Somewhere in the space in-between worlds, a fly was begging for mercy.

"I…" Beelzebub buzzed as an invisible force choked his essence. "Forgive… me…"

"You have disappointed us, Beelzebub," a female, reptilian voice echoed in the void between worlds. Five great inhuman shadows loomed in the crimson infinity that separated Elphion from Titanspace. "We find your performance so far most lacking."

Unlike the gods of the Nexus, most Titans had no interest in playing at being like mortals. They didn't bother with common forms such as humanoid templates and instead preferred to manifest either as primeval beasts or forces of nature. The fact that they didn't waste mana on inhabited worlds meant that they individually wielded more power than most traditional deities.

The rules of the B&C Accords prevented them from fully manifesting anywhere near Elphion outside of Incursions, so all Beelzebub could contact were mere shadowy projections… but even those possessed enough power to choke the life out of him. He could feel an invisible snake tighten around his throat with cold reptilian fury and eldritch malevolence.

He would have been able to free himself and shrug it off once, before that bastard Set and those traitors from his own Pantheon dethroned him and diminished him to this demonic state. Words couldn't describe how much he yearned for the lost might of the Overgods!

That power would be his again one day, but he was at the mercy of his newfound superiors for now; and unlike the Nexus' teachers, they did not deal with disappointments with kind words.

The one choking Beelzebub was Tiamat, Mother of the Primordial Waters. Many confused her with the Elder Wyrm—that progenitor of dragons, whose five heads could not compensate for her dimwittedness—much to her chagrin, but Tiamat's children could not coexist with mortal life; for they were big, fertile, and forever ravenous. She was also expected to invade Elphion after Whiro, whose defeat did not sit well with her.

"We tasked you with weakening this world's defenses, yet Whiro found enemies ready to fight," Tiamat accused him upon tightening her psychic grip. "Including the son of Set, whom you said you could handle."

"I–I did attack him!" Beelzebub protested. "I ruined the largest army in his realm!"

This did not cool Tiamat's anger at all. "Then you are guilty of incompetence rather than treachery," the ancient goddess replied with disdain. "Were you my child, I would have already purged you."

"Why do you always kill them first, my dear?" Old King Kronos chuckled. "Children taste best when eaten alive."

His grandfatherly laughter echoed in the void, but none of the Titans so much as smiled. Old King Kronos wasn't the greatest threat to the Olympian Pantheon anymore—that honor went to his half-brother Typhon—but he remained a force to be reckoned with and the second strongest Titan to have answered the call to attack Elphion once he learned a grandchild of his would lead a civilization there.

He could never resist screwing over the young.

"This fatuous dispute wastes our time…" whispered Hastur, the King in Yellow. His shadow—or was the being an it? None had seen beneath the Unspeakable One's robes and lived to say how he truly looked like—alone followed a vaguely humanoid shape. "Punish him or do not… I do not care either way…"

"Patience, you two." The shadows darkened across the void, and a presence in the flow of mana grew heavier. The voice was snakelike too, a hiss in the void; but where Tiamat's voice carried the strength of her anger, this one was soft, barely audible, like the rattle of a corpse beckoning the living to their grave. "One failure does not erase a history of prior successes… nor future uses."

"Whiro lost because of him," Tiamat replied gruffly.

"Whiro lost fairly because he lacked recursion options," the Titan in question said. "Whiro will not make excuses for his defeat."

"Indeed," the serpentine voice added softly. "Release him now."

Tiamat obeyed the order without arguing.

Beelzebub felt the pressure on his neck weaken. He would have gasped for air if he needed to breathe like a mortal, but settled on sighing in relief. The pain faded away in an instant, yet he did not relax in the slightest as two colossal slitted eyes the size of suns settled on him.

When Apep spoke, all listened.

Of the five Titans that answered the call to attack Elphion, none could rival his power and wisdom. Apep the Destroyer, Lord of Chaos and Enemy of Ra, would be the final of the five to take a stand against this world's defenders–if they survived that long–and he would likely clean house.

Much like how that bastard Set held the record of B&C victories in the Nexus, Apep was the greatest player among the Titanomachy, with more dead worlds to his name than any other. The Lord of Chaos snuffed out universes like candles, and his feud with Set—who had prevented him from devouring Ra for eons—went back to the beginning of time.

That was why Beelzebub visited Apep first upon having been exiled from the Nexus. The Lord of Chaos had promised him mana, revenge, and a chance to restore his old glory in exchange for intelligence on enemy Pantheons. The attack on Elphion was only one of Apep's many schemes, but one which he had also taken a deep and personal interest in.

"Your mistake, Beelzebub, was to challenge the heir of Set to the kind of direct battle in which his cursed kin excels," Apep said with the patronizing tone of an elder addressing a child; which the demonic god resented, but wisely did not protest at. "You ought to have killed everyone in Promesse, ordered your parasitized agents to infiltrate mortal society, and then sent your flies to devastate their farmlands to starve and weaken them."

"But, Sir…" Beelzebub buzzed, the mere word leaving his throat sore. He would never forgive Set for diminishing him from king to errand boy! "Would you have had me abandon Promesse without a fight?"

"I would have you throw a thousand fights if it meant winning the final one." The Lord of Chaos nodded his shadow head. "We sent Whiro first because he understands this lesson well. The damage he caused has crippled young Wepwawet's civilization."

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"Which shall suffice," Tiamat said. "I will complete Whiro's task and crush that pup."

"No," Apep decided.

A short silence followed, with Tiamat's shadow squinting in confusion. "No?"

"Young Wepwawet's success calls Ra's succession into question, which plays straight into our hands," Apep replied calmly. "Young Horus and he should soon be at each other's throats. Let the heirs of Ra feud with no common foe to ally against. Let their dispute fester into a rotting wound. Let the rats bloody each other until a winner is decided, so that we may slay the wounded victor in his hour of empty triumph."

That was why cunning Apep focused so much on Elphion. The sons of Osiris and Set were both in the running to inherit Ra's position as Overgod of the Egyptian pantheon, and the succession would be called into question should they fail to protect their very first world from Titan depredation; which in turn would cause the family to fall into infighting and weaken their hold on the thousand worlds they already oversaw.

"Moreover, I have read Beelzebub's battle logs and those of Whiro's Incursion," Apep added. "Young Wepwawet shows a good grasp of strategy for his age, but he relies too much on his Champions and the environment to compensate for his lack of powerful Miracles. He is a thinker."

"Youngsters like him struggle the most with disruption-rogue deck players," Old King Kronos commented. "Hastur will handle him."

"Mayhaps, mayhaps not…" Hastur whispered. "My turn has yet to come…"

"If it ever does," Tiamat replied with queenly arrogance. "My spawn will overrun these mortals before you even have to get off your throne."

King Kronos grunted in annoyance. "No way you will handle my son's brat! That pleasure is mine!"

"Patience, Kronos," Apep said with serene confidence. "Tiamat will lay the groundwork for our victory by weeding out the weaker gods and seeding this world with monsters that shall serve our purposes, while Beelzebub shall focus on subtler sabotage."

"Subtler sabotage?" Beelzebub would have squinted if his buglike eyes could do so. One of the downsides of his demonic demotion was his inability to change his shape at will. "What do you have in mind?"

"Your civilization's ability to control mortal minds lends itself to long-term subversive maneuvers," Apep replied. "One mortal nation in particular shows great potential for destabilization."

"Chaos conquers all…" Hastur whispered.

Tiamat's immense shadow nodded sharply. "The mortals' inability to put the group ahead of their own individual interests has always been their weakness… hence why my creations are all exclusively homegrown and the disappointments are quickly culled."

"Bah!" King Kronos' snort echoed across infinity. "Living creatures are more trouble than they're worth! Move on with the times and automate like I did! My machines do what they're told and don't talk back!"

"But they cannot adapt!" Tiamat countered. "Steel breaks, but flesh bends and heals!"

The two Titans began to argue about their respective creature playstyle, which neatly illustrated Hastur's point. Apep, however, did not let himself be distracted.

"You will recruit mortal thralls and send them to destabilize key regions of the world that are likely to inflame international tensions among our opposition," the Titan leader ordered Beelzebub. "Others will focus on gathering information on our opposition. Have them record all Miracle uses. The more we learn about our enemies' decks, the better we can counter them."

"What of my Lunar Cry plan?" Beelzebub asked. He had pitched that strategy the moment he arrived on Elphion and discovered his civilization.

"Whiro supports it," Whiro said. Unsurprising, considering his fondness for large-scale disasters.

Apep showed more skepticism. "Your plan indeed shows potential… but the timing matters. Focus on strengthening your forces and slowly weakening the opposition for now. Our advantages will build up with time."

Beelzebub did not look forward to it. He used to consider intrigue beneath him, like his ex-wife. Those with true power had no need for tricks. Once upon a time, all he had to do was order others around to see his wishes fulfilled.

Apep seemed to sense his frustration and soothed his wounded pride. "Perform well in this endeavor, and we shall restore the divinity Set stole from you," he said, reminding Beelzebub of their pact. "Like a snake, you shall shed your old demonic skin and be reborn again as Baal-Returned."

Beelzebub buzzed with enthusiasm. At long last, he would be able to cast away this buglike parody of a state which Set and his own former Pantheon had reduced him to. None would mock his Providence again, and the name of Baal would once again command respect among gods and mortals alike!

And that would just be the beginning. Once he had regained his full power, he would crush Set's bastard, move on to avenge himself on his father, and he would reclaim his treacherous wife. Oh, the sweet fantasies his mind conjured…

"However…"

Beelzebub froze in place as the crimson infinity turned black as pitch. Apep never raised his voice, but the snake had mastered the art of layering his words with the worst kind of malicious threat; the kind he would carry out.

"We can forgive the occasional mistake… but not a pattern of incompetence," Apep warned him. "Should you exhaust our patience and fail to deliver results, Son of El, then you will learn firsthand why Kronos' children were so desperate to escape his stomach."

"I've never eaten a fly god," King Kronos said with a hint of morbid interest. "I wonder how many millennia it will take me to shit him out."

It took all of Beelzebub's willpower not to shudder in dread. He had heard the stories from Zeus' siblings back in the day. "I… will not disappoint you, Sir."

"That all depends on your performance," Apep replied with cold and unrelenting malice. "Now return to your post. Let us return this mana waste of a world back to nothingness, and its mortal parasites with it."

Apep forwarded Beelzebub's orders through the System and then promptly dismissed him by cutting the connection. The demon god reeled from the blatant disrespect, but put up with it. Nobody dared to speak to him like that when he used to lead the Canaanites!

Bear it, Beelzebub told himself upon returning to his Idol. Soon, you'll go back to eating at the table rather than feeding on the scraps.

His consciousness spread across his Influence, back to the black moonsteel walls, flesh bridges, and mushroom towers of his civilization's 'capital', Lune. The lunarians' first and only city nested inside a crater that, while outwardly silent, buzzed with activity. Thousands of slaves abducted from Elphion's surface toiled in stony depths to build the weapons that would secure Beelzebub's victory in this war.

Assuming control over the lunarian civilization had taken much effort. Their hierarchy was complex, and though they were united in their disdain for 'lesser races,' each of these creatures considered themselves a king. Their arrogance caused them to struggle with any kind of large-scale coordinated effort. Beelzebub only managed to achieve control over them by dominating their main spiritual authority, and even then it felt like herding cats sometimes.

King Kronos might have a point; machines didn't talk back.

Well, they'll die like the rest once we're done here, Beelzebub thought as he turned his attention to Elphion. The planet floated in the void of stars above his head, right next to its second and larger moon. Tiamat's Incursion should take place in the south of its central continent, far away from that cursed Verglane. What a pretty bauble of green and blue this planet is...

He couldn't wait to watch it all burn.

A/N: Otherwise, I've just released a standalone novel, Dungeon Wreckers on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited; which serves as a sort-of spinoff/alternate universe of my more popular Perfect Run series. I would appreciate any shouts, purchase, or review, anything that can help it find a home on Bezosland ;)

Link: https://www.royalroad.com/amazon/B0F959D6T1

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