It was a disaster.

Wepwawet couldn't find any other word to describe the current board state. A miniature sea occupied most of the southeast side of it, having drowned nearly the entire magmorian army and heavily damaged Citadel Sapphire. The tidal wave would have likely destroyed it utterly without the lava moat evaporating most of the water, though the magma had cooled and the walls had cracked or collapsed in some places.

There was no way the fortress could stop the Hydraslime now. It had already regenerated from its wounds and swam past the corpses of extinguished magmorians.

"This is… This is odious…" Pele muttered in horror, the souls of her late champions manifested as wisps floating next to her mana counter. She gazed at the board with a heavy stare, partly because she felt her followers' drowning to death through her Influence—quite the painful experience for a volcano goddess—and partly because the seriousness of their situation had finally hit home. "You've… you've killed them like they were nothing…"

"They are nothing," Whiro replied coldly. The Titan sounded almost disgusted that other gods would show compassion to mortals. "You weep for fleas."

Okay, this is bad, but it could be worse, Wepwawet thought as he furiously tried to find a solution. Whiro's flood had only devastated Pele's army and Citadel Sapphire, whereas Narc and its region remained untouched. Once I defeat our Hydraslime, I can send my army to reinforce Pele and–

"Whiro is not done," the Titan said upon revealing his last card in hand. "Whiro plays the Rank 12 Heavenly Treasure Ritual. Each of us must draw cards until we have six cards in hand."

Wepwawet's hope turned to despair as the Power Dice and Animal Kingdom Miracles found their way to his hand. A despondent Pele drew another card, and Whiro grabbed a full six.

"Take cover!" Wepwawet warned his Champions, as he knew exactly what was coming. "Run away from the hydra!"

Victoire, Lord Raymond, and his Commanders relayed his warnings and ordered a quick retreat, but the soldiers on the field engaged in battle with the slimes were too close to take refuge anywhere. Wepwawet could only clench his fists and pray they would run far enough away…

"Whiro plays a Rank 1 Prophecy and then a second copy of Tsunami," Whiro said with cold malice, targeting the Hydraslime assaulting Narc this time. "Whiro discards three more cards to activate Anthropocene Age once more."

"Aren't you sick of using the same tactic over and over again?!" Wepwawet snapped.

"No," Whiro replied bluntly. "Now watch how your precious mortals die."

Wepwawet activated his Protect Champion spell to shield at least one of them, but it was too little, too late.

Death flooded down from the heavens.

Lord Raymond struck a slime and turned it to ice.

If someone had told him he would one day defend a wereling city from an army of man-eating slimes, he would have laughed. Now he only wished he could be better at it.

There's no end to them, he cursed as he took a look at the battlefield. His soldiers—whether humans or werelings—trampled hundreds, if not thousands, of slimes to no avail. The creatures regenerated from nearly all wounds and continued to gather in an ever-growing pile of goo at the center of the battlefield. Only the charioteer Cynisca and his own squire Kale managed to stop them by turning them to ice.

Where's the light? Raymond wondered. His sword used to radiate with holy radiance before the gods in the sky appeared. Did the enemy disrupt it, or–

"Take cover!" Lord Wepwawet's voice echoed in his head in alarm. "Run away from the hydra!"

Raymond was an experienced soldier, so he did not question the order. He simply obeyed.

"Soldiers, retreat!" he shouted, heralds echoing his warning with war horns. His troops immediately pulled back from the slimes and spread across the plains facing Verglane's fortifications.

"Sir!" Kale warned him. "The sky!"

Raymond looked up just in time to see a colossal sphere of water descend from the clouds like a falling star. Awe and surprise soon turned to instinctual terror as he realized the danger that now befell his entire army.

Death was coming.

"Run, Kale!" Raymond warned as the sphere of water hit the ground with cataclysmic strength. His body shimmered with Lord Wepwawet's light and a shield of sorcery. "Behind me–"

Raymond grabbed his squire, shielding him with his body as the wave hit them with all of its overwhelming violence.

The wave washed away thousands into a watery grave.

Victoire barely had time to duck behind a battlement as the flood impacted the fortifications, filling the ditches, crushing the ice barriers, and impacting stone with overwhelming violence. She was nearly thrown off the walls by the impact, and many of Wintresse's wand casters plummeted to their deaths upon losing their balance.

"Sister!" Princess Topaz shrieked in horror and grief, with Jasper struggling to hold her in his arms to prevent her from falling off the cracked wall. "Father!"

"Princess, please!" Jasper said in a vain attempt to reason with her. "We can't do anything!"

Victoire herself could only clench her teeth as the walls trembled beneath her. They swung ever so slightly under the rising pressure, making her fear they would collapse beneath her and bury her under tons of stones.

They held against all odds.

The walls stopped swaying, allowing Victoire to peek over the battlements. Countless ditches and the ice fortifications had broken the wave's momentum before it reached her own layer, weakening it enough that it failed to sweep away all of Narc. Part of the outer wall had collapsed, but the western part on which she stood had survived.

However, the plains beyond were a sight of horror. A vast sea stretched all the way to Citadel Sapphire and buried all but the tallest hills under water. Countless corpses floated to the surface, with few survivors flocking to the debris and the few islands of high ground left. Victoire couldn't see Lord Raymond, Kale, Cynisca, or Jarlack among them, and she prayed to her god with all her strength that they survived

She noticed movement beneath the water.

She barely had time to glance at it before a serpentine head surged from below and smashed its way through the walls. Stone flew in all directions, with Jasper pulling Topaz back to avoid being hit. A good chunk of the fortifications collapsed into the water, with a colossal eight-headed horror quickly filling the hole.

The hydra had fully regenerated.

Victoire's heart skipped a beat when one of its heads spotted Topaz and Jasper, then inhaled in preparation for an attack. Runic symbols materialized in a circle around its slimy jaws and gathered power for a spell.

Victoire instinctively rushed in front of the magmorians with her shield up right as the beast fired a stream of magical poison at them. She felt the magic swirling in the air around her and the spell coalescing against her god's divine protection… only to reflect back in the form of a blast of ice that froze the head solid.

"You… saved us…" Princess Topaz muttered, utterly astonished.

"Like it or not, we are on the same side today," Victoire replied as she coated her spear with ice once again. The other seven heads snapped at Wintresse and the nearby wandcasters, swallowing a handful of the latter with each bite. "Jasper?!"

"Yes!" Jasper readied his sword. "Stay back, princess!"

"I-I will not stay idle!" Princess Topaz joined her hands, her fingers glowing with magic. "Fire Blessing!"

Blue flames swirled around Victoire's spear and Jasper's sword as they rushed forward with a battle cry, old enemies fighting side-by-side.

Two notifications crushed Wepwawet's heart.

Raymond Le Hardis, Glarmes General, deceased.

Cynisca, Crushing Rider, deceased.

For the first time since he arrived on Elphion, Wepwawet had lost two of his Champions.

School and his Father had prepared him for that eventuality, but it still hurt. Champions were connected to their deity, so the pain of their last moments radiated through his Influence, letting him share their fear and agony.

Their two souls appeared at the side of his mana counter, asleep and waiting for revival. Lord Raymond had the kinder death in that the sheer water pressure nearly killed him instantly by crushing him. He barely had time to see the wave, and then he blinked out. Cynisca though… Wepwawet still felt the taste of water in her mouth as she drowned. She had fought like hell to remain above water, but her armor had been too heavy. Her last thought had been to worry about her wealth and Jarlack. She had lost consciousness thinking of them both.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Wepwawet had cast Protect Champion in an attempt to save Raymond, since he was one of his Commanders, but it had failed. His sacrifice had however saved his squire Kale, at least for now. The young Glarmes soldier still struggled to survive the flood washing him and other survivors away across the plain.

Wepwawet was furious; both at Whiro for killing so many with such casual cruelty and at himself for failing to stop him. He knew a god could expect to suffer casualties, but a part of him still felt remorse at the thought he could have avoided them.

Nonetheless, it could have been much worse. The tsunami had shattered the first two layers of fortifications protecting Narc and flooded the plain, but the third set of stone walls had only collapsed in its most vulnerable parts; the rest held, with the water being directed through canals into mines dug deep in the mountain overseeing the city. Most buildings had survived.

Whiro growled in annoyance at Narc. "How is that den of parasites still standing?"

"Because we already flooded it once ourselves, and we learned from it!" Wepwawet retorted. "Your tsunami is being flushed down the drains!"

Narc had been designed so that its streets could be flooded by overloading the hot spring source the same way Wepwawet drowned Jasper's troops, with the water to be diverted through the mines soon after. This had been meant to serve as a last-ditch plan to stop a magmorian attack by drowning out the lower parts of the city and leaving the inhabited areas on higher ground unscathed.

Wepwawet never thought these preparations would serve to strengthen Narc's resilience against an actual divine flood, but he was thankful for his foreplanning. His forces inside the capital had survived to carry on with the fight.

"Whiro is not impressed," Whiro replied with contempt. "Whiro will slay them all on his next turn."

Wepwawet drew the Wolf House Miracle and gained fourteen more mana from his mana surges, bringing his total to twenty. He quickly assessed his options, knowing any misplay here would be critical. He had to think things through carefully.

Whiro's strategy relies on two things: having enough cards in his hand to use Anthropocene Age, and killing enough creatures with his Providence to fuel his Miracles. The first foundation required mana-expensive drawing Miracles to resolve, which in turn let him draw dangerous natural disasters to fuel the second. It's a self-reinforcing loop and an overwhelmingly relentless tactic, but it's got a huge flaw… he can't keep it up for long.

Whiro was burning through resources at a quick pace. If Wepwawet's count was correct, he had less than a third of his thirty cards deck left; and he oddly hadn't summoned any other creature besides his Hydraslimes and Ecocide Cauldron's slime summons.

I bet his deck is almost entirely hard-hitting Rituals and Miracles that let him draw more cards to keep the engine going, Wepwawet analyzed. He hasn't summoned more creatures because he doesn't have any left.

Whiro's deck had no staying power. It was all about defeating the opponent as quickly as possible with hard-hitting Miracles, meaning it would run out of steam should Wepwawet and Pele endure long enough.

"I cast the Rank 11 Pot of Gluttony Ritual, which lets me draw three cards and discard one," Wepwawet said, adding Fraudulent Miracle, Howl of Verglane, and most importantly, Pyramid Warfare. "Finally! I discard Skill: Masterworker and cast the Rank 7 Pyramid Warfare Doctrine! This lets me imbue all of my followers' weapons with holy light!"

Light immediately surged from the tip of all his soldiers' weapons, from his archers' bows and spears to his casters' wands. Projectiles that once bounced off the Hydraslime powering its way through Verglane, now seared its slimy flesh and left wounds behind.

"Now my soldiers can actually damage your Hydraslime!" Wepwawet taunted Whiro before casting his Fraudulent Miracle. "I then play a Rank 1 Prophecy."

Fraudulent Miracle would let him copy any Miracle which Whiro or Pele tried to cast so long as he paid an equal amount of mana. He didn't have enough gas in the tank to make full use of it yet, but it might prove critical in the next few turns.

Wepwawet had cast all that he could for now. Jasper had leaped on top of a hydra's head and gored it with his sword between the eyes, while Victoire threw her glowing spear at another. Wintresse and the surviving wand casters had retreated to the cliffs surrounding Narc and continued to bombard the hydraslime. They did their best to delay the creature, but it healed almost as fast as they hurt it.

"Is the DRY ready?" Wepwawet asked Slimon through telepathy.

"Almost, sir!" The scientist promised. He, Lourson, and Alpine had been outfitting a golem with all the substance it could carry in one of the city's warehouses under Filou's oversight. "We'll be ready to launch in minutes!"

"Make haste," Wepwawet replied before ordering Filou to go tell the wereowl bombardiers to stand ready. They would have only one chance to slay the Hydraslime for good. "Bernard… unleash the beast."

"Are you sure?" Bernard asked back. "He'll grab Princess Topaz and run away back to his den."

"He'll have to fight a giant hydra in the way, so I'll take my chances." At this point, freeing Insupportable simply couldn't make things any worse. Besides, his den is in another dimension at this point, so good luck with that.

Wepwawet received a grunt of confirmation, followed by the sound of ice snapping and a dragon's roar of freedom.

"Mine!" Insupportable snarled upon escaping the temple and taking flight towards the Hydraslime threatening Princess Topaz. "Mine, mine, mine!"

Wepwawet glanced at Pele. His classmate was deep in telepathic communications with her Champions right as their own Hydraslime barreled down their door.

He could only hope they had a secret ace up their sleeve.

The battle was lost.

General Peridot was no pessimist, but after watching his country's entire leadership drowning, his army decimated, and his walls collapsing, he had to face reality. Citadel Sapphire was now a half-flooded island of stone with destroyed fortifications and absolutely no way to defend itself from the giant monster approaching.

The hydra was now so close to Citadel Sapphire's ruined walls that they could hear its roars. The only reason it hadn't reached the fortress yet was the impromptu attack by a certain red dragon raining fire upon the hydra, his crimson scales wet and steaming.

"Princess-slayer! Princess-slayer!" Soumis snarled with blazing anger, his breath hotter than magma and incinerating all the slime that it touched. "There is no hell cold enough for your odious crime! Soumis will never forgive you for this!"

General Peridot had no idea how the dragon survived the deluge or how long he could hold the hydra back, but he had the feeling their respite wouldn't last long. Soumis was wounded, smaller, and slower. It was only a matter of time before his opponent cast him down from the sky.

His surviving kobold engineers and wereling allies were building impromptu rafts from all the debris they could gather. It might be enough to save most of his remaining soldiers… if the hydra didn't pursue them.

"Worry not, soldiers!" Lady Pele shouted in his mind. "Hold the line a little longer! A Miracle is just around the corner, and the dead shall rise again through my salvation!"

General Peridot struggled to contain his frustration. He was sick of her. Sick of having her shout platitudes in his mind, sick of her lies leading them to bumbling disaster after disaster, sick of false hopes.

He only saw one option left to save what he could.

"Can your number magic slow the beast down?" General Peridot asked Sagesse.

"Not for long," the wereowl warned grimly. "A few minutes at most."

"That will do." General Peridot let out a breath of smoke. "I am activating Operation Cobalt."

"Operation Cobalt?" Lady Pele asked in surprise.

"It is a plan I created should Citadel Sapphire be taken by the enemy," Peridot said, both for the sake of his troops and that of the voice in his head. "It will cause the magma below the fortress to surge up into a lake and incinerate everything in the vicinity."

It was a bold-faced lie—or rather a half-truth—but his so-called goddess failed to pick up on it; or to think things through. "Then what are you waiting for?! Activate it!"

"But what about us, sir?" his kobold auxiliary asked the general with fear in his eyes. "We can't survive a magma flood!"

"Hence, you must all evacuate," General Peridot replied. "I will stay behind to open the magma valves."

He said those words with confidence, but only Lord Rickart appeared to understand the grim implications. "General," he said quietly, "you have my respect."

"I wish we had met in better circumstances, but there's no time for regrets," General Peridot replied. "Leave, now!"

Last words were for those who hadn't said enough.

Wepwawet clenched his jaw as Sagesse took flight towards the Hydraslime.

Her spell could only affect a target within ten meters, so she had no choice but to get into close combat herself. He observed the event unfold with his full focus, tensing up when the beast grabbed Soumis in midair with its jaw and then flung him across the sea and into the waters. Its eight heads then turned to Sagesse as she flew straight at it. So great was the difference in size that it reminded Wepwawet of a fly challenging an ox.

Yet his Champion did not waver. Not even in the face of eight heads with mouths filled with venom glaring at her.

"Level 2 Slow!" Sagesse cast right as a torrent of magical poison engulfed her.

The Hydraslime's breaths proved so corrosive that it melted off the feathers and flesh off the wereowl's bones, then dissolved the latter in an instant. Sagesse's magic expanded and spread to the enemy in her final moments. Wepwawet felt her agony through their bond. The only kindness was that her pain receptors melted away with her skin, so she only experienced a second of torment before death.

Still, melting away in acid was a deeply cruel way to go.

Sagesse, Wereowl Ambassador, deceased.

I'm so sorry, Wepwawet thought as his Champion's soul returned to him. The number of ghosts in his palm paled compared to the swirling amount hanging on to Pele, but they were still three too many.

Her sacrifice did give them some time. The Hydraslime had grown sluggish under the Slow effect and took twice the effort it used to need to cover a stretch of water.

Wepwawet's turn came to an end, and Pele recovered her bearings when her counter started.

"You… you will pay for your cruelty, you gecko bastard!" Pele snapped at Whiro upon drawing. Her mana surge brought her amount of mana to twelve, brought down to eleven after paying for her Doctrine cost. "I cast the Rank 4 Firewall Ritual! It lets me raise a wall of fire that will burn your Hydraslime to cinders!"

"You will not," Whiro replied bluntly. "Whiro triggers his Countermiracle Prophecy. Whiro pays the same amount of mana as your Miracle to disrupt it, and you still pay the cost."

"Then I follow with this, the Rank 6 Auto-da-fé Ritual!" Pele snapped back upon using the card she just drew. "It disrupts your Elemental Shield Doctrine, and you have to discard an amount of Miracles equal to its Rank from your Deck!"

Whiro barely had time to blink in surprise before his Elemental Shield shattered and his already thin deck lost four Miracles. His reptilian lips morphed into a snarl of annoyance as he realized he had been had.

"She baited you out!" Wepwawet taunted him. "Now you can't protect your creatures from your own Miracles!"

"And I'm not done either!" Pele said. "My Volcanic Temper Providence lets me turn any damaging Miracle I have into a Fire one, so Smite this!"

A bolt of fire descended from the heavens onto the Hydraslime besieging Citadel Sapphire, blasting off one of its seven heads and incinerating the stump. The creature roared in response, but continued its slow progress towards the fortress' ruins.

"That's all I can do," Pele confessed. "But my Champions have a plan! They have a plan!"

Wepwawet clenched his jaw as Whiro's turn came up. Goreville's group had entered his range of Influence, claiming a new Altar for him on their way, and would make contact with the Ecocide Cauldron's small army of oozes soon enough.

"Whiro draws and casts another Heavenly Treasure. We draw until we each have six cards in hand–" Four cards made their way into Whiro's hand, followed by a screeching error noise. "What?!"

A void had replaced his deck.

ERROR: Deck-Out!

Deck-Out Penalty! Whiro's Corpse-Eater Providence is now unavailable!

A deck-out didn't spell out immediate defeat in B&C, but it did carry its share of downsides.

"You've run out of steam!" Wepwawet pointed at Whiro. "You've burned through your entire deck!"

Whiro grit his fangs, and for the first time since the battle started he actually took a moment to assess the board. Wepwawet could read the frustration written plainly across his reptilian face. The Titan must have finally realized his mistake.

The cards in Whiro's hands and the troops on his board were all that he had left, and he was threatened on three fronts with no Elemental Shield to protect his monsters from friendly fire. He had tried to hit hard and fast, to wipe them all out in an instant, and he failed.

Now he would have to prioritize.

"So, Titan?" Wepwawet taunted him. "What shall it be?!"

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