== VORTEX QUEST 1-15 ==
== THE VORTEX ==
"We gotta get moving," Chay said. "Get up."
Xane hadn't really napped. After the nectar bud high had mellowed out he'd still been too sexed up to fall asleep. His hole burned pleasantly from Goro's attempts at putting his fist in there. Better not think too much about where the sensation came from and just bathe in the afterglow.
"Five more minutes," Xane mumbled and made sparks dance between his motes that lazily fluttered overhead.
Chay stretched. "Shadowhand said we're not as safe here as we think. The Blood Feaster clan might regroup and lay another ambush. Hrailoth could betray us any second. We can't put this off."
Goro was leafing through a book, frowning. "I'd like some more time with this, too."
"We got the vortex' emergency shut-down codes," Chay said and slipped into his dark red fundoshi. "Xane can you carry the key stones again?"
"Sure thing, boss," Xane said and threw his legs up, right into a handstand, reveling in how magic enhanced his acrobatic skill.
"Also," Chay added, "can you give Goro another bald shave? And... since we're infiltrating, Marcus should get one, too."
"No way," the fake blond athlete said.
"We're infiltrating," Chay repeated. "We have to look like slaves and your hair is just too long."
"Not by much," Marcus said and patted his faux hawk, which the lack of styling products had left fairly messy by now.
"It's about the fate of humanity."
"Ugh, fucking fine. Doesn't mean I have to like it."
Xane could keep his head bald with a mere illusion, Chay's hair was passably short already, Marcus and Goro got magic cuts down to the scalp.
The pantheon dressed and left for Jheyr'Udd's most important location.
===***===
Dozens of crawlways as well as open streets led to Illt-Besh, a rare urban space in the pastoral hellscape.
At the center of a basin sat a dozen multi-story obelisks, rugged and serrated, dominating a busy bazar, from which stone houses sprawled like oversized mausoleums, tapering off into iron-supported clay and wood huts at the edges.
The aurora's dim sheen was supplemented by frozen flames in immense braziers atop dented stone skulls. The sounds of the city were kept quiet by a Muffling Bell, silently ringing from a central obelisk, keeping sound from traveling beyond a street or two.
There was artistry in the architecture, but no throughline save for bone as a material. Xane would have called some areas Gothic, Mayan, even Indonesian, each faction in Illt-Besh turning a block into a village unto itself.
The four men pretended to be figments – slaves conscious enough for simple tasks but not unruly enough yet to need oversight at every turn.
They'd procured one of the ubiquitous chains and wrapped themselves into a line, chain around each man's neck. To cover their fundoshi, which they needed to keep their aegises hidden, they each carried a bunch of stolen leather, seemingly delivering it.
The streets were steep, random, often narrow. Hellions patrolled in groups of thirteen; eight-foot pillars of transparent jelly slimed along the paths; a Troll smoked blue leaves on a balcony while Kobolds made bets on arena battles below; a Fiend dragged a Wyvern corpse into a butcher shop where three many-limbed chimera got to work.
The pantheon's target was obvious.
A bright blue tornado, nearly reaching the ceiling, the vortex swirled strangely windless. Every few minutes its glow erupted into a sharp, white-blue flash, blinding if you looked right at it. Only the Muffling Bell kept it strangely silent.
Mashmorg had repurposed the town's Institute of Psycho-Arcane Infrastructure Planning for his prestigious project on Interdimensional Manifold Tessellation, better known as the vortex.
The pantheon passed through a wider street. On the left was an almost quaint view of Trolls and Kobolds in front of a tavern sipping some pale green beer. Opposite that was a stack of crude cages where sweating human hunks stood like sardines in a can, some drooling, some pissing.
A velociraptor-like Kobold in a leather jockstrap hit a heavy switch and an entire cage of a dozen men was executed by some invisible means, fading and seeping into the ground. Deep red sparks raced along wires above the building to power machines across Illt-Besh.
The slaves conscious enough to perceive the event, cried out and rattled their cages.
Xane suppressed a shiver and forced his eyes off the spectacle. There was no consideration given to comfort, but also none to torture. It was simply battery storage.
===***===
Infiltrating the institute was oddly easy. The Wraith at the entrance didn't lay one of its many hands on them, used to delivery figments wandering in and out.
Moving along the oppressively bulky stone walls of the interior, Xane's heart was beating so fast he was sure any nearby demon could hear it. He was desperate to check his aegis. He had a bad feeling about the whole mission.
"We're almost to the inner sanctum," Chay mumbled, head down. "It's obvious they don't expect an infiltration, let alone by slaves. We might be able to get in and out with no fight."
While some Hellions stood guard, the vortex control wing was nearly deserted. Security focused on the vortex site closer to the edge of the institute.
An open air courtyard, about the size of half a football field, allowed a view of the blue maelstrom shaft swirling upward. Machinery was everywhere, mostly in the form of pipes along the walls, rattling pumps and steaming valves.
The demigods were in the arcade corridor surrounding the yard, arches leading into the open space.
The far wall of the yard contained... a computer? A truck-sized machine of brass and iron with so many pipes it looked like an organ. Rune engraved brass knobs formed a keyboard of a hundred buttons. Glowing runes hovered above, like a holographic display.
The machine was powered by a dozen smaller soul stones, hanging in a network of twisting cables that ran along the walls.
In a corner, five human thralls knelt in silence, drooling.
"Jackpot," Chay mumbled. "Damn, that thing got a ton of weaknesses."
Marcus chuckled. "Held together by duct type and nectar?"
"Unattended," Goro said.
"But protected," Chay said, looking left and right. "The archways all have those invisible force fields. Here."
Chay took a look at the tablets set into every other arch. Wires and diagrams like a demonic fuse box. The wires were centered on deep blue gems, a black tadpole moving within.
"Soul gems?" Xane asked.
"Kinda," Chay said. "Psychaceous Cerulite. Subtly different. These are accessible because they're expecting an attack to come into the yard from above, not from within. Still... There's tripwires in the parallel psycho-polarizers. I'd bet my next cumshot we'll trip an alarm if we pull a fuse."
Goro gently hummed. "Just bypass the psycho-flux regulator before it reaches the polarizer."
Xane stared at the bald berserker, as did the others.
"What?" Goro asked with a shrug. "Engineering minor."
"That..." Chay started, "sounds good. I need to short it. Anybody feel like getting electrocuted? Wait, better idea."
One of the thralls in the yard rose and waddled toward them. Xane readied for battle, but Chay waved him off. The umbralist was puppeteering.
The short, well-built, hairless man was Brazilian, easy to figure out once Xane focused on him and felt his mind slip into the correct language.
The thrall ran, leaning forward. Before Xane had figured out what was happening, the slave rammed his head into the archway. Xane jolted.
As soon as the dead thrall hit the ground, his corpse evaporated. A third tadpole joined the ones in the fuse box's blue gem.
Chay fiddled with the cable attached to the soul stone. "Aaaand flip the signal."
The force field became visible and retracted along the entire side of the yard.
Chay held out his hand for a high five and Goro emotionless reciprocated.
Xane wanted to say something like `stop having a bonding moment with my bestie, you already got to be the leader'.
"Okay," Chay said quickly. "No way this goes unnoticed for long. The keys."
They hurried to the organ-computer terminal. Xane banished the sticking charm he had used to keep the donut halves in his fundoshi hem. His bald-illusion failed at the same time, which he hadn't intended but didn't matter.
Chay unfolded a piece of paper he'd kept under his fan-bracelet. The others stood watch. Xane let his motes slip from his fundoshi pouch. The vortex flashed overhead.
The keystone halves clicked into a depression and pandemonic runes flittered across the keyboard, too fast for Xane to read. Chay began pressing buttons.
The hot air stirred.
Hellions stormed toward them from a side corridor, a Wraith hovering behind them.
"Overload the doors," Chay shouted. "Just throw souls at the box."
Goro leapt into the slave group and grabbed two by the neck. Before Xane could get his bearings, the berserker had slammed the humans face first into the wall at a soul gem tablet.
The force field reestablished, cutting off the warriors.
Pumps all over the yard thumped and steam blew from vents on the roof. The vortex flashed irregularly.
The roof's force field became visible and retracted. The Korean bodybuilder's three butterflies circled his head.
"Done," Chay said. "Now- Oh shit, it's Mashmorg." Black smoke rose from his hands and barreled to the ground. "Get ready to fight."
A red demon in gray robes descended rapidly, his wings steady. The Champion had two large horns with a black flame at each tip. He growled loud enough to make Xane's crotch quiver.
Goro's muscles were pulsing and tattoos crawled across his chest. His hair grew back within seconds. He used the bead string to tie it into a bun. "Ready."
The remaining thralls rose against them. Goro sank two fists into their faces like cannon ball hits and they evaporated.
As the Daemon crossed the threshold into the yard a butterfly dashed in from the side and burst into a thousand radiant needles. Lord Mashmorg was hit in the back and his wings got tattered at the base as did the back of his robes. Pretty good hit, Xane told himself.
The nine foot demon crash landed with a deep shout.
"Shit," Chay yelled. "He's possessing Goro!"
Xane looked at his friend who was frozen with a pained expression, his muscles flexed to the max.
"I'm, uh," Chay started, "counter-possessing. I can't puppeteer him, though. Fuck, I can't fight like that."
Two Hellions spawned into the yard with bursts of green flame. Marcus flew at one, his chakram at the other.
Wafts of gray smoke fell off Chay and crept along the walls. Pie slipped from his fingers and raced around within.
Xane was terrified of fighting a major demon – let alone a Champion of Zheggyr.
But the hellfucking bitch-cunt had possessed Goro.
No. Just fucking no.
The second mote Xane expended he flipped to chaos energy. Inherently unstable and threatening to slip from his control but he was ready to let it loose.
The mote hit Marshmorg in the face and detonated into static so flat and deep at the same time it was challenging not to dwell on the distracting paradox.
Ideally, the attack would have beheaded the demon but the champion was too powerful to die like that.
Bits of flesh and skull hovered above the bleeding stump as the Daemon's body regrew.
Goro broke the possession.
Before Xane could yell out in triumph, the nearly headless enemy reached into his robes and withdrew something disgustingly rotten, like a dead squirrel. He crushed it and black sparks raced along the ground at the demigods.
The sparks were target seeking. There was no dodging. They hit. Xane felt his flesh begin to rot rapidly.
"G-gather, expel. Come on, expe- hurg!"
Xane vomited bile. He bent forward and black sludge shot from his throat. His healing set in, rejuvenating his flesh.
Two more Hellions spawned in but Marcus was busy burning the rot out with holy fire. Goro was healing faster than the poison putrefied him, now in his madness state.
The 6' berserker went up against the 9' Daemon.
Xane stumbled over to Chay who was on the ground, rotting fast.
"Chay, I... I don't have magic to spare. It's barely healing me."
"It's fine," Chay said, weakly. "Pie... feeding me... life."
He gestured at a panicked Hellion, clouds puffing under the armor.
Lord Mashmorg's face was regrown to the point where he could see again. He flung his robe at the attacker. The cloth moved like a sentient creature and enveloped Goro's upper body. As much as the mania-beast tore at the fabric, the strips stayed stuck on his face. His hands, strong enough to bend iron bars, got tied up.
"Goro's gonna suffocate," Chay said and failed to sit up. "The robe... hexer-chimera..."
"What do I do?"
"Weak... fire."
While Marcus, fully healed, was busy with the latest batch of Hellions, Xane sent his final mote at the robe. He tried to calibrate the flames to spare Goro as much as possible but he had little time and he didn't think it would matter too much.
Flame enveloped the berserker.
Lightning raced down from above, blinding Xane and throwing him off his feet. He caught himself, hovering. Two Wyvern circled overhead. More lightning came down from whoever rode them.
Xane sent counter lightning, creating mid-air explosions where the bolts met. He grabbed the barely mobile Chay with one hand, thanked the gods for his natural and supernatural strength, and dragged the wiry Thai fellow along one armed while countering enemy strikes.
There wasn't much of an overhang to the yard. Nowhere obvious to hide. He could have bent pipes into cover but shaping-magic was a slow affair.
Chay flipped open his fan and sent the entire stockpile of smoke up to form a dense dome over the yard. The lightning stopped.
Xane finally had magic to spare on healing and pumped it into Chay who coughed up bile.
Mashmorg summoned a green scimitar.
"Watch out!" Chay shouted at Goro, his voice firm again.
Pie went after the demon and bit his ankle. The champion was now only in a leather pouch that held his double cock. His perfectly muscled body was marred by black blood along the back and tail from where Xane's first hit had landed. Why did that take so long to heal when he had regrown his whole head by now?
Xane summoned a radiant bolt into his hand and sent it around in an arc to hit the demon in the face.
It landed and made the lord flinch back as drops of black blood spurted from his horned visage.
The next batch of Hellions spawned in with a group of enthralled Gawri. The gecko-insect men were like a gift to Chay who could possess one to fight on their behalf.
Marcus kept the area around Goro safe, while the berserker continued to go up against the demon solo. The green scimitar was a serious problem. It cut wounds much bigger than it had any right to, forcing Goro to pull back in a circular path and heal anytime he got hit.
Xane found a good rhythm of sending radiant bolts at the demon and piercing arrows or steady lightning at the closest enemies.
A stalemate.
Massive amounts of goo dropped in from the ceiling and solidified – two pillars of transparent jelly.
"Gloopers. They'll try to encase you," Chay said. "Weak to temperature. Don't bother with anything slashing or piercing."
The umbralist sank back into a cloud of his own making, leaving Xane alone.
The mage flexed his biceps and focused for three seconds. Flame streams poured forth from his peaking biceps, burning a hole of bubbling liquefaction into the nearest Glooper. The hole left a charred rim as it expanded, just like holding a giant Bunsen-burner to jelly should.
"Yeaaah," Xane shouted over the chaos. "I'm on fire, baby. That's some god-tier shit."
He hit most-muscular and frost shot from his biceps. Solidifying Gloopers was more effective than liquefying them, since they could no longer move once their base was frozen. Xane became an ice-cannon.
The corpses of Hellions and Gawri piled up in the goo of Gloopers getting slashed apart by the scimitar – the demon swung indiscriminately whenever Goro was in range and Chay surely piloted minions into the swings.
Xane went back to sending radiant projectiles at Mashmorg.
Debilitating horniness overcame Xane. He was basically ready to kneel down and finger himself and let the demon cut his head off. Nothing was more important than sex, not even survival.
The Wraith in the corridor must have found a way to cast through the umbralist's smoke-screens.
Luckily they had prepared for this moment.
Xane fiddled with the linen sack on his calf with shaking fingers, constantly reminding himself that if he could hold off on pleasuring himself for just a moment, much greater satisfaction awaited.
The mage brutally rammed an egg-sized golden oval into his eager ass and let the fundoshi strap snap back into place over his burning hole.
It wasn't quite like getting fucked but he felt the sex-power overcome him. It was still tempted to finger fuck himself or to uselessly try to jerk off but he could at least finger his rock hard nipples and shoot bolts from his biceps at the same time.
Chay appeared next to him and grabbed a bud to put in his own ass.
Xane used his mage-hand in invisible mode to carry on over to Marcus who was struggling to punch a single Gawrus while ramming three fingers past his fundoshi strap.
Chay carried the last one to Goro, gold dripping from the Thai athlete's oversized glutes and down his inner thighs.
Horny and craving but getting sufficiently pleasured, Xane continued to fight.
Just when the yard seemed at maximum chaos, Hexers descended through the smoke dome up top.
Hexers or `Hex-Kin' in the abyss came in a variety but they looked mostly like tattered robes without openings, their hoods going all the way around. Whether the Hexkin were living cloth or invisible beings within the fabric wasn't known to the pantheon.
A gaggle of Bloodkin Hexers hovered above, identifiable by the illusory blood constantly dripping off them. They had short, gnarled staffs pointed down.
The veins on Xane's left forearm burst. Blood bubbled forth as if boiling.
He sent a firebolt at the Hexkin, which missed, and focused in keeping himself from bleeding out.
Chay was taking control of a Bloodkin Hexer, her wand pointed at her compatriots. The unsettling, tattered hoodies ripped. War broke out among them.
Marcus went up and sent his chakram around to rip cloth where possible, his fists finding no resistance – punching a Hexkin was like punching a towel.
"Grab and tear," Chay's voice came from his fog.
Xane's veins were closed and he sent radiance at the champion again. The demigods were slowly winning, kind of.
Goro was no longer engaged in melee. There were enough fallen Hellions around that the berserker could grab swords, axes, tridents and spears off the ground and throw with all his godly muscle power.
The Daemon blocked projectiles competently, but some landed and sliced him up.
Goro was naked, his crotch gleaming with holy light. It made it tricky for the demon to look directly at the berserker's lower body but there was no way to capitalize on that.
Chay jumped from the omnipresent shadows, crotch alight. The demon flinched from the blinding gleam of holiness. Goro rammed his body into the distracted lord.
The scimitar dropped. Chay grabbed the handle and dragged the weapon into his shadows.
The enemy recovered under Goro's pummeling and fought back.
Xane screamed out as his balls were crushed like never before. His aim failed. A squirt of nectar from the bud shot out of his hole and onto his shredded hamstrings.
Mashmorg must have noticed the signature on the naked balls.
Xane couldn't move. His legs were made of pain dialed up to eleven and still rising, no longer under his command.
With tears in his eyes and sickness rising in his abs, Xane sent lightning, infused with as much holiness as his magic could muster. The lightning curved around Goro and hit Mashmorg in the bleeding flanks. Pie was wrapped around the demon's face.
The trickle of Hellions had slowed down. Marcus went after the champion, too, a nectar drop squirting from his hole with every hard hit.
Chay emerged from the shadows next to Xane. He was cupping his crushed balls, his voice whiny.
"Make another mote," the leader said. "Chaos to the face like before. We can take him. I'll defend you."
The naked umbralist dragged Xane into the clouds where the pain-weakened wizard went to work. Making a mote took one or two minutes. Luckily it required rather little focus.
Fighting for his life and suffering ball torture while his ass felt like getting beautifully fucked was almost putting Xane's mind over the edge of insanity. He chuckled like mad as shivers wrecked him, racing up from between his legs, pain and pleasure crossing wires.
He shaped his rage into a red butterfly with sharp, pointy wings, orange at the edges, black spackles in the center. Chay stayed by his side, cupping his own balls and stabbing beyond the fog with a Hellion's spear at things Xane couldn't see.
When the mote was ready, the team of Goro and Marcus had danced a full circle, with Mashmorg on the offensive again. Pie slipped into his underwear and hopefully gnawed on the double cock enough to distract the enemy.
The mote hit the demon from the side and chaos erased the head from existence – opposed by the Daemon's resistance to incomprehensible cosmic forces.
The disconnected remains of everything above the neck stump got sliced further by a chakram. The demon was blind and deaf again, grasping around wildly. Goro managed to slam an arcane chainsaw-axe into the torso several times, red energy ripping red flesh.
Chay stepped out of the shadows and speared the lord's flank with the green scimitar, shouting something at Goro. The wound was so deep and wide it seemed like the flesh eagerly parted to accommodate more of the blade.
The ball crushing ceased but the pain didn't let off, only dulling, not yet fading.
The Bloodkin returned through the smoke cloud in greater number and Xane sent lightning up before they had pointed their wands.
Goro now had the scimitar. He jumped up, did a forward roll for maximum force and brought he weapon down into the Daemon's torso, cutting through the chest like paper.
Xane ascended to meet the Hexers who were fighting again, one of them surely controlled by Chay. Thaum-magic fire didn't burn these Bloodkin much but they seemed afraid of acid. Xane only had to watch out for his friends underneath.
The scimitar cracked, vibrating the air around it.
The Hexers fled and Xane didn't think it was his doing.
Chay yelled something and swiped aside the smoke dome with a fan wave.
The three demigods on the ground took off, joining Xane, drips of nectar trailing from their asses.
"Go go go!" Chay yelled. Pie retreated into his ring.
Xane levitated ahead, putting his depleted strength into escape. The vortex was gone without a trace. The city looked darker without its blue glow.
The demon's sword exploded into a storm of green lightning that tore Mashmorg's corpse apart. The city's Muffling Bell effect visibly struggled to contain the detonation's volume. Projectiles zoomed from the courtyard, too fast for the pantheon to escape.
Dodging between obelisks, temples and skull-riddled pillars, the four men tried to evade the demon's last curse, but to no avail. Each one was hit by an orb as were several creatures in the institute facility and on the street. The demon wanted to take people with him into death.
The demigods landed on a spiky roof.
"Anyone feel like they're dying already?" Marcus asked, patting his body for rotting spots.
"I... I dunno," Chay said. "I'm still horny as fuck and flying high on nectar but... Maybe we're immune to the scimitar curse?"
"That..." Xane said, hands on his knees. "That was fucking awesome. Whooooo yeah!"
Goro fist bumped him with a grin.
"Quiet," Chay said and handed out the fundoshi Pie had collected off the ground. "Get dressed. If a demon flies by we'll be beacons."
Marcus stretched his arms. "Was that it? Job done? Jheyr'Udd off the checklist?"
"I think so," Chay said. "Let's go back to the spire. We need to plan next steps before a horde comes our way."
They started jumping rooftops. People on the street who'd been hit by the scimitar's curse got up as well. Maybe it was nothing, Xane speculated. Yeah, probably nothing.