Board & Conquest 129: Time & Again

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This day would be immortalized in the Elphion’s hall of fame, for it bore witness to a historical event. 

A slime had beaten a god. 

Wepwawet witnessed the entire collision through Slimon’s eyes right before his demise in the fiery explosion that consumed his ship and Beelzebub’s face alike. He sensed his Champion’s soul return to him right as the Idol shattered and permanently altered the balance of mana in the world. A ripple coursed through the weave of magic that bound the planet’s leylines together, shattering a network of hidden Altars that now found themselves bereft of a centralized Idol. 

A great weight was lifted from Elphion as Beelzebub’s remains vanished into dust along with the debris of Slimon’s ship, followed by the devastating impact of the final Dragonstar meteor striking Verglane’s icy desert. Although Wepwawet had successfully redirected it away from any inhabited area, the sheer impact sent tremors that could be felt all the way from Narc and beyond. A great flash of fire blinded the horizon, and a plume of flame the size of a mountain arose in the distance. 

A warm wind flowed across the land in response to the shockwave, and a pleasant notification followed. 

Beelzebub, Lord of Flies, has been permanently expelled from Elphion. 

Quest: The Ring of Fire, completed! You have unlocked Dragonstar Fire Rank 12 Animism. 

Dragonstar Fire

Rank 12 Animism

You unleash the heavens’ wrath in the form of a devastating meteor strike, inflicting devastating Fire/Physical damage against everything within a ten-mile radius centered around the point of impact.

A Miracle so devastating it would be nigh-impossible to use it without threatening everyone in the vicinity or causing cataclysmic collateral damage.

What was more important was that the Ring of Fire Quest could only complete itself once Wepwawet had expelled all enemies from his territory and secured his borders. He had failed to do so for years due to lunarian spies constantly infiltrating his territory. 

The fact that the Quest had finally been fulfilled could only mean one thing. 

The war was finally over. 

—----

Victoire observed Lune from on high with mixed feelings. 

The breathing apparatus, letting her survive on the moon’s thin atmosphere, weighed heavily on her mouth like a muzzle, yet she could still smell the fumes and smoke rising from all across the city. 

She would have marveled at the magnificent architecture if it hadn’t been built on the back of slave-labor. The battle and Beelzebub’s final rampage had torn most of it apart, leaving its districts buried in rubble, its spires toppled, its bridges crumbled, and its infrastructure blasted craters. Thousands had perished, and what remained of the gods’ united armies were hard at work trying to look for survivors buried under the debris. Mimicships continued to hover over the downed forms of Castle Neigebleue and Lady Ishtar’s Molek. 

At least the moonquakes had stopped. Lord Wepwawet’s slime army had overwhelmed and destroyed the Gravitational Engine buried under the satellite’s crust. 

The surviving lunarians had also been easily overwhelmed once freed from Beelzebub’s control, with most of them being forced to abandon their defensive positions and heeding the Overmind’s call to regroup in the city center. 

Unfortunately, a race of dominating psychic slavers didn’t feel especially grateful at ‘lower beings’ freeing them from a tyrant god. The Overmind’s last holdout had refused to surrender so far in spite of the overwhelming odds, even threatening to kill the slaves still under their control to make the ‘invaders’ back down. The pantheons’ armies could probably wipe them out easily without Beelzebub getting in the way, but it would come at the cost of many hostages’ lives. 

Thoon was currently negotiating with the Overmind for their release and a ceasefire on behalf of the alliance. Victoire hoped they could settle this with words. Even if she had no love for the lunarians, further bloodshed would only serve the Titans’ ends.

“Will Insupportable recover, mistress?” Soumis asked Victoire as they patrolled the crater’s edge for any sign of remaining flies. Beelzebub’s creatures had remained active even after their cowardly creator hitched a ride back to Elphion. “He is mean, but… Soumis is worried anyway.”

“Bernard said he’s stable, and we have our healers taking care of him.” If only dragons could be half as concerned for the sake of lifeforms other than themselves. “He’ll make it.”

She wasn’t sure how to feel about that. Insupportable had been a valuable member of their army for the past two years, but Victoire couldn’t say it had made her grow any fonder of him. 

“Consider yourself lucky, you’re not the one he harasses every day, calling you ‘minion,’” her god said in her mind, filling her heart with joy. “Call it Stockholm Syndrome or whatever, but I admit I would feel a little bad if he died.”  

“I am so happy to hear from you again,” Victoire replied with relief, though she had no idea what a Stockholm was. While she knew her god had been alright, she had seen the meteor move towards Verglane before it vanished past the clouds. “Is everyone alright?”

“Yes, thankfully. I had to transform into my Divine Avatar form to deflect the meteor, but it hit the arctic desert rather than any settlement, and the bug is done for.”

“Beelzebub’s avatar was destroyed?” Victoire didn’t suppress a smile. “So he’s gone?”

“Ah, yes!” Lord Wepwawet replied with pride. “Slimon kicked him out of Elphion at the cost of his life by ramming his ship into his head! You should have seen it, it was spectacular!”

“He… he did that?” Victoire was torn between utter surprise at the idea that mortals could indeed blow up an animated Idol—even if they had fought hard to do it, it was one thing to imagine it and another to see it confirmed—and disbelief that the ooze had it in him. “I… I had misjudged his bravery…”

“He wanted to impress Princess Treasure.”

“Oh.” Well, that made more sense. “Did he realize that she couldn’t see him from the moon?”

“I didn’t have the heart to tell him… but I made sure she was informed, so he will reap his reward once I revive him.” 

“That’s great news, even if I would have preferred to see Belzebub destroyed rather than expelled from Elphion.” The Lord of Flies’ defeat brought her great satisfaction after what he did in Promesse and all the chaos he spread. So many of her comrades had finally been avenged. “I know you told me gods can’t die, but I had hoped he would be different against all odds.”

“Oh, believe me, I’m pretty sure he’ll wish he was dead when he shows up in front of his Titan masters with nothing to show for all of this mess.” Lord Wepwawet’s voice grew grimmer. “What’s the situation here?”

Victoire scowled beneath her respirator. “We lost a lot of people,” she admitted. “Viviane, Alexandrite, Bernadette… Castle Neigebleue lies in ruins, and Insupportable took such a beating that I don’t think he’ll recover in time for the Fourth Incursion. We are at considerably less than full strength now.”

“I see… I feared as much. I should have anticipated Beelzecuck would bring something like the Divine Avatar to the table.” 

“What’s done is done,” Victoire comforted him. Everyone knew this would be a hard-won fight, no matter their preparations. “I think it went as well as it could have considering who we were up against.” 

“Yes, Artemis’ worm apparently destroyed the engine on the other moon from what she tells me, and Sun Wukong’s Champion is negotiating the release of all lunarian spies and slaves. This theater of the war is over at least, and Elphion is safe from the Season of Dragonstars.” Lord Wepwawet let out a sigh on his end of the telepathic line. “I cannot cast Miracles or bring you guys back home until my Divine Avatar runs out, but I should be able to do so right as the Fourth Incursion is set to begin. Try to rest beforehand.” 

Victoire nodded and looked up to the sky. The Incursion Rift continued to grow over Elphion’s surface like a spot on a stainless sea of clouds.

They had won one battle, only to jump right into another. 

—-----

A dark, grim silence had fallen upon Titanspace.

Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies, shrank like his namesake insect as five heavy gazes full of condemnation fell upon him; none colder than that of Apep the Destroyer.

This was bad. This was really bad. 

“I, uh…” Beelzebub cleared his throat, his divine mind furiously trying to find a way to get out of this mess in one piece. “I know this looks like a setback, my lords, but when one focuses on the details, it is actually a complete success.”

The quietness became all the more unsettling.

“I mean, yes, I won’t be able to volunteer for the Fourth Incursion and the lunarians are done for, but I have decimated the godlings’ Champions and armies,” Beelzebub argued. “Their takeover of Lune cost them so much that Lord Kronos will have no trouble cutting a bloody path through them. In a way, all of his future and inevitable glorious victories can be traced back to me. Moreover, I still have agents–”

“Silence.”

Beelzebub cowered in fear. Lord Apep had raised his voice. 

Lord Apep never raised his voice.

“You were granted all possible advantages, from a pliable and technologically advanced civilization to our guidance and powerful Miracles,” the Titan leader said. “Each of them you wasted or mismanaged. Kronos’ machinery could have completed your Lunar Cry plan and ensured Elphion’s moons collided during the Fourth Incursion, bringing the history of this miserable world to an end. This plan will come to naught because of your elimination, and worst of all, you were defeated by mortals. You were slain by an ooze.”

Darkness surrounded Beelzebub from all sides, cutting off his Influence from the rest of the cosmos and leaving him trapped. 

“You were warned of the price of incompetence and yet failed to improve your performance. I see now why your own Pantheon was better off without you, and you will shame us no longer.” The great serpent uttered his next word in the form of a single name. “Kronos.”

The shadow out of time blanketed Beelzebub in darkness. The former lord of the Assyrian Pantheon attempted to run, but an immense hand the size of a solar system seized him with greedy hunger.

“Please, please, give me another chance, I beg of you!” Beelzebub pleaded with all of his might as a giant, mouth-shaped void in the fabric of time and space opened to swallow him whole. “I-I can salvage this, I can make it righ–”

His screams and pleas were swallowed into the darkness of endless time, the gulping noise of Kronos’ gullet echoing across the multiverse. 

“Ah, so bitter,” Kronos commented with a rattle of pleasure. It had been so long since he had dined on another god. “It will take millennia to shit him out.”

“Creation might be better off if you never flush him through a toilet,” Tiamat commented with contempt. “What a waste of our time.”

“He wasn’t wrong, though. This operation cost our enemies many troops,” Hastur pointed out. “They will never have time to replenish their Champion losses in the hours left before Kronos’ arrival… if at all.”

“Yes, we can still salvage this disaster,” Apep said before turning to Kronos. “Our hopes lie with you now.”

“Just relax and watch, old friend. You won’t even have to take the field.” Kronos’ chuckle echoed into infinity. “I’m going to sack this planet like Troy, you’ll see!”

—---

They had indeed won the war. The System said it in all of its glory. 

You have won a great war. All your Champions can now rank-up. 

Whoa, an impressive turn of events, but not entirely surprising. Even the Champions who hadn’t directly participated in the various battles, like his Crafters, still contributed by providing equipment that helped turn the tide. They had fought as an army and won as one. 

This had been a great victory and should have been cause for celebration. 

However, Wepwawet wouldn’t have been able to say so when he reunited with his fellow gods in their shared Influence group chat. Almost everyone looked grim, with the one usual exception. 

“Why are you all making that face?!” Sun Wukong asked, though Wepwawet could tell he was mostly trying to lift everybody’s spirits. “We’ve won! The fly is squashed, the world is saved, and the lunarians’ military is broken! Sure they’re still holding out, but we’ve got them on the ropes!”

“At what cost?!” Hel complained. Her forces had borne the brunt of the fighting, and while her Providence let her replenish most of her losses by raising her victims as undead, a lot of her troops remained trapped under tons of debris. “Half of my army is buried under blackstone as we speak!”

“My Molek has seen better days, too, and we took severe casualties,” Ishtar confessed. “A few more victories like this one and we’re done for.”

“We did as best as we could considering the enemy’s advantages,” Horus countered. “Allowing Kronos to take out two of us for free and boost the Gravitational Engines would have led to disaster.”

Epona nodded sharply before summoning a system notification. “It is true we should rejoice in our victory and that we avoided the worst outcome, but the true battle is ahead of us.”

Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies, is no longer available to partake in the Fourth Incursion. Three gods must volunteer or will be forcefully selected based on proximity to the rift. 

Time remaining until the Fourth Incursion: 23:45:57…

One day left before the Reaper of Time came knocking on their door. 

They had no time to celebrate, nor to waste. 

“Let’s make a tally of our losses,” Wepwawet decided. “We can organize accordingly.”

All in all, every god had lost between a fourth and a third of all forces they had deployed in the operation, Champions included. None of them could revive them all in time for the Incursion, if they even had the necessary Miracles in the first place. 

Beelzebub’s participation would have guaranteed certain defeat for two volunteers and likely an even worse fate for Elphion if Kronos ever managed to supply the lunarians with a doomsday device, but the Lord of the Flies’ defeat had taken its toll. 

Unfortunately, it also meant that none of the three teams they had selected prior to the Lune invasion–Wepwawet, Ganesha, and Artemis on one side, Epona’s alliance on another, and Horus, Ishtar, and Sun Wukong filling out the last spot–had a particular advantage. They had all been bloodied enough that there was no right option when picking which one to take the field against Kronos. 

“We’ve all walked away from this battle with a bloody nose, and we need to leave troops behind on Lune to ensure the remaining lunarians don’t play foul,” Ishtar commented. “Not an optimal scenario.”

“Seems we’re all equally messed up,” Anansi summarized, his gaze turning to Artemis. “In that case, I nominate the team with the enemy’s granddaughter to lead the charge. Surely she will have the intelligence advantage.”

“I shared everything I knew about that child-eating ass with all of you,” Artemis replied, glaring back at the spider trickster. “Plus, your half-dead girlfriend’s undead army will have the edge against Kronos’ Providence!”

“Hey, I would never be Anansi’s girlfriend!” Hel complained. “I may be a goth, but I still have standards!”

“You’re breaking my heart,” Anansi deadpanned. 

“Enough,” Horus cut in with annoyance. “If no team is volunteering, we’ll have to decide at random.”

“Yes,” Wepwawet concurred before opening a System window. “I’ll ask the System to assign each of our teams a number between one to three at random to decide the team order. The group that goes last will provide the bulk of the forces securing Lune so the other teams can better focus on the incoming battle. Does everyone agree with this?”

The groups exchanged glances, but all conceded. Wepwawet closed his eyes and ran the program. As much as he would have wanted to take the field against the Titans again, his and his allies’ armies had taken too many losses for him to volunteer; going second or third might give him the days he needed to cast revival miracles to at least replenish his Champions should the worst come to pass. 

Fortune favored him this time. 

Epona’s group received the number one; Wepwawet’s, the two; and Horus’ trio, the three.

“It is settled,” Wepwawet said with finality. “Epona’s team will go first, then mine, and then Horus’.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Epona replied grimly before turning to her teammates. “Very well. Let us prepare and complete some last-minute trades.”

“If you need anything from our group, Pona, it is yours,” Ishtar said. The fact that she would offer such unconditional help to a former rival spoke volumes about the seriousness of the situation. 

Hastur had taken out two gods, and Kronos was even stronger. 

It wasn’t a question of whether the class could win without casualties, but how many they would suffer. 

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Next Chapter

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A/N: I'll probably keep most of the rank up offscreen because we have 35 Champions to cover but yeah XD the Fourth Incursion is now around the corner.