== VORTEX QUEST 3-11 ==
== THE BASTION 2 – THE KING STIRS ==
Marcus had thought he'd become immune to the fear of deep, extensive, underground caves, but with the lights out everywhere, the bastion felt suitably terrifying.
Across the chamber, confused Ogres lit torches, shook glow worms awake in their baubles, or flicked on runic glimstone lanterns threaded to their belts.
Xane created an illusion of an Ogre's head and torso in front of them, facing forward. It was just a static 3D image, but sufficed to confuse Ogres in the meager illumination.
"Where is the generator?" Xane barked in Troglo from behind the illusion.
"This way," yelled an Ogre on the other side of the room.
The horde led the demigod duo right to their target. Marcus and Xane only had to stay at the back, masked by darkness. The sounds of a bastion on high alert echoed through the corridors, footsteps and armor clanking and many crashes and curses as guards ran into each other.
The group of ten warriors and two demigods reached a scene of a battle in progress. A Daemon, clawing at his face where Pie was chewing his nose, versus Goro in a ring of dark tendrils on a pile of dead Ogres and Hellions. The walls were caked with the residue of detonated Banelions.
The room was tinged in the dull red of a huge soul stone. Three flashy chastity cages brightening the chamber as Xane dismissed the illusory dicks.
"For Pselhorg," shouted an Ogre among the reinforcements. Xane let one butterfly burst into several blue bolts, each hitting a troglodyte in the brain.
Marcus somersaulted over the ones still standing and let the edge of his palm break their necks.
"Careful where you step," said Chay who appeared suddenly inside light mist, his crotch covered by a denser fog. The leader gestured at the ground where pieces of a rune-covered blade were glowing.
"Most Hellions will blow up on death," Chay continued as he picked up a dead Ogre's torch, "Pselhorg sent a signal of some kind, so I think more reinforcements are coming. Don't touch the annihilation orbs or you'll have a chunk missing. Just regrew my fucking hand."
Marcus was about to ask "what orbs?" when he spotted the light green motes encircling the champion. Touching the demon without touching them was going to suck.
Chay dragged the mage aside. "I think we can use the `dizzy vark effect'. If you can modulate a disruptive counter-ward to the annihilation orbs' arcane tension-"
Marcus tossed himself into the mayhem to keep the area clear. Any Hellions rushing in got the might of his fist to the skullfaces. It took more than one punch to kill most Hellions but incapacitation was preferable anyway, since Marcus had trouble tossing the dead ones away before they exploded in a shower of green acid.
He had to use weaker `fire punches', tossing charged holy flames at them from a foot distance.
Xane sent a few test-bolts at the orbs.
Every now and then, more Ogres streamed in. While Marcus fought the Banelions with pugilism, his chakram zoomed around the entrance and built a pile of bleeding Ogre corpses that was turning into a formidable barricade.
Taking on two armies was stressful as balls but he was focused.
The demon made one mighty wing flap, creating a brief hurricane. Marcus rolled along the ground and was up on his feet in one motion. Pie got flung off his face and the umbra-mist was pushed back to reveal Goro who was healing from a chest wound.
As Chay made the fog close in again, Xane shouted "got it" and sent a blue-yellow butterfly at the champion. The mote turned into a sequence of lightning strikes, zapping the annihilation orbs from existence.
A wall exploded. Dust added to the darkness and chaos. Giant, headless praying mantises skittered into the crowded chamber – Lisks lead by a horrifying Lisk-Ogre chimera.
A second mote hit Pselhorg and severed his neck with a radiant, white ring of energy. The head reattached itself wrong, hanging twisted and drooling off the badly healing stump. Goro closed in.
"Help me here," Chay said, appearing out of nowhere.
Marcus wanted to be with Xane, no matter what. No, he had a mission. If Chay needed him elsewhere... He followed the Thai hunk to the Lisk-incursion.
"Kill some and block the entrance," the leader commanded. "Hit the joints. I'm taking over the abomination."
Marcus complied. His chakram snapped into his hand, shrunken to wristlet size. He hit Lisks with the voidblade knuckle where it would make limbs bounce away and dug his razor-ring into the exposed joints, alight with whitefire. Clawed arms came off, smoldering.
"He's stalling," Chay said, directing his puppeteered chimera to obstruct the entrance. "The Lisks aren't what the signal was for. We need him dead soon. Is the brood secured?"
"Yeah, the Revolution signaled imminent arrival," Marcus said. "Hope they're having an easier time than we are."
"Made your choice, Wraalaguun?" Chay asked in necrosian.
Wraalaguun, a crazy buff purple guy, appeared behind them. Ah, a Necrarch. And Chay had already converted him.
"I have," the muscle-Lich answered. "The other lieutenants will soon be here and I'm setting a trap for them."
"Good," Chay said. "But I have a feeling Pselhorg is looking for an out. Oh, Marcus, give me that."
Marcus held out the knuckle.
"No, the other one," Chay said and grabbed Carrot, the stubby orange sword. He vanished in the shadows.
"Rude," Marcus mumbled and turned his attention to the entrance again, where Ogres were clubbing their way through the pile of fallen brethren.
===***===
Goro wouldn't run out of stamina for a long time and together with Xane he was making headway against the demon. But they were missing a decisive strike.
Chay encroached invisibly. Pselhorg had his back to an excellent ambush spot, Chay only needed to activate the bane-fang.
He tapped the orange blade at the weak points to pre-crack it and hoped he was right about how to use it. He'd only skimmed through `Catalogue of Rare Arms Volume 2'.
The Daemon lord summoned another wind gust to blow Goro back after sustaining a fist-pummeling. The magic in the red bat-wings drove Chay's cover away. Now or never.
He took control of Pselhorg's legs to make him spasm. The demon dropped to his knees before realizing what was happening.
"Stay back!" Chay shouted at his friends.
The bane-fang came down on the champion's head and shattered. White honey sprayed over him, turning black as it ate.
"Not my Carrot," Marcus shouted for some reason on the other side of the chamber.
Pselhorg's scream died as his face, neck and shoulder were dissolved. His tattered, left wing broke off. His head caved and shrunk as matter was eaten away.
Chay dropped the hilt of the spent bane-fang. "Fuck yeah."
A brawl broke out at the entrance where two Necrarchs were tied in blue strings, their ends like leashes in Wraalaguun's hands. The other demonblooded Liches kicked and spat, trying to cast spells at their captor.
The dead champion's claw grabbed Chay's ankle.
The umbralist screamed in surprise. Goro rushed in and kicked the demon in the biceps.
A blinding light broke from Pselhorg's chest. A cone of restorative magic practically burst his fully healed head back into existence. He stayed one wing short and his shoulder remained molten where the cone hadn't encompassed it.
A one-wing hurricane kept the demigods from attacking instantly and the demon rushed away, toward a wall – no, toward a hole in the wall barley big enough to fit him.
Pselhorg slipped down a chute.
Chay assessed the threat. Wraalaguun could handle the other Necrarchs, probably. What were the chances of a chute off the generator room leading into a trap? And why had the demon stalled for time when he was just going to run now? Ah, right!
"We follow," Chay announced. "His reinforcements are at the surface."
"But he went down," Xane said.
"Trash pit," Chay responded and shoved the mage toward the chute. Pie zipped into his toe ring, her long tail stroking Chay's cheek on the way down.
The pantheon dropped into a pit, illuminated by their crotches.
Above them was a nearly vertical shaft, Pselhorg already ascending.
Chay started hopping with godly strength, making his way up via the various chutes in the side of the upward tunnel. The fleeing champion broke every grate and barrier ahead, using them as projectiles down. Easy enough to evade or have Xane and Marcus shoot aside.
They reached the surface – Rhibinelg's suns blinding them with eerie light, burning on Chay's bald head, the hot Hakkri sands shimmering in static waves along the protruding top structures of the bastion.
Pselhorg hovered above, his one-winged silhouette askew in the sky, backlit by one of the suns.
As soon as they emerged, the demigods were beset by ten-legged spiders the size of bulldogs. Green, fuzzy, round, with sharp mandibles. Drops of something gleamed at their fangs' tips.
"Don't let them bite," Chay shouted. He took control of a spider and had to chow down on its confused fellows.
Hopping across the sand, he fanned fog clouds along the dunes to create some minor cover. The open field wasn't his favorite battle ground.
Goro jumped the ten foot distance to catch the champion, but even heavily injured the demon's flight let him evade easily. Marcus razor-sliced through spiders around him, while cartwheeling gracefully out of their reach.
The sand shifted. Something huge was moving underneath. Wyrm sized? No, multiple somethings moving in a circle around the pantheon's position. They had to be strong to move that much sand out of the way effortlessly. Unless...
"Shit," Chay said. "Arithid! He's got... three Arithids. Dodge."
The creatures were the dunes themselves. Sand rose, the face of a wild feline forming at the tip.
A dune panther rushed at Chay who threw himself into his mist, invisibly, leaving ever thicker, blackness in his wake like a squid's ink. The other Arithid was attacking Xane, pummeling him with its amorphous, shifting form. Cat claws manifested within the dune, digging into the mage's skin.
A mote of chaos and force exploded, tearing the dune panther apart, but it reshaped itself, drawing sand from the environment to fill its body.
Goro groaned. He had landed in a cluster of spiders and received some bites. His leg veins were shot through with green venom, while the crushed spiders reshaped themselves.
"Vampire spiders," Chay said, understanding their weakness. "They'll keep sucking life from you to come back. Kill the ones that bit you." He was hoping Goro could out-heal the venom before the spiders drained him for their resurrection. If Chay was bitten he'd have a harder time dealing with the constant life loss.
He dodged another Arithid attack – this one with the face of a granular lion. They had no way of wetting the sand or creating containment. Puppeteering an Arathid wasn't possible, Chay could only take away a grain at a time. None of their weaknesses were actionable.
"Plan!" Chay shouted. "Kill the vampire spiders first, dodge the cats. They're not as dangerous. Prioritize the demon."
The ground trembled. Something even bigger was about to-
Chay was tossed into the air with enough force to break his ankle. A creature of sand – enough to fill a house – burst from the desert and sprayed apart in an abrasive particle rain.
Chay was flung hard enough that he lost all orientation. He slowed his fall with umbra-power but his skin was getting sandpapered as he fell within the massive creature – a Gyrethid.
Eventually he drift-fell out of the Gyrethid's body, his bleeding eyelids barely obeying. He saw a mix of whale and cat reshape itself from the burst sand and drop onto Marcus.
Softly hitting the ground, Chay's broken foot twitched painfully as Pie rushed out. She took a sorrowful glance at him and dashed for the nearest living thing, which was a vampire spider.
Chomping down on the green beast, the cat-faced cloud creature dragged the struggling spider to Chay as she fed him its life.
No wait! The spider's venom interfered with Pie's ability and drained Chay's life further. He let out a choked grunt as a shadow of venom entered his cuts and bruises.
Pie tossed the spider away and dashed around in a panic.
"It's okay, girl," Chay whispered. "You tried..." He coughed and noticed he probably had a few cracked ribs. The venom was making breathing difficult.
Pselhorg was on the ground, half encased in ice, black roots weaving around him. Xane was out of butterflies but at least with the Daemon grounded, Goro could hit him properly.
The berserker was healing new spider bites. Xane was busy keeping the Arithids at bay and couldn't take care of the vampiric critter.
And Marcus... the martial artists was the Gyrethid's main victim, tossed in the air like a plaything. Each time Marcus seemed to have left the dune whale's range, the creature explosively grew a long fin to smack him into the sand.
An Arithid broke from the battle and dove into the desert, heading for Chay as a wave of sharp dust.
The injured demigod wiped blood from his vision and crawled on his knees. He'd have to rely on pure umbra to dodge, his enhanced strength depleted.
The dune panther burst forth and... changed course, coming to a slithering halt. It glared at Pie.
Fear? No, but unease. The abyssal creature was freaked out by the `untwisted' version of a close cousin, like a horse may be frightened by the sight of a camel – especially when the horse was from hell and the camel had been suffused with divine energy.
Why was he thinking about equine analogies? Chay was clearly getting delirious. He had to make use of this new weakness.
He summoned pure, white nebulae from his palms, shaped just like Pie's adorable face. As they grew long enough to approximate the cat-snake, he let them detach and drift to encircle him. Then he made more. Pie threaded herself between them.
The Arithid was grabbed by insecurity and mild fear. Chay dragged himself forward on his knees, letting the false Pies close in.
Ogres at last emerged to the surface from a bastion structure a hundred feet away. They were being led by... no chased by the curse throwing Wraalaguun. Sharpeye the Dragoon was by his side with a silver pike. At least they seemed to have things under control.
The Gyrethid was back, but full of holes, where loose sand rained like blood. Ah, Hole. Marcus must have started using the void weapon to great success.
Maybe if Marcus killed the big dune beast while Chay kept the Arithids contained... No, Xane was getting overwhelmed by the panther and lion attacking him, blindly throwing bolts at the ground as they pounced alternately, like arches of sandpaper ripping him to a pulp.
Pie lunged. She entered the dune panther, like a puff of smoke rushing into another.
Chay's ankle thumped painfully as the tendons merged into shape. His cuts closed. The venom faded. It was a process, but the Arithid had no way of expelling Pie. Thrashing and diving into the desert only dragged the interwoven Pie into the ground, too.
Chay started running as soon as his foot was functional again.
"Goro?" he shouted as he slid into a small crater. "Goro!"
The berserker was hammering away at red pulp, sand and guts and blood spraying from the near sonic pummeling.
"He's dead, Goro. Help Xane."
The warrior with black tattoos crawling over impossibly dense, rippling muscles froze, shot up, started at Xane getting covered in sand and repelled off the ground so hard he buried Pselhorg's corpse in a dust wave.
Chay jumped out of the crater to see the mania-warrior draw the Arithids' attention. Pie was back, having fought off Chay's previous attacker.
"Good girl," Chay said and petted he cloud. "Incredible job. Couldn't have done it without you. Would you help Goro, too? That's my girl."
Pie zig-zagged across the desert as Goro drew the dune panther and lion away. Chay knelt down at Xane's side. The mage was coughing up sand, his body glittering with magic as it closed a thousand cuts.
The ground rumbled.
"Hate..." Xane managed to say before coughing – or vomiting? – more sand.
"Pselhorg's dead," Chay said to distract him. "Good job, team Gym Bunnies."
Xane opened his eyes. He looked past Chay. "Fuck!"
A shadow fell over them.
Xane reached out and loaded thaum into his hand as the Gyrethid dropped on them. The magic blast punched an indent into the creature, big enough to reach one of the many holes the dune whale had sustained.
Chay grabbed Xane by the hip and swung him out a sideways hole as sand rained on them before the Gyrethid splashed on the ground. Marcus tore through the creature, the invisible blade swirling in circles.
"Careful," Chay shouted as Hole came way too close.
Marcus' eyes were burning with white flames, healing abrasive damage. "Is it dead?"
"Think so," Chay said. He felt the rumble underneath them. "At least it's not coming back. Can you still fight?"
"Think so. But I'm obviously on a timer," Marcus said, raising the knuckle.
Chay looked into the distance. Goro was returning, Pie resting on his shoulders like an impossibly fluffy feather boa.
The moment the victorious demigods reconvened, a hoard of Ogres was upon them.
"Sorry we couldn't do more," Sharpeye said, pushing his way through the pinkish troglodytes. "We were busy securing the bastion in case Lord Pselhorg was going to come back down. And I don't have experience fighting Arithids."
"It's fine," Chay lied, quite aware they had been used. "We won in the end."
The Ogres offered them water to wash and drink, which the men gladly took. Drinking didn't quench their thirst but it would dilute the piss they'd inevitably have to slurp.
"Ooof," Marcus made. "Carnal craving, real bad."
"Take your pick," Xane said, gesturing across the three unaffected divine avatars. "Who've you go a crush on today, huh?"
Marcus' greedy eyes wandered between the trio. His gaze locked on Xane. "This means nothing and fuck you if you say otherwise."
Marcus practically attacked Xane, licking his nipples and up to nuzzle into his neck. Their fingers found each other's asscracks on instinct. Xane's mage-hand tore a canteen of ectoplasm from a random Ogre and the two lovebirds got caked in lube with sloppy fingering.
Their wrist-deep fucking was desperate and erratic. They couldn't lay down or sand would have gotten into their holes, leaving them to stand half-squatting. The shorter muscle man nearly collapsed, pressing his mouth into Marcus' neck to muffle his moans.
Goro and Chay shared a look that could only be described as `knowing'.
"Fuck?" Goro asked, nodding at the abyssal crowd.
"Fuck," Chay confirmed. "Dips on the Necrarch."
Wraalaguun was game.
They moved onto an ancient, bed-sized cockle shell, shaded by Chay's personal cloud layer.
Lich dick remained deliciously flexible and tongue-textures even when demonblooded. The twin-ending flicked deep inside Chay's guts, exploring spots other dicks only rubbed in passing. He was cry-laughing at the inner tickles, totally defenseless and brain-numbed, as the Necrarch humped into him.
Goro had picked the thickest-dicked Ogre going, getting his ass spread by the punch-humps of a nine inch wide oval, attached to a dumb, bald monster with piercings on fangs, ears and nipples.
The berserker's face, draped with his shaggy mane, showed pure despair as he forced himself to endure more pleasure than he could handle.
Xane and Marcus played for the privilege of fucking Sharpeye, then agreed to share – alternating between riding the studded Drake tool and getting their holes demolished by Ogres.
While fucking, Chay could almost convince himself he didn't need nectar anymore, so impossibly superhuman was his sexual experience. But of course he very much needed nectar. They all did.
Pselhorg hadn't had much of a supply since few slaves had been kept around, mostly producing for his minions. Like many abyssal natives, Ogres liked to indulge in nectar sometimes, although the effect on them was mild by comparison.
A few jugs could be procured to reward the pantheon.
===***===
"It's not clear," Sharpeye said, "whether to keep the bastion in Ogre hands or transfer it to the Reapers. Maybe we'll need to negotiate a compromise."
Chay was still coming down from the nectar high, vivid recollections of muscles, sex and demonic cock swimming in his mind, both as a craving and the highest fulfilment.
"But we've essentially doubled our Hellion population," the massive reptile continued. "I'm by all means ready to claim lord-status. Oh, and last I heard, the Wandering Oasis is in total anarchy. All signs are pointing at the cycle flipping over soon."
"Right," Chay said, patting his regrown buzz cut. He found it reassuring, like the cherry on top of full physical healing. He absentmindedly fanned himself, despite not needing to combat Hakkri's heat.
"Our next steps would invo- Oh..."
Something weird was happening to the sky. A single sun flipped over to illuminate Lydeth. Its dark side faintly... blinked?
"Vaagh'tang watches," Sharpeye whispered. "I didn't think we were ready to..."
"No," Wraalaguun interrupted. "Your Revolution has redirected enough dark chantries to cause trouble. That doesn't mean the king's attention will flip yet, but he's disturbed. The chantries of Lydeth will have to step it up."
"We'll talk to the Sirens," the Dragoon said. "If the king is upset..." his eyes fell on the pantheon. "You should get out of here. He can't know we achieved this with divine help or his wrath might destroy everything we have built."
"The vortex?" Chay asked.
"I guarantee you, it will fall if it hasn't already. You can return here to check in a few Ring Spans. But your involvement can't be spotted in this crucial time. You must hide."
Chay looked up. Some kind of presence cast a shadow on the ocean overhead, shapeless, as big as a country. Vaagh'tang stirred, his attention drifting here and there. A few suns developed twitching dark spots. Pupils?
"Fine by me," the umbralist said. "Where do we hide?"
Sharpeye rubbed his lizard chin. "Not in Rhibinelg. If a dark chanter learns enough to alert the king..."
"Mockery," Wraalaguun said.
Chay was momentarily confused, but sensed a realization form in Sharpeyes mind.
"That's a place, huh?" Chay asked.
"It's a realm," the Necrarch answered, "that was adjacent to Rhibinelg before it went through cataclysm and was cut off. No one sane would follow you there."
===***===
The mighty dual-realm Rhibinelg was, by all appearances, going to shit.
It rained in the desert. Mostly foam coming down in blobs big enough to do damage to anyone how stood right underneath. Marcus had even seen a coral coming down like a comet. King Vaagh'tang's eyes threw burning gazes across Hakkri.
Flames licked at the horizon but according to Ardor that was nothing to worry about.
The ex-angel had gotten his hands on a bigger, better barge, its 40 foot black frame racing above the sand, blue sails drizzling soul energy for propulsion. Revolution Hellions manned and steered it.
Marcus felt the bliss of having Chay's arm up his backdoor, halfway to the elbow, rhythmically fucking his brain to pieces. In return he sank his arm into Xane, who's guts spasmed around his hand so hard Marcus almost felt like he was fucking with his dick.
Lucky Goro got Xane's mage-dick, even luckier Chay had gotten the first turn of getting injected by the nectar snake between Ardor's legs.
"It's an insane plan," Ardor said, composed but clearly enjoying topping demigod-ass. "So truly, you won't be followed by anyone with a shred of sanity."
"A-any insane killers around?" Chay asked through shivers, barely keeping it together enough to respond. Marcus knew if it had been him getting injected he'd been too blissed out to count to ten.
"Plenty," Ardor said with a light chuckle. "You've done enough damage that assassins are bound to be on your trail. Luckily, it's not worth going through the crucible if you want to take equipment along. Just move on from this realm. Oh, and I think we should switch it up. I'm about a quarter done. Who's next?"
Marcus pressed Xane down with his fist deep inside him to keep the mage from raising his hand. "Me!"
===***===
The pantheon was freshly fucked, loaded up on piss and cum and as ready as they were going to be.
The crucible entrance was in a deep, dark cave, as usual, sealed off by spiked, poison tipped iron grates and blocked by piles of stone skulls. The desiccated corpses of unlucky beasts and humanoids littered the place. Getting past the incursion-defenses had required some finagling.
"You're coming along?" Xane asked.
Six Hellions were stripping, their red muscle bodies irritatingly enticing, their stupidly long cocks too distracting to look anywhere else. Marcus swallowed dry.
The tallest of the nude Hellions was Commander Zero-B. He raised two scimitars. "We volunteered to help you cross over. We'll return after you've found the exit to Mockery."
"Appreciated," Chay said. "It's supposed to be a difficult trip, more than other crucibles. Everybody ready?"
"Yessir," Marcus said.
Goro nodded. Xane formed an OK gesture with his glowing mage-hand.
Chay released his mists, seeking the tear in reality. Outside, King Vaagh'tang's horrid gaze roamed a world in flux.