== VORTEX QUEST 1-16 ==
== FROM PARADOX TO CRUCIBLE ==
There'd been enough mayhem in Illt-Besh that nobody noticed the four humans flying off.
The pantheon only stopped to drink at a creek far up the cavern wall. They didn't need hydration but it felt good to cool off.
Goro still couldn't believe it. He had gone up against the biggest baddest demon in the motherfucking realm and won. He wanted to party hard, eat pizza, smash pussy and hang out with his buddies. At least the latter, he kind of got to do. Small mercies.
When the others needed to piss, Goro joined in. There was something fun – in an animalistic way - about leaning back, hands behind his head, and getting piss splashed. He didn't comment on it.
Gallant was waiting at the spire, sitting in front of the holy mist, his ephemeral wings twitching. The Nephil rose as he saw them coming.
"I must congratulate you," the gold skinned giant said. "Not only is the nascent portal to earth closed, you're all still alive. Beyond expectation, if I dare say."
Goro waited until Chay had relayed the entire battle, constantly interrupted by Marcus. Pie was out of the ring and rested in Goro's arms. It felt like holding extra fluffy cotton.
"Ah," Gallant said eventually. "I believe the bound blade was enchanted to cast the Paradox Curse."
"Which means?" Chay asked.
The fallen angel looked deep in thought. "The paradox curse makes it impossible for the victim to feed itself. Food only makes it hungrier, if it does anything at all. Only being fed by another can satiate. Not automatically deadly but a great weakness."
"We should be immune then," Xane said. "Food doesn't matter."
"There's variants," Gallant said. "Maybe the curse adapted for you. Can you still derive pleasure from yourselves?"
The men stared at each other. Obviously no one else was going to check so Goro spit lubed two fingers, pulled his fundoshi off his hole and rubbed his prostate from behind.
His usually controlled face fell into a frown. "It's... not working."
"You can tell in two seconds?" Marcus asked, slowly fingering his own nipples.
Goro grunted. Maybe this warranted explanation. "I've been creaming out prostate-gasms once a month or so since I was fifteen."
Marcus grinned and opened his mouth but Goro's glare was enough to seal his lips. Goro hadn't even meant to threaten the bald athlete, but his face contorted with bestial desperation at the lack of stimulation.
"Shit," Marcus said, fingers off his nipples. "He's right."
"Move aside," Xane said and slapped Goro's arm. The mania-warrior retracted his fingers and felt Xane's magic hand enter him with three hooked fingers. The relief was instantaneous. He accidentally let out a whorish moan. It was confirmation enough.
Goro's fingers went to his nipples, which did nothing to add pleasure. He pulled Chay closer and fingered the umbralist's nipples instead, getting a return gift from Chay's fingers.
Sexual joy seared through his rock hard pecs at another man's touch.
Marcus whined, hand at his hole. "We can't cream one out solo anymore. We gotta help each other at every turn now. Fuck."
"Hey," Chay said with a weak smile. "Teamwork all the way." He didn't sound like he believed it but nobody called him out on it.
Xane let big, cartoon-teardrops shoot from his eyes. "This is a disaster. You guys don't know how much I was pleasing myself when you weren't looking."
"Same," Marcus said. "I've been spreading my hole even when we were walking. I could probably take a fist by now and, fuck, I'm craving it."
Chay sighed. "I've snuck off to finger my nipples a few times. A-and my hole."
It was confession time so Goro figured he'd add something. "When I was playing with Pie in the mist, I usually tried to cream. Had to eat my own load to hide it once when you almost caught me."
"Same," Marcus said again. "Not a fan of cum taste. Found that out the hard way."
"If that will be all," Gallant said, "our time together seems at its end. Jheyr'Udd is... not quite a backwater but a less connected realm than some others. I suggest you move on to the vortexes in Phivvinum before earth is invaded."
"Any travel suggestions?" Chay asked.
The Nephil cocked his head. "You've seen the realm liners? Barges flying along the ceiling?"
"Yup," Xane said and scribbled a sketch of a liner in the air.
It looked like an upside down ship, the sails hanging on a mast pointing down, the fore-castle underslung at the bow. Its `hull' was made of arches, chains threaded between those were aglow in faint red. It was a pretty good illusory rendition.
"Those also travel between realms at certain points. I'm not sure how you'd get on board but there's usually one leaving every week or so. The journey takes a few days."
"We don't have days," Chay said. "Every day we wait, a vortex stabilizes further."
"True. The instantaneous portal of Shgraas has sadly been lost. Some realms have a railway of sorts between them but not Jheyr'Udd. Not that it would take much less time."
"Anything else?" Marcus said. He was clearly in a bad mood now that he couldn't do anything to sexually relieve himself.
"A crucible," Gallant said. "The area of collision between realms – a slice of limbo, if you will. It is rarely traversed since all sorts of creatures are caught within it and the world itself can be hostile. Not something I recommend."
"We can deal with it," Xane said. "Just has to get us there fast."
"It would. You'll be over in Phivvinum within the hour. With your powers you could make it through, but beware that objects seldom survive the trip – another reason even the strongest Daemons prefer slower travel."
Chay shrugged. "We have nothing to bring."
Gallant nodded. "Then this is goodbye."
"Wait! Nectar!" Marcus demanded.
The huge, angelic creature gave the tan, bald man a glare but dropped his robes with a sigh. The pantheon fell to their knees as the long, prehensile dick uncoiled.
Goro's mouth watered, which was too embarrassing to even think about. He'd never thought he'd taste dick and certainly not that he'd crave it, let alone demonic cum that sent man-muscle-sex right into his brain.
But he was man enough to make it through any trial. And hey, he liked man muscles and sex – he just hadn't planned on ever combining them.
He only wished he could sit on it, too, and get his ass filled to the brim.
===***===
The plasma chute rides were one of the most fun parts of the abyss. Goro hadn't used waterslides often but the endless dark twists and bends, for all their lack of safety compliance, were pure childish amusement.
Marcus, sliding behind him, was lighting up the path with his head aflame like a white comet, trying to heal his hair back.
They shot from the chute and slammed together on the ground, sweaty muscles sliding over each other.
"Ooof," Marcus made. "Watch were you point those glutes, big G. They're harder than the wall."
Goro didn't answer, already scanning the area for threats. Chay had a load of smoke ready to toss at enemies.
The crucible entrance wasn't guarded. Nobody sane would come here.
The ceiling above was beset by holes in reality where the false night sky of the exoteric realm shone through.
Regular void hail had deleted rock and vegetation, leaving a landscape littered with small, smooth craters. There was debris from stuff people hoped the void hail would delete from existence.
The pantheon advanced into a wide cavern where void hail had carved tiny, smooth ravines running downward. Iron spikes and huge, sharpened bones secured with anti-void runes all pointed into the corridor in case a monstrous being popped out of limbo.
Xane conjured a few pale lights to shine on the path. Chay sent smoke tendrils ahead, following air currents.
"I did it," Marcus said, touching his head. Black hair had grown from the top of his scalp. "Going to need a mirror."
"Keep it shorter," Chay said, "so you can pass as a figment in a hurry."
Marcus shrugged. "I'll have our resident hairdresser shape it up." His scalp burned up again, adding strands along the back of the head.
Xane chuckled. "For the lanky gentleman, I recommend pigtails."
"This way," Chay said and marched off.
The smoke tendrils had found an invisible seam in reality, dug into a crevice. Xane deleted his lights and fed energy into the seam to widen it.
"This is it," Chay said. "Goodbye Jheyr'Udd, you bitch of a hellscape. Everyone ready? We don't have a way to test if it's safe to-"
Pie zoomed from his middle finger and dashed into the flickering rift. After a moment of stunned silence, the cloudy being reemerged as if checking what the holdup was and slipped in again.
"Okay then," Chay said. "Safe."
===***===
The trip through the rift was psychedelic. Goro thought he was falling but he might have been floating. Did he even have a body? A million colored shards scraped him, mostly rebuffed by his mania-power. Indiscernible kaleidoscopic beings reached for him, grasping, tearing and-
They were through.
The crucible was an assembly of cracked rock, floating in a void of red and purple clouds. Shards of silver poked from the ground, big as cars.
"Man," Chay said. "Those fuckers ripped my thong off."
The leader was naked, his aegis and balls with the black ring tattoo on display.
Xane stepped up to a silver shard and flexed at his slightly distorted reflection. "I'm crazy fucking hot."
"Hm," Marcus made and flexed his right thigh at the mirror surface. "Did I get sexier? More muscular?"
"It's the body fat," Chay said. "I think we're getting leaner. I probably had the least body fat among us and even I'm looking more muscular."
"Also water weight," Goro added. "We're not drinking nearly as much as we're sweating out."
Xane went through a slow flexing routine while Chay spread his tendrils with fan-power to seek the exit.
Marcus had grown a wide mohawk on his otherwise smooth scalp, each strand at a random length. He set his head on fire again.
"Yo," the animus-fighter said. "I can burn out the pigments. Holy shit, nice."
Marcus' hair turned pure white, more than his dyed hair had been. He seemed overjoyed.
Goro hip-bumped Xane away from the silver shard and flexed to himself, while the shorter hunk gave Marcus a magic half-inch cut on his mohawk.
Goro loved to flex in the mirror. He looked shredded as fuck, like he only managed at the height of a cut, but without the weakness that came with undereating. The only thing that could have improved the image was if his dick had been out instead of caged, and preferably getting sucked.
Fear crept into his system. Something was triggering his fight-flight response, tilted hard toward flight.
"Something's fucky," Xane said.
Goro remembered the sensation. "Creephorror!"
A black and brown flesh mass spilled from a crack in a floating island. The martial artist's chakram was digging into it right away.
The creature tried to fight back, firing bone shards and stones from an extending pseudopod.
Xane threw a blade of force, slashing the appendage.
A roar sounded from behind the group.
"Shit," Chay said. "Amber Wyrm, adult version."
The serpent in unnatural orange was as long as a train car and half as wide. It ended in two heads, one a cross of lion and serpent, the other a snake and eagle mix. All covered with orange scales.
The heads spat blindingly bright flame balls. Goro took to the air to avoid the one aimed his way.
Frenzy time. Goro let the power overtake him. He put his hands together as a single fist and leaned his weight into his downward swing. The lion head got a hammer blow to the brain and slammed into the ground.
Chay fought by his side. Darkness flowed into the Wyrm's vision, rendering it blind unless it kept whipping its heads around.
Goro rammed his foot into the eagle head and used the momentum to fly at the lion again. The lion's mouth, filled with snake-like fangs, snapped at him but jerked aside with a spasm – Chay's aid.
The wild berserker hugged the serpent-lion's throat and squeezed. He glanced back at his friends who were slicing up the Creephorror. This one was small by comparison but still had a lot of material to lob at attackers. Marcus was bleeding from the face and kept his distance, while Xane sliced the creature apart from behind cover.
The Amber Wyrm thrashed.
Goro was slammed into the ground, sensing his spine breaking. His legs went limp. He clawed himself harder into the lion's throat.
The entire snake whipped around, tearing itself out of Chay's smoke momentarily. The eagle spit dripping fire at Goro.
The berserker let go and pushed himself up over the lion's head. He front flipped mid-air and slammed his sensation-less lower body into the choking head to make it meet the fire meant for him.
As the flames rained in an explosion onto the rock, Goro clawed himself back into the lion's serpentine neck. The Wyrm was bleeding bright red blood with a gentle glow in multiple places.
Finally, Goro's spine healed. He used his dug-in legs as leverage and ripped the Wyrm's flesh apart. A chakram sliced deep into a wound he had opened and the sound of grinding razor on bone heightened his sense of frenzy.
The Wyrm's spine snapped.
Spasming wildly, the eagle head fired blindly into the area. Goro let himself be thrown away and hovered to a greater distance.
The Wyrm retreated just as the powerlifter's sense of dread subsided.
He looked over to the Creephorror, which was running as dark ooze out of its hiding place, too sliced to keep integrity.
The pantheon reconvened on a huge, fractured stone skull that cried ectoplasm into the void at the rim of the island cluster.
Xane let the Creephorror's sludge wash off him with a forceful gesture and dutifully cleaned his friends of enemy blood before fixing his hair.
Marcus stepped out of his dark red fundoshi, rubbing his caged package. "Okay, I need to jack off to a degree I didn't think possible. Who's trading hands with me?"
"Circle," Goro said and slipped his clothing off. He met no opposition.
Xane grabbed a mage-handful of ectoplasm from a puddle and slathered their holes wet. They laid down in a circle, on their sides, one leg up.
Xane's hand went into Goro's ass and Goro's fist opened Marcus' hole to the knuckles. It was fucking fantastic. Goro had trouble containing his moans and he could tell the others did, too. He felt like he was pussying out by holding back but he wasn't going to freely bitch-moan in front of bros unless somebody else started it.
Since each man was mostly focused on his own ass pleasure, they had to rock backwards, holding their own hand steady. Goro found that too cumbersome.
"Fistfuck," he demanded. "Stop humping back. Inefficient."
He showed what he meant by hammering Marcus with his hand, which made the renowned athlete go wild. Goro went harder than planned and slipped past the knuckles. Marcus cried out, high pitched.
"Sorry," Goro said.
Admittedly, it had felt great to intrude like that – to finally enter a hole again even if it wasn't with his preferred tool.
Marcus swallowed hard. "D-do it again. Fuck."
Goro obeyed. But now he was curious. "Xane push it in. I can take it. Wretcher dick is bigger than that."
"But you're not high on nectar right now," Xane said sounding worried enough Goro felt endeared.
"Dude," Chay said. "We can literally heal from anything."
A minute later each fist was fully buried in a hole. Goro was getting wrecked by pain-pleasure so immense he felt strength leave him like after his hardest workouts.
"I can't keep going," Marcus said. "It's too much. Too good. This is Drake dick all over again."
"Do we stop?" Xane asked. "I'm getting overwhelmed, too."
"Wait," Marcus said and brought his middle finger to his face. "How about a tiny bit of unicorn dust?"
The animus-fighter shot a knife's tip of glitter into his mouth. He quivered, his ass tightening around Goro's fist, then loosening more than before. "Fuuuuuuuck."
Marcus struggled to reach into the middle and shoot glitter onto each waiting tongue. Goro felt the effect. It wasn't enough unicorn dust to turn his brain into sex-goo this time but he was horny all over again. Objectively this was terrible, he should have been glad he was finally having enough stimulation, but he wanted to keep reveling in the fisting glory.
"Kinda glad," Xane mumbled, "about this turn of events. Had started feeling kinda gay, but this isn't dick so it's fine, right?"
"Right," Marcus said. "Not dick, not gay."
Goro lost himself in the slow-motion punches. Some time passed. Was he freely bitch-moaning? Yeah, but somebody else had started it, he just couldn't remember who.
"When," Chay said, whiny and breathing rapidly, "when do we stop? We can't do this all day?"
"Why not?" Xane asked. "Don't need to eat, don't need to drink."
"Yeah but, uhhhhh, Pie found a rift."
Marcus sighed. "I think we went for long enough to let the dust wear off. I'm so ready for a nap."
"We gotta keep going." Chay slipped off Marcus' fist with a shameless whore groan. "Gotta fight... for humanity."
Goro felt empty without a fist but his body had received so much stimulation it barely registered anymore. It was a shame that rubbing his nipples did nothing thanks to the curse but maybe they'd find a workaround for that, too.
His mouth felt dry, even though he didn't need water. It had to be nectar cravings.
Xane widened the rift while Pie dashed between them. Nobody mentioned that they stood broad legged now. Goro's hole was so tender he could barely wear the fundoshi. He pushed his magic into his hole and healed the soreness. The others noticed him doing it when his mark of madness slipped into his asscrack and followed suit.
Chay had no access to healing without Pie's help, but he brought his buff legs together anyway.
Standing straight, upright and powerful, the demigod entered the crucible's exit – onto the next adventure.
===***===
END OF BOOK ONE
===***===
See you soon for more naked battles and more desperate gay sex.