== VORTEX QUEST 3-5 ==
== REVOLUTION 2 – JOIN US ==
Rhibinelg's suns brightened the ocean above to a shimmering blue, the reflected `nighttime' light dyeing the red sand a gentle navy.
The demigods were on the war path.
Marcus carried a bandolier of darts and daggers.
Xane had three butterflies sitting on each round shoulder for a total of six, their bright colors trailing behind them as illusory comet tails.
Chay lead an army. Goblins in leather straps, carrying clubs, Hellions in spiky armor, a well-paid Wraith and even a Glitzer – its semi-transparent body casting torchlight sparkles. Two tine-varks served as gear carriers.
Goro had pushed `healing' into his hair, making it grow nearly to his ass. Xane had kindly braided it, which his third, optionally visible hand made easy enough. A few black metal pins held the braid together. He'd always wanted to try that, but chickened out at the time and effort required. The mark of madness ran across his left thigh.
Goro found the idea of Chay as a grand general a bit spooky, but as long as a divine berserker had a place in that army, he wasn't going to objects.
Marcus, on the other hand was talkative as ever. "One of the slaves is a Filipino, by the way. Not totally lucid of course, but close. Thinks it's 1988 so he's gotta have been recycled a fuckton of times."
"I'm sure you had lots to talk about," Xane teased, "with how much time you've spent overseas."
"Fuck you and that's not what it's about. He spoke Tagalog and, like, for a second I was embarrassed because I always feel like my Tagalog should be better and then I have to be like `sorry, I grew up too American' but I'm a magic god now and speak everything so it's actually chill."
"Can you speak less?" Xane said and got a face full of kicked-up sand. "Hey!" the Korean sputtered, "no charged kicks or I'm sending a spell at your ass."
The group dipped underground into one of Hakkri's disjoined crawlways - sandy tunnels with sporadic illumination. Goro slapped away some dry vines grasping weakly at him. Eyeballs hanging from the cave ceiling followed the army of two dozen. An imp fluttered to safety.
Goro stayed tense. If they had been betrayed, a narrow tunnel was an excellent ambush opportunity. Minutes later, they made it to the surface fifty miles from the entrance just as the suns flipped and bathed the desert in light.
"How's your Thai, Chay?" Marcus asked.
"Fucking zilch," the leader said without turning around. "I'm adopted. Also, we're almost there."
In the distance, heat haze created a mirage, but underneath was a real oasis, ringed by tufts of light green and blood red vegetation.
The bean-shaped body of water was home to a lord's castle and his bazaar on one end, but caravans were allowed to park around it.
One such group was packing up and leaving as scheduled – the army's target.
The caravan was focused around an eidophant – a giant, headless tortoise with a flat enough back to house a wood-and-sandstone mansion. It belonged to an Arch-Hexer by the name of `Fourth Ascension' and her coven - and she needed to die.
Her entourage, trailing the eidophant, was a mix of Kobolds and vark-handling Goblins but also a good hundred enthralled humans – rows of naked, blank-faced, sweaty, bald or buzz-cut man like a military parade with the uniforms removed.
Goro felt a spike of horniness at the insane amount of dangling dicks and glistening muscles. He didn't have a problem with his attraction to men anymore – he'd always loved bodybuilding so finding them sexy was just a new appreciation – but he had a problem with the level of horniness. He couldn't get distracted.
His mark crept up his hip, promising the zen calm of murder-machine-mode.
Chay steered his army into the path of the caravan. "They're getting nervous," he told his Hellion aids. "See the Kobold guard at the edge of the shell? Blue, eye patch. He's putting his men at alert. They'll take a minute to prepare archers."
"We're close enough," the Hellion said and raised a horn to his skullhead bone-lips.
"Yeah... let's hit them. Attaaaaack!"
Goro didn't wait for more instructions. He plowed ahead with huge jumps that made the sand shoot up like geysers and rammed his mania- -enhanced body into the ground-based gobbos.
The superhumanly broad, short greenskins burst aside as their bones got shattered on impact and landed on top of their fellows. Goro grabbed some and threw them at whoever was still standing. That would make enough of a path to the eidophant.
At the fenced edge of the shell, Kobolds dropped. Marcus threw darts ahead of his advance as he levitated into the defenders. The projectiles zoomed like bullets trailed by whitefire.
Several dark robes emerged from the shell-back palace.
The sound of the revolution alliance army behind Goro came closer.
With the energy of a battle god in his muscles, Goro hopped onto the eidophant, fists in Kobold faces instantly.
Blightkin Hexers were made of gnarled, matted robes, heavy with fungal growths. Their empty sleeves reached out and tumors popped up on Goro's skin. They burst like zits as Goro's body healed them away.
Fighting fabric-beings was Marcus' job, who was already on it. The Goblin army below clashed with the defenders. The alliance Hellions began their surround of the eidophant.
"Cinereant!" shouted someone below. Having Chay mistaken for an ash man was a double edged sword. On the one hand, desert dwellers were familiar enough with them to have a healthy respect for the possibility of getting suffocated. On the other, Chay would be a priority target, especially once they realized his smoke wasn't thick enough to kill.
The alliance Glitzer crawled onto the shell with clumsy crystal arms and started breaking shit. Goro joined in.
Liches stormed from the shell-back palace's side wing. The tall, purple men in robes had wild, pale masks over their faces. With open arms they summoned skeletal imps.
Goro threw himself forward, blood exploding from his body where the blightkin cursed him with tumors. His fists shattered a lich mask, brain matter splattering in a cone behind the hit.
The berserker crushed his way through a swarm of skeletal imps that bit through his skin, aiming for his face. He grabbed and crushed bone.
Xane was doing something. Color flashes behind Goro were followed by relative quiet from the Hexers, his body no longer fighting off sickness.
He ripped a Lich in half, purple blood staining his ultra-ripped pecs.
"Stop," shouted a Lich on the ground. "We surrender. We didn't mean to anger the Reapers. She told us-"
"Shut up!" Goro roared. He gestured at the next batch of Blightkin floating from the palace roof. "Join us, fight them."
The Lich nodded frantically and the masked men directed their skeletal imps to attack the Hexkin from behind.
"Where is Fourth Ascension?" Goro asked.
The Lich pointed at a palace tower. "She might be summoning something."
The eidophant shook.
Goro took off. He jumped onto the roof of the highest part for an overview. Chay was a huge black cloud, Xane within the darkness shot lightning at surely strategic targets. Marcus and the Glitzer worked along the shell's rim and made it impossible for the defenders to use the height to their advantage.
The battle below was pure chaos. Goblins and Varks and Hellions fought on piles of dead, the corpses bubbling with tumors and blisters. Skeletal imps were now attacking the defenders but the message hadn't quite been received so everybody slapped the bony creatures as they saw them.
Creepy robes hovered over the battle field, without flaws, pristine and gently flowing, the staffs beside them straight and tipped with precise geometry – thrallkin hexers.
The thrallkin cursed alliance soldiers to join their side as mindless slaves. The mindlessness made them less effective at combat but every ally denied to them was an issue. The revolution's Wraith was counter-cursing them but he was getting swarmed and his many hands were busy fighting off greenskins.
Goro rammed his foot into the roof over and over, stone and iron no match for muscles of heavenly power.
He went into the palace like a torpedo and didn't slow down as he shoulder-bumped the wood portal before him off its hinges. His spine-length braid swirled around him.
The Arch-Hexer Fourth Ascension was a dark, hollow robe three times bigger than a human. She reached out with her finger-like, parted sleeve. Goro briefly felt a bizarre need to punch himself in the face hard enough to shatter his skull, then another to land on a spike heart-first. It didn't matter. His curse-overload, combined with the training from Oldblue made him immune.
He jumped and rammed the Arch-Hexer through the tower walls. Wrapped in the living fabric, Goro fell through rubble and dust until the eidophant shell broke their collective fall. Within half a second, his shattered bones were mended and he began to tear.
"Marcus!"
Goro ripped with hands and teeth. The martial artist's razor ring failed to show up.
To Goro's surprise, the bitch was able to use his open signature and crush his balls. The pain was not mitigated by his magical near-invulnerability. His balls were getting brutalized hard enough to make him feel like his entire stomach was getting ripped from between his legs.
He roared loud enough to make his own ears ring as his vision blurred. The fabric in his grasp tore away as the living robe slid from under him.
Fourth Ascension gained the upper hand. With her flexibility, she slipped from his stiff fingers and pulled up. Goro jumped and dug his hands in. She slapped her body at his face, slamming them both onto the eidophant shell again, covering him, cutting off his breath. He ripped as much as he could while his balls got quasi-kicked again and again.
Fire rained on them both. Xane's voice.
The Arch-Hexer pulled away, burning. A chakram finally zoomed through the air, but missed.
"Left!" Xane yelled. "Bit more. There. Down."
Goro pulled back from the burning robe. Marcus was blind. Pale, slow motion fire poured from his eye sockets where tumors were still healing.
The eidophant tipped to one side as several of its legs retracted into the shell. Warriors screamed underneath as the massive creature crushed them.
The tumbling Marcus caught himself elegantly like an Olympic acrobat without knowing what he was even holding onto. Goro dropped on all fours. Parts of the palace broke off.
Xane threw some more fire at Fourth Ascension and ran. "Shit, it's sliding."
Goro grabbed Marcus by the hip and jumped out of the way of a building coming down the slope.
The trio landed in the sand and met Chay who was guarded by Pie, three Liches and a puppeteered enemy Kobold with an axe.
"Status?" Chay asked.
"She's dead," Xane said.
"She was summoning something," Goro said.
"I know." Chay nodded at the nearest Lich and continued in Necrosian – Lich language. "Seems she succeeded. It's some kind of Wyrm."
With the enthralling Hexkin dead, the hundred or so slaves returned to their former selves. Figments were loopy and at varying levels of consciousness but figured out they should run. Shades were only driven by bare survival, unable to grasp the situation, but they saw men fleeing and ran along.
A slate-gray Wyrm burst from the sand under the slaves. Three men were catapulted high. They faded as they landed with broken spines.
The Wyrm, with the face of a serpentine elk, its gray antlers raining sand, slammed its body onto the battlefield.
"Rockwyrm," a Lich said. "We'll try to break the enthrallment but she cast it as her death-wish so the amount of high-frequency crypto-potency in..."
Goro flung himself at the creature. His fist came down on its eye. It was entirely made of stone.
While the bones in his fist fixed themselves, he jumped into the antlers and tried to break them off.
The antler serpent dove into the sand as if it were water. Goro was slammed into the desert and felt the rock creature's rumble move underneath. Goro could sense where-
The eidophant retracted its last legs, pushing a cloud of sand across the area as its body hit the dunes. Its massive body's reverberation overwrote all other movement under the desert.
The Wyrm broke through in the center of the army. Most were quick enough to escape but the Glitzer got tossed in the air, broken in two, a few small crystals spraying off the main parts.
It aimed for Chay. Goro jumped in the way and tore its antlers aside. Chay probably helped out, if a Rockwyrm could be made to twitch. The gray snake's face landed five feet beside the group. It pivoted and speared a few gawking shades, the human flesh melting off his antlers as the souls faded, then it escaped underground.
On the next emergence, Chay closed in with the voidblade. The invisible sword dove into the rock-skin like thick cardboard but the creature moved too fast, dragging Chay along instead of letting him get in a good cut. He had to de-summon Hole before being pulled into the ground.
How did you kill a long mountain if all you had was magical rage and incredible muscles?
Very slowly? Not an option. A really, really big pickaxe? Haha. An elemental counter, like water or air? Not applicable. A second, bigger mountain? Maybe...
By the time, the elk-serpent rumbled below again, Goro was ready. He carried a wall segment on his back, sand and rubble raining off its edges. How heavy was that? Three tons? He had an urge to try squatting it.
The Rockwyrm emerged and got a stony surprise. Goro's throw had the wall sailing into the elk's chin. Rock chipped off the creature and it landed on its side, awkwardly propped up by an antler half-sunk in the sand.
Xane had created a new mote by now and threw stored up chaos at the enemy. A sphere of disorienting static deleted a chunk of face, including an eye and an antler-connection. The creature fled, but Chay was sure it would keep attacking.
At the Wyrm's next attack, Goro held the sliced off 300 pound antler like an awkward baseball bat. The moment the Rockwyrm emerged, he hammered down, lifting himself up.
The creature continued to emerge, seemingly unimpeded, but paused at the high point and fell backward.
"It's unconscious," Chay shouted. "Get it."
Xane pushed his flexed arms ahead and loaded his palms. Little wizard-bolts needled the stone.
Goro brought the antler down on the main body like a misshapen axe. Chay hoped onto the main body and stabbed down, rock cracking under his all-cutting Hole. Tearing and stabbing and blade-dragging, Chay got enough of an opening to let Goro's `axe' fracture the stone-meat.
The creature broke open with spasms, rock innards steaming as they spilled forth.
===***===
"So we lost a lot," Chay said.
"Worth it," the Hellion general responded. "With this traitor executed, we'll have Reaper support."
The reason for killing the Arch-Hexer and her caravan coven was simple. The revolution lacked in demonic support. Minor demons like Reapers and Wretchers would have been a great addition. They had a complicated relationship with Thrallkin Hexers since they all dealt with slaves. Enthralling humans in particular was subject to endlessly shifting agreements, compromises and power plays.
Fourth Ascension had taken things too far – practically stealing escaped slaves from under Wretcher's bat noses. If she hadn't been dealt with, her `criminal empire' would have turned into a business too important to just stomp out.
Frankly, Goro was too horny for politics. And there wasn't even nectar.
"Can we fuck some slaves?" Xane asked.
"I think," Chay said, looking at the horizon, "they're already getting picked off by Wretchers. And if we try to follow some, they'll have been stung by sliverlings before we get there."
"If it's sex you want," the Wraith said, using its many hands to help the Glitzer put itself back together, "just point at some Lich and he shall be yours."
Chay looked back and forth between the Wraith and the Liches. "Ah, some rivalry? You're both territorial. A lord can only employ one or the other. I was wondering why we haven't seen Liches before. Well, that's something for Sharpeye to figure out."
"So..." Marcus started. "Lich fuck? My thighs are in actual pain for how much my hole wants it. My legs are going to get sucked into my ass."
Chay shrugged. "I was going to say we find a tunnel and fist for hours, but sure, let's see what they've got. I'm about to get hit with Carnal Craving."
===***===
To prevent other caravans at the oasis from getting antsy, the revolution's armed forces retreated to the nearest underground cave, carrying off what little spoils of war were easy to grab off the ruins atop the scared eidophant before the oasis' lord laid claim to it.
The ten Liches weren't prisoners, but there was limited trust regarding their cooperation.
In the dim, colorful lights of the dead end cave, the ten purple men were made to strip. They revealed long, lean bodies, relatively human-like. Their masks turned out to be their actual faces - chaotic, but symmetric patterns blurring and shifting in lieu of facial expressions.
The Wraith cursed them with horniness and their frantic masturbation started.
For a second, Goro thought he had been betrayed and cursed as well, but his aggressive sex drive was simply acting up at the sight of novel, fascinating monster dick.
Lich-cock was just as elongated as the rest of them, easily surpassing eight inches, some closing in on ten. They looked like a snake's tongue, with the heads double-ended and flattened – perfect for teasing a hole open. Down the shaft, the dicks got ribbed, thickening toward the base in promising knots.
Xane bent over as if doing deadlifts, his ass just at the right height for a kneeling Lich.
Goro didn't hesitate. He was horny enough to take anything up his hole as long as it granted relief. He pulled a Lich along and laid on his back on the cave's oddly warm sandstone, his braid draped aside.
The split tip of Lich-cock tongued the berserker's rim. Goro arched in anticipation, trying not to flex his glutes and pull his hole away as the anticipation of pleasure drove him mad.
While the skeleton-summoner slipped in with a few drops of ectoplasm, his split dickhead sporadically spread the bottom's guts wherever it currently was. Goro liked nothing more than to be spread. The constant inner tongue-flicks were more tease than pleasure. He continued to arch his back instinctively.
The Lich pinned him down. Goro was surprised by how strong the creature felt. Obviously, he could have fought the Lich off within a second, but he didn't want to – the fuck started in earnest.
The four demigods groaned at each other, each getting his ass hammered by dicks with teasing tips eating them from inside while a masturbation orgy broke out among the other, unpartnered Liches.
Chay got facefucked by a Hellion to solve his carnal cravings, which persisted through the Lich-fuck.
Part of Goro still wished he could have his own dick out and cum the way he had spent all his life doing – especially with the prospect of brutalizing Chay's now snot-and-tear-covered face. But for the most part, Goro was content with the insane pleasure of getting monster-ravaged. Nothing he'd ever done with his dick had felt this good.