Turns out I accidentally submitted two chapters at once last time, creating a really long double chapter. So we're already at chapter 12... Enjoy.
===+++===
== VORTEX QUEST 1-12 ==
== HOW THE SAUSAGE GETS MADE ==
Moving through the ceiling's crawlway wasn't too different but anytime the rock gave way to the outside, Xane got a dizzying dose of height.
A lake shone several skyscraper's worth below them. They were above a maelstrom, a swirling maw where all the ectoplasm coming in was flushed back into the underground.
Luckily, Xane didn't see much of the outside, or even the crawlway. Chay was trying a new method of travel – by cloud. Kidnapping a Kobold anytime they wanted to go somewhere wasn't going to cut it.
A ring of black fog with threatening tendrils surrounded the pantheon, obscuring the men. Apparently this looked like a Cinereant – a creature most abyss dwellers avoided angering. One so rare Chay hadn't been able to figure out what exactly it looked like, but most people probably didn't either.
If a passer-by stared for too long, Xane added slow rumbling thunder or creeping rainbow lightning.
He was having fun. In fact, he felt better than he had all day. That his sore, tender hole was responsible went unmentioned.
Chay dismissed the cloud and Xane readied his three motes, torn from pleasurable thoughts.
They walked over a suspension bridge of bone and chain, adorned with rock skulls. Below then was a flock of Cranio-Jellon – massive airborne jellyfish-like things. Their heads were gnarled brains the size of a house, trailed by tentacles as long as a train.
"Nobody nearby," Chay said and Xane relaxed.
Fno'Xhaan's overcastle was ahead, a small, upside-down mountain, with platforms and windows, some closed off with stained glass.
"What's the plan boss?" Xane asked, glancing into his fundoshi pouch where a nub shone gently. "The bitch is home."
"Two prong. I see two obvious entrances and I think we should take both – meet at the throne room and take Fno by surprise. Yes, yes, I know, splitting up sounds like a terrible idea but the risk of detection is greater wh- Incoming! Look slave-y."
Xane stepped in front of Goro and tried to look catatonic. His big, beefy, ever stone-faced friend had an easy time with that. Xane gave himself illusory baldness, matching his now smooth-headed gym buddy, and a drooping dick instead of his white thong.
A flock of Aeobolds landed up ahead and continued on foot. The Kobolds were the same man-sized reptiles the pantheon already knew but with wing-skin running between their four arms to allow flight. The ceiling was a different ecosystem.
The Aeobolds slipped into a chute without going near the pantheon.
"So," Marcus said as the danger passed. "Who goes in what hole?"
===***===
Xane didn't like abandoning two team members but he had to admit, he and Chay made a perfect infiltration unit.
They'd hopped in through an opening that lead into a rough stone corridor where bulky steampunk machines hummed, heating the air, powered by a massive garnet suspended in a tangle of wires.
Chay could become invisible in a light layer of his own fog. Xane didn't but the mist served to obscure him still.
The thaum-mage clicked the door's lock open with swipe. Luckily the locks here were so simple he only needed his mage-hand to pick them.
The antechamber was lit by a single tiki-torch. Five kneeling men were chained to the wall by the wrist. All physically fit and middle aged at most, no hair on their head older than a week, naked.
Four of them barely registered the demigod duo's presence but one jolted and asked "Who are you? Where did you come from?"
He'd asked in... Javanese? Then tried again in broken English. Xane still felt creeped out be hearing humans in the abyss speak earthly tongues.
Chay only made a `silence' gesture. The duo continued into the corridor.
"Fuck," Chay whispered. "I don't like it when they're... conscious."
"Bro, I was just thinking that. I got chills." Xane shone a searchlight from his palm across the empty walls.
"Man, there wasn't really anything they could do for these people but I'd love to start a slave revolt. I guess the Wretchers would just collect them, though."
"Feel like this should've been in the briefing," Xane mumbled. "And you books don't say anything?"
"Haven't had much time to read. They had lines around the neck, though, so they can be beheaded at a thought."
"But if Dle'Shuul can free us from what's essentially the same curse..."
Chay nodded. "Maybe we- Cover."
They pressed themselves into the wall and crouched down. Xane drew Chay into a loose hug, ignoring the erotic charge of touching perfectly smooth skin, and covered them with an illusory outcropping.
Footsteps passed, clanking with bones and chains. The light tapping of Gnome feet followed.
Their aegises had gotten bright enough to cast their radiance through the white fabric. Chay let darkness pour from his hands. Black clouds covered the glow of their crotches like censor-marks.
"Hm," Chay made and rose through the illusion once it was safe. "I wonder if the Gnome tunnels are big enough for us here, too. Keep going."
===***===
Goro had an inkling that Chay thought he and Marcus matched well, being on opposite sides of the patience spectrum. He held off on judgement.
By the time Goro had bent the iron bars out of shape, Marcus had stuck a few fingers in his own ass.
"Do you have to do that now?" Goro asked.
Marcus shrugged with the shoulder not used for anal masturbation. "It's starting to feel real good, man."
Goro slipped into the overcastle first. He entered a dim corridor, lined with cells the size of toilet stalls. About half held a male human, a few held more. The densest held five, unable to even sit down. The cells were labeled with the names of Kobold clans and Greenskin tribes.
"Guess Wretchers don't do delivery with their catches," Marcus said, the free hand on Goro's shoulder. "Wonder how long slaves have to wait before they get claimed."
Goro had no answer so he didn't respond. Their instructions amounted to `beat shit up until you're in the throne room', just with a lot more nuance and contingencies.
"Sucks we don't have time to ride human dick, huh?" Marcus said and slapped the mania-warrior's ass. "Not that I'd get a lot out of it. Maybe we can chat up a Drake. Up for it?"
Goro had nothing to say to that but realized Marcus wasn't going to shut up unless redirected.
"We should go. The others rely on us."
"Sure, big guy. Or am I supposed to say `yes sir'? I can keep the sarcasm on the inside. Military brat. Hey, you seem like the kind of guy who'd think about joining."
Goro walked past a cell with a black guy praying in Arabic. He could do nothing for him so he banished the sight from his mind.
The berserker pulled the chamber's door open, breaking the lock.
A Hellion and an Aeobold were chatting ten feet ahead in the corridor. Goro pushed himself off the ground and rushed in, the feeling of warm air on his shaved head unfamiliar but invigorating.
He rammed his elbow down on the Hellion's skullhead before the guard had a chance to put his helmet back on. It wasn't enough to kill the creature even though the skull cracked.
Goro used the rest of his forward momentum to drive both knees into the guard's face and landed with a backflip.
The winged Kobold screamed, a spear raised. A rune on the tip activated with purple sparks.
A chakram zoomed past the berserker's shoulders and sliced the Aeobold's throat, silencing him.
As blood splatters decorated the walls around them, Goro and the Hellion exchanged blows. In raw strength, mania-power was unmatched, but the Hellion's armor gave him enough mass to keep shoving fists aside. This one was an extraordinary fighter even for a demonic elite guard.
The mark of madness exploded across the powerlifter's right flank and abs in wild designs, directing him calmly.
Goro frenzied and comfortably gained the upper hand but his hair regrew within seconds and fell over his face.
Marcus appeared, flat hands aglow, and drove a palm into the Hellion's chest. The warrior with all his iron coverings was launched to the ceiling, sprawled there with a clank, and fell down flat on his face.
Goro jumped ahead, swiped the incoming spear aside and grabbed the blood-spewing Aeobold. He threw the creature into the wall and then down the corridor toward the prison.
Marcus dropped a whitefire foot on the Hellion's head, splattering it.
With both enemies dead, Goro walked off at a determined pace. He swiped a broken iron spike off the ground and used it to tie his hair around. Was it a little longer than before? At least the sides hadn't regrown.
He noticed that Marcus wasn't following.
The easily distracted man was staring at a double door. "Looks important. If we assassinate Fno, he's not gonna need any riches, right?"
"Just be glad nobody was in there to hear us. Come on."
Marcus pulled the gate open.
"We have a mission," Goro said.
"But loot," Marcus whined with a pout and proceeded.
The Japanese bodybuilder was about to grab the Filipino athlete in anger when he saw inside the room.
Well-lit from variously sized lamps on the ceiling. The floor was moist earth. A tree like a pale white willow stood at the center. Hanging on nearly every twig was a huge, fat slug like they had seen plenty of.
Under the slugs, all around the tree, were bowls and baskets with semi-liquid unicorn dust. Occasionally a slug squeezed out more. Older glitter paste was spread on shelves along the wall to dry.
"Oh," Marcus made. "It was slug shit. Didn't think they had real unicorns down here but, fuck man, they made me addicted to slug shit."
Goro grunted. One mystery solved. He hadn't planned on eating more unicorn dust and he had already wanted to kill as many Kobolds as possible so this changed nothing. No reason to blabber on.
"How much can you carry?" Marcus asked.
"You're not serious."
"Not to use it, dummy. It's valuable."
"Carry it yourself," Goro said and left.
Marcus joined him with about a pound of dried slug shit in each hand and a slug-shit-eating grin on his face. "If I sell it, don't come asking for your share."
"Wasn't going to. Watch out, Hellions!"
===***===
It had been a few minutes of hopping from hideout to hideout, through darkness and illusions. Now Xane was in a Gnome shaft just big enough for his wide frame to fit without chafing on the rock.
If their crotches hadn't lit the way, he'd have gone first with a conjured light, but obviously Chay was the leader and Xane wasn't going to fight him about that in the middle of a mission.
Now he was in the regrettable position of staring at Chay's ass from up close. The fundoshi's twisted string didn't fully cover the features of Chay's hole. Xane wondered if all of Dle'Shuul' nectar was fully absorbed. Probably. Not that he would have licked Chay's hole even if a golden drop had been right there – but he couldn't help wish for more nectar, no matter how.
A tiny cloud of black dashed between his legs to cover his radiant crotch as they passed a grate.
"Fno's bath, pretty sure," Chay said. "Have a look."
The room was fairly opulent, marble pillars ringed by nacre pustules, gold veins in fractured pottery. Not arranged well. Xane was almost as offended by the demons' lack of stylistic sophistication as by their mass slavery.
A bowl large enough to serve as hot tub for a True Daemon was filing with water. A green Kobold in a jeweled loincloth held his hand in.
"Cold," he said to the other lizard-man. He opened a gold grate in the floor to reveal pipes, centered on a small soul stone, that would continue under the tub. "It's empty, bring three."
Xane had to weave himself between Chay's muscular legs since the umbralist couldn't turn around in the tight tunnel. Their eyes met briefly. They were about to solve a mystery.
It didn't take long for the second Kobold to come back with three humans in tow. Two were thralls – pentagrams on their hairless heads. The third wore chains on his wrists. He had the build of a powerlifting lumberjack, buzzed red hair.
He insulted the jewel-decorated Kobolds in Gaelic until the first whacked him on the head with an iron stick. The slave dropped dead onto the pipes.
Xane was about to say something like `we need to save them' when the slave dissolved.
As soon as the lumberjack had hit the ground he fell apart as flaky ash and liquid drips. He seeped between the pipes as he faded.
Nothing remained, but a shadow of black now moved in the soul stone like a tadpole.
"Fuck," Chay said while the defenseless thralls got killed, fading to nothing before they even hit the ground. "We're electricity."
"Fucked up," Xane said. "That answered some questions and raises others."
Chay began to crawl forward. "Let's kill one of those demonic assholes. And whatever else we can."
===***===
They hadn't known if unicorn dust worked on anyone but humans. The gates to the throne were guarded by an armored Aeodrake – a Drake with leathery wings from arms to legs. Marcus flung their bounty and the creature got a facefull of glitter.
He dropped to his knees, grabbing his crotch. The demigods kicked him into an alcove. One problem dealt with.
Goro went into the throne room guns blazing as usual. It was an oval space surrounded by green stained glass windows tilted down, like an overturned church. Fno'Xhaan was alone, reading. The same pale white marble skin as any Wretcher, dressed in a black toga.
Aimless Noggins turned toward the intruders.
Goro was upon the lord with a frenzied roar, hammering the demon's face. Fangs broke, teeth chipped and Fno'Xhaan's head whipped back and forth under the blows.
Marcus had cast aside his bags of glitter and the handful of obols taken off their enemies' bodies. He sent his circular weapon to slice the Wretcher's legs as he took position.
The demon was catching his bearing and slashed wildly at Goro's body. Lean tan skin and dense flesh tore. They healed almost as fast, but the short searing pain brought Goro back from his berserk rage to reality. He had to put effort into evading or he would lose.
Green flaming pillars burst from the ground. A Hellion teleported in on either side. Poleaxes went for Goro.
The mania-warrior let his mark crawl over his shoulders, eyes dark, turning from a mere superhuman into a murder god. His pulse slowed as a nearly meditative calm overtook him, while his blood overflowed with adrenaline.
Using the Wretcher as a shield, Goro danced around the Hellions, dashing, flying and flipping to evade claws and weapons.
Marcus was somewhere in the mix, white burning fists breaking Hellion bones at the joints with perfectly coordinated hits, charged feet kicking spiky armor into demonic flesh.
More fire, more Hellions teleporting in.
Goro had beaten Fno'Xhaan's face to a pulp, black blood splattering on stained glass as his fists flew.
The demonic lord of the palace was not used to fighting for his life but that left his attacks erratic and difficult to predict. Goro didn't like being on the defensive. A claw swipe landed, severing the demigod's main leg artery.
The blood spurt and sudden loss of feeling in his right leg forced Goro on the retreat. His fundoshi was torn and gone, crotch a flashlight. He hammered his elbow into a Hellion who teleported in behind him while his leg sowed itself back together.
Human thralls stormed into the throne room – naked, well-built men with pentagrams on their foreheads. They swarmed Goro but were no match. A mere distraction. Each swing broke a neck or a skull.
The dead humans vanished seconds after getting killed. Illusions? The impacts felt real.
Fno'Xhaan flapped his wings and his massive body raced to the ceiling. The demon tore at his robe while he glided back down. He produced a blue stone from a pocket.
A wooden door burst off its hinges and the two missing pantheon members walked in, the room behind them on fire. Human thralls threw themselves in their path.
A cloud of darkness exploded into tendrils at the flap of a fan and Chay started yelling orders.
Xane sent a butterfly fast as an arrow at the pale, bloodied demon.
Fno'Xhaan caught it before it reached his head and his arm was enveloped in an explosion of thundering annihilation. It didn't fully delete the limb – even a minor demon was too powerful to be simply magicked away like a mere imp. Tattered, semitransparent bits remained in position, unconnected to anything, resisting the snapping lightning that crackled along the remains.
Fno'Xhaan crushed the blue stone in his other hand. A stormy breeze emerged from the shards as they fell to the ground. Goro braced himself.
Chay was shouting again but difficult to hear – giving instructions to Marcus on where the Hellion armor was weakest.
Xane sent his second butterfly. Fno'Xhaan turned away, swiping it with his huge wings. The mote burst into a dozen sparks, ripping through the wings like razor blades.
Fno'Xhaan went down.
But the wind had picked up. Goro jumped toward the demon but didn't make it any closer. The storm was turning into an indoor tornado.
"It's alive," Chay shouted. "Air phantasm. It's got some kind of brain somewhere in-" He became unintelligible.
Goro grabbed onto the throne. His feet were losing traction.
Hellions clawed on the ground as the phantasm dragged them along the walls. The remaining human thralls were flung around and dragged across the walls, bursting apart as they died.
Xane was in flight, putting every bit of thaum into resisting the storm.
Chay and Marcus hugged a pillar. The umbralist sent out puffs of cloud to check something in the rapid currents. It was impossible to communicate.
Furniture was the biggest hazard. From mugs to tomes to end tables, it all turned into projectiles racing around the room.
Goro didn't know how to beat up air but that wasn't the mission. Fno'Xhaan was on the ground but not as affected by the storm. The demon had to be in the eye of the phantasm.
The hunk let go and flung himself into the current, a beautiful slab of naked muscle and rage with a radiant nub. His hair tie became undone, the iron spike zipping through a stained glass panel. His hair tail hit his face before dissolving into strands.
He was flung into a pillar - ribs shattering - spiraled along a wall - shin breaking - and burst through a window. Big shards exploded around Goro as the indoor tornado shot him out of the throne room.
He used the momentum to round much of the room on the outside with levitation power and slammed himself into a different window feet-first just as his ribs were back in one piece.
With his lit crotch tearing through Chay's tendrils, Goro rammed straight through the tempest and dropped on Fno'Xhaan's position.
With his knees in the demon's back, he hammered down. Marcus' chakram had made it into the eye of the phantasm, constantly buzz-sawing into the Wretcher's hand, splitting it in two, spraying Goro with more black blood.
With his wings in tatters, one hand in ghostly bits and one sliced apart, Fno'Xhaan had no way of fighting back. Goro let the mania flow from his shoulders down his arms into the demon in thumps that cracked the floor beneath.
The darkness around him lit up. Chay's tendrils were retracting.
Something exploded and the air went erratic. The tornado turned to chaos as air currents intersected randomly, creating a dozen local maelstroms around the room.
Goro and his victim were flung up and to opposite sides.
"Yes," Chay shouted. "Good job, Xee, that was the master current. Now go for- Uh, Fno is dead. Holy shit. Wow, good job, Goro. Uh, Goro?"
The berserker looked around the room where furniture came crashing down. The demon was face down in a puddle of black. Was it really over?
The entire overcastle rumbled.
"Shit," Chay said. "Let's go. Now."
Fuzzy little balls of mold and spider legs dropped from the ceiling around Goro. Were the Gnomes attacking? Fleeing?
Neither, as it turned out. A blue glowing sphere dropped amidst the Gnomes, tossed by the fuzzballs in the ceiling. A cone of blue radiance washed over Fno'Xhaan's body. Here the ray touched him, he was instantly healed. Half his head, the inner part of his wings, most of his legs. Not the arms, those had been outside the effect.
The demon took off with a mighty flap and rushed out the broken window. Marcus' weapon zoomed after him, loaded with whitefire.
Goro heard Chay give instructions but didn't wait. He jumped after.
The pantheon's levitations didn't let them ascend much, but simple gliding was much easier. Fno'Xhaan's wings were too tattered to bring him up so he flapped just to stay afloat. Catching up wasn't difficult.
Goro fell onto the lord and clung on like a human backpack. He sunk his teeth into the left wing's shoulder joint and tore with both hands.
The pair impacted on something soft. They were on the brain-like head of a Cranio-Jellon. The creature was pushed down. Its friends wiggled their tentacles at the attackers.
Marcus and Xane dropped on the Jellon next to Goro and assisted. Xane sent bolts of ice. Marcus used his chakram but was occupied with healing the wounds he had incurred from tempest projectiles all over his body.
The wing ripped off.
Goro pulled Fno'Xhaan back by the head. Half the demonic face was still indistinct mush. The demon barely fought back anymore.
The mania-warrior turned Fno'Xhaan on his back and rammed a divine fist into the pulpy mess of a face.
Just as the Jellon around him wrapped tentacles around his waist, Goro broke the demon's neck from inside with a thick crunch.
Chay dropped past them on a cloud, sinking slowly through the brain-jelly flock.
"Great job but we gotta get going. These things have dangerous thorns."
Acid burns cut into Goro where the tentacle was wrapping him. He ripped the appendage apart.
"But my loot," Marcus whined. Xane dragged him off their Jellon and onto Goro's severing the grasping tentacles with a glowing bolt.
"We're already too low," Chay said, nodding at the massive stalactite above. He looked down at the next layer. "Bridge coming up. Everybody hop."
Goro kicked the demon. It slid off the floating creature and dropped into the lake with a long, long fall.
===***===
Dle'Shuul was laughing, which seemed like his most annoying habit.
Happy his rival was going to be missing in action until he resurrected in centuries, Dle'Shuul was willing to dip into his "secret blood reserve" where he had a bottle of Lord Hrailoth's blood next to many other lords'.
Xane was overflowing with confidence. They had taken down an actual demon – a minor one, but still. But there were a lot of lingering questions.
He'd recreated his three motes on the way. Not having butterflies fluttering around him felt like leaving the house without phone, wallet and keys.
Goro was naked and had asked Xane to give his head a clean shave for now. Marcus had lost his fundoshi to the phantasm. Only Chay's and Xane's crotches were dimmed by clothing as the aegises shone at the minor demon.
They had to strip anyway.
Dle'Shuul loaded the blood sample into a weird ray gun that looked much too sci-fi for the abyss - he called it Mockery-tech - and fondled their balls, `shooting' the signatures with invisible rays.
Xane hated how he couldn't stop staring at the robe-covered demon crotch, dreaming about riding that dick again. He didn't have experience with drug addiction, even if he had `flirted with steroids' as he called it, but his nectar craving was worrying. He didn't want to bring it up, though. Talking about riding cock didn't feel like a Xane thing to do.
"It is done," Dle'Shuul said, raising to his full height again. "Mitopathy of the Stereodemonic lineage, if you feel like reading up on it."
"But... the signatures are still there," Chay remarked.
Dle'Shuul shrugged. "Hemogenic Graphoplasts are practically indestructible. But I have weakened and `unassigned' it. No other lord will be able to sign you now either."
"Good," Chay said. "Great even. And no demon can assign it to himself?"
"Correct," Dle'Shuul said and chuckled. "It is simply open... for anyone."
"What..." Chay asked, eyes narrow.
"Don't worry," Dle'Shuul said and raised a hand. "No one can rip your balls off now. Only tug a little."
He closed his hand and Chay whimpered. The leader smashed his knees together and clutched his crotch.
Xane readied his thaum for a fight.
Dle'Shuul waved and Chay let out a relieved huff, sinking to his knees, still in pain.
"Just a bit of fun," the demon said. "Not like it can do serious harm now that I weakened it. Again, you're welcome."
As Xane and the others stood down, Dle'Shuul laughed again and gestured across the pantheon. They all jolted.
Xane had been kicked in the nuts a few times. Every time had sucked and made him want to kill a motherfucker. He bent forward, hands on his crushed balls. It was already over but the pain kept creeping higher.
Goro stoically held still, his pain only visible in his flexed thighs and the way his nostrils flared. Marcus was crouching, breathing deeply.
"Well, this fucking sucks ass," Marcus said, "but hey, my balls are staying on. That's something, huh?"
"This one's got the spirit," Dle'Shuul said and turned away.
Xane came within an inch of asking Chay for permission to kill, but part of him wanted to keep their nectar producing ally alive. Barely.