Board & Conquest 132: The Fourth Incursion

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The Fourth Incursion was minutes away, and Wepwawet finally finished the mass rank-up of his Champions. 

He didn’t have the time to let them think too much about the paths available to them, considering the threat at hand, so he simply let them progress further in their best Class to ensure maximum consistency. Most of his Champions simply received enhancements of their base Perks, like Victoire’s Weaponmaster III improving her damage from +5 to +8… with one exception. 

Slimon, the First Ooze, has Ranked-Up in Godslayer! +5 STR, +3 AGI, +5 VIT, +5 SKI, +3 MAG, +4 INT, +4 CHA, +4 LCK! He has earned the Divine Scourge I Perk!

Divine Scourge I: You can disrupt or shrug off any Miracle whose Rank is equal to or lower than your Champion Rank at will. You need to be affected by the Miracle or in range of its effect to disrupt it. 

“Yes, yes!” The moans coming out of Slimon reminded Wepwawet of… something else… “I feel the power coursing through me!”

“I can see that,” Wepwawet commented. Godslayer had stat growths even better than that of a dragon on top of a rather powerful Perk. Wepwawet decided to overwrite Failure Tolerance II with Divine Scourge I, since taking reduced damage from one’s own failed inventions was a niche ability and redundant with Wepwawet’s own healing and resurrection Miracles. “Go board a mimicship.”

“Shouldn’t I be charm—I mean, escorting Princess Treasure?” Slimon replied through telepathy. 

“I may need you to get into the fray quickly, either to disrupt the enemy’s machinery or their Miracles, so you’ll have to stay mobile,” Wepwawet explained. “Igor will be with you, so you can boast to him all you want.”

“It’s not boasting, it’s stating the facts!” Slimon replied with unbearable pride. “I am a boneless god of war, and I have the undeniable evidence to prove it now!”

“Please don’t turn into a dragon, I already have enough egos to manage,” Wepwawet replied before contacting Victoire. “Are we ready?”

“As ready as we can be,” his favorite Champion replied with a groan. “And I hate you.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I do now! Why did you assign me not one, not two, but all three of our dragons?!”

“Because they’re our strongest attack force and won’t take orders from anyone else. It is a sacrifice I am willing to make.” Wepwawet let out a sigh. “Good luck, Victoire. This will be our most difficult battle yet, but… I have faith in you and the others.”

They would fight together to the bitter end, one way or another.

Wepwawet rejoined his two teammates in their private Influence chat. Ganesha was meditating in an attempt to calm his nerves while Artemis obsessively rechecked her cards. 

“They’re not going to change no matter how many times you look at them, Arty,” Wepwawet teased his girlfriend.

“Yes, go on, rub it in,” Artemis pouted. “Your extra deck is such a cheat.”

Wepwawet couldn’t exactly deny it. He had switched out most of his utility Revelations for his extra deck Miracles, creating a pretty consistent card combination. His current deck was something he could have seen himself playing outside of Elphion. 

“You’ll get one once we manage to turn one of your Kaijus into a god,” Wepwawet replied, before sensing unease from his girlfriend. “We’re going to beat him, Arty.”

“Of course we are,” Artemis replied, hiding her nervousness behind a mask of confidence. “I would never live with myself if I let that creep walk all over us.”

Wepwawet studied his girlfriend’s expression, and he quickly realized it wasn’t for them that she worried the most for. “Our Champions will make it,” he comforted her. “He’s not going to eat their souls. I would rather blow up both Kronos’ Idol and my own with Dragonstar rather than let him have them.”

“Don’t you dare do that!” she threatened him. “No self-sacrificing play! We all pull through or not at all!”

“You don’t want to anger her, Wepy,” Ganesha mused as he ended his meditation, now sounding far more relaxed and focused. “You should know that, you live with her.”

“Yes, I do, thanks to your dirty scheming,” Wepwawet replied with a smile, trying to portray an air of confidence for his teammates’ sake. “It’s the first time we will all be fighting together since our Nexus days.”

“I almost pity that boomer creep,” Artemis said, pumping her fist. “Let’s go!”

The three teammates nodded at each other and then entered the rift. Their avatars materialized into a vast expanse of purple light pulsating with dark particles, the images of pasts that never were and possible futures flashing across the infinite expanse between time and nothingness. 

“Would you look at that?” a mocking cackle echoed across the void. “It’s my ‘progressive’ granddaughter and her two token minority friends!”

Kronos, deposed king of the Olympians and Reaper of Time, materialized in front of them.

Wepwawet had already received his description from Artemis and the previous team, but he had to admit that the ancient Titan was rather a different beast than Whiro and Hastur. Whereas the former had been a monstrous beast and the latter a mysterious entity cloaked in yellow, Kronos looked almost like a normal Greek god at first glance. He was tall and imposing like his son Zeus, with bulging muscles, a long, wizened white beard, was wearing a blue himation mantle, and an old metal crown. 

However, the impression only lasted for a second. His skin was a pale shade of gray, his sunken eyes a pair of white stars floating in darkness, and his gaping mouth a toothless black hole swallowing light and matter alike. Wepwawet could sense the hunger at the titan’s very core, his overwhelming urge to devour life. His own children had spent so many centuries trapped in his stomach…

“Have you looked at the way you dress, my granddaughter? Do you take yourself for a boy?” Kronos sneered with all of his ancient disdain, his jaw creaking like rusted metal. “Cover your legs, whore!”

Artemis spat at his feet. “I dress however I want, you old crusty bastard!”

“Your only saving grace is that you kept your virginity for marriage,” Kronos said contemptuously before glancing at Wepwawet. “You should bring her to heel after marrying her. She’ll forget who she is the moment she leaves the kitchen.”

“Screw you!” Wepwawet snapped angrily. “Don’t talk to my girlfriend like this!”

“She’s your granddaughter!” Ganesha protested, the usually calm elephant god torn between anger and sheer disbelief at Kronos’ attitude. “This may be an official B&C match between our factions, but this is no excuse to insult her!”

“You shut your mouth, you tandoori chicken seller!” Kronos replied with contempt. “I speak to her however I want! Her entire lineage sprang from these mighty loins of mine; she’s my property! The wolfhead owes me a proper tribute for the right of bedding her, and I’ll have my due!”

Wepwawet quickly understood why the gods of Olympus had overthrown this bastard. Whiro was monstrous and Hastur almost alien, but Kronos was something even worse: an old, unsufferable douche. 

Artemis scowled, her gaze hardened with pure hatred. “I’m going to demolish you,” she said, very calmly, “I’m going to send you back to that retirement home down in Tartarus just like Dad did.”

“I would like to see that, you insolent little dyke! I’ll eat you for dinner like I did your uncles and aunts!” Kronos waved his hand and summoned the board. “Duel!”

Victory condition selected: Destroy the enemy’s Idol!

Kronos carved a thirty by thirty miles wide board for them to play on, ripping out each players’ Idol, capital, and countryside away from Elphion to form their side of it. Wepwawet’s Narc and its icy fortifications materialized between a vast lake containing Artemis’ aptly named Village-Turtle, her werescale capital carried on the giant turtle’s back. Lands north of Wepwawet’s position transformed into a rocky valley full of enormous stone, marble, and golden buildings fit for giants, with Ganesha’s Idol looming atop the tallest of five mountains surrounding it. This was Megaloria’s legendary capital of Cyclopea, Elphion’s stronghold of greed. 

The three cities took up the left side of the board, while Kronos’ Idol—depicting him as a conqueror with his fist raised to the sky—materialized on the far right. Over two dozen miles of ravines and rocky wasteland separated them, with a monstrous, gaping rift in the fabric of space and time floating in the middle of it like an open maw.

“You know the rules, kids, I get to play the Timecrash Rift Rank 12 Animism for free, which will let me randomly summon one creature per turn for free, at the cost of them being sent back into the space rift after a certain amount of time!” Kronos boasted as their decks formed and shuffled. “The past and future bend to my will!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Wepwawet replied dismissively as they all drew their starting hands. His was quite the winning combination: Antimagic Lock, Animal Kingdom, Ruin Excavation, Oath of Winter, and the Divine Avatar.

It’s the second time I drew the Divine Avatar with a starting hand, Wepwawet mused. Unfortunately, unlike the battle with Hastur, the Idol format meant that all challengers started with an empty mana reserve. I don’t have enough juice to cast or even maintain it, but if I can store enough up…

Wepwawet took a look at the board and counted a total of seventeen unclaimed mana loci that could be transformed into Altars, two of them being a few miles away from his fortifications. Ganesha was also close to one, but Artemis had landed far away from any. Kronos was in position to claim a few, too, if he managed to summon a Commander. The distance between the Idols was likely too wide for a blitzkrieg, too…

Since he had Panopticon of Terror on the field, he also took a moment to check everyone's hands, including Kronos: Atlantean Golem, Chaos Gear, Chimeric Fusion, Emergency Budget and Pyramid Pension Plan. Half of them he recognized from Epona's debrief, but the last two were unknown. He was reading their descriptions when hostilities began.

“I’ll take the first turn,” Kronos said as he drew a card, cackling upon seeing it. Three mana surges, one for each opponent, filled his mana reserve with fourteen points. “Now, let’s see what creature will answer my call!”

The Timecrash Rift bellowed with a crackling sound, and the image of an icy wasteland briefly flashed inside its event horizon. The spacetime fissure vomited out a star of light that landed in the middle of the board and swiftly materialized into a colossal, forty-five foot tall woolly mammoth roaring to the heavens. A phantom counter showing the number 6 floated above its head. 

“My Rank 5 Ice Age Mammoth will stay for a total of six turns and return to the rift after that, but not as a creature of flesh and blood!” Kronos chuckled. “I use my Providence to age it up into the Rank 6 Golden Skemammoth!”

The mammoth’s roar turned into a wail of agony as time itself bent to Kronos’ will, rotting its flesh in seconds and exposing golden bones beneath. Centuries flew by in seconds and transformed the creature into a gilded skeleton with crimson stars glowing in its empty eye sockets.  

“And now, younglings, it’s spanking time!” Kronos immediately played the card he had just drawn; the one that Wepwawet had hoped he wouldn't be able to get anytime soon. “I cast the Rank 12 Three Ships Alliance Miracle, which lets me summon three Rank 10 Commander Artifact-Creatures: Past Ark Timaeus, Present Dreadnought Critias, and Future Starship Hermocrates!” 

I knew it, Wepwawet cursed as Kronos’ idol glowed with otherworldly energies. Goodbye blitzkrieg, hello marathon. 

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Victoire assessed the wasteland from atop Soumis’ back. 

The so-called ‘Superelite Dragon Squad’—she didn’t pick the name—was ready to take off from atop Castle Neigebleue’s tallest tower. Their rookery gave Victoire a perfect view of the region, including the Megalorian city to the north and the Kaiju-filled lake hosting Village-Turtle to the south. She should have felt reassured at the thought of having giants and colossal Kaijus to assist her in today’s battle, but the sight of the Titan Idol in the distance reminded her too much of Beelzebub raining down destruction across Lune. 

“That sounds very far-fetched,” Glatisant told Insupportable. The two dragons had been arguing about something both surprising and unbelievable for the last five minutes. 

“I told you, I saw the Elder Wyrm, greeting me into her embrace,” Insupportable replied, his tone unusually low. Although his body had recovered from the wounds Beelzebub inflicted, his spirit remained shaken. He had had Bernard sing his praises since he woke up from his coma to bolster his wounded ego, but it wasn’t enough.  “I… I think I was on the verge of death.”

“But do you have any empirical evidence to support this theory?” Glatisant replied with skepticism. “Can you name a single, non-deformed dragon who has ever suffered from the death affliction?”

“Are you seriously arguing whether or not dragons are mortal?” Victoire asked in utter disbelief. 

“That is the thing, what is there to argue about?” Glatisant replied with a shrug. “We dragons cannot die.”

“Y-yes, mistress, death is for minions, not for us,” Soumis said. “Or for zmey.”

“Even if we could suffer from this death affliction, Chief of Staff Wepwawet would cure us as he did with the other minions,” Glatisant argued. “This vision was simply the result of a concussion-induced hallucination, young Insupportable.”

Insupportable didn’t look all that convinced, and Victoire didn’t have the time or will to involve herself in the pointless debate. The Titan Idol in the distance had begun to glow within a minute of its appearance. A bright flash illuminated the wasteland, forcing Victoire to raise her hand to protect her eyes. 

When she lowered her arm, three colossal ships had taken the Idol’s place.

Each of them were widely different. One resembled an ancient wooden galley ship, albeit so huge she could see it from miles away, with two ghastly heads on two sterns, two towers at the back, and dozens of oars on each side. The lack of water thankfully left it stranded on the waterless ground like a husk.

Victoire couldn’t say the same for the other two. The second vessel was a mechanical vessel a bit longer than its counterpart, with great chimneys spewing out steam on its back, small cannons on the sides, and an enormous turret at the front. Two continuous tracks, the length of city blocks, carried it forward.   

It was the third and final ship she found most impressive, and awfully familiar. A black, triangular floating starship defying gravity itself, the machine’s surface so smooth it seemed to absorb all light cast upon it. A colossal, cross-shaped tower stood on its deck with a crimson crystal at its center, glowing with otherworldly energy. It immediately took to the sky and swiftly began to gain altitude. 

A terrifying fleet had arisen to match their own. 

Victoire clenched her teeth and contacted her god. “Your orders?” 

“Claim as many Altars as you can,” Wepwawet replied grimly. Mimicships had already taken flight beyond Narc’s fortifications and flew across the wasteland. “As fast as you can.”

“You’ve heard Lord Wepwawet!” Victoire raised her spear, with the might of three dragons at her back. “Forward!”

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A/N: yes, Kronos is kinda behind the times ;)