== VORTEX QUEST 5-7 ==
== ASSASSIN ON DECK ==
By the time the demigods made it back to the floating island that contained the defiled sanctuary, Goro's and Xane's aegises had worked through the blood-bursting curse.
The pantheon dropped into their assigned quarters and started fucking. But things were different.
Goro had always had an appreciation for the male physique – after all, he'd used dozens of peak athletes as his inspiration and hung out with guys who were as motivated as him to sculpt their bodies.
But getting his sexuality flipped opened his eyes. Each mirroring surface compelled him to flex and admire himself. Was this how fags saw him? No wonder his inbox had seen so many drooling men begging for his used underwear and socks. Even without magic powers, he was a fucking god.
The only thing drawing his eyes away from his own perfection was the presence of his friends. Each one more crave-able than the next.
Clearly gays saw the true meaning of manly power, while girls didn't. Otherwise they would all have been drowning in pussy from the moment they'd hit legal age.
Goro knew he was monopolizing Chay, but the leader didn't seem to mind. The berserker gave in to his animal nature and wrung every drop of pleasure from the both of them.
Half of him wanted to treat Chay with revering tenderness, the other half wanted to ravage him so brutally that the bitch would need magic healing.
He alternated.
There was just one issue – if you could call it that.
The Wraith's revenge had been transformed by the aegis into something like a cum bursting curse. Creamy jizz exploded from Goro's aegis, caking the already cum-sticky Chay who was quivering with abyssal orgasms. At this point, the cum puddle on and under them had to near a gallon.
Xane – his lips locked with Marcus' – was squirting a lot less cum. The two were pressed against the Chay-Goro couple, getting pounded by a double headed mage-dick.
According to the fallen angels the cum curse was temporary, but how temporary they couldn't say.
Valor entered.
The babyfaced gold giant had put on light armor. Black, scaly leather with white rims of a metal patterned with celestial ornamental excess. Pauldrons, arm and leg braces, a winged helmet and a crotch piece, all threaded into his sparkling robe.
"We are ready when you are," he said.
Goro wanted to stay, give in to base urges, relieve his hellish horniness, cover Chay in cum, worship Chay, brutalize Chay – make Chay his - fuck his other friends for a bit, too, maybe.
"Shadowhand is delivering your message," Valor continued. "With some luck you'll return just in time to hear the response. We'll fly with Toothcracker. The repaired ship isn't fully operational yet but he needs the business, so this is a great way to increase his loyalty to us. We assumed the Aelves..."
The Nephil realized his speech was pointless. He retrieve a vial, uncorked it and let the smell of nectar penetrate the room.
Goro and Marcus got a mouthful, sharing it with their friends via kiss.
While flipped to gay, nectar visions weren't intrusions, but gentle nudges, more pleasant than ever, even if Goro missed their forcefulness, their urgency.
He creamed out another huge splatter while thaum-magic was roaming his muscles to clean him up.
"Man," the wizard said. "You're gonna have to go naked."
Goro swiped a load off his thighs and sucked it off his fingers. "Fine by me."
Goro felt a mage-tongue lick his hole as Xane passed him, arm around the giggling martial artist's shoulder.
Feeling his blissful state fade, Goro slapped his balls to force his body to plateau. He jizzed onto his forearms, even spraying up to his biceps.
With white man-juice dripping down his arms, he saw his body reflected in a wall-high silver shard. Naked, cock caged, sweating, hair hanging over his face, cum loads running along the veins and fibers of his muscles.
He pulsed his body to magnificent muscle-glory with mania-power and grinned. He was a fucking god indeed.
===***===
Captain Toothcracker's barge, Bleeding Pearl, was repaired with the crude, minimal effort of Boldian design, planks and chains filling the holes in the deck just enough to prevent anyone from falling through.
Along for the ride were the armored Nephilim Gallant and Valor and three of their Goblins marked as thralls by forehead pentagrams.
Their resident wizard - and demigod of style - gave Goro a haircut. The berserker squatted to give Xane easy head access and got mage-dick fucked as a reward, an invisible muscle cock going in and out of his guts.
Goro was running out of styles he really wanted to try. He'd have been fine going bald for a while but his healing ability triggered hair growth so easily.
"Is it different?" Xane asked, pulling lightly on some strands.
"I dunno," Goro said. "Can't see."
Xane chuckled. "Not the style. I'm not done. I mean, this. Having your hair played with by a guy while you're gay."
Goro gave a huff. "Yes. It's... making me fall in love."
"Wow, okay. Honesty is really working with that dumb brute concept you're going for. When I was flipped it was so hard to keep from touching Marcus all the time. I figured it would be the same for him now but he also likes admiring me from afar. Apropos..."
Goro could hear the smirk and tore his eyes away from Chay who was in animated conversation with Toothcracker.
"We'll be even better friends after this," Goro said and swiped up cum from his thighs to lick. White strings were occasionally shooting or drizzling from his lit aegis, caking abs and thighs.
"Fuck," he continued, "I wish these loads came with orgasms."
"Same," Xane said.
Goro hadn't seen Xane suffer the cum bursting curse since he'd put on the tiny, black fundoshi again. "You're just cleaning them as they come?"
"Yeah," Xane confirmed. "But I'm also holding them back. You're not?"
"Holding them... You can do that? Man, I think I'm Mister Self-Control and then you show me up. Just like when we were cutting for the stage." He chuckled. "I never figured out how to use the aegis as a torchlight either."
"It's similar. I just... feel the burst coming and load it into the cock cage instead of letting it happen. Makes for a massive cumshot every ten minutes or so. I think I wasn't as Wraith-cursed as you, though. By the way, I'm done."
Goro rose, having held a squat without effort for far beyond his human ability. The mage-dick slipped out one last time and instead an illusory mirror appeared before him.
His hair was tied up into a silly palm tree with a Vark bone holding it in place.
"I look like a classic cartoon savage. It's great, thanks."
"No problem. I was afraid you'd find it too stupid but who's gonna judge? Oh, I think you have a fan."
Chay walked toward them, moving around weak points in the hull only he was aware of. He was grinning, short of bursting into laughter.
"Wow, is this Neanderthal going to knock me out and drag me to his cave?"
"Anytime," Goro said, cream squirting from his cock cage again.
Marcus dropped from the rafters. "Cool hair, Gogo-boy. Literally no one else on earth – or wherever – could pull that off."
He went to his knees between Goro's legs and licked to satiate his hunger.
"So here's the deal," Chay said, lightly clapping his hands. "If we're going to take down the vortex, we have to get past ridiculous amounts of force fields. Champion Slyell'Pvan is not fucking around. We'll need to stop him from refueling his batteries."
Marcus, casually fingering his nipples, huffed. "That's one way to say we kill a bunch of humans. Yeah yeah, they're just ectoplasmic shades. That's what all the murderers tell themselves."
Dimness fell over them as the Bleeding Pearl moved into a passage, barely five times its size.
"So we'll need a fast ship to get around. The Captain had `suggestions' for who's to kidnap."
Xane raised his hand, excitedly. "Ooh, ooh, is it `from a rival clan'?"
Chay smirked. "Yup. We're stealing a liner from the Scratch Clan after we got the Aelves out. Dips on being the capt-"
Immense force and pain.
Goro was ripped off his feet and slammed into an arch's pillar like a train had hit him. His lower body was not responding.
A red spear as thick as Goro's forearm and longer than he was tall was stuck through his abdomen, nailing him to the ship. No, not a spear – a harpoon. The head of the red object was split and barbed.
Another harpoon had rammed through Xane's back and farther into Chay's stomach, nailing them both to the deck. Only Marcus had twirled out of the way of a shot meant for him.
More harpoons came flying in high arcs from somewhere below and buried into the deck, shattering the arches above. Chains on them went taut.
The ship had almost left the passage but was being dragged to a near halt. The Kobold crew was panicking, firing their deck guns into the darkness blindly.
Xane let out his final breath with a pained cry, blood running from his lips. He grabbed the shaft with both hands and thaum-magic, pulling it – and himself – back, pulling the weapon out of the deck, out of Chay, then shoving it backward through himself. A mote zoomed into his punctured center.
As Chay dropped, a mote slammed into his navel and aided his healing.
Goro roared. His mark had exploded across his shoulder, arm, face, chest. Perfect, bloodthirsty calm overcame him. It didn't take the pain away but it changed how he felt about it. Total focus. Even holding the cumshots back was trivial for now.
The harpoon broke under his grip. He pulled himself off the broken shaft and collapsed. While his spine un-severed itself, he crawled on his arms to Xane who still had a hole in his chest. A mote had turned into a new lung while the rest of the body healed around it.
"They're coming up!" Marcus yelled.
Chains jangled and stiffened. The harpoons stuck in the deck were being used to climb.
The animus-fighter was running around the ship and kicked grappling hooks off the planks they were dug through.
The Bleeding Pearl had been dragged to close to the wall and scraped rock, arches above and sails below getting shredded.
Skeletons ascended the chains. Reanimated Kobolds, their bodies of pure bone barely armored. A living Aeodrake, black, highly muscled, fluttered above. No, worse, a Dragoon, a lizard strengthened by demon blood, veins thick with power on the black scales.
Goro dragged himself to Chay with mighty leaps, his sensationless lower body flopping along.
"He's a thrall," Chay said, looking at the Dragoon closing in. "Someone is sending a Kobold hoard to try and kill us. Likely Lord Slyell'Pvan."
"Why is he not attacking?" Goro asked.
Chay smirked and fought himself to a stand, his fog cape spilling onto the deck. "He's my puppet."
Crocs dropped from the cavern ceiling. The immense, thick lizard beasts snapped at the nearest target, tearing apart a Goblin. Chay's Dragoon zoomed down and crashed into the Crocs.
The skeletal Kobolds were surrounding them. Xane held his own with red orbs grinding their bones to dust on impact. At the front of the ship, Gallant was keeping the crew safe behind a golden force field, while Valor spun a web of holy twine to hinder the skeletons' advance.
Marcus was flying from target to target, skulls popping from necks as his feet rammed into them.
At last Goro's spine reconnected. With feeling in his legs returned, he pushed himself off the planks and rolled into the hoard. It didn't matter what he hit, each touch scattered an undead body.
The ship was precariously tilted forward as it dragged the harpoons along on its flight, planks breaking, chains snapping. They were going to have a crash landing soon.
Living Kobolds ascended with the next load of skeletal ones.
"Fire!" Chay shouted. "Pyrebolds! Oh fuck."
Flame spewed from the mouths of a dozen lizardmen. Goro hardly cared. His skin healed the damage at the rate he incurred any. A fist to the reptilian face put a permanent end to any elemental shenanigans.
A mote turned into an oppressive force wave and extinguished every flame on deck. The thaum-mage switched to lightning to deal with yet more Crocs that had shown up.
The enthralled and puppeteered Dragoon fought alongside Goro now, making the pyrebolds chose a quick escape by jumping off the ship.
No, they were jumping because-
The Bleeding Pearl fell apart. Rope-webbed arches and rafters floated up with latent soul energy while the deck itself tiled forward, the bow pointing straight down.
Goro fell in a rain of unprepared skeletons.
He caught himself on an iron bar with his right middle finger, taking the force of his weight like it was nothing. The Dragoon fell past him, seemingly determined to go down.
A dish-sized razor ring hacked into the plank next to Goro's head.
Marcus horizontally landed next to him and held onto the chakram, undisturbed by its apparent sharpness. "How's it hanging?"
Goro looked down. Valor was holding a golden twine lasso that connected a net full of ship crew with the bow. Gallant was carrying the two surviving Goblins by their harnesses.
The Bleeding Pearl's remains were about to drop through a pink bubble cloud.
"Just peachy," Goro said.
"Did you hear them go `blood feast!' when they attacked? Really took me back to the old days of getting hunted by the fuckers."
Goro wasn't surprised. Kobold religion was varied, and ultimately the only real constant was worship of the realm's king, but a chunk of them had elevated drinking the blood of their enemies to a central dogma.
The berserker grunted. "Nah. Must have been killing them too fast."
"Shame. Was hoping to share the nostalgia. Hey, your silly hair survived the battle. Now that makes Xane a wizard."
"Does Chay have a plan?"
Marcus clicked his tongue. "Bet he does. Ask him yourself."
Goro looked down again. Chay was breaking through the cloud, riding the back of his Dragoon, the huge, musclebound Aeodrake bleeding from the stump of a missing lower jaw.
"Just drop," Chay told them, hovering in position next to them. "Xane is preparing a landing zone. There's more Kobolds waiting, so be ready."
"Welp," Marcus made, "see you on the flipside, fellow part time faggots."
The chakram shrank to a ring around the martial arts demigod's finger and the tall, tan man dropped.
Goro dropped second, heading into the cloud feet first. Bubbles and a pink tinted darkness enveloped him. He got soapy.
Falling out the other end with a pink sheen to his skin, he noticed another soap-bubble-looking structure below. He was falling into an illusionary lord castle, its green spires rising from a forty degree slope canyon wall, ringed by a garden that terminated exactly at the bubble's border.
The shrubs and person-sized flowers were getting set on fire and regenerated immediately, being mere visions.
Xane was at the center of a Pyrebold circle, an ice wall with integrated Kobold corpses giving him a secure flank to stand with his back to, while he lightning zapped the encroaching horde.
Pulsing to mania-powered muscle size, Goro's mark spread across lower back, ass, hips and legs – corresponding to his mental focus.
He slowed his fall just enough to avoid splattering. Killing five Pyrebolds on impact, he landed on one knee, fist dug deep into the back of a lizardman.
About a dozen bones on Goro's body had shattered or fractured from the fall. He rose by pure muscle strength while they snap-healed back into place.
The demigods reunited moments later. Chay as a buff and handsome pillar of smoke, invisibly roaming the battlefield, making the army fight amongst itself; Marcus as an athletic whirlwind of cut throats and cracked ribs; Xane as a flexing ice, acid and lightning dispenser. Pie as the cutest thing ever, dishing out angry nibbles.
And Goro – as a wave of death.
How could this vortex lord think fucking Kobolds were going to stop the pantheon? He might as well have sent a strongly worded letter.
The remains of the Bleeding Pearl crashed into the castle, severely damaging two of the six irregular spires.
Chay appeared in one of the many smoke tendrils around the illusory garden. Goro never flinched or accidentally attacked the leader for some reason. Latent mania magic or godly timing on Chay's part?
"Fiends incoming," the umbralist said. "I sent Marcus to deal with them but the Nephilim had to drop the crew kinda in the middle of enemy territory. Stay with Xane, I'll be right back."
Goro had to fight his urge to say something stupid like `no, I'll always stay with you, my love'. He had to trust Chay to handle himself, even though he wanted nothing more than to touch the man with the crazy hair patterns and never let go.
As Chay faded, Goro roared at the thinned horde.
"You want my blood? Huh? I've got something better."
He levitated to get his crotch to Kobold-face height and let his burst curse loose.
Cum shot from his aegis' slit, so much and so hard it shredded his urethra. Letting out an inhuman scream, Goro felt a good gallon of cum leave his dick in a fraction of a second. The concentrated `projectile' hit the Kobold in the face with enough force to pop an eye.
Goro didn't take time to marvel at his new weapon. He followed up with a foot stomp.
Flame engulfed him from two sides. It hardly mattered. Charred fists hit just as hard. He wasn't omnipotent – nowhere close – but he was a fucking god.
===***===
The saccharine, idyllic fantasy-scape of immense blossoms, wavy hedges and gemstone paths shaded by spiraling trees was a strange contrast to all the piles of bones and shredded corpses Goro was leaving in his wake.
The horde was defeated. After sustaining many devastating wounds, the berserker looked untouched, lizard blood dripping off him as his muscles shrank to their normal human-bodybuilder size.
As he rejoined the group, Xane swiped the air in front of the mania-warrior and the blood disappeared, even from his stylish hair.
Three Fiends knelt by a pool of shining pearls, clothes discarded, faces glittering with magic slug shit. One was hammering his arm-sized dick into Marcus' ass, the others simply jerked off, leaking nectar.
Goro gave Chay a nod of acknowledgement, sat down and drank with greedy licks, letting his bursting curse flow free, caking his own crutch as golden demon cum ran down his chest.
"Either way," Chay continued his in-progress conversation, "the lord of this place isn't going to be out long and another fight is going to cost too much time. I don't like it either but splitting up seems prudent."
"Fine," Gallant said, sounding not fine. "Captain? I'll accompany your crew to Lbeth-Chnerg for a new hull. We'll need a way to carry the old engine covertly or someone's going to try taking it."
Xane spoke up. "I can figure something out. Give me a second."
"The sails, too," Toothcracker said, "they're still good."
"Hopefully," Gallant continued, "we'll be with you in time for the return. I'll have to buy the hull outright. Captain, you'll pay me back, I assume?"
"Hm... this is a rather unusual arrangement. I could wait nearby for a clan member to pick us up. With how dire your situation is... I'll pay 70%."
"You're mad. No one in the abyss gives 30% discounts. You'll pay three percent less."
Goro stopped paying attention. He was already slick with nectar, letting the fuck-honey run all over him. He waved over a Goblin – ridiculously wide frame, filled out by bulging, soft muscles. It took very little convincing to make the Greenskin ram his divine ass with the Goblin dick, which was, as usual, as wide as it was long.
The nectar visions let Goro think he was getting spread by a bomb blast of bliss to a hole a mile wide. Then his little cum shots felt like a fountain of jizz, spraying from his rockhard dick into his mouth, confusing the demonic dick he was sucking for his own. Nectar came up with truly the wildest ideas.
But his mind kept returning to Chay. The others, too, yes, but Chay most of all. Every other scenario involved the umbralist. Sucking his dick on a stone throne, fucking him in Goro's dorm room, sixty-nine-ing in the college library, fisting each other in an astral void. Xane and Marcus played supporting roles, or at least their arms did. And cumshot-ready demons were everywhere.
Goro didn't bother coming back to reality until one of the others tapped him on the back. Strange how easily the nectar vision could be broken when they seemed so real.
The pantheon stole a Wyvern from the castle they had wrecked.
It wasn't cooperating with foreign masters but Chay figured out how to puppeteer it. This made for a bumpy ride, especially with the Goblins and their freight also riding on the same white serpent.
Valor flew ahead.
Chay had been right. They were on a tight schedule. Goro wasn't interested in returning to Hgaan – if they even could.