== VORTEX QUEST 4-4 ==
== THE KING'S PRICE ==
Diego was waiting for them in a library carved from the world tree. There were as many shelves of bound volumes as there were chalkboards filled with line diagrams.
Lord Lelthnu was a dark blue skinned Reaper with the usual features, like fangs, muscles and a leather harness. His toga was discarded on the ground amidst his scattering of geometric notes.
Lelthnu looked up as they entered, light glinting off his nose ring but not the three black rings in his right ear's helix.
"The demigods, huh?"
Marcus resisted the urge to pull his jockstrap aside and shine holy radiance as proof. But he did grin at the thought of it.
The umbralist was no longer gravitationally challenged, walking beside the berserker who now had three braids hanging down to his ass.
In looking at the magically grown hair tails, Marcus also saw Goro's crotch, thoroughly soaked with precum. His own jockstrap was crusty, too, since he was leaking horny juices with every sexy thought, but the big guy seemed to leak like mad right now. From having Chay play with his hair? He'd tease him later, preferably with Xane in earshot.
Oh, Chay was negotiating. Marcus should probably focus on that. Chay had the facial expression he used when talking to a demon about important things, that slight intensity under a casual surface, like a coiled viper. Man, negotiating with abyss royalty twice your size couldn't be easy, umbra-fuckery or no. Oh right, focus.
"...simply no rootpath I can invoke," Lelthnu finished.
Chay took a moment for a theatric chin rub, glancing along the shelves. "If we get our hands on rootpath invocations from folks who we know travel to the technarium..."
The Reaper dropped into a chair beside an end table overflowing with books. "Their notes would be encoded. I could crack the code within months, but as far as I can tell you don't have that time."
Chay stayed nonchalant. "Surely that code is written somewhere, too."
Lelthnu sighed. "Fine. I know exactly where to find the decoder. I've been hoping for a chance to get it from there. However, cracking the code quickly means I would have to drop other important projects, affecting my income – maybe even the world tree operations."
"How much?" Chay asked.
"Oh, the King's Price should do. Just as a token, you understand. I can't accept less, I'm afraid."
"We can do that," Diego interrupted, suspiciously cheerful. "Expect us back in a few Ring Spans."
"Excellent," Lelthnu said. "Now is there anything else?"
Chay straightened his shoulders. "You wouldn't have some nectar for us? It would speed up the procurement if we didn't have to go searching for nectar, too."
"Ah, the slaves crave their dosage?"
"...yes, my lord."
Marcus mouth was watering before the Reaper had even pulled his leather shorts off. Two dark dicks whipped with their full twenty inches, segments promising a pleasurable sensation with every other inch. It was unfortunate there were only two instead of three, but those two were fifty percent thicker than the Reaper dicks they'd seen before.
Diego pulled his own tool out while Lelthnu snapped to make a reddish Kobold procure lubricant.
Marcus won the first round together with Chay. They knelt skin on skin as their tentacle dicks slipped into their asses. Marcus was so crazy horny that he had to stop himself from punching Chay to claim both dicks for himself.
Meanwhile Xane went on all fours in front of Diego. The devil conjured a ward, a knee high dome on the ground, and had Xane lay on top of it. He could grow the dome to have the wizard's hole at the perfect height for thrusting. Xane whimpered like he was losing his mind, his butterflies littering the ground as if they had been turned off.
Goro was squatting rapidly, tearing up, probably riding invisible mage-dick of who knew what size.
The Reaper was all the way in Marcus' gut, the prehensile tentacle bending to slip past every fold inside him effortlessly. Marcus lazily groped Chay's nipples to reciprocate but was barely present. Each drop of nectar pushed up his ass switched him over to a world where his only purpose was to swim in sex, muscle, dicks and demons.
For the duration of getting demon-fucked, Marcus' fantasies about chicks were crowded out by a litany of cock, memories of his girlfriends replaced by memories of hot men.
At least, he hoped it was only for the duration of the fuck. Even before the Reaper had started hammering his ass, Marcus had wanted to fuck and suck every slave and demon and Kobold in the world tree, but that was just the abyss' effect, surely.
Another thrust and his mind was gone again, until it was time to switch and he had to make do with Xane's mage-dick and what nectar there was still swimming through his guts.
===***===
"What's the King's Price?" Marcus asked as they followed a good distance behind their tour guide Pcedfoth.
"Uh," Chay started. "I dunno. Sorry, still loopy from the monster-load. Diego?"
"I bet Lord Lelthnu appreciated some good, willing bottoms. You really got him on side. But to answer the question, King's Price means 666 obols. A pretty common token of commitment. Not trivial for a champion, but doable. Ruinous for little league players like me."
"But you agreed to pay it," Xane said.
Goro huffed. "He agreed we would pay it."
Diego made a `calm down' gesture. "You'll have to help me fill my coffers, yes, but we're helping each other here. You're not robbing some random nobody. Lord Vgenfri is a major supplier for the technarium. Rootpath invocation and money, all in one."
Back at the entrance, Goro took his maces back. Chay glanced at Hole before slipping the knuckle back onto his hand. "Seems like it's been moved," he said with a smirk.
Diego tossed a tri-obol from his belt to the Wretcher. "See you another time, Pcedfoth, you greedy old bastard." The world tree guardian bowed and stepped away.
As the pantheon boarded the devil's transparent, ten foot bowl, Marcus gave Goro a slap on the glutes.
"You've been leaking pretty hard recently, big guy."
Goro half-shrugged. "Creamed as soon as Lelthnu was all the way in. Needed it bad."
"Hm, seemed to me like Chay riding on your back made you soak the strap."
Goro pulled one of his three thin braids forward. "I like having my hair played with. Major reason I've magically grown it. Plus I look most savage either long haired or bald."
"Right..."
Diego's chariot bowl lurched and flew in a long arc toward the canyon.
Okay, the berserker was tricky to tease but the martial arts god wasn't going to give up.
"You suuuure," Marcus started, "it wasn't Chay's supple thighs wrapped around you?"
"Maybe," Goro said, looking ahead. "He's worth fucking."
Chay reached back and gave Goro a fist bump.
With an ominous smirk, Goro put his hand on Marcus' inner thigh. "You're telling me this doesn't turn you on?"
"Uh, whatever," Marcus said and pulled his legs in. Xane chuckled behind him. This hadn't gone according to plan.
Xane crossed his short, buff arms. "You think you can tease the master of stoicism? Think again. But speaking of teasing, I want to try something. Move closer, all of you."
The demigods squeezed themselves into a kneeling circle, legs sliding on each other.
"Pantheon cuddle," Xane said. "Okay, hold still..."
Marcus felt a tongue lap along his crack. It found the tender hole and rimmed. He bit his lower lip and groaned. Chay and Goro were similarly struggling with ecstasy.
"Voila," Xane said. "Reaper dick inspired triple-tongue."
"Fuck that's good," Goro said, blinking away tears. "Just what I need."
Xane flexed. "I'd appreciated a reciproca- whoa!"
All three rimmed demigods had reached out. Marcus was on Xane-nipple duty, while the other two had several fingers of one hand each underneath the wizard's ass, fingerbanging with abandon.
Marcus pressed himself into Goro, whimpering into the massive shoulder, as the rimjob sent waves of craving and relief through him.
It was impossible for them not to slip their fists into each other, quickly lubed by thaum-magic. Marcus didn't know whose holes he was in or who was in his, only that bliss spread through him as a devilish shadow loomed above.
Diego was content watching as he steered, but he did watch attentively, a smile on his lips.
===***===
Diego's slaves were a source of piss and cum, and then of cuddles while the pantheon napped. The men were awoken by a commotion downstairs.
"Don't worry," said a tall slave in Turkish and pulled Marcus back into the pillows. "Master said he's mobilizing the troops."
"Oh," Marcus said and leaned back into the embrace. The slave was obviously well-built, had died at nineteen and had been here for enough cycles to be basically human. He knew he only had another month to live until the process repeated with no memory – and that he'd move on by the end. Diego was astonishingly honest with his toys. Wait- Troops?
"Mobilizing against who? Are we under attack?"
Chay's head rose from between the thighs of a black American, a line of spit leading from his lip to the crotch. "The Kobolds are going to attack Lord Vgenfri so we can sneak in and steal what we need. Going to take another hour."
The black guy grabbed Chay's buzzcut head and shoved him back down where the leader gagged.
Marcus turned to the slave cuddling him. "Horny? I need breakfast."
"Uh... do you have dust?"
Marcus sighed deeply. "Not into me for my stellar personality and winning smile? Alrighty then."
He held his ringed toe up to the lost soul's nose and shot glittering slug shit right up it. He got a more aggressive face fuck than he had bargained for.
===***===
An army of sixty Heart Rippers in primitive uniforms were led by an Ultrabold with a blue crystal in the middle of his torso, Heartless Killbringer, a general hired on short notice by the Urrk. The Bolds pushed with them three siege engines - soul stone powered devices that looked like a mix of crossbows and cannons made of huge bamboo pipes.
Diego was reciting a language older than pandemonic in a rune circle. The asphalt opened before him into a tunnel entirely carved by wiggling roots, forming a thick web along the walls of the deep shaft.
"This will bring you close to Vgenfri's fortress. The same spot will bring you back. I have to stay behind so he doesn't figure out who to take revenge on. For all he's supposed to know it's a random roving band."
"Got it," Chay said. "We're ready."
Diego walked aside and gave Chay a spank on the ass. "Good luck, my little Cha-Cha."
"Don't call me that," Chay said with barely veiled aggression.
Marcus cringed.
"Good luck," Diego repeated with another ass spank.
The Kobold army and the pantheon entered the rootpath.