A horrid monster burst out of the street.

Filou mistook it for a yellow ghost at first, but ghosts didn't have wriggling tentacles for a beard. Squirmous appendages thicker than a kraken's and longer than ropes burst out from its pallid mask and from beneath its tattered robes in a swarm that broke through stone. The only humanoid part of the creature was its torso and two clawed hands reaching for Viviane's throat.

While Slimon was taken aback by his lack of warrior instinct and close-combat experience, both Filou and Viviane sprang to action in an instant. The former swung his burning scimitar, while the latter bolted back to avoid the monster's grip and fired back at it with her bow and arrow. A flaming blade cut pallid flesh, and arrows impacted yellow cloth, but neither did much damage.

A tentacle hit Filou in the chest by surprise like a whip and flung him across the street with immense strength. Others attempted to crush Slimon, though they bounced off and quickly recoiled after touching his acidic body. Parts of Slimon's slime, split by the blow, swiftly gathered to form smaller oozes.

Filou adroitly managed to land on his feet and then leaped to the side to avoid a whipping tentacle. The monster—likely the Pallid Mask—now stood in the middle of the Champion trio, screeching and hissing at them.

"Attack, my children!" Slimon shouted at his newly created spawns. "Defend your daddy!"

The two slimes born from the previous fission leaped at the Pallid Mask, as did Filou. His sword hacked at a veritable wall of flesh and slashed any tentacles coming his way; yet for each one he cut, two more grew to take its place. The two new slimes landed on the monster's torso and melted away at its clothes on their deaths, revealing only coiled tendrils where there should have been ribs and shoulders. The oozes evaporated swiftly at their contact, as if their very lifeforce had been drained away.

"Target the mask!" Viviane shouted, her arrow aiming straight for it. "I think it's the weak spot!"

The Pallid Mask raised a tentacle to intercept her projectile, then let out a screech. Yellow light glowed from its eye sockets and summoned a strange, three-legged phantom sigil floating above his head. It shone so brightly that all Champions instinctively looked up to it.

That was a mistake.

Filou's thought process came to a sudden halt. It was as if his mind had instantly hit a wall of some kind; split-second decisions about the battle at hand, his worry about milady's safety, the tension in the air… everything disappeared, replaced with a fixation on the yellow sign floating in nothingness. His eyes simply refused to focus on anything else, as did those of Viviane.

They were stunned.

"Don't look at the sign!" Filou vaguely heard Lord Wepwawet's warning in the back of his mind, but the words grew distant in his feverish thoughts. "Filou, Viviane! Fight it!"

"Wake up, guys!" Slimon shouted, being the only one unaffected by the effect for an obscure reason. Filou could only perceive him at the edge of his gaze as a tentacle coiled around his neck and lifted him above the ground. He felt his lifeforce being drained away, but the idea of fighting back didn't even register. He remained limp like a piece of flesh dangling from a butcher's shop's hook even as his body, clothes, and weapons grew shadowy, even translucent.

He barely noticed the thundering noise of giant feet stomping the ground, but he did see the immense fist punching the Pallid Mask straight in its tentacled face.

"GRUDU!"

The hit caused the yellow sign to fizzle out of existence and the Pallid Mask to drop Filou, allowing the squire to regain his senses… yet something felt strange when he hit the ground. He sensed no pain, no impact. In fact, he didn't feel anything at all.

"What the…" Filou wondered as his translucent body now floated halfway through the pavement like a boat carried by waves. He could tell he might have fallen deeper below had he not woken up from the trance in time; and when he tried to grab a support to lift himself up, his hand simply phased through the stone as if it didn't exist.

"Focus on yourself, Filou," Lord Wepwawet advised in the back of his mind. "Do not concern yourself with the environment. Simply imagine yourself floating above the pavement."

"Y-yes, Your Godliness!" Filou obeyed his god's instruction and swiftly found himself floating a foot above the pavement somehow.

He was swiftly greeted by the surreal sight of a reborn Grudu pummeling the shit out of the Pallid Mask. The weremammoth had pinned the monster to the ground away from a still half-stunned Viviane and Slimon, and then proceeded to punch it in the face again, and again, and again.

"Pummel him, big guy!" Mistouffe shouted from atop Grudu's head with enthusiasm. "Put some dirt in his eye!"

Filou grit his teeth in frustration at having been tricked so easily and attempted to redeem himself by hacking at the Pallid Mask's body, but his sword proved as ethereal as the rest of his body. Blade and flames alike phased through the creature's tentacles until it straight up vanished into thin air. The Pallid Mask was soon gone in a flash of light, leaving behind the confused Champions.

"Grudu?" Grudu wondered as he looked around, searching for his target. "Grudu!"

"Did we win?" Mistouffe wondered.

"It's still in the area," Wepwawet warned. "It will lick its wounds and come back."

"Lord Wepwawet, what's happening to me?" Filou asked, begging for an explanation. He could see through his own arm! "Am I… am I dead?"

"Whoa," Mistouffe said upon noticing Filou. "Filou, you're translucent and on a discount. That… that doesn't look like something a potion can solve."

"I think we would find your corpse lying around if you were dead," Slimon replied, his oozy eyes studying Filou with immense curiosity. He tried to touch the squire's clothes and sword to no avail. "It even affects your gear."

Filou would have held his breath, if his lungs were still moving.

"Filou," Lord Wepwawet said with a telepathic sigh. "You have become intangible."

Goddamn ailment players!

"The Pallid Mask's attacks can inflict a permanent Intangibility effect," Wepwawet warned his allies with much frustration. "Any creature it touches for too long becomes unreal."

"Cunning," Epona commented with a frown. "Affected Champions might as well be dead, but cannot be revived by resurrection Miracles."

Wepwawet nodded gravely. Now he understood why Hastur had forced him to discard Antimagic Lock earlier. The Miracle would have negated all magic within his Influence and would have let him neutralize that curse for his Champions.

Nothing else in his deck could remove the effect, so Filou was stuck as an observer for the rest of the battle, the same way Hastur prevented Wepwawet from even playing half the time. He guessed that the Pallid Mask's goal was to affect as many Champions as it could through hit-and-run tactics.

At least the squire could still contribute as a spotter and Grudu reached them in time. It saddened Wepwawet that he didn't have time to rank-up the weremammoth–since he only had time to revive him mere hours before the Incursion's start–but his strength and Perks let him pummel his way through the maze with surprising ease.

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Wepwawet quickly checked the Pallid Mask's location. The monstrous Commander had teleported around one thousand feet to the south—a rather large range for such an effect—and was crawling away. Wepwawet guessed it was only the first of a very long series of hit-and-run attacks from it.

They couldn't let that monster recover.

"Filou, I cannot return you to normal yet, but your state might be a blessing in disguise by letting you travel through walls," Wepwawet informed his Champion. "I will give you directions to pursue the Pallid Mask. Lead the others to it and finish it off before the next layout shift."

"On it, Your Godliness!" Filou replied with unshakable determination. "I swear I won't disappoint you again!"

"You never did, Filou."

Wepwawet's turn came to an end, and Epona's began with a surge of four mana. As expected, she drew the Mask of Alec. Having an empty hand, she had no choice but to pass the cursed baton on.

"I pay 1 Mana to put the Mask of Alec on top of Sun Wukong's deck and draw another card," Epona said, her lips stretching into a rare smile upon checking her new pick. "Excellent. I play the Sword of Crossroad Artifact."

Wepwawet's eyes widened once he watched the exact same giant, teleporting sword she had used to summon hordes of soldiers to Lavaland's doorstep descend down at the feet of Epona's Altar… for the few seconds it took for Hastur to trigger his Yellow Sign upon realizing the danger.

"We negate your sword's activation with our set Yellow Sign and remove it from the game," Hastur replied, the sword disappearing into thin air and mana. "By removing The Yellow Sign from the game, we can set a third copy onto the field without paying its mana cost."

"As I knew you would, but you are now down to your last counter," Epona replied, her smile unwavering. "Better use it wisely."

Hastur didn't respond, though his cowled hood turned slightly towards a certain smiling monkey.

"Now the real fight begins," Epona said upon waving her hand at the board and calling more Champions to the field. "I summon Carsour the Burning Glaive, Rank 5; Rapide, The Wizard Chariot, Rank 6; and Jeanne D'Arrow, Battle Maiden, Rank 7!"

Three more Champions appeared at her altar's feet: a burning glaive floating in the air by its own power; a winged golden chariot with spectral pegasi for carriers; and a blue-haired, fair female knight with a sword of light.

The floating glaive immediately disappeared, however, and quickly reappeared in Commander Ravness' hands. Wepwawet had been briefed about this Champion before the fight began. The result of a legendary weapon gaining sentience over centuries of fighting in the hands of Valentinian knights, Carsour could either fight independently or immediately teleport to its current owner's side to empower their abilities.

While Wepwawet guided each of his Champion groups towards each of their respective quarry—with Grudu demolishing the walls Filou guided them through, and Soumis flying circles in the sky above the district where Magnos hid—he checked Epona's side of the board. Her latest Champion, Jeanne, boarded the chariot and flew up while Ravness and her pegasi companions tracked Ghost Queen Cassilda again, miles away from Epona's Altar.

The four of them had tracked her down to an alley, and then swiftly proceeded to surround her. The queen fired a black orb at the pegasi riders in the sky to repel them and attempted to phase into the ground to escape, but Ravness proved quicker. She threw her glaive at the ghost, and the weapon struck her in the chest. The ghost queen screamed in pain as flames filled her ectoplasmic entrails.

Besides the fact that the weapon could harm the incorporeal creature, the glaive's touch disrupted whatever magic allowed her to phase through the ground. The pegasi riders quickly threw their own spears at her from above and nailed her like a pincushion.

"Yes!" Sun Wukong all but bolted into the air, his fists pumped and raised. "Yes, yes! Exorcize that witch!"

"You got her!" Wepwawet congratulated Epona. His and his classmates' enthusiasm was palpable. "She can't escape!"

"She won't," Epona said with a smirk.

Wepwawet's joy turned to unease when Cassilda's face twisted into a grim, horrifying skull. Her jaw expanded into a black hole that heralded certain disaster.

"Epona–" he shouted a warning, but his classmate was already one step ahead.

"I activate my Horse Goddess Aegis Prophecy to protect Ravness from your attack!"

A shield of light surrounded her Commander right as Cassilda let out an ear-piercing death shriek.

Her final wail was so strong that the noise cracked stone across the street, caused walls to collapse on themselves, and threw Ravness a good ten meters back from the shockwave alone. The three pegasi riders all fell out of the sky and crashed onto the pavement in bloody chunks of broken bones and lost feathers.

"When Cassilda is defeated, her Banshee Wail Perk activates," Hastur said. "Instantly inflicting heavy Wind damage and Instadeath on any unit capable of hearing her."

And true to its description, it had slaughtered half of Epona's Champions, mounts included. Only Ravness and her sentient glaive—being an animated construct immune to Instadeath—had survived the attack; while Jeanne and her chariot had been spared by virtue of being a mile away.

Nonetheless, this costly victory remained that: a victory. Ghost Queen Cassilda vanished into the nothingness from whatever abyss she had crawled out from, with the floating glaive Carsour lingering behind like a tombstone.

"It's gone," Wepwawet said. As much as he pitied Epona's dead Champions, he couldn't suppress the relief in his voice. "It cost us much, but one Commander down."

"We'll revive your Champions in time," Sun Wukong reassured Epona. "The battle isn't over yet."

"Yes," Epona concurred with a scowl, her gaze lingering on her Champions whose souls had returned to her side until the day she could bring them back. "My followers gave their lives for our success. We cannot waste their sacrifice."

Big words for someone who threw her men into a devastating war, but Wepwawet privately agreed. Unfortunately, he doubted they would be able to catch the other Commanders in time. Victoire, Soumis, and Sagesse continued to run circles above the district in which Magnos hid without locating him, while the Pallid Mask continued to move away from its pursuers.

"The Pallid Mask can teleport in bursts of a thousand feet, but there seems to be a one-minute cooldown between each jump," Wepwawet warned his allies. "My Champions won't catch it in time for the next shift."

"We'll corner it together now that Cassilda is down for the count," Epona replied upon ending her turn. She immediately had her Jeanne D'Arrow and Ravness separately converge towards Filou's position. "I'm sending my Champions to rendezvous with yours."

"My turn," Sun Wukong said next upon gaining three mana. He feigned surprise at the card he got. "Look at what I just drew, a Rank 1 fodder Miracle for my Providence! I hereby pay one mana to transform the Mask of Alec into a Rank 1 Sacred Weapon Artifact and equip it to one of my ogres!"

The red ogre near his Altar soon found himself the owner of a new silver pole, much to Hastur's disdain.

"I still cannot believe you kept Sacred Weapon of all things in your deck," Epona said with amusement.

"I have his girlfriend to thank for it," Sun Wukong replied, his thumb pointing at Wepwawet. "I actually traded it with Artemis before the Second Incursion to help her complete a quest. I'm sure it'll become a funny anecdote once we win."

If we win, Wepwawet thought. They had disrupted some of Hastur's strategies for now, but the battle was far from over. The Yellow King had stopped obsessively checking his cards, which meant he had finally decided on a new course of action after the curveballs they threw his way.

"Also, remember that Rank 6 Gorilla Warfare Ritual you didn't force me to discard last turn because you thought my Ambush Shield was more important?" Sun Wukong taunted Hastur, whose frustration was palpable. "It would be a real shame if I were to, I dunno, use my Providence to turn it into a copy of Incoherent Tenets and place it on the field as a Prophecy."

Which was exactly what he did, much to Hastur's annoyance since he only had one Yellow Sign left to counter it. Not to mention that Sun Wukong still had another Rank 7 Prophecy in play. He would only be able to negate one of them.

"Unfortunately, I'll have to call it quits for now," Sun Wukong said upon revealing his now empty hand. "I'll trust you guys with the rest."

In other words, he needs to keep mana in reserve to fuel his Providence in case Hastur tries anything, Wepwawet thought. He still had no idea what Sun Wukong was planning to do with his Champions, who remained next to his Altar and hadn't taken steps to participate in the fight yet. The quicker we can bleed Hastur's resources, the faster we can break his lockdown.

"Still no sign of Magnos?" Wepwawet questioned Victoire through telepathy.

"No," his Commander replied from atop Soumis. The dragon was raining down fire on a district of crumbling houses and spires to flush out Magnos, to no avail. "We think he might be hiding underground where the flames cannot reach him."

Wepwawet nodded and tried to focus his Providence to better narrow down Magnos' location. Perhaps I'll get a better read on his movements if I look for a Rank 1 Champion instead of Magnos directly…

His Providence came up empty.

That took Wepwawet by utter surprise, since nothing could block his special ability, until a worrying possibility formed in his mind. He tried to locate Rank 2 Champions, then Rank 3, and finally found a match when he searched for Rank 4.

"Magnos' rank has increased to four," Wepwawet muttered out loud.

Epona's eyes widened slightly. "What did you say?"

"I don't understand how, but Magnos is a Rank 4 Commander now!" Wepwawet confirmed.

"Uh oh…" Sun Wukong said, suddenly on edge. "His title was Apocalypse Prophet, right?"

Wepwawet wondered what it had to do with the situation when the truth hit him like a brick wall. His gaze wandered to Hastur's doomsday clock as he finally realized why the Titan had brought such a weak Champion to a high-stakes battle.

Magno started as Rank 1, and there were three Apocalypse counters active on the field.

His Champion Rank and stats increased with each Apocalypse Miracle cast.

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