== VORTEX QUEST 4-5 ==
== THE UNDERWATER LEVEL ==
The rootpath was half tunnel, half vehicle.
Moving underground within the wooden web was helped along by the roots themselves sliding underneath to transport them faster. Even when Chay held still he moved forward at walking pace, surfing on the roots like skating on ice, more tunnel always opening before him just as he was about to touch the dead end.
He had his jockstrap pulled down to supplement Xane's orbs and the Kobold army's torches with some holy radiance.
The tunnel became steeper until walking was no longer an option. He slid down long roots in spirals into darkness, an earthy smell in his nose and the sound of roots shuffling clay all around him.
It became a nearly vertical slide, the army and their siege equipment clanking behind him as they all dropped. The slide evened out and Chay surfed along the roots to the exit – a crawlway space overflowing with dimly luminescent mushrooms.
Trampling squishy mushrooms, Chay collected his fellow demigods while General Killbringer kicked the Kobolds into a row, souls circling in the blue gem that was his heart. The Urrk was absent, too recognizable to risk showing up for a battle against Diego's rivals.
The pantheon scouted ahead, while the army filed into the cave. The crawlway was a random mix of tight limestone cave and Mockery's basements, an empty cargo area with thick concrete pillars and dead neon lights in places no human would have mounted them. All overgrown with fungus, some of which were just as aggressive as the jungle above, squirting flesh dissolvent or noxious clouds or whipping at intruders with their root webs.
Eventually, the army made it to a cavern lake where building-sized, fossilized mushrooms stood atop crude imitations of human apartments, lacking most exterior walls.
General Killbringer blew a horn and his men put up shields as a basic palisade while the three crystalline siege engines were rolled into place.
A spear hail rained onto Lord Vgenfri's first line of defense – Goblins and some semi-aquatic, hunchbacked fish people. Alarm gongs echoed in the fortress of black fungus.
The demigods snuck along the side of the cave, moving across the wall with the ease of mountain goats. Chay was ejecting enough black fog to give cover to his friends, fully invisible himself.
The lake defense arrived. Three blue-gray seals as big as tanks shot from the water and flopped toward the attacking Kobolds.
Chay gave some orders and Xane sent a mote in a long arc, to make it seem like it came from the army. The butterfly exploded into a dozen tiny needles and drove into the left super-seal's face, inflicting necrotic poison that started eating the eyes and would soon reach the brain.
Meanwhile, Chay's umbra-magic controlled the right most creature like an extension of himself and Vgenfri's reinforcements would find their ally turned on them.
The middle super-seal was getting its flesh boiled by the beam of a finally emplaced siege weapon.
The attack was going to look way more powerful and prepared than it really was, driving the fortress defenders to the battle, clearing the interior.
Armored Scourge Fiends appeared in the fortress' lower floors and entered the water, their stark-white bodies moving like torpedoes toward the coast. The shark-elf demons shot from the surface and flung themselves at the simple palisades.
The Ultrabold Killbringer was entering the fray, a saber in each hand. His chest crystal pumped blood beyond the ability of any heart, letting him fight in top condition for however long the distraction would take, while the main army set up better siege walls.
Halfway around the fortress, the demigods slipped into the lake, diving deep enough to reach darkness. Their jockstraps stayed behind as did Goro's maces.
Chay had perfected his filtration mist. As long as no strong current hit him in the face, the constant cloud over his mouth should have sufficed to keep him breathing.
Ready?' he signed in ASL and waited for three okays. Office Team this way, Vault Team, almost straight down this way. Good luck.'
He gave Marcus a nudge in the side and the animus-fighter followed him toward the underwater building.
Vgenfri's office was six floors down from the surface and luckily, the exterior wall of this fake apartment complex was little more than a sea weed curtain.
===***===
Xane had his trusty air bubble surround his face while strong strokes carried him down, his buddy's even more powerful ones showing him up.
The treasure chamber was only accessible through a long line of complicated, layered defenses starting at the top and working down to the bottom of the structure – the perfect challenge for a lateral thinker.
Xane reached the ancient, fossilized fungus, its rough, organic material reflecting little of the wizard's crotch glow.
If he simply dug through, he might hit an air pocket on the other side, changing the pressure in a way that triggered alerts. He slapped a mote onto the wall and had its channeled power turn into a dome of air two feet across.
Goro's and his torso stuck inside the dome as Xane burned a circle into the fungus with a heat beam, leaving the massive Japanese man to tear the burnt bits away and toss them into the lake's darkness.
The Korean bodybuilder took a breath of the air. "Man, I'd been hoping it'd smell like grilled champignons. More like burning grass, huh?"
Goro grunted. Enough of the wall broke away to reveal the air pocket behind it.
Xane chuckled. "Feel like I'm in a heist movie. We've broken into so many places and I'm finally doing the classic laser-cutting a window bit. Just no laser or window. Same shit, tough."
"I've had the same thought," Goro said. "Never knew robbing a place would make me so giddy. Maybe just the constant, dizzying urge to orgasm."
"I feel you, bro. I'd take a fisting break if we weren't on a schedule."
Goro let his hand wander across Xane's backside. "Never wanted to fuck a chick as much as you, hehe."
Xane chuckled along, but he knew it was true. If there had been pussy around, things would have been different but his mouth watered anytime his eyes glanced over Goro's physique.
The hole was big enough to slip through. Xane pulled himself in legs-first. "Better get to work before you ravage me like a fleshlight."
Goro smirked. "I can multitask."
===***===
Dispatching what few Amphibolds remained in the fortress was messy since blood leaked into the water. Chay forbade Marcus from using the chakram again but there were now a few impossible to hide corpses.
The office space was relatively open, floor and ceiling of algae-wet concrete, kelp curtains suggesting a separation of spaces, frozen flames shining in tinted baubles.
Chay drifted in a circle while Marcus dispatched a few aquatic Noggins guarding the chamber.
Getting a sense of Vgenfri's priorities,' Chay signed. Not much writing here, typical for a Siren, but the carving utensils are out. Regular correspondence with other sea folk.'
Does that help?' Marcus asked, looking into random pots and cabinets. Not many containers anyway.'
`Important texts would still be hidden. Feel free to make a mess, though, it obscures what we were trying to find.'
Say no more,' Marcus signed. But can I have a kiss first?'
Chay frowned. `You do not need to call it that.'
Their mouths closed in. Marcus let out the breath he'd been folding before his lips entered Chay's mist. The animus-fighter took a new breath to hold for many minutes, gave Chay a peck and swam off to flip tables over.
Chay rolled his eyes and looked around. That pillar was not structural, dragged here from a different floor. Knocking produced a hollow sound. A secret compartment perhaps?
===***===
The heist was going off without a hitch. Goro's raw strength and Xane's genius were all it had taken to dispatch what token guards had remained and crack the vault. A shame they didn't have a way of detecting and disabling curses, so the more interesting items had stayed behind.
Pearl chains wrapped around his limbs and hanging off his neck to the point of distraction, Xane carried a precious bag of nectar buds through the lake's darkness, while Goro held an ornate chest filled with coins – lightened by thaum-magic - swimming only with the stroke of his legs which was still enough to propel him at the speed of a top athlete.
They broke through the surface, dumping their loot on the rock that held their jockstraps.
The siege had turned into a stalemate, only one engine remaining, firing at the fortress and chipping off rebar.
Xane's butterflies dove up from the water and danced on his shoulders. "Chay thought Team Office would be back first. I don't like this."
Goro gave a nod. "He was so confident, he said they would try to join up with us. If we go in we might trip some alert Chay knew to avoid."
Xane flung his last pearl chain at the rock. "Yeah, but fuck it. If they're in trouble they need us. If not, gonna teach the boss to be overconfident."
They dove down again.
===***===
The ceiling above the office was collapsed, opening the three floors above with a massive hole. Turbulences threw flickering underwater patterns onto the cracked rebar. Debris drifted in their way.
Goro punched aside the corpse of a crab-frog-thing large enough to crush a car.
Xane spotted Chay in a corner, desperately riding the muscle cock of a Siren Fiend. The demonling was cut up, his pale blue skin leaking black blood into the water in several places, but he still fucked.
Stop,' Chay signed. He had one hand extended and gestured at the black knuckles. The water above his hand flickered. Hole malfunctioning. Marcus' ring leaking dust.'
Xane saw the voidblade on Chay's hand flicker on and off, displacing water as the visible knuckle spikes randomly extended and contracted beside it. The clouds of unicorn dust were nearly impossible to spot in the chaotic lighting and streams.
`What's going on?' he signed, feeling Goro swim to a halt behind him.
Don't know,' Chay signed. Can't think. Too horny.'
After taking a deep breath, Xane dismissed the air bubble on his face and sent light orbs through the room. Dust sparkled but it was already too distributed to collect easily. Several dead enemies floated around, three Sirens were alive and jerking off.
Marcus was riding a Siren Fiend, too. For a second Xane was simply envious of the nectar injection. Then he saw the martial arts god's purpling face.
Xane dismissed his lights, reestablished the air bubble and sent a mote zooming right at Marcus' clenched lips to establish an air filter. Chay was still doing fine with his mist.
There were enough naked Fiends to make Xane's ass twitch. The situation seems under control enough to fuck for a minute, right? Already, Goro's hands were caressing Xane's chest, driving his ultra-turbo-horniness beyond what a mere mortal should have been capable off.
Oh shit, the dust. Xane had neglected to turn around when checking for dust clouds. Goro's arrival had pulled the current right to his back. Team Gym Bros was sparkling in the chaos underwater flicker lights.
Enemies were entering from above, Amphibolds heading for Chay. Hole's vaporization zaps were making them cautious but Chay wasn't thinking clearly.
Xane turned a mote into a butterfly-shaped, ethereal air filter right on his nose and lips so he had his free magic spare to collect the dust off his skin. Spear-carrying frogs swam his way. He shot a mote at them and chain lightning killed enough to scare off the rest.
Chay was dangerous to approach, Marcus on the far side. He needed at least Goro clear headed. Was there a way to get the nectar buds from the surface? Not really. And he couldn't spare his free magic for a mage-dick if he wanted to stay safe from the dust that kept dissolving more and more.
Xane sent a mote to the center of the room and had it burst into a maelstrom to specifically collect dust. It would take a while though and he had made himself a target.
Goro was swimming toward the Sirens, who leaked nectar into the water from their delicious, pulsing, veiny dicks that begged to enter Xane's hole and-
More walls and ceiling far above caved, concrete bits raining down in a shower of algae. The whole fortress shook as something far below broke.
Fuck, he needed to do something. This couldn't possibly by the siege's work. Something was deeply fucked.
Xane's strokes brought him up to the erratic Goro and he clung to the berserker's legs. He magically wiped as much glitter off Goro's back as he could, then shoved his fist between the smooth, lightly striated glutes.
Goro paused and pushed his ass out. Lake water wasn't much of a lubricant so Xane had to sacrifice his last-but-one stored up spell to slicken up his arm. He slid all the way to the elbow on the first try, giving him an embarrassingly mindnumbing erotic jolt in return, and Goro groaned out his held breath with a full-body tremble.
Shit, Goro was drowning. The plan was fucked. With only one mote left, Xane wasn't going to have enough-
Goro twisted and bent, made easier by being in the `low gravity' of an underwater area, and pressed his lips on Xane's. Through the wizard's filter, they inhaled the same, continuously refreshed breath again and again.
Ramming Goro's insides hard, Xane used his free hand and his illusory mage-hand to sign next to his face.
`Defend me while I fix this.'
Goro gave an `Okay' back. His tattoo expanded across his chest, his eyes went black.
With a deep breath, the berserker detached from the thaum-mage's lips and became Xane's extended fist, taking blows and dealing damage to anyone swimming near while getting anally pleased.
Xane shot auxiliary energy into the maelstrom and directed it around the room, its maw soon reaching Marcus and sucking him clean of glitter.
The lean, tan demigod sent his chakram into his top's neck and swung himself upside down, a trail of nectar shooting from his ass, to kick the Siren in the head with break-neck force, fully beheading the demon.
`Plan?' he signed.
Can't clean Chay,' Xane signed. Hole would cut my spell.' They had tested as much during a moment of downtime, with Xane wielding the blade against his own illusions and attacks, accepting he'd eat Chay's ass for five minutes afterward in cursed despair.
`Kill demon?' Marcus asked and got a nod.
Xane sent bolts at the green aqua-demon fucking Chay to distract him. The demonling recoiled, his glorious muscle dick slipping halfway from the leader's cheeks.
The fortress shook again and cracks in the floor appeared between structural pillars. It was getting hard to see with all the concrete dust, but at least the unicorn dust was mostly mopped up into a ball at the center.
Marcus' weapon zoomed in and sliced the demon's dick off. The creature lashed out and shoved Chay away, scratches on his back bleeding into the water.
Xane sent his final mote and had it explode in a show of light and pressure strong enough to create a near vacuum all around Chay.
The umbralist was flung around – the glitter mostly pressure-washed off his skin – and the lake came crashing back on him from all sides as the severed demon dick shot from his ass.
Disoriented, Chay was even more dangerous as he flailed with the malfunctioning Hole. Pie was nibbling on the panicked demon to feed healing to her owner.
Marcus' ring was still leaking slug shit. Xane couldn't make a new mote. Another quake collapsed bits of the floor.
Something super wrong happening,' he signed, his fisting hand retreating from Goro's guts. Need to get out.'
Chay, to his credit, took charge and gestured at a hole in the ground. `Bronze tablet, right there.'
Goro slipped down with a few strokes and came back up with a bronze rectangle. Marcus' toe ring was not leaking for the moment but he stayed at the back as the demigods swam in single file, Chay ahead to cut through anything his barely controlled blade found in their way.
===***===
Chay hopped onto the rock where their jockstraps and stolen treasure waited.
The siege was over. Attackers and defenders were scattered and tried to survive the assault from a greater threat. Something moving rapidly – no, not moving at all... It wasn't quite teleporting, as if bits of the creature glitched ahead of the rest with every blink.
Nearly pure black, a bipedal wolf, wrapped in chains, glitch-strode along the shore. It never attacked, people just seemed to explode around it. Then it glitched into a different form, its body becoming more that of a pure white owl-man dripping with hot wax for clothing over the matted feathers. Again, the creature did not obviously attack but anyone it faux-teleported near screamed. From pain? Horror?
"The Rebel," Chay said. "A Specter of the mad king. Does essentially random damage. We gotta leave."
"I thought Specters don't show up in populated areas," Marcus said as he picked up pearl strings. "Not often."
"Maybe someone summoned it and things went wrong," Xane speculated.
"This way," Chay said and directed Goro, who carried the money chest.
Hole remained unreliable – the Rebel's doing - so Chay had to keep it ahead of himself on his left knuckle and stay ahead of the group. At least it wasn't triggering the Carnal Craving curse.
As they sprinted across the nearly vertical rock wall, Xane was digging in a bag, pulled out a nectar bud and pushed it into his ass. Chay knew better than to stop him after the short muscle god had weathered unicorn dust so admirably. Chay himself was still shaken by the mix of glitter and nectar.
Hopping over a barricade and a pile of corpses, Chay sensed the Rebel turning toward them. The creature glitch-traveled their way, its dark wolf form changing over to the hovering, blindingly white owl.
Goro flung a mace with more force than any human could generate, his eyes black with mania. The spiky ball on a stick hit the wax-dripping owl-man in the face, flinging it back at brutal speed. It slammed into the rough terrain and drew a path of white wax.
"Crayon!" Xane and Marcus shouted simultaneously, then frowned at each other.
Kobolds flocked to them, many injured, screaming for help.
"Keep moving," Chay said. Hole was currently behaving. Pie sat on his head, the long cloud tail hanging along his back like a diffuse imitation of Goro's hairstyle. "Collect as many allies as possib-"
Chay's left arm exploded.
From the wrist to the shoulder, Chay's flesh and bones turned to pulp as did a bit of his flank. The hand that carried the knuckle dropped to the ground.
He collapsed, blood running from his side and shoulder stump. Pie leapt off his head and into the face of a Kobold. He didn't care if it was friend or foe, he just needed healing. Xane knelt beside him and fed magic to the umbra-power that was doing what it could as Pie's life-steal set in.
Something large collapsed behind them and fell into the lake. They couldn't wait. Chay made sure the tablet was safe with Marcus and pushed himself up, the shoulder no longer bleeding, bone regrowing.
"Let's go. Is Killbringer dead?"
"Escaped," a Kobold responded. "But half of us are dead, I think."
"Collect the clan, we're bailing," Chay said. "Xee, mage-hand to pick up Hole. Go first. You Kobolds, take over the treasure."
While the `crayon' Rebel reverted to the wolf version at the shore, the remaining army filed into the crawlway.
Chay was puppeteering the Pie-victim to suppress dissent, making the drained Kobold shuffle to the back so he could easily dispose of the corpse. He felt a little bad about it but mostly he didn't have much time to think.
Five Scourges were blocking the way, one fully adult demon and four Fiends no older than a couple of centuries. Their robes were in tatters, hanging over marbled skin where Chay could sense freshly healed wounds. They'd had a run in with the Rebel and were now afraid and desperate.
"We have a way out," Chay said, as calmly as the near-delirium let him. His arm was restored to the elbow. "You can come along if you behave."
The adult demon was about to attack but was preemptively overruled by the younger ones. They let the army pass.
Trampling dense mushroom fields to a wet slurry, the group hurried to the rootpath entrance, where a maw of tangled roots waited.
Hole was going crazy. If it wasn't for the mage-hand they'd have been forced to leave it behind.
The Rebel glitched ahead of them. The chains around the pitch black wolf-man clanked as he dropped into existence bit by bit.
Mushrooms detonated into a thick mist, cracks appeared in the cave walls. Goro used his second mace but it ripped apart and zoomed past the Specter's head in shards. The berserker tossed a rock the size of his pec at the wolf face and the Rebel toppled over.
A Kobold exploded.
"Run!" Chay shouted and made his puppet fling itself at the enemy. He fanned fog at the Specter but wasn't able to sense whether the creature even navigated by sight in any way.
His finger-stumps ached as the healing seized but he had to recall Pie to keep her safe. His umbra-magic would do the work eventually, it already staunched the bleedings.
The group pressed into the roothpath and the network expanded into a way up. Roots slithered to assist the climb like a creepy conveyer belt, some roots even grabbing people to pull them higher.
There were only four Scourges. "Where's the older one?" the umbralist asked the nearest Fiend.
"Exploded," the huge shark-like, marbled demon said with a smirk. "Rebel got him."
That was a lie, Chay knew. Some kind of score had been settled. Not his business as far as his divine perception could tell.
At last, they reached the surface – only to be attacked by imps. Chay had no patience for them. He took Hole back from Xane and swatted the ugly beasties out of the air while Pie bit one to death to finish his fingers' healing.
Only then did he realize that Hole was no longer Rebel-affected and using it would incur carnal craving again. The pantheon, Kobolds and demons were all drenched in sweat, dust, grime and mushroom sludge.
"Fuck," Chay mumbled. "Uh, Xane, could you clean Goro a bit?"
"Wh- Ah, sure."
"And stop grinning like that."
"No can do, boss. Just so happy for my buddy. He's got a personal slut now. Or what, is it a purely professional asslicking, hehe?"
Chay wanted to bite back – something like "go lick Marcus' balls" - but that would have been unproductive. He just focused on slicing imps.
"Uncalled for," Goro said, which wiped Xane's grin away. And that's why he was Chay's favorite. No shenanigans.