== VORTEX QUEST 4-1 ==
== MOCKERY CALLS ==
A pantheon of four men with truly divine physiques dropped into a dense cluster of ferns under the mile-high cavern ceiling of the tropical realm once known as Hrancliay, now only called Mockery by those few who still spoke of it.
Naked, save for the cock cages, the demigods righted themselves in the vegetation, ready for battle.
Goro's two Hellion maces – black, spiky, too heavy for a regular human – had survived the crucible. His shoulder long hair flowed in a breeze that gave an ominous rustle to the shrubbery.
Marcus was hacking at plants with a black scimitar, his chakram traveling at ankle height to cut the stems. The white mohawk standing out on his tan skin, the lean martial artist stayed low to be a more difficult target to acquire.
The other gifted weapons hadn't made the journey. Chay watched the remains of a disintegrated dagger run through his fingers, the iron dust as black as his buzzed hair.
Xane shoved ferns aside with magic force but his focus was elsewhere. His six butterflies broke from his mohawk and swirled happily in the jungle flora a few feet away. He called them back with what control he had over them.
Mockery had many of the features of generic realms – skulls the size of hills, ectofalls, canyons, stalactites – but the cavern walls were broken with long stretches of astral void seeping in like foggy galaxies.
The whole area was covered in low jungle. Green, blue, purple bushes drank in the different spectra that shone down from gleaming gems or the many void tears, more plants growing up the realm's walls as moss and lichen. Clusters of thick trees interrupted the hip-to-head-high growth, often gathered around an arboreal behemoth, reaching a mile toward the vine-hung leaf ceilings.
"Down there," Chay said and pointed ahead. "At the edge of a canyon. Some kind of structure. Four, five stories tall. Decrepit."
"Don't see it," Marcus said, pouting.
Xane stepped behind him, one hand on the taller man's shoulder, and drew a glowing outline in the air so the Filipino would see the blocky shape of the building among the equally green surrounding. "That one."
"Oh, cool."
The pantheon marched into Mockery, levitation hopping to escape the jungle critter, while staying low to avoid being spotted. Sliverlings attempted probing attacks but between scimitar strikes, mace pummeling and Chay's ability to puppet the swarm leaders, Xane didn't even have to pay attention.
They entered a forested area – taller, denser shrubs more so than trees - when Goro raised his hand to signal a stop.
Xane sank down and enhanced his hearing by shaping the mage-hand into a shell around his ear.
"Something on the ground moved," Goro growled.
"Advance slowly," Chay said. "Marcus, cover this area, Xane this one. No sudden motions."
The demigods moved back to back. Xane felt the heat of three men taller than him even before their skins touched in the jungle air. The musk of divine man-sweat gave him a horny tug in the belly, like the smell of a nectar dollop about to reach his tongue.
"There," Chay whispered.
A thing rose from the shrubbery – splayed pale brown threads coalescing around a shapeless body. Like bandages wrapping around the amorphous blob, the long tendrils tightened the figure into something humanoid.
"A mummy?" Xane asked. "Fire?"
"Maybe," Chay said. "But that's not exactly TP."
The mummy had gained enough shape to have legs and stomped forward. Xane sent a butterfly ahead of Marcus' zooming ring.
The mote turned to fire and expanded into a searing phoenix, colliding with the mummy in a display of napalm fireworks. Bandages burned away. They didn't catch fire but smoldered where splashed.
Underneath the mummy's wraps, the blob was congealing into a transparent mass of organs. Xane hadn't drawn much interior anatomy but the creature didn't seem to have human parts he could recognize.
Dark shards broke from the disturbing interior, burst through the transparent flesh and rushed at the demigods. Xane evaded and shot the closest one from the air.
Goro shoved Chay out of the way and brought his maces down on the projectiles.
The dark shards detonated with a deafening blast, black energy pulsing in a shockwave. Goro was flung off course and rolled over thick roots. The shockwave pushed Xane off his feet, too, and he stumbled into a mossy trunk.
The chakram was slicing the gelatinous mummy where it could, with Marcus himself moving in to deliver charged blows.
Chay shouted something. Xane was nearly deaf. He pumped magic into his ear drums to fix them faster.
Marcus flinched back from the mummy, his hands burned by acid, darkness flowing into his body through the hand's veins. He retreated, holy fire burning out the poison.
The umbralist stumbled toward Xane, shouting and gesturing his flat hand down. Xane's ears were still damaged but now he heard Chay as if underwater. "...down," the leader yelled. "Get down."
The wizard rammed a mote into the ground and earth-shaped a knee high barrier to hide behind. He pulled Chay down with him. Marcus was up a tree, Goro behind one.
The mummy exploded in a screeching wave of darkness, tearing his ear drums apart again – even exerting enough pressure on his eyeballs to make a few vessels pop and blur his vision. His lungs had gotten fucked up, too, probably torn. Inhaling hurt too much to do.
A white, blue-rimmed butterfly hopped onto Chay's head before Xane had finished his thought. He let healing seep into the leader's body while used personal magic on his own, starting with the lungs.
Marcus dropped from a tree, blood running from both ears as they flickered with whitefire. "What the fuck was that? It just offed itself?"
"No clue," Chay said. "This is the weirdness of Mockery, I guess."
The pantheon reconvened, cleaned up and continued on their path, now through increasing thicket. Xane squeezed his magic into a new mote to get back up to four. Tactically important, plus it helped him calm down.
===***===
By the time they reached the concrete hull, Goro had grown sick of his hair sticking to his face and tied it into a high ponytail with a durable vine. Xane melded the vine's ends together.
The building was the ruin of a generic, depressing apartment block - thick uncolored walls, cracked tile or exposed concrete on the floor, rusted fixtures. There was little left of doors or windows, save for dulled glass shards.
"Do you think this was ever a real place?" Marcus asked, aegis lighting up the ugly staircase.
"King Jnessos dropped this thing here," Chay said. "Maybe copying a real place, but I don't think it was in use. Not a trace of furniture or fixtures."
"Look," Xane said and shone his orb at an unhinged door. "Apartment numbers, except... this isn't numbers in a real language, is it? Some rare abyssal glyphs?"
"Wouldn't bet it's anything," Chay said. "It's just... experimental set dressing. But there's a vark skull in this apartment. Might still be someone's burrow. Keep moving up."
The pantheon arrived on the roof, which had rusted metal boxes symbolizing an air-con unit with no pipes connecting it down. There was a roof pool, filled with green water and covered in debris.
"Could you purify that?" Marcus asked.
Xane shrugged. "Give me twenty minutes. Although, it would be easier to water-shape the liquid and-"
"Guys?" Goro said, getting instant attention. "Look down."
The demigods walked to the edge that faced the canyon below the building. There was jungle, as expected, but it grew over a vast city, more ruined than the tower they stood on.
Collapsed houses, claimed by vines and trees, stood in intersecting grids through the entire canyon until it bent out of sight. Bridges over nothing, scaffolding too bizarrely angled to have ever been climbable, lightly smoking factory chimneys in the middle of the road. Flickering neon lights suggested the shape of letters, blobs of color suggested graffiti without regard for its surface. Far at the back, a huge ferris wheel spun without cabins.
Occasionally a building was sat along the edge, as if the city had spilled over when it was created inside the valley – such as their current rooftop.
"It'll be brimming with enemies," Chay said. "I don't think we'll find post-apocalyptic humans adventuring here, as fucking cool as that would be."
Marcus wandered to the edge of the pool. "Always dreamed of having my own roof pool, is that weird? Like, I felt that's how I'd know I've made it. But I'd have wanted a bigger one, and an infinity edge and- Woah!"
Xane had given the rambling man a push and chuckled as Marcus' feet dipped into the muddy green before his magic carried him across like a skipping stone.
"Fuck you, piss sucker," Marcus said. "Next time you need a fist in your ass, mine's going in your face instead."
"Well next time you need-"
"Visitors," Chay said, loud enough to shut the bickering down.
Three white figures swooped from the sky. Bat winged men with marbled skin, wearing flimsy brown clothes made of jungle material over their supernaturally muscled physiques.
Four godly crotches lit up.
"Wretchers," Chay confirmed. "Bet they think we're runaways. Mere Fiends, inexperienced and wishing to impress each other, hesitant even though they expect us to be easy prey."
The demigods moved apart, one at each edge of the roof. Xane took positon next to the vines that crept up the five stories and had taken over half the walkable area. The vines snapped at him but were easy to kick aside.
The first Wretcher swept in for Goro and got a pincer punch – one fist to the head from each side. The berserker mutated to his mania form and swung the demon into the ground. Concrete cracked.
"Get them," Chay shouted as the other Wretchers turned in midair to flee. Goro leapt, while Marcus took care of the downed one.
Xane shot a mote into a long vine, imbuing it with telekinetic will. The vine slammed itself into the nearest airborne Wretcher and coiled around him.
Winged demons didn't need to flap to fly but the wings were the source of fight-magic and the Wretcher was greatly hampered by the ties.
Marcus was keeping the disoriented Wretcher down with a foot on his throat and a spinning chakram between the eyes, scimitar held high. Xane dragged his victim down to join the hostage.
Goro clung to the one who had jumped and the eight foot Fiend was dragged down in a wild spin by the human colossus. As they hit the ground, the cracked concrete burst and they dropped one floor down.
Chay held his knuckle up to the tied demons' face. "Ever seen a voidblade up close? Real close, like inside your skull?"
"What do you want," the Wretcher hissed, no longer struggling in the vine. His deep, husky voice gave Xane anticipatory shivers. It was embarrassing how much his asshole reacted to the sound of demons, flexing to pull an imaginary dick farther into him – like the total opposite of getting an erection.
"You recognized these," Chay said and pointed at his aegis that clearly caused discomfort to the Fiend with its blinding radiance up close. "But the others didn't. You've seen demigods before? Back in the realm you're from?"
The demon snarled.
Chay narrowed his eyes and continued. "No... here, in Mockery. There's something you're dying to gloat about."
"Ha," the Wretcher said. "I've met your kind, all right. Had to take a trip here once, when a wise deal I'd made fell through due to incredibly bad luck."
"And you're back," Chay said. "Seems to me it takes a pretty big mistake to have to come here."
The Fiend snarled again. "Just waiting for things to cool down for a century or so, then I'll be back home and stronger than ever."
"Same," Marcus said. "Laying low here, too, just not quite so long, maybe."
Goro dragged the third Wretcher upstairs by the neck and shoved him to the trapped duo. Xane created a fire arrow and kept it aimed at the new guy.
"How about another `wise deal'?" Chay asked. "We've worked with Wretchers before. Tell us more about the situation and maybe..."
"Bring them to Djegnoth," said the arrival from downstairs as he gestured into the canyon. "He might offer a reward."
The tied up demon cursed him out with untranslatable, pandemonic swears. "I was getting to that! You gave away the endgame. You ruined the negotiation. Ugh, do me a divine favor and kill that one."
Chay shrugged. "Maybe after we've drained his balls. So, one of you goes ahead and asks Djegnoth if he'd like to meet us, the others start heading there with us. Nectar first."
The Fiends grinned at each other with their sharp teeth. Xane undid the vine tie and started spreading his hole. He needed the golden honey and he didn't care anymore how embarrassing and faggy he was about getting it. Well, he did still care but not enough to stop.
With three Fiends to four demigods, somebody had to wait in line and as the rock-paper-scissor luck would have it, that someone was Xane.
Going mad with lust, the wizard had to watch his friends getting fucked into a bliss-trance by muscle dicks that could flex like a powerlifter's biceps all along their ten inches.
Xane was so opposite-of-erect that his thighs were cramping. The mage-dick in his ass was prevented from giving him relief by the paradox curse but he made it hammer his ass anyway to keep it loose.
Finally a Fiend signaled a swap and Xane moved up in the queue, Marcus now restlessly waiting.
The Korean bodybuilder went on all fours, eyes on the massive crack in the roof where Goro had broken through like a dick invading ass, or pussy. He realized he hadn't actually thought about pussy in what felt like several lifetimes. Shit, he was still a goddamn man, he had to focus on dreaming of chicks at least a little, for fucks sake.
The unnaturally white muscle dick's tip opened him up, nectar painting his walls. Xane was a perfect, overjoyed whore for demon cock, incoherently murmuring as he dreamed of every inch of his body getting penetrated by ten demon cocks at once.
After draining the three demonlings in what felt like a minute but had probably taken an hour, the pantheon was ready to let one of them fly ahead.
The one Goro had smashed into the building won their game and a wing sweep carried him up. He threw a glance back.
"Yep," Chay said, "he's betraying us."
The airborne Wretcher shouted the pandemonic equivalent of `suckers' and three green flames appeared on the roof.
The other demons who had stayed behind clapped their hands, summoning more teleport flames and took off.
"Bring those two down," Chay shouted.
Goro flung himself at one, while Xane had a butterfly dash at the other's head and detonate into a freeze flash, giving the Fiend a bad case of ice-brain.
A chakram raced at the frozen headed Wretcher who dropped to the ground and sliced his arteries. The blood-spewing demon raced at Marcus only to get a face full of Pie, who blinded him with her long smoke tail as she bit into his elfin ears.
"Little help?" Chay yelled. He was encircled by... they looked like Gawri but with moss-like fur. They were just lowly thralls and Chay kept switching which one he controlled so they couldn't effectively contain the puppet – but there were a dozen of them, pressuring Chay to the edge.
Xane charged a bolt for a second and sent it into the Moss Gawri crew. Their green fuzz smoldered just as easily as regular fur, as did the flesh underneath.
Goro and his chosen enemy missed the building in their fall and dropped to the jungle below.
Xane jumped after him without a second thought – best friends and all that. As he fell, he saw Pie jumping after him like a cloud projectile, a struggling, screeching Moss Gawrus hanging from her mouth in case Goro needed healing.
"Good girl," Xane said as she caught up to him.
The mage hit the ground just slowed enough to keep his bones intact. Goro didn't need help, he was hammering the Wretcher's face into a tree. His sweaty, godly muscles gleamed in the aegis radiance as his arm rammed again and again with incredible speed. Xane briefly wished his asshole could be where the Fiend's mushed face was before coming to his senses.
"Dude," Xane said, "I think he's dead."
Goro grunted and let go. The pale vampire stayed nailed to the tree. The berserker's mark of madness retreated from his face down to his neck and chest.
"Forgot it's not a full grown demon. Sorry?"
Xane made a ghostly skull appear over the awkwardly leaning Wretcher's face pulp, floating up and fading. "Never be sorry for killing a demon, buddy."
Goro patted his own shoulder with a grin. "Good job me. Uh, do we go back up?"
"We better. I'm not sure things are under control. Chay still got the voidblade but he was surr... Never mind."
The two roof demigods dropped through the foliage, a bruised Wretcher with many bleeding vein cuts in tow.
Xane repeated his illusion with the floating skull ghost to present the dead enemy, which made Goro throw him a side eye. It was worth getting a chuckle out of Marcus.
"Well then," Chay said to the surviving demonling. "To Djegnoth. Lead the way."
===***===
Apartments, offices and shops, all in naked concrete, with barely enough adornment to make the streets feel like more than rectangular greenery. Rooms empty, exposed wiring and pipes in senseless places, staircases to nowhere. Signage and lamp posts nearly rusted away. And over it all, jungle.
Moving through the `city' was eerie. Xane wasn't the biggest fan of zombie movies, but the environment primed him to expect undead streaming from the paneless windows all around. But only the occasional imp disturbed the general rustle and Chay maneuvered each one away before it came close.
For a normal human, traversing the broken asphalt would have been tricky, but the demigods could hop across chasms and roots like pole vaulters.
Goro insisted on being their vanguard. His incredible frame perched on the edges of crumbled walls like the naked version of a brooding superhero, dreamed up by a muscle-worshipping homo. He looked intense and dangerous.
Marcus jumped around like he was doing kung-fu parkour, which was probably exactly it, occasionally saying "I'm a monkey, hihi" to no own in particular. He looked foolish and ridiculous and- Fucking hell, Xane was fond of the dipshit idiot for fucks sake, okay?
The mighty muscle wizard himself stayed sensibly with Chay, their shining aegises covered by Chay's dark clouds hovering around their hips, as they walked behind the Wretcher called Rkethnior.
The rustling was joined by a clattering. Armor? Giant insects? Xane charged a bolt.
Goro dropped, rolling off the asphalt to make no sound. "A crab the size of a tank. About to cross us from this avenue."
"The Knight," Rkethnior said. "Take cover."
The pantheon and their sort of prisoner ducked into a roofless building and glanced out the window.
It was a tank-sized crab, yes, but Goro had neglected to mention that its back was covered in flowers. Bright, colorful, exuberant arrangements of bushels and bunches unlike any vegetation in the realm, despite Mockery's exotic colors.
"We could take that," Marcus said with a huff.
"No..." Chay mumbled. "No, we can't. It's indestructible. I see no weaknesses, like the mummy that exploded on us."
"You've met the Saboteur?" Rkethnior asked.
"The what now?" Marcus asked back.
"The Knight and the Saboteur are both Specters that manifest and vanish at random. Fragmented aspects of the realms' shattered king. They can't be killed any more than King Jnessos could have been killed. And yes, the Saboteur is known to leave with a detonation."
"Good to know," Chay said. "It's a narrow part of the canyon but there's a few more streets. Do we have to wait till it leaves or is there a way around?"
The Wretcher rubbed his chin. "I don't like the crawlway and I know little of its structure around the Laughing City Valley but..." He pointed at the canyon wall. "Up there is a chute that should get us close to Djegnoth's camp."
The group snuck out of the building's back doorway and entered the crawlway through a crack in the road.
Roots and vines required Marcus' razor slices, Goro's mighty rips or Xane's magic touch. The canyon's crawlway was less of a cave and more of a trench connecting basements, with the city visible but distorted above as each step carried them across streets or entire blocks.
It never got as tight as other crawlways until they reached the canyon wall. Rkethnior offered to carry them up, two at a time, but the demigods preferred not to split up and climbed.
Ascending a cliff with magical assistance was incredibly fun, challenging for his muscles but made easy enough with thaum-power. Chay rode on Goro's back, carrying the bodybuilder's maces, keeping watch for airborne threats. It looked kind of cute but kind of gay considering the nudity, although part of Xane envied the leader for getting a ride.
As soon as they arrived at the chute platform, Marcus declared, "I gotta piss."
"I had to piss mid-climb," Xane said. "Was thinking about just raining on your head. Still could."
"I could open the floodgates, too," Goro said.
Chay dropped to his knees. "Sixty-nine, big guy?"
"Don't say it like that," Xane said. He'd been hoping for backup from Goro but the biggest demigod only huffed with a smirk.
The leader and the berserker laid with their heads buried in each other's crotches and gulped.
"Man," Marcus said, "I'm always stuck with you, huh?"
Xane winked and flexed his arms. "It's cause they know you can't get enough. Tap's open."
"You first. Be my piss bitch."
Xane laid down and accepted being at the bottom of their less equitable sixty-nine. He used thaum to direct the piss down his throat without having to taste it, so getting pissed into from above was actually advantageous. He chuckled to himself, thinking about Marcus feeling all empowered and manly on top when he had no choice but to taste the wizardly stream.
Xane got horny from being between Marcus athletic thighs, but he got horny from everything. Each flower stalk made him think of a rock hard cock.
He wasn't the only one. The demigods were fingerbanging before their streams had faded. They slid down the chute, glistening in their holy radiance, on all fours and casually fisting each other, with Xane at the front focusing his mage-dick on pleasing Chay at the end of the queue.
Part of him wished he could be actively penetrating even if it was just with an arm, but frankly, the bigger part of him was too blissed out to fret.
They slid into a different part of the Laughing City's canyon.