forgive.

The first and greatest of all offenses was to steal from a dragon’s hoard. Such a devious, immoral act only warranted death and immediate devouring. 

The second offense was for a minion to betray their beloved dragon master. Lesser creatures owed their wyrm superior their loyalty in return for protection—and the dragon’s tolerance of their existence—so to violate this sacred bond was a sin against the Elder Wyrm. 

The third, and perhaps the most ignominious, was to slay a princess. To massacre such a precious, rare, and endangered species was the height of cruelty and selfishness. A dragon could at least understand the appeal of stealing from their hoard—their wealth was well and truly precious after all—but what could anyone hope to gain from slaying such a pure creature? 

Twice those so-called Titans had slain a princess on Insupportable’s watch; the latter of which he had graciously loaned to that weirdo Soumis after coveting her for years. 

There would not be a third.

Minion Wepwawet was right. These titans were right to fear his kind! 

And so he flew alongside Glatisant towards the nearest of the titan ships, some wooden boat stranded in the middle of a wasteland to the south. A small group of animal-shaped golems protected it under the purview of a colossal machine akin to a giant Igor. Insupportable loathed these creatures the most, since they were entirely inedible. Destroying them would be a chore. 

Thankfully, the minions were already cleaning the path forward for them.

Minion Artemis’ soldiers had already begun to storm the area in the form of a screaming tide of scaly and fleshy beasts. Great lizards with gloved claws, krakens with swords in each of their eight arms, and birds with golden beaks that left Insupportable salivating fought with the machines. Steel blades clashed with bone claws in a fearsome storm of fury. Howling ghosts flew among them, taking on hits meant for their living allies as if they were solid and guiding their paws. The giant golem was engaged in a brawl with an equally large, fire-breathing saurian—–of course the strongest minion present would be the most dragonly—–while a colossal worm gnawed at its metal leg. 

They were doing rather well for minions, slicing through metal as if it were flesh and exposing wires leaking oil beneath. Princess Victoire’s death had clearly motivated them as much as their dragon masters, granting them new reserves of strength and willpower. Their blows tore the enemy apart with ease and enemy projectiles bounced off their bodies in turn. If only they could be so competent all the time rather than during emergencies…

Minion Goreville and a few others had joined the carnage too, with the werewolf tearing apart a steel dog with his bare fangs while his undead allies rusted other machines away with their spells. 

Unfortunately, none of them could move closer to the ark than a handful of miles, or else that vile princesskiller Kronos’ magic would age them to dust… but such frailty did not apply to dragonkind. 

“Victory for Insupportable!” the dragon roared as he entered the fray and froze machine-birds deranged enough to get in his way. They all turned to ice and crashed under their own weight onto the ground below. The soft noise of their impacts was so sweet. 

“This is divine judgment for the sin of princesskilling!” Glatisant added upon gathering power in her gullet. “The lightning of justice!”

She fired a torrent of lightning from her maw and set the ark on fire. 

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The tide was turning. 

As Wepwawet suspected, Kronos had made a huge blunder by turning all his troops into Artificial creatures. The power boost he hoped to grant them through his Advanced Machine Emperor didn’t compensate for their newfound vulnerability to Artemis’ followers. They were simply tearing through the opposition, and Glatisant was steadily setting Past Ark Timaeus on fire one lightning bolt at a time. The stranded ship couldn’t move away nor summon enough defenders fast enough to save itself, and Kronos’ Providence couldn’t save it from dragons since aging them would only make them grow bigger and stronger.   

The first member of the Three Ship Alliance would soon be scuttled, leaving Kronos with no way to replenish his troops. 

“My turn!” Wepwawet declared as he received no less than twenty mana points from his Idol and the five Altars claimed on the board. The card he drew was so good that he immediately placed it on the board. “I first set a Rank 1 Prophecy!”

Now that was done, Wepwawet considered what to do next. He had enough mana to cast Underworld Escape or The Divine Avatar, but the former could only revive one Champion from all those who had perished, and he lacked the juice to maintain the latter for more than one turn. His Animal Kingdom was useless now that Kronos transformed all his creatures into Artificial ones, and the rest of his hand wouldn’t grant any tactical advantage at the moment. 

Insupportable and the others have the south well in hand, so perhaps I should support the other fronts. Wepwawet glanced at the rest of the board. Rapoleon and his crew were helping Soumis heal from his wounds and wake up from being knocked out, whereas his troops in the north were being bombarded from afar by Kronos’ Present Dreadnought Critias. It had already downed two mimicships from miles away, though Ganesha’s remaining troops were moving to flank it. If we can destroy that one too, that’ll leave only Future Starship Hermocrates and Kronos’ Idol to deal with. 

“I activate my set Prophecy!” Kronos suddenly shouted, his tone now noticeably infuriated rather than smug. “Emergency Fusion!”

Wepwawet’s head perked up in surprise. “What?!”

“This Miracle lets me fuse two or more of my creatures of the same type on the board into a single one!” Kronos waved his hand at the board. “I fuse my Advanced Machine Emperor and Future Starship Hermocrates to summon my ultimate weapon!” 

His Advanced Machine Emperor, which was being stomped to death under the foot of Artemis’ Mesozoic Emperor, turned to light that flew upward towards the board’s upper atmosphere where Future Starship Hermocrates had retreated. The two joined and began to shine, their pieces merging into a singular war machine. 

And as they did, a mad idea crossed Wepwawet’s mind. A winning combo as insane as it was brilliant, and that Kronos would never see coming.  

“Behold your doom!” Kronos boasted upon regaining his confidence as his creature took form. “Lemures–”

“I activate the Prophecy I just set, Fraudulent Miracle!” Wepwawet declared hurriedly. “This lets me copy one of your Miracles by paying its price!”

“Yes!” Artemis pumped her fist in triumph. “If you fuse your godslaying slime with that sentient ship of yours, they can take the fight directly to Hermocrates!”

“The creatures have to be of the same type, so it won’t work on those two…” Wepwawet chuckled wickedly. “But my three most powerful Champions just happen to share one.”

All other gods present, including his opponent and teammates, stared at him as if he had completely lost his mind, which he just might have.

“Wepy,” Artemis whispered, her skin pale. “Please, think this through…”

“Insanity,” Kronos said, his voice shaking. “You won’t be able to control that thing…”

“Wepy…” Ganesha muttered, his eyes widening in horror. “Y-you don’t mean…”

“That’s right!” Wepwawet grinned ear to ear as he uttered words that would be remembered forever in the Nexus, for good or ill. “I fuse my three dragons together!”

And the titans would soon learn despair. 

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