Board & Conquest 128: Wepy's Howling Castle

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Watching Castle Neigebleue punch Beelzecuck in the face brought Wepwawet no small amount of joy. 

The colossal transforming castle golem’s fist threw the Divine Avatar back and towards Sun Wukong, who hastily swung his stone staff at the Titan’s back and threw him off balance. Ishtar’s Molek then rammed Beelzebub in the legs and threw him to the ground, at which point the three giants jumped him like ruffians and began to beat him down while he was on the ground. They beat him into the blackstone crater, shaking the ground with each stomp while Beelzebub pathetically shielded his face with his arms. 

“Your castle can walk?!” Hel asked, utterly shocked.

“I had my crafters work months on an architectural plan,” Wepwawet replied with pride. “Pretty neat, huh?”

At the end of the day, Castle Neigebleue was a Rank 11 creature with immense stats on top of being a living dungeon. Its architectural shape usually anchored it in one place, but judicious use of the Maze Shift Miracle had allowed Wepwawet to reshape it into a purely functional golem capable of fighting directly. 

“It’s still slow and barely bruising Beelzebub,” Horus pointed out, being a killjoy as usual.

“I don’t think we can hold the bug down for long either,” Ishtar added. “We dearly need your worm’s help, my dear Artemis.”

“Skitter crashed on the other moon, and I can’t summon her again until tomorrow,” Artemis replied. “I sent her to destroy the other Gravitational Engine instead.” 

While Wepwawet took that as good news, it meant the engine near Lune continued to inexorably draw the moons together, and its sabotage remained incomplete. The tremors shaking Elphion’s satellite only increased in strength, and great ravines of blackstone began to crack open across the landscape. 

How long until all that debris was torn off the surface and flung towards Elphion? They had no time to waste. 

“Okay, I think I have a plan to destroy the engine,” Wepwawet said as he focused on one of the contraptions he had summoned during the initial phase of the assault: the colossal, infernal cauldron Whiro once used to besiege Narc and which had spent the last hour bellowing out an army of oozes to storm Lune with. “I’ll send the Ecocide Cauldron’s slimes into the tunnels Skitter dug and have them corrode the machinery.”

“Are you sure?” Ganesha asked, having helped clean up the aftermath of the last time the monster-spawning device was used for over a year. “Letting these things multiply under the moon’s surface could have long-term consequences.”

“Worse than a meteor storm?” Anansi asked wisely. 

Ganesha remained silent for a second. “Point taken.”

Wepwawet proceeded with the plan. The Ecocide Cauldron produced four ranks' worth of slimes obeying his commands, and while they lacked Slimon’s intelligence or much sentience beyond the desire to spread, they could follow very simple orders. His growing army poured into the tunnels Skitter had dug beforehand and began to eat away at the Gravitational Engine stretching beneath the surface. Their acidic touch melted away blackstone coils, gold cables, and other machinery far more advanced than anything seen on Elphion’s surface. 

How much damage would it take to disable the device? Wepwawet couldn’t say yet, but he had to hope damage would build up to cause a total collapse quickly enough. 

Unfortunately, it couldn’t come any sooner. Beelzebub managed to create an opening by smashing his wand into Sun Wukong’s Zodiac Protector and knocking it back, and then quickly flapped his wings to fly out of the encirclement. The monstrous Titan attempted to take flight, only for Castle Neigebleue to grab him by the leg as he ascended.

Although the golem was incredibly heavy, the Divine Avatar proved strong enough to carry it upwards, albeit with a struggle. 

“Let me go, you pile of rocks!” Beelzebub buzzed as he tried to kick the castle off him, to no avail. “Off!”

Sun Wukong used the opportunity to have his Zodiac Protector take a step back, then rush forward and use his staff as a pole vault to throw himself at the Titan, foot first. He successfully kicked Beelzebub in the face and nearly tore his head off his shoulders, yet the Divine Avatar proved stronger still. Beelzebub countered with a swing that threw Sun Wukong to the ground, but though the monkey king managed to land gracefully, Beelzebub’s wand fired off another hurricane before he could regain his footing. A blast as powerful as the one that destroyed a whole district of Lune hit the statue at point-blank range, shattering it into countless pieces. 

“Guys, I’m out!” Sun Wukong warned, only for his voice to perk up with joy. “But Thoon opened up the network again!”

Wepwawet sensed as much from his Champions on Elphion, who had been blocked from Citystepping into the city after the Overmind cut the lighthouse connection. They managed to arrive just in time, alongside other allies. Victoire and Soumis appeared to help burn the flies harassing the Overmind; a colossal monkey kaiju sent by Artemis materialized and trampled lunarians underfoot; and more of Ishtar’s demons joined the fray, including the Demon Emperor himself. 

The new reinforcements helped turn the tide enough to cause a breakdown in the city’s defenses. The enemy air force keeping the coming fleet away faltered. 

The saucers flew above Lune… and, with the exception of the animated ship Wepwawet had recruited earlier, then completely ignored the ongoing chaos. Instead of helping secure the city and assist the troops on the ground as planned, they deviated to travel to the crater’s edge. 

“What’s going on?” Wepwawet asked his Champions onboard. “You were supposed to help blow up the enemy forces and the engine!”

“We can’t control the ships!” Slimon panicked. “They’re acting on their own!” 

“They’ve been distracted,” Cynisca complained with an audible groan. 

Wepwawet remained speechless for a second as a terrible, awful possibility crossed his mind. Reality on the ground confirmed it as he watched the fleet chase after a certain burning bull, itself running after Beelzebub.

“Sweetpup,” Ishtar said, her voice brimming with a mix of disbelief and annoyance. “Why is your mimic fleet chasing after my Molek?”

Because at the end of the day, a giant metal demonic bull was still a cow. 

“Just…” Wepwawet groaned in resignation. “Just try to position Beelzebub between the fleet and your cow.”

Beelzebub managed to finally kick off Castle Neigebleue and sent it crashing onto the ground, the living fortress’ weight working against it as it broke one of its tower legs on impact. Princess Treasure barely managed to hang onto its crenelations as her seat of power nearly broke apart on impact. 

Wepwawet winced as he sensed his Champion’s pain through their link. Castle Neigebleue couldn’t die so long as its core remained intact, but the destruction it suffered was akin to an amputation. It would take it a long time to recover from. 

Beelzebub’s victory proved short-lived, however, when the Overmind used the opportunity to shoot at one of his wings with its laser eye, breaking it off. The Divine Avatar was forced to land near a ravine created by the increasing gravitational anomaly, and was instantly rammed by Ishtar’s Molek. The beast’s burning horns pierced through the Lord of Flies’ abdomen and came out of the other end, inflicting massive damage. Beelzebub buzzed with rage, snapped Molek’s horns off, and then smashed its head to scrap with a swing of his wand.

That proved to be a terrible mistake. 

The entire saucer fleet let out a droning noise and opened fire at the Lord of Flies all at once. A deluge of lasers hit him in the face, blowing off one of his arms and riddling his wings with holes. The mimics swarmed him the same way his flies had attacked so many civilizations. 

“We’ve recovered control,” Cynisca informed Wepwawet from inside her ship. “Let’s squash that bug and reap the bounty!”

“All-out assault!” Wepwawet ordered his Champions before boosting those he could with Power Dice. 

The bombardment intensified, with Beelzebub retaliating with his cyclone wand and blasting a few of the saucers from the sky… but there were so many of them he could hardly hold back the tide. Each beam tore off part of his exoskeleton and weakened the Lord of Flies. 

They can do it, Wepwawet thought with excitement. They could destroy the Divine Avatar. 

But then a moonquake struck, and the ground split apart. 

Wepwawet’s slimes had done their work and damaged much of the Gravitational Engine enough to prevent Lune’s complete destruction, but enough of its infernal machinery still remained functional. A small fraction of the lunarian capital’s crater began to break off from the rest as its sister moon passed over its sky and began ascending. 

A chunk of the moon’s surface was splitting off. 

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Pain hurt so much!

Beelzebub raged on as those stupid saucers continued to bombard him. Their lasers barely hurt more than bee stings, but there were so many of them coming from all directions! The holes in his abdomen and the wounds he had taken from that stupid howling castle and its animal friends left him in agony too. 

He had to get out of here. The battle was lost, but so long as he survived his Divine Avatar would recover from its wounds once he paid the mana maintenance cost. So long as he survived all the way to the Incursion, he would satisfy the terms of his alliance with the Titanomachy and receive the reward he was entitled to. He couldn’t let all his efforts go to waste! 

His chance came when a large chunk of blackstone broke off from the rest of Lune. Using all of his remaining strength, Beelzebub managed to take a leap and flap his remaining wings fast enough to grab onto it. 

Lune began to shrink beneath him as he rode the newly made meteorite into space. A few of the flying saucers continued to pursue him, and the Overmind frustratingly continued to fire at its former master with its eye-beam, but Beelzebub repelled the former with whirlwinds from his wand and shrugged off the latter’s attacks. 

It didn’t take long for the blackstone meteor to escape the moons’ gravity, though, to Beelzebub’s frustration, it would be the only one to fall upon Elphion below. Those godlings’ sabotage had prevented a full orbital bombardment. Moreover, escaping the moons’ gravity wells meant Lune’s inhabitants were now out of range of both his Bug Crown and Sin of Gluttony Providence. He had lost the fight and his civilization, which wouldn’t please Kronos and Lord Apep in the slightest. 

No matter, Beelzebub thought with glee as he looked upon the world he hoped to despoil. This chunk can wipe out a city, and it’s facing the right hemisphere.

The northern hemisphere, to be precise. 

Beelzebub could see that hated Verglane country stretching out before him with his only remaining eye. He had fantasized about this for so long that he could recite every city’s location by heart. Using his wand to create another whirlwind, he subtly altered the meteor’s trajectory and guided it towards Narc. 

He would crash it straight onto the wolf bastard’s head, destroying him and wiping out his capital at the same time, and then fly away at the last second. 

Revenge was his at last. 

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Wepwawet clenched his jaw as he observed the incoming meteor through his Idol’s eyes. Its fiery trail burned the morning sky red as it entered Elphion’s atmosphere on its way to Narc. A few of the saucers, including Slimon’s and Cynisca’s ships, continued to give chase, but what could they do to stop its fall?  

“Can you intercept it?” Wepwawet asked his cousin. 

“My flying pyramids are too far south of Verglane,” Horus warned him, his tone grim. “I have nothing that can intercept the rock in time.”

“I do, but it’s a one-shot.” No way around this. “I’ll be unable to cast Miracles, so I trust you with the cleanup on Lune.”

Wepwawet mustered his resolve and cast his own Divine Avatar card. Mana surged from his Idol and animated it for the fourth time in Elphion’s history. His followers in Narc looked up to him with faith and trust as he raised his spear and aimed for the sky. 

Just a tiny bit to the left… just a little more… Wepwawet readied his aim according to his Providence, calculating the perfect angle. Now!

He threw his divine spear with all of his force, air rippling as it broke through the sound barrier. 

The projectile flew across the heavens and struck the meteor in a flash, throwing it off course. The immense projectile was cast south towards the heart of the icy desert, where its impact would be minimal.

Unfortunately, Wepwawet’s divine senses immediately picked up on Beelzebub leaping off the meteor before impact. The Lord of Flies’ broken wings forced him to glide on the arctic winds rather than truly fly, but that would be enough for him to make a safe landing far, far away from any god’s reach. 

“That bastard is getting away!” Hel panicked. 

“My spear is done for,” Wepwawet warned his allies. “I can’t strike him down!”

“All flyers after him!” Horus ordered, but it was mostly too late. Only flying saucers had the speed required to catch up to the Divine Avatar, and most lagged behind… 

All except one. 

“Is she watching?” Slimon asked his god through telepathy. “Princess Treasure, is she watching this? From the moon?”

“Yes, but–” Wepwawet’s stony eyes widened as he realized what his Champion had in mind. “Slimon, don’t–”

“I can’t hop away from this!” the slime replied with hope. “It’s my chance to reproduce!” 

—----

Beelzebub buzzed with annoyance as he struggled to keep control of his flight. He had to use his wand to conjure winds to assist his broken wings, but so far, so good. He watched his meteor be diverted from its intended target by the broken icy spear stuck in its side. The expected massacre he had hoped for would not happen. 

Why?! Why did something always have to go wrong at the last minute?!

You’ve got this, Baal, Beelzebub tried to psych himself up. He was a survivor. So long as he endured, there would be another chance. All he had to do was keep going until the Fourth Incursion, and then he could finally stick it to those godlings and–

Something at the edge of his vision caught the Lord of Flies’ attention. He turned his head slightly to see a reddish, blazing comet heading his way. He briefly mistook it for another blackstone meteorite until he noticed its saucer shape.

And it was flying straight at him.

No way, it wouldn’t dare!

Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies, hastily attempted to raise his arm to protect himself, but it was far too late to make any difference. 

The saucer hit him in the face, and both exploded in a mighty blast.

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