== VORTEX QUEST 3-12 ==
== (UN)FAMILIAR TERRAIN ==
He hated the phrase "be ready for anything" because it demanded the impossible. Every preparation was a tradeoff.
But if any place demanded being ready for the impossible, it was the crucible leading to the realm of a mad god. Or a sleeping one, or a fractured one. The pandemonic term was difficult to translate. Goro understood well enough, though – no need to talk in circles.
As the group dropped through the freaky rainbow maw, Goro dipped into mania enough to make his muscles battle ready, feeling the beautiful, dense fibers pulse with power, expanding his frame ever so slightly at every bump, his mullet now flowing as a proud mane to his shoulder blades.
He was much heavier in this charged state – a tradeoff – and the chipped concrete tiles trembled under his large feet as he dropped from the kaleidoscope with a modicum of elegance.
Wait, concrete?
The area was lit by a bright, omnipresent haze and Chay immediately started fanning out puffs of smoke, reducing Goro's vision. There was only so much mania-powered sight could do to penetrate the leader's mist.
They were in a ruined building, sloping roughly thirty degrees.
The exterior wall had broken away, granting sight of limbo's void where constellations shifted. The interior walls of concrete, glass and steel showed the signs of decades of abandonment, thick vines in green and purple growing within the wear-and-tear cracks and creeping over shattered windows.
Not many ambush opportunities, but also little space to take cover.
Xane was moving farther in. Goro soundlessly followed.
"Is this... a mall?" the thaum-mage wondered.
Their room was one of many around an atrium, three stories tall with the lowest floor half underwater. Limbo's light falling through holes in the sheet metal roof onto dense jungle vegetation gave the place a post-apocalypse ambiance.
"Might have been," Goro responded.
The implication of an entire mall falling into the abyss was grim. Was earth not as stable as they had thought?
He jumped to the upper floor where more signage seemed intact, landing on slippery purple moss.
On first glance, the signs were in Japanese although he recognized none of the brands. Hell, he didn't even recognize the characters, though many were strongly familiar. Maybe it wasn't Japanese. There were English ones, too... Or was that Cyrillic? Or...
"Can anyone read this shit?" Marcus yelled from below.
Goro dropped down again. Marcus had uncovered a dead neon sign with a mix of Kanji and Greek letters – mirrored, twisted and erroneous.
The six naked Hellions were securing a perimeter around Chay. One, who had managed to get a spear through the portal, gestured over the place. "It's all fake. We call it Mockery for a reason."
Commander Zero-B crossed his arms over his ripped pecs. "Don't try to understand it. King Jnessos went mad trying to `understand', trying to learn and improve and achieve."
"Hard same," Marcus mumbled. "Poor bastard must have been in my algebra class."
Chay was looking at everything and nothing with that intense, hard gaze he had when he was capital-A Analyzing. Part of Goro was afraid of being exposed to that gaze, in a... strangely good way.
"He was trying," Chay said and rubbed his temples, "to imitate humanity. He had – has? – a fascination with the alien and grotesque, by demon standards. He's amazed by the way we order things and create. He wanted to study us like an ant farm, maybe create a bridge between the abyss and- Oh shit, there's the threat."
Goro had already spotted the unrest on the water that half the atrium floor was covered with. There had to be a basement or two, under the muddy liquid. Whatever moved below had to be absolutely massive.
A hydra rose from the brown waters, pushing aside steel rods and rotten logs like mere twigs. Six heads, then nine, then a whole dozen. Brown, toad-like serpent heads on long necks were arranged around a thirteenth, black, draconic head with red eyes.
"Keep it busy," Chay yelled. "Still looking for the exit. I'm going to puppet the rightmost snake."
As expected, the rightmost serpent's teeth dug into its neighbor's face, causing confusion among the heads.
Goro lunged, his tattoo already dancing across his shoulder. He clashed with a random neck and slammed his hands together, breaking the scales and digging into the flesh.
The Hellions screeched. Some kind of mind attack was happening but Goro's esper-wyrm training was paying off again.
He got whipped around as the head tried to fling him off but he only hugged harder, choking the beast with every mighty limb, his naked superhuman body's weight keeping the snake bent in a way he hoped was cumbersome, if not painful.
Explosions went off around him. Projectiles were thrown. Marcus' razor-ring cut where it could, blinding snake eyes and racing along arteries. The chakram came dangerously close to Goro a few times as the hydra tried to use him as a shield.
By sheer pressure and whole body flexing, he managed to tear the neck apart, blood and bone fluid coating him in a thick shower.
He dropped into the water with the severed head, getting slammed into submerged concrete and buried under his trophy. He pushed himself free - blind in the cold, muddy lake – and swam up.
The ultra-muscled godly avatar rolled onto sloped concrete and took stock. The Hydra was six heads short already, a stump ablaze with green fire, another frozen. One remaining head fought the central, draconic one.
A Hellion was dead in the water, missing everything from the nipples up. Another was getting ripped apart in the fangs of a wildly whipping head. Two serpents were stretched into the mall's interior, snapping at someone out of Goro's vision.
He ascended again, going right for the central head.
The black serpent saw him coming and pulled back the entire body, its red eyes lighting up. The mouth opened as if to blow on him. Fire breath?
Goro changed course to the second floor and rolled between two vine-riddled, empty displays for cover.
There was no fire. The central head blew deep purple smoke, filled with starry shimmers. It layered itself over the mall interior, painting a diffuse night sky on the walls like a blurry disco ball.
Goro was suddenly so horny he accidentally punched himself in the brick wall abs as his trembling hands searched for his crotch. He made erratic jerk off gestures until his mind cleared enough to register the fucking aegis.
His fingers found his asshole and invaded without mercy. No, he had to focus... the enemy.
The hydra retreated into the water. There was no obstacle to making him go sex-brained. He tried to fist himself, squatting deep. Maybe if he broke both his forearms...
Had he really just thought that? The paradox curse made it impossible to pleasure himself. He had to find help.
Landing with a stumble before Xane, Goro wanted to request sex but his mouth barely followed orders.
Xane was crawling on the ground. "Piss..." he said with a voice like he was dying.
"I... don't have piss," Goro said, his desire to help his friend just barely overriding his need to get fucked.
"So thirsty... bring me to the water."
"That's muddy and it won't help." Thinking on someone else's behalf was easier than thinking for himself. But he still had to fight his inner demon somehow.
"Thirsty..."
"Okay," Goro said and grabbed Xane by the shoulders. "Fuck my ass and I'll get you water."
As soon as the mage-dick rammed into his hole he took off, jumping to the atrium lake.
"Don't," Chay said, face wet, crawling away from the water. "It won't help. He clutched his stomach. "We're getting, curse overloaded or something. I'm so hungry now, it hurts so bad."
Xane wasn't listening and started water-shaping a bit of mud lake into his mouth. He spat it out. "Shit, I'm not thirsty anymore. I'm horny as fuck. Why can't I..." He tried ripping his aegis off. "Fuck, I can't even breathe... please... Goro, buddy... fuck me. An arm, a leg, I'll take anything... please."
Goro's horniness subsided rapidly. He was deathly thirsty. He wanted to jump into the lake and drink drink drink. He didn't have the strength to fingerbang Xane.
Two Hellions found them. "Hey, your demigod friend shoved slug shit into our commander's face and is riding him. Can you... Are you affected, too?"
"Fuck me," shouted Xane. "Cum," demanded Chay. "Piss," Goro weakly croaked.
The Hellions looked at each other and shrugged. Goro received one meager stream, keeping it in his mouth to fight the dryness, struggling against the reflex to swallow. He just needed to hold out.
Xane got railed by a twelve inch abyssal cock and sobbed with relieve. Poor Chay had to tough it out.
The curses kept rotating but grew weaker. Goro got a ride of illusory Troll dick, demolishing his insides just has he liked it. He even managed to cream out a load for Marcus who found them just when he was starving.
The four surviving Hellions were well spent by the end, even with unicorn dust aid.
"I just hope," Chay said, on all fours, getting dutifully fingerbanged by Marcus, "this hasn't messed with our curse priority. Okay, deeper now, to the wrist. Yes, like thaaaaugh. I found a few potential exits, still have to – don't slow down – check precisely, but we should be ready to move on."
"Then we'll leave," the Commander Zero-B said, his dick on the floor between his squatting thighs. "Keep our weapons. I don't think they'll survive the journey out of the crucible in any direction, but if they do, they'll be more useful to you."
"Thanks," Chay said, rising to his knees. "I hope your Revolution makes you all rich and so on." Fog wafted from his torso. "It'll point you at the way we came in."
"Perhaps we'll meet again. Hopefully on the same side."
"Deuces," Xane said.
Goro gave them a nod on the way out, looking at their bright red, musclebound backsides. He wouldn't have hesitated to fuck their asses for a second. He wasn't sure if he should have felt reassured for still having the urge to sink his dick into holes, or freaked out by how much he wanted gay sex with monsters. He decided to just squat faster on the fake Troll dick.
=== END OF BOOK THREE ===