Wepwawet had almost forgotten what it felt like to have a mortal body.

Gods lived in realms of raw mana and Influence far away from the material existence of mortals. Incarnating as a physical being was a novel experience for most, and Wepwawet was no exception. The last time he had walked on a mortal world's surface was back in Egypt many eons ago.

An Avatar's powers depended on the deity's portfolio, and Wepwawet's had slightly changed since he arrived on Elphion. He was no longer his Pantheon's scout, running ahead of his parents and family to pave a path forward for the Pharaoh. He felt closer to ice and winter than sand and the Egyptian desert he used to belong to.

He was now the deity of Verglane fighting to protect his titular land, the wolf-shepherd defending his flock. The very land flooded beneath his feet granted him strength and speed until he crossed miles in a single bound; he had gained dominion over beasts and strengthened them; as a god of reconnaissance, he knew he would never miss nor fail to find anything; and his focus on war summoned a spear of sacred ice in his hand. He guessed the last part partly represented his growing winter motif, though he didn't feel it embodied him yet.

Would that be enough?

Wepwawet was confident in his strength, but he had little time. Minutes. His low mana reserves meant he had to finish this now or watch his mortals die once he failed to pay the mana upkeep cost.

Thankfully, Whiro came to him. Wepwawet's acute senses detected the Titan swimming across the inland sea so fast as to create shockwaves. Whiro didn't waste time on chit chat. He lunged out of the water like a crocodile on the hunt the moment he reached Wepwawet, fangs aiming for his throat.

Wepwawet raised his newfound divine spear with two hands and Whiro's jaws closed on the shaft. The monster's weight and strength forced him to take a step back, the earth shaking beneath his feet. The sheer power of the impact sent ripples across the sea and caused Narc's remaining fortifications to waver.

Wepwawet's stance remained firm and strong, though. He did not waver, nor did he fall. The prayers of his Champions flowed into his head to remind him of what was at stake.

"Kick his ass, Lord Wepwawet!" They called out to him. "Demolish him!" They sang. "Crush that beast!" They shouted.

But it was Victoire's words that hit him the most. She didn't shout or clamor, no. She simply said four little words that carried all the weight of her trust.

"I believe in you."

Wepwawet was the only barrier between his followers and death, and he would not fold.

"Bold of you to face Whiro," the Titan said with a soft, creepy kind of murderous glee as he pushed forward in an attempt to throw Wepwawet off his feet. "And foolish."

"You're the fool!" Wepwawet snapped back. "You picked a fight with the wrong god!"

A wiser player would have stayed away and waited for Wepwawet to run out of mana, but his hunch that Whiro would live up to his reputation as a brute had proved correct. Gods didn't play The Divine Avatar Miracle to stay on the sidelines; they played it because they wanted to feel the blood on their hands, to fight in person like they did in the old days before they invented B&C.

But Whiro had bitten more than he could chew, in more ways than one.

Wepwawet pivoted his spear to toss Whiro sideways. The monster lost his balance and stumbled into the water. Wepwawet didn't give him time to regain his balance and struck with his spear. He had aimed for the throat, but Whiro managed to shift slightly enough that he struck his shoulder instead.

A disappointing outcome, though Whiro's grunt of pain brought a smile on Wepwawet's face.

"Not so easy when you're facing a deity with your bare hands rather than bombarding mortals from above, is it?" Wepwawet taunted him as he twisted the spear. Poison and black ichor spilled out of the wound. "You said you came to kill, not fight; and that's where we differ!"

Whiro opened his mouth and breathed poison in Wepwawet's face. The god of scouting pulled back to avoid the attack, his movements causing his spear to take out a large chunk of Whiro's stony flesh. The titan broke free with a glare of malice, his wound starting to close on its own.

Oh great, of course the lizard can regenerate, Wepwawet cursed. Even worse, he sensed the timer nearing closer to the turn's ending. Gods fought at blinding speed by mortal standards, but none of them could escape time. I need to kill him in one blow, and fast!

Thankfully, Whiro had made another mistake. He had brought the fight to his Avatar and thus fallen under the sway of Wepwawet's Opener of the Way Providence. His ability let him find anything he wanted within his realm of Influence.

And that included weak points.

The heart, Wepwawet thought as his Providence sent him the appropriate answer. I need to hit him in the heart.

Whiro turned on himself and swung his tail at Wepwawet like a whip. A booming noise spread across the land as his appendage broke the sound barrier with enough strength to shatter mountains. Wepwawet lowered himself to dodge the strike and thrust his spear forward in an attempt to skewer his foe.

Whiro saw the move coming and grabbed the spear with his jaw… which was exactly what Wepwawet was counting on. He suddenly pulled back, exploiting Whiro's own weight against him, causing the Titan to stumble and fall into the water again.

Whiro was a savage beast and fought like it, but Wepwawet had killed plenty of those. His father had seen fit to train him in the arts of war and battle ever since the day he could comprehend them.

"Is this necessary, Father?" he recalled having asked him once, and Set had replied. "How do you expect to command your Champions' war effort if you do not understand how to fight yourself? One only understands battles by living them!"

Wepwawet suspected fear of a day when the Titans might decide to break the B&C Accords and return to their old ways had motivated his father's training, but whatever Set's reasons, his son now understood that it had been a wise decision.

Meanwhile, Wepwawet could tell that Whiro had little experience with an actual fair fight. His sheer power had no doubt let him slaughter mortals by the millions and possessed the relentless bestial cunning of a hungry predator, but his movements were predictable and wasteful.

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He was a killer, not a fighter.

Whiro roared and snapped its mouth open in an attempt to breathe out poison once again. Wepwawet simply stomped his jaw underfoot and snapped it shut. He heard a crack, but did not waste time.

"You might be a lizard-faced deity of evil and disasters, but I am Wepwawet, son of Set and Nephthys!" Wepwawet boasted as he loomed over the Titan. "I'm…"

Wepwawet raised his spear for the kill.

"A wolf-faced god of war!"

Wepwawet drove his spear straight into Whiro's chest.

His weapon gored its way through pulsating stone-flesh and slimy ribs on its way to a pulsating heart. Whiro barely managed to catch the shaft with his hands before the tip could reach his heart and pushed back with all of his might.

Wepwawet barely had time to blink before Whiro's elongated tail coiled around his neck like a hangman's noose. It gripped him with immense pressure and tightened further. Gods had no need to breathe, so Whiro settled on trying to snap Wepwawet's neck rather than suffocate him.

Wepwawet struggled to jam his spear through Whiro's heart, but the Titan held firm. Worse, Whiro's tail managed to pull Wepwawet back enough that he had to take a step back to anchor himself on the ground, freeing the Titan's mouth.

Seconds left… Wepwawet cursed until he noticed Whiro gathered his poisonous breath for another attack. Here's my chance!

Whiro fired a poisonous breath of acid capable of melting stone straight into Wepwawet's face.

That was his mistake.

Wepwawet didn't avoid the attack. He instead leaned in with all his strength the moment Whiro exhaled, as the Titan's muscles naturally relaxed when doing so. The hold on his spear and neck weakened until he could press his spear deeper in. He powered through the poison damaging his Avatar's icy skin and the pain alike, until he felt his weapon touching something round and hard.

He impaled Whiro straight through his rotten heart.

Whiro didn't scream, because he had no time to. His Avatar's core exploded in a cataclysmic burst of mana, to the point that the sheer flash of radiance escaping from the Titan blinded Wepwawet for a second. The entire board trembled and shook along with the spatial rift in the sky.

Wepwawet sensed the tip of his spear hit the ground beneath the waves as Whiro's Avatar shattered to pieces. The Titan's Idol retook its original form before crumbling to dust in front of the mortals he had so feverishly attempted to exterminate.

A message appeared in front of Wepwawet, its letters glowing with triumph.

Titan Whiro has lost his Idol! Titan Whiro has lost the battle!

Penalty: Titan Whiro is permanently banished from Elphion, and you may pick any card from Whiro's deck!

Wepwawet's consciousness returned to the outside of the board in an instant. He gazed at the flooded lands between two ticks of the clock as time stopped flowing for mortals. His triumph was immortalized; his Avatar standing tall with its spear dug into the ground, his capital city safe from harm.

Whiro's jaw had clenched in annoyance, his eyes glaring at Wepwawet's Avatar in rage and disbelief. This made Wepwawet's victory taste all the sweeter. In spite of all the sacrifices, all the losses and close-calls his Champions had gone through, they had won.

They had won.

"This changes nothing," Whiro finally said, though he couldn't hide his annoyance and frustration. "Whiro was the first, but he won't be the last. Whiro has eliminated your ally, slain thousands, polluted your land, and poisoned your waters. Whiro has laid the groundwork for your destruction."

"My mortals will bounce back, and I'll throw back any Titan who dares attack them after you!" Wepwawet replied defiantly. He wouldn't let this sore loser intimidate him. "Now show me your cards so that I may claim my prize, and then get off my planet!"

He had seen enough of the gecko-faced bastard!

Whiro grunted in response, but the Titan Incursion's rules forced him to behave. His entire deck appeared in front of Wepwawet, ready for the pillaging.

As he suspected, Whiro's deck was almost entirely made of natural disaster Miracles—from Meteor to Earthquake to Tsunami—and cards that let him draw more cards like Heavenly Treasure. His creature-creation Rituals were few and far between, though Wepwawet spotted one Salvage Miracle Prophecy to recycle old cards.

"Why didn't you use that one?" Wepwawet asked.

"Your ally forced Whiro to discard it with her Auto-da-fé."

So Pele did make a difference. It saddened Wepwawet a bit. In spite of her terrible personality, his classmate had been instrumental in their victory and paid the price. He wouldn't forget that and meet with her back at the Nexus at the first opportunity to offer his thanks.

But that could wait until the Incursion's conclusion. All of Whiro's cards were extremely powerful and could have found a home in his deck, but there was one that no sane god could pass on.

"I pick The Divine Avatar," Wepwawet decided. The Miracle immediately left Whiro's deck and joined his own, replacing a copy of his Smite.

The Divine Avatar

Rank 12 Ritual

Unique. Temporarily transforms your Idol into a Rank 12 Divine Creature; however, you cannot recover mana in any way nor play any Miracle while the Ritual is active, and you must pay a maintenance cost of 12 mana.

While it required a huge amount of set-up, this card remained extremely powerful as an ace in the hole and a counter should any other future Titan play a copy. Wepwawet had hesitated between taking it and Salvage Miracle until he confirmed that The Divine Avatar could be used outside of B&C battles, which in turn offered a key benefit he knew would make all the difference in the long term.

Namely, it allowed him to move his Idol around.

"Wise pick, but futile," Whiro commented. "Pray we do not meet again. Whiro won't lose next time."

"In your dreams," Wepwawet snapped back. "Tell Beelzecuck I said 'beat you soon' on your way out."

The Titan snorted as his essence was flung back through the rift from which he came from, never to return on Elphion. Whiro would clearly rather have won, but he sounded content to have caused as much damage as he could.

He was unfortunately right that all the disasters he unleashed during the Incursion would take a toll on Verglane and Lavaland. The impact of Animisms would remain even after the battle ended, which was probably why Whiro stacked his deck with so many poisonous Miracles.

All your surviving Champions can now Rank-Up!

Surviving. That just put his losses into perspective.

Cleaning this up will take a while, and many of my followers paid for this victory with their lives, Wepwawet thought as he gave the board one last look. Mistouffe, Viviane, and Rapoleon had thankfully survived to make their way out of the toxic garbage patch that used to hold Whiro's Idol while most of Narc's population survived the attack. I need to find a Miracle capable of reviving them, and there's so much to rebuild.

Nonetheless, he was content with the result.

Verglane would see another day.

And so the battle came to an end.

Victoire watched the barrier enveloping Narc's region recede. The board rejoined with the world it had been severed from. The crimson rift above the clouds shrank and closed to reveal a clear blue sky. Her god's Idol walked back onto its pedestal and became inert again, his gaze and new spear pointing towards the horizon.

Not everything returned to normal, however. The inland sea outside of Narc remained, with countless soldiers stranded on rafts or small islands which used to be hills and mounds. They would have to be rescued. Narc had taken heavy damage, and it would take many months before it regained its lost glory.

Nonetheless, Victoire only had to look at the dawn on the horizon to remain hopeful. She and her allies had fought the hardest battle of their lives against a foe whose power they couldn't even fathom. They had witnessed a duel between gods, and seen their protector put his money where his mouth was to defend them.

They had paid a heavy price in blood and sweat, but the day was theirs.

Yet this was just the first of such attacks, Victoire thought grimly. Lord Wepwawet had said as much when he told her the truth of the world. More of these Titans and cataclysms will come, and we barely survived this one.

She and her fellow Champions would have to do more than just rebuild. They would have to grow stronger, to train, and to prepare. They would have to be ready for the day when the darkness inevitably returned for another round.

But Victoire remained hopeful, because for all the pain and losses, they still had won. They had fought an ancient evil bent on their destruction and they kicked it off their world.

The Titans could be beaten.

And she would never stop fighting.

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