== VORTEX QUEST 2-8 ==
== AND THAT MAKES THREE ==
Naturally, the men couldn't contain their holes on the way back, arranging a fisting-chain on the Wyvern again.
Marcus felt weirdly proud of getting Xane's considerably buff arm inside himself to the elbow. It wasn't supposed to be that easy, right? None of his girlfriends would have been able to just sit on a fucking arm like it was second nature.
The sensation was beyond description. Marcus had always felt like horniness shot right to his dick, which could harden within just two heartbeats. But now he kept forgetting he even had a dick inside that aegis, feeling horny everywhere on his body at once, with bliss pulsing from Xane's fist like an orgasm-pump.
As soon as they reached the fallen tower, Marcus dropped into a corner and fell asleep. Chay was going to do the debriefing and whatever shit Marcus didn't have the patience for.
He woke up with Goro halfway draped over him as a big spoon, having to stifle the urge to cry at the disorienting haze of erotic yearning.
The lithe little spoon felt a burning desire to drink nectar, or to be precise, to get the muscle-cock-demon sex injection that turned his brain into a man-sex obsession machine. Could an asshole be parched?
When had he stopped forcibly redirecting his thoughts to chicks?
Chay came up to him, looking like he had just gotten up, too. "Hole tight?"
Marcus grinned. "Is that how we say good morning now?"
Chay handed him a nectar bud. Gold was dripping from his own thighs, which he regularly swiped off and licked.
Marcus gratefully shoved the `egg' into his ass and spasmed as the injection gave him what he craved.
Chay pushed a bud into Goro's hole while the giant slept soundly.
Marcus felt Goro's hug tighten as the Japanese powerlifter with a bun woke up from sexual bliss.
Xane was floating, eyes aglow, limbs lightly spread. Lightning slowly danced around him, enhancing his perfectly proportioned frame. He looked like a terrifying god.
"He's got five motes now," Chay explained. "Trying to make himself look like a superhero. He says it's to practice intimidating his enemies but," Chay smirked, "he just gets off on that shit."
"Well," Marcus said, sitting up with ass rhythmically clenching, "if I was a villain I'd defo shit myself when he shows up. Until I see the chastity, that is, hehe."
Goro bent his massive legs and fingered his own hole. "Uh, fuck," he mumbled. "Can't feel a thing."
Marcus draped himself over the broader guy and hooked his fingers in. He got Goro's fingers in return. Getting prostate-pleasured while the bud melted inside his guts was pretty good, the martial artist had to admit. He moaned into Goro's rising and falling pecs.
Their fingering speed increased. Marcus raised his head and their eyes met. They burst into laughter.
"Holy fuck," Goro said. "We look like two faggots."
"Yup. But it feels soooo good."
Marcus breathed Goro's scent in. It was the manly smell that nectar visions put into his nose. He wasn't fighting it anymore. It wasn't like chicks would ever know about his abyssal adventures.
===***===
Saan'kurr the Wretcher had pointed them at their final target – Phivvinum's last vortex. The way wasn't one a Wyvern would travel, they had to rent a liner.
Marcus was in a daze while Chay arranged everything.
During college, Marcus had gotten much better at organization, patience and plain getting his life the fuck together. He resented the abyss for setting him back.
But part of him took pride in being a restless, holy wreckingball.
To his unreasonable joy it was the Ceiling Dancer. The crew of Aeobolds and a Glitzer – that scary hunk of crystal – were willing to travel to Champion Remvan's territory directly.
Chay was in his `Cinereant' form, oozing darkness. He handed over a whole stack of deka-obols and the otherwise empty ship floated upward.
Since Marcus and Xane were both still fully nude, they wore illusory dicks over their aegises. Marcus was pretty sure it was his real dick, but a good 50 percept bigger, maybe as a tongue-in-cheek apology. Xane's fake dick was reasonably sized but clearly on the bigger side.
The mage was drawing on himself, leaving various tattoos on his skin that faded as he moved onto the next. Marcus kind of wished he had magic like that but he had never been much of an artist. If it took more than five minutes to create it was too boring for him.
===***===
This was the first time Marcus felt a chill in the air since they had entered the abyss. Cold didn't seem to affect him, but he could still sense it.
Then the barge rounded a corner and Marcus got blinded.
Remvan lived in an arctic environment inside a deep crevice. Silver slabs were frosted over, geodes hung with icicles. Snow covered every surface. Even the aurora was blue hued.
Signs of life were sparse, but the long cave of about half a mile across was lit by the rapidly flashing blue of a half-formed vortex. Rings of buildings stood out from the snow surrounding the energy whirl. A mile above it was a huge stalactite – Remvan's overcastle.
Chay let mists overflow the Ceiling Dancer, hiding the liner's approach behind a fast drifting cloud. Captain Lasher followed the cloud away from the overcastle's sight, behind a smaller stalactite.
The demigods hopped off and Xane sacrificed a large red butterfly on a disused crane to make it lower a drawbridge. Icicles rained.
The path was clear across cracked ice bridges between stalactites, leading to the upper balconies of Remvan's home.
The leader stared intently at the structure and the vortex with its village below.
"Feels like... nevermind," Chay said eventually. "Remember, we're only here find the keystone. Chralloth gave us everything else we'll need. He's trying to court Remvan as an ally, so we'll tread lightly here."
Marcus rubbed his hands. He wasn't actually chilly – they were all immune – but he felt like he should and that made him impatient.
Finally, when Xane had restored his mote supply, Chay waved them to attack and in the cover of fog, they slid across a pointed ice bridge like naked snowboarders.
Marcus had to resist the urge to shout `woooo' as he skated along the precariously thin, slippery path a mile above the ground, guided by animus-power's supernatural agility and reflexes.
His crotch flashed as his illusory dick vanished. The holy light was strong. A demon had to be right near-
The mists were wiped away by a strong gust. Remvan hovered before them, wings emanating strong wind without flapping.
The red, eight foot man wore a chainmail robe, fitted to the hard muscles visible underneath. A crown of ice and iron on his head, liquid black flame at the tips of his four horns and an overly large mace in hand, the champion of King Miph'grix flashed his fangs.
"I knew it," he said in a voice deep enough to make Marcus bones vibrate. "There was no coincidence. Our enemies are hitting the vortex sites. What are you? Demonblooded slave thralls?"
With no response forthcoming, Remvan raised the mace.
"Watch out," Chay shouted and pushed himself off the bridge.
Marcus followed his example as the Daemon rammed his weapon into the bride and caused a shattering rift that raced all the way up to their position.
With magic ice shards vanishing below them, the men levitated as fast they could to the nearest overcastle terrace. It was big enough to fit a basketball field but Remvan was summoning reinforcements all around them while taking position above the platform.
"Fuck," Chay shouted. "Don't be near those when you kill them."
Marcus looked around the approaching Hellions, spawning from pillars of green fire that left puddles on the ice platform. "Uh, why?"
"Some of those are Banelions," Chay said. He turned to Xane. "Plan B. I've got an idea. Get me up."
The thaum-mage sent a sapphire butterfly with white spackles to Chay. The magic insect landed between the leader's shoulder blades and grew until it looked like he had butterfly wings with a three foot wingspan.
"Be right back," Chay shouted. "Keep them busy."
He ran right into the cluster of Hellions and `grabbed' one with umbra-magic. Black smoke leaked from the warrior's pores as the demigod puppeteered him to spin around, axe-slicing his companions.
Chay took off and sailed around the icy structure while his puppet killed a Banelion. The special Hellion exploded in a burst of green fire that rained to the frozen ground as a spatter of flaming acid.
"Kamikaze cunts," Xane spat and shot lightning.
Marcus used his chakram like a sensor, cutting deep enough into each Hellions to make him bleed to know which ones to avoid. Anyone not dripping green got a whitefire kick toward the edge.
Goro was less careful, rushing in with beefy arms spread and ramming handfuls of enemies off the platform.
While the Hellions adapted – moving with their back toward the structure's frozen wall – Remvan swooped down, his mace swinging with impossible speed.
Marcus evaded but saw Xane get clipped. The bodybuilder got flung, his shoulder shattered and bleeding. As he flew, he sent a white projectile into the demon's face. Remvan screamed and pulled up, eyes frosted over.
Aeobolds in light armor streamed from opening gates all around the overcastle. The winged reptiles carried lances and iron stakes, providing a cover of metal hail as they swooped down.
Xane was busy healing and could only provide cover for himself. Goro grabbed spears off the ground and lances from the air and flung them back with the force of a cannon, ripping Aeobolds from the air.
Marcus could do little more than send his chakram up and cut the wing skin apart to force attackers away, except...
He grabbed onto a Hellion's collar and flung his own legs up behind him, flying into a headstand. His momentum pulled the Hellion along and after a full rotation, the warrior got slammed into a Banelion.
The special elite detonated in green fire and Marcus surfed the explosion on the Hellion, catapulting him halfway to the Aeobolds. He pushed off the corpse and his magic carried him close enough to grab a winged Kobold.
Each charged fist punch and knee hit gave him momentum to jump to the next Aeobold before the enemy could react.
Chay returned, butterfly wings carrying him to the platform. He grabbed the healed Xane, arms around his chest and too off.
"Gonna borrow this one," Chay said. "Cranio-Jellon incoming. Get inside."
Marcus let himself drop the three story distance and finished with a roll. Goro was already kicking the terrace's door open into a hall of iron furniture and yellow banners.
The interior was a mix of stone and ice, eerie blue light suffusing the fortress, with glimmers of orange lights shining through the walls.
A puppeteered Hellion was swinging long daggers at Trolls that tried to push their way into the room. The massive, broad, troglodytes were enthralled – a pentagram on their forehead marking diplomacy as impossible.
As soon as the Hellion fell, Goro was upon the Trolls, his supernatural muscles crawling with wild tattoos, black hair fluttering like a mane. He was smaller than a Troll but so heavily buffed up, he looked to be made entirely of muscle.
Marcus jumped in, aiming for necks and joints to take Trolls out with targeted strikes, shattering a shoulder with every hit and a knee with every kick. The swinging clubs were no match for his evasion. Goro simply took the hits, healing nearly as fast as he incurred broken bones.
At some point, the berserker's white fundoshi got ripped off. The crotch glow only made it easier for Marcus to track his companion in the corner of his vision.
As the Trolls fell, the sound of crystal clanking on crystal came from all sides, swelling and receding. Burred shapes moved in adjacent rooms, just visible through the ice walls.
No time to investigate. More Hellions spawned in the hall.
Marcus and Goro landed next to each other, eyes briefly meeting. Marcus couldn't help but grin. Fighting had started to be fun. If it wasn't for the aegis, he knew he'd be painfully erect – more so than usual, anyway.
Goro wiped away Troll blood with the back of his hand and grinned back, eyes pitch black, muscles so pumped even his face looked too masculine.
The ground shook. The two demigods re-entered the hall, watching the Hellions slowly retreat. More shaking. An earthquake... or ceilingquake?
Griffnix circled outside. A mix between bulls and lions with a dash of dragon, the winged creatures were large enough to be hard to kill quickly. Each Griffnix carried several Hellions on its backs, who provided arrow fire.
"They want to keep us in," Goro growled, sounding only half-human.
"Why?"
"No idea. We go outside."
The two tallest demigods stormed ahead, swiping Hellions out of the path.
The platform was a mess of iron spikes and acid puddles. Arrows rained in from all directions as the circling Griffnix picked up speed far out of Marcus' effective range. He had to use his chakram to slap arrows out of the air. Jellons – the giant tentacle brain jellyfish – were slowly encircling the structure.
Above them, Remvan and Hellions in purple robes had created a webbing of dark energy and gold spheres. Some kind of trap Marcus couldn't do anything about.
As the overcastle shook again, the rushing waterfall next to the terrace increased in volume. Wait... waterfall?
Water came rushing from openings of broken parts of the fortress. The place was melting.
More waterfalls appeared and flushed stuff and people from bursting windows. Remvan's trap fell apart. He left the Hellion warlocks behind and rushed them with his mace.
Goro pushed himself up with an eardrum shattering roar.
Marcus slid along the spike riddled ground, covered by his chakram in the arrow hail.
Goro had moved over Remvan and rammed both fists into the demon's head, making the crown burst as the demon was pushed down. Marcus slid barely underneath the mace swing and placed a magic flat-hand punch on the chainmail covered abs. As if in slow motion, he saw ripples of devastation travel through the champion's flesh and into the body. The force of Goro's next punch slammed Remvan's face into the ice.
Marcus' slide ended with him getting clipped by the Daemon's tail swing. Rolling with the momentum, Marcus started healing the injured arm. Remvan dropped over the edge, right into the waterfall.
The aegis' glow dimmed to a shimmer.
Another quake. The fortress was leaking like a sieve, creeks dripping from nearly every opening.
Chay swooped in, dropping a sweat drenched Xane with a single butterfly a bit too rough on the cracking ice.
"Inside," Chay shouted.
The terrace began to crumble as soon as Marcus was in the hall, ice crackling as it fractured and ever larger chunks fell.
The Griffnix riders pulled away.
As the platform broke off with one massive cracking noise, Hexkin rose from below as if they had just been waiting for a dramatic reveal.
The long, dark robes dripped with endless, illusory liquid like black honey, thick fabric fluttering with the mere suggestion of a human shaped being inside them. Bloodkin.
Marcus' leg vein burst along his entire right thigh. The spray of blood had enough force to it to make him slither on the frozen ground. Holy fire sealed the wound without a trace but he immediately felt light headed. White flames burned inside his veins to replace the loss.
He sent his chakram at the Hexkin. Xane shot fire.
Chay's jugular had exploded. Pie was spiraling around the room in a panic, biting residual life force from crippled Trolls.
No longer bleeding, the extremely pale Chay gave Xane orders while getting dragged behind a toppled stone table for cover.
Marcus stayed hidden behind a banner standard as Xane shot fire.
After another moment of razor-slicing blood Hexers, he dashed over to his friends. Chay and Goro now both had butterfly wings, Goro's being a mix of white, purple and red.
"Gotta borrow that one," Chay said, pointing his thumb at the Japanese powerlifter. He was still wobbly on his legs. "Try not to run into any Fiends or warlocks. They're planning something but they need time to implement it. We're not giving them time." He slapped Goro's ass. "Come on, Big G."
The winged demigods took off with the cover of a dark cloud as the last burning bloodkin fled the area.
The flock of Jellon was close enough to reach into the door. Translucent tentacles as thick as a firefighter hose moved furniture aside in search of prey.
"Man," Xane said, "what haven't we fought today?"
He let lightning of eldritch black and white dance up the tentacle, causing leaky tears and smoldering holes.
Marcus let his chakram race up the reaching limbs but stepped farther and farther away from the exterior wall. The floor was one big puddle, water now streaming from deeper in the fortress. The ground lightly shook a few times in quick succession.
Each injured tentacles was preplaced by two more.
The demigods' aegises glinted. A demon must have been rushing past.
"Fuck this," Marcus said. "We need a plan. Do you know what Chay wants?"
"Kinda. Let's just bail," Xane said. "Find something easier to kill inside."
"Fine by me."
They retreated to a spiral staircase, past several open doors. The palace seemed abandoned. More blurry shapes raced past them inside the ice walls.
This time, the shapes broke through – sharp crystals, ranging from fist-sized to the volume of a man's torso.
"Shit, Glitzer," Xane said. "We don't have Chay."
When taking on a Glitzer the plan had been to have Chay point at the weak spot. If you hit this `mineral elemental' were the grain of the shards met, it would break apart like a dropped glass.
Marcus didn't have Chay's weakness-sense, but he had his own sensors.
The chakram spun at as many rotations per seconds as possible and bounded off the ultra-solid humanoid creature, which now rose two heads taller than Marcus.
Xane was simply shooting heat rays at the floor to sink the creature and avoid the fight. Steam shot from the boiling water where Xane hit.
The water was now ankle deep. It rushed into the holes the mage created.
Marcus whipped around as he heard splashing behind him. Another Glitzer was rushing them.
The animus-fighter slammed into his teammate and they tumbled into an abandoned chamber, Xane's heat rays shooting chaotically around as he got flung.
The Glitzers crashed into each other and the floor shattered under them. The elementals dropped.
The walls shook and didn't stop.
Cracks in the floor spread to the demigods' position.
"Up," Marcus shouted and they levitated as the floor vanished beneath them. The ceiling followed and stone rained in chunks.
Marcus evaded down, dropping into water so cold it could have killed a regular human instantly.
The suction pulled him under into darkness. His power let him hold his break insanely long but pure survival panic drove him to struggle. He got slammed into a wall with enough force to once again kill a regular man and the water dragged him along right into... Xane?
Marcus clung to the naked muscles in the pitch black stream as they got dragged from room to room.
The wall beside them broke apart – blinding light - and the water rushed down the much greater path all at once. The hugging demigods levitated from the resulting waterfall into a creek-dripping hole a few levels down.
The swiss cheese of a fortress was mostly gone in the mid-section, structural stone exposed and, in many places, cracked.
The aegises flared up. Xane and Marcus stared at each other.
"Oh shi-"
Remvan descended upon them with a screech, and the men burst apart.
Xane shot a series of bolts for cover as the duo dove into the overcastle.
The Daemon barreled through a stone wall, rolling clumsily. He rose with frantic mace-swings. Xane had landed a face-hit. Remvan's eye sockets were oozing black blood were the necrosis fought demonic healing. He was currently blind.
The quakes were turning into swaying as the whole city-block-sized stalactite grew less anchored in the ceiling.
Chay arrived as a comet of smoke. Goro lost no momentum as his butterfly detached. The berserker threw his weight at the champion's face and... something made the demon's clavicle burst. The voidblade – Hole! Goro was wielding nothingness.
"We're in endgame?" Marcus asked.
"Hoping," Chay said. "Going to need you."
Goro's butterfly attached to Marcus' back. It didn't feel like more than a light brush. Then he was off the ground and-
Soaring a mile up in the air was frankly terrifying. Chay seemed to be the one controlling the butterfly, or maybe Xane's magic was somehow interpreting Marcus' thoughts? He sure wasn't controlling the flight directly.
Marcus pissed himself. Part of him was surprised he hadn't already lost control during his near-drowning experience but he suspected his bladder was as magically steeled as the rest of him.
Looking ahead, Chay's smoke-trailing limbs were spread, exposing his hole. With the cover of a dark cloud, they evaded the slow, hesitant reached of Jellons.
Marcus had a quick urge to dive forward and ram his fist between the smooth, sweaty cheeks. Not that it would have been hot or anything, it just somehow felt like fun. Horniness shot into his lower region. He wasn't experiencing horniness acutely in his caged dick anymore, it had become a fully distributed sensation. He'd have liked to finger his ass but their paradox curse made that pointless.
The duo circled a cracked pillar as thick as a baseball pitch.
"Here," Chay said and pointed. "And here and here..."
Marcus chipped away, focusing his enhanced flat-hand punches to go deep into the rock. The overcastle continued to sway, cracks spreading with grumbling noises.
Under the protection of several clouds, Marcus broke pillars as arrows from Griffnix riders and the occasionally stray Jellon tendril zoomed past.
Chay pulled him away.
The floor dropped. The entire overcastle fell. More stone broke from the ceiling as the structure's weight no longer hung from it.
The fall was spectacular. Marcus and Chay stayed in free fall, drifting away from the fortress as the rollercoaster went down, down, down – into the vortex.
Blue lightning shot up the ice-and-stone wedge as it rammed through the magic construct.
With a sound worthy of a mountain crash landing, Remvan's home drilled itself into the ground and broke apart with enough force to distribute building-sized shards across the entire cavern as easily as splattering paint.
Dust and snow rose to blanket the area.
Marcus was pulled along by his butterfly wings, following Chay. Goro joined them with a new set of butterfly wings, holding Xane bridal style.
"Remvan?" Chay asked.
"If he wasn't dead enough yet," Xane said with a lopsided grin, "he is now."
Chay looked out on the still growing dust cloud. "Let's go before the area becomes impossible to navigate. Here's hoping the Ceiling Dancer stuck anywhere closeb- ughhh, fuck."
The butterflies became erratic and Marcus spiraled uncontrollably down. He slammed into a pile of snow.
He was horny. He was horny enough to die for a fuck. If he couldn't get a dick into his hole he was going to tear his own brain out just to end this suffering.
He unburied himself from the snow, both hands uselessly digging two fingers into his ass.
A Wraith hovered closer. The cone of a thousand hands under a metal disk was the one cursing them with desire. Marcus had to... to kill the Wraith... but he had to fuck. He had to cum and fuck and sex and dick and ughhhhh.
Griffnix closed in from above as the billowing smoke started darkening the area.
Goro burst through a pile behind him. The mania-warrior was in frenzy and had Xane... sitting on his arm?
The short Korean hunk's ass had swallowed the tall Japanese's right arm to the elbow. Xane had an expression of unbearable bliss and fired magic missiles at the Wraith.
Goro barely slowed down and aligned his left hand with Marcus' ass. He held a nectar bud in his pointed fist, the arm glistened with ectoplasm.
Under no other circumstances would Marcus have considered this option.
He spread his ass at the approaching Goro and the powerlifter rammed his hand into the Filipino athlete's hole without slowing his step.
The fist-railing was enough to override Marcus' brain functions. He was now a sex-and-battle machine. Swinging wildly at the Wraith's many arms, Marcus gave himself to the craving and pleasure of adrenaline and humanly-impossible fist sex.
Then the nectar kicked in he could feel himself sliding farther down Goro's forearm as his hole welcomed the intrusion. Flooded with craving and fulfillment at the same time, Marcus turned his visions of men, muscles, dicks and demons into action, swinging with powerful hits as the Wraith practically flew apart.
Xane's lightning sparked all around Marcus while his chakram dug into the flesh blob under the metal disk from which all those arms grew.
Goro slipped out of Marcus' and Xane's holes to kick the disk away as it dropped.
Marcus went to the ground, trembling, tears rolling down his face at the intensity of orgasm's big daddy. Xane collapsed on top of him, pissing.
That was fine. Marcus was going to take a long nap right there in the snow. He wasn't cold, after all, and the battle was won. He couldn't possibly move and clearly neither could Xane.
He was just... going to drift... off to slee-
"Run!" Chay shouted weakly. The leader was stumbling on shaky knees through the snow, barely inching forward. Gold drops ran down his inner thighs.
Tendrils had broken from the descending dusk cloud, with smoky skulls at their tips.
A Wyvern made serpentines above, carrying robed Hellions who shot those strange projectiles.
The pantheon crawled forward, finding their divine strength quickly but still hardly able to run.
The skull-clouds impacted around them, turning snow into streaming puddles.
Chay was hit in the head and collapsed. Marcus tried to shout a warning. A projectile hit him in the chest. He went down, snow flash melting around him.
He... wasn't dying. Not poisoned, not rotting, not getting shifted into a different dimension. Nothing.
The Wyvern passed and took the casters with it.
The demigods got flushed a few hundred feet as the warm water rolled over ice and stone, then came to a wet halt.
Chay brushed himself off. "Er, as I was saying. Let's get out of here."
"Can we nap?" Marcus asked.
"Preferably for a few days," Xane added.
Chay sighed, shoulders sagging. "We need to report to Chralloth's guys so we have someone to look at what curse just hit us and then we..." He looked at his friends. "Fuck it, we all need a round of sleep and a circle of fists. Yeah, let's find a crevice."
Goro looked back at the settling smoke pillar. "Last vortex in Phivvinum, down. That's four of six."
Marcus weakly punched the air. "Go us."
Goro went to his knees. "Ughhh, carnal craving is setting in."
Chay sighed again, glancing at the metal knuckles on his chest belt. "Volunteers for getting eaten?"