== VORTEX QUEST 6-8 ==
== THE COLLECTOR ==
Few creatures were capable of time-manipulation and purposefully practiced time-magic was even rarer.
Learning to anchor oneself in the present in the face of an atemporal enemy was not often done and usually took years to master, so Chay knew he should have been glad they made it in just two Ringspans's time thanks to their divine knack and the work they had done with the Nightwyrm Starbeholder.
Still, he was glad to be free from Gloomwisp's Fury nest where accidental hypnotic distractions waited around every bend. But acquiring new skills was a duty he had to bear.
"Man, that was fun," Marcus said as the Sneak Attack took off again.
"That didn't even sound sarcastic," Chay noted. "Are you feeling okay?"
Goro chimed in. "Yeah, it wasn't testing your patience as much as I expected. Even I found it boring at times, despite the meditative nature of it."
The animus-fighter shrugged. "Felt a bit like going to magic school. Hypnotic danger around every corner. I love trying new skills."
Chay felt personally attacked but resolved to grumble quietly.
"A very bird-themed magic school," Xane added, a big illusory quill hovering above his palm. "But you have a point. We could make it a thing. Look for tutors."
"Less expensive ones," Chay said. "Also we have places to be now. There's only one thing in the way of us freeing those demigods."
Marcus nodded. "Ah, right. Boss loves a big kaboom. To the gun shop."
===***===
The town of Ugun-ug Fa'avn was an assembly of weathered, alabaster-white blocks with living spaces chipped into them. The realm's cavern-ceiling here was merely a mile high, with many white blocks breaking through from above. The town laid distributed across rolling hills, carved up by two creeks combining into one that babbled from stalactites so big they nearly touched the ground.
At the edge of Ugun-ug Fa'avn lay a collection – a private museum and library – owned by a demonblooded Lich who had agreed to a talk.
The museum's iron door opened to reveal a green Kobold, frog-like but with a neck frill. A pentagram on his forehead marked him as a thrall. He wore a black robe, not too formfitting but with a visible bulge between the legs.
"We're looking for Master Tsee-Hyaa-Rou," Chay said at the doorstep. "We're the demigods he's expecting."
The Kobold blinked his huge, black eyes. "Weapons?"
Chay spread his arms and did a twirl, as did the rest of the pantheon. Diego had stayed with the ship's crew, checking out the town.
"Enter," the Kobold said. "The Collector is in the atrium. Touch nothing without permission. Do not ask for permission to touch anything."
"Gotcha," Xane said and gave the assistant a blatant once-over like he was checking out a hot chick, lingering at the crotch like he would have at a pair of tits. Had Chay also stared like that? Were they all that obvious?
The pantheon wandered along a hallway of ceremonial shields, fossils under glass domes and massive insects in amber. Summoned boldian skeletons swiped the floor and polished glass.
The atrium was an irregular square, alabaster walls lined with bookshelves and display cases. More skeletons sorted tombs from a crate onto shelves only reachable by ladder. Light fell down in rays from a grid at the ceiling. The room was high enough for it to be a skylight but the gentle rays were too pleasant for it to be abyssal `day' light. An illusion?
The Necrarch sat on a cushion, scrolls towering in bowls to either side of him.
Tsee-Hyaa-Rou was nine foot tall and buff in the way Chay should have been used to be now but that still continued to set off his fuck-cravings. Even more so since his dick was locked away again.
Tsee-Hyaa-Rou had the typically dark purple, nearly black skin, riddled with the veins of a stage-ready physique model. His face was a chaotic mask of shifting spikes, his body hung with a gray tunic that covered one pec and ended just below the crotch. A dozen gold rings shone on his right hand, with unknown magical effects.
"Greetings, Chay of the demigods," the upgraded Lich said.
"You know which one's me?" Chay asked. He was honestly curious, although admitting surprise was a disadvantageous negotiating position.
"Your gang has caused a major crisis," Tsee-Hyaa-Rou said. "Words travels faster in such times. But I wouldn't have expected you to bless me with a visit. My reputation must also precede me."
"Yes, we need to borrow a weapon that can slay a Ghoul. The one under the volcano near the Jaded Claw Crossing, if you're familiar. We can supply divine power to a universal converter."
The Necrarch rubbed the chin of his mask. Or his face? Chay was ninety percent sure there was a subtle difference but hadn't been able to learn anything definitive. Lines on the mask drew narrower.
"An unusual proposition, little slave man. I do possess weapons King Pwen'Gllach has blocked from use and I do have converters that could circumvent this with powers beyond royal influence and I do think some of them could slay even a Ghoul."
Chay took a gamble. "And you do miss something from your collection we could procure better than anyone."
Bingo. The Necrarch's minuscule reactions were enough to betray him to umbra-senses.
"Something you've been itching to grab," Chay continued. "Not even far, right under your nose. It has to be boiling the demonblood in you."
"Appealing to my greed, huh?" Tsee-Hyaa-Rou asked, rhetorically. His inscrutable gaze wandered along the walls where stone tablets hung above locked chests.
"One corner of my collection concerns royal artefacts. Anything touched by kings is... rare, if not unique."
"And whereabouts..." Chay suggested innocently.
"The Rock Lubber Tribe," Tsee-Hyaa-Rou said. "Tantalizingly nearby but loyal servants of the local Champion, who would defend their claim if I... acquired it."
Xane slammed his fists together. "But if some rowdy earthlings waltz in and legit steal it, and it juuuust so happens to end up in your collection..."
Goro shot Chay a glance as if to ask for permission. Chay gave a nod. He appreciated that the berserker knew negotiations were delicate.
"What is `it' actually?" Goro asked.
"Kings may speak," Tsee-Hyaa-Rou said. "But their words are often difficult for mere lowly creatures to bear and so they... crystalize, take on a shape less esoteric, though no less alluring."
"You want a... recording," Chay suggested.
The Necrarch gave a nod. "Of the words the king spoke to erect the Wall of Sgogs'Shrogny over seven Sphere Arcs ago. It is a gem of frozen thunder."
"Another heist," Xane said. "And then we get a Ghoul-killer gun? Plus instructions?"
Tsee-Hyaa-Rou's mask lines contorted in excitement. "You have my word. My assistant will arrange a way for you to deliver the gem without the champion's notice."
Chay gave a nod and waved his companions to follow him outside. They had places to rob.
The Necrarch rose to full height, a hand raised. "One moment, demigod Chay."
Umbra-senses tunes, Chay looked for betrayal, for attempt to trap them and add them to the collection. What he saw instead was equal parts good and weird.
"It is rare," Tsee-Hyaa-Rou continued, "to meet slaves who can withstand the power of demonic sex, and just as rare to meet a creature who submits willingly to my cock." The titan let his tunic slip off his shoulder. "None of the mess of unicorn dust, yet all the satisfaction. Surely, your reputation is not unfounded, yes?"
The split-ended, tongue-textured, dark dick and its enjoyable ribbings slipped from the tunic and Chay felt his hole twitch so hard his inner thighs cramped.
"Not the rep I was aiming for," he said as he stepped out of his fundoshi, his aegis aglow. Xane followed his example. The jockstrap crew didn't have to undress but did so out of solidarity.
Then it was time to fuck.
===***===
They reunited with a chipper and clearly freshly fucked Diego.
"How's it hanging?" the preliminary member asked.
"We need to do a quick smash and grab," Chay said, "but I sense you had your own little adventure."
Diego spread his arms. "I had a drink and listened to some rumors. Found a Wretcher who's running the local champion's archives. They're sending an expedition to retrieve some lost objects and if we help..."
"We get?" Chay prodded.
"A psychometric lens, allegedly among the missing items. Most demons can easily tell if someone's there or not with some focus, so it's basically a prosthesis to them. But I figured this would help track a Time-Ghoul, unless we want to spend another Cycle learning this from an Esper Wyrm."
"Excellent job," Chay said and spanked Diego's ass.
He felt a mage tongue lick into his hole. "Hey," Xane said. "We could have hung around in bars, too, if you'd split the party."
Chay grinned. "You kids are the ones running after me like lovesick puppies. You can hit up bars for the most fuckable demons anytime."
"Maybe I will," Xane said, arms crossed as he walked down the gentle slope of the town.
"What's the plan, Cha-Cha?" Diego asked.
"Immediate heist." The leader pointed at the river. "We're going through there. Hop in."
Goro grunted in acknowledgement, the wizard and the warder groaned. Marcus applauded and ran ahead.
===***===
The Rock Lubber Trolls had settled in a cavern where the regular black of Hiwinymb and the local cream white stone merged in psychedelic spirals.
Their hide tents were arranged around sanded down crystal poles, topped with Vark skulls. The river terminated into a lake at the edge of the village, into which the demigods dropped via a waterfall.
Chay puppeteered an instantly attacking fish to instead defend him from its swarm, while he swam toward an outcropping that would hide them from sight.
The men surfaced. Xane's mohawk was instantly bone-dry. Chay felt his own cockhawk dry supernaturally fast. He gave the thaum-mage a wink of acknowledgement.
"Not enough natural fog here," Chay said, "to hide my own. We'll try doing this sneakily but some have to stay back and cause a distraction in case we're noticed."
Chay wanted to go on the mission himself, technically being the sneakiest among the pantheon. Goro was an obvious choice for distractions. The others got to sort themselves out. Marcus stayed behind but gave Chay the glitter ring. Chay left Pie with the distractors.
Luckily, the village was fairly deserted, with most of the Trolls on a raiding mission.
The trio of Chay, Xane and Diego slipped along the badly illuminated backside, encroaching on the chief's tent. It was marked by a totem of gold and horns, dedicated to King Pwen'Gllach and the local champion.
Chay allowed himself a mere cape of fog but most of the hiding was done by Xane's illusions. The three of them squished together inside a conjured stack of bags anytime a Troll came near.
At last the main tent was in reach. Two heavily tattooed, muscle-bulging greenskins in nothing but flimsy harnesses and red loincloths sat guard, playing a game, their spears carelessly tossed aside.
The demigods went in through the back.
An empty pillow throne, unlit braziers, stacks of random useless shit.
Chay took control of the pet abomination roused by their intrusion – a spider-rat with a spine ridge of bright red feathers.
"Puppeted," the umbralist whispered and made the creature lay down.
He sent his smoke cape through the hole in the ceiling as a fluffy little orb. Nothing that would draw attention but signaled to their friends that they had made it. He would let it turn red if they needed a distraction to cover their escape.
"Which ones?" Diego said. He had pulled aside layers of fabric to reveal a collection of head-sized, round gems. Transparent blue, orange, green, each struck with a lighting stroke.
"Not what we're looking for," Chay said. "I think that's literally frozen thunder. We need the figurative thing."
He tried to sense the hiding places for the most valuable stuff but the chief was messy as fuck.
He shuffled through a pile of Troll thongs, always one eye on his companions. "Don't touch the yellow sword, super cursed. Don't open that box, Xee. Looks like some kind of... acid trap? You can disarm it."
Noise came from outside. Drums, chants, yelling.
"The raid is over," Chay said. "The place is about to open for business. Where in this shithole is- There. Fucking finally."
Moving a hide-cover revealed a nook where knick-knack was stacked atop chests. Among it was a purple marble, the size of a fist, cracks running from its center. Looking at it made Chay hear a rumbling, like a Daemon's voice, so low it was nearly below audible threshold.
The leader glanced aside and tuned his senses.
"Can't say for sure but I'd be shocked if there's no safety measures. Diego, grab it with a bubble."
The ex-Devil wrapped the frozen royal statement in a ward and lifted it. He had another ward ready ahead of him in case of explosive shenanigans. Chay stood back.
"Fu-"
The umbralist's revelation was too late for words of warning. The whole room seemed to tremble as a tent-wide spell activated. He had been too focused on the danger of individual items when the whole place had an alarm system.
No, not just an alarm. Something runic spent a ton of stored life-force to pump a curse through the tent.
Chay went down, his muscles limp, his eyes blind.
He let the smoke above the tent pulse blue before it dissipated out of his control – signaling `we need help'. He lost the puppeteering connection to the abomination but he couldn't shout a warming.
His throat was filled with... acid? His own blood? Xane wasn't already here helping him heal which meant even thaum-magic wasn't strong enough to fight this curse.
He couldn't move. His veins were stiff like rock, filled with cursed poison.
Then something seemed to vacuum the poising away, into his crotch.
Chay regained a modicum of eyesight.
The black substance infecting his blood was getting pulled into his dick by the aegis and - with an involuntary flex of his cut abs – the demigod cummed absolute buckets.
His fundoshi pulsed as the white cream splashed from his cock cage, squirt by squirt raining up to his chest and neck or down to his feet, covering him in ropes.
Chay quivered with fever and weak muscles as he crawled around to find his friends.
Diego was creaming himself similarly, whining and struggling to sit up. The abomination was dead, fallen to the curse. Xane wasn't doing too well, prismatic light dancing along his skin as he pumped every ounce of healing into his veins, holding the curse at bay.
The two Troll guards entered, their spears now in hand.
White fire ripped through the tent wall and two humans burst in.
Marcus flew into the space while Goro ran with superhuman strides through the hole the animus-fighter had burn-sliced. The guards dropped from a single fist hit each.
"What do I do?" Marcus said with rising panic.
Chay struggled to press words through his raw throat. "Pie. Xane. Needs feeding."
Diego was curled around the frozen thunderclap as Goro picked him up.
"Anything else?" the berserker asked while grabbing Chay with his other arm.
"No, just get us out of here."
The serpentine cloud kitty sank her teeth into Goro's neck and the mania-beast let his muscles pump power to feed it to Xane. Marcus had tossed the stiff, groaning wizard over his shoulders and was first out the tent's tear.
Chay poured fog ahead of them, barely fast enough to hide their human silhouettes as they traced their way back to the lake. Chay kept dripping cum loads, hoping he wasn't giving the Trolls a way to track them with some bio-magic or whatever.
Somehow, Goro swam upstream with two men in tow until Diego had the strength to create a ward-bowl for them to skip along the waves.
As they rode the plasma chute system toward the defiled sanctuary, Xane's condition worsened. A curse this excessively powered up was measured in Ring Cycles rather than Spans – weeks, not days. They couldn't wait it out. If the Korean physique builder was going to live, what needed doing was obvious.
===***===
Xane spent five seconds furious – and creaming like a hose – before Marcus tackled the newly dick-caged thaum-mage and licked his nipples.
Xane went down, his hole gaping as a mage-fist pummeled his guts, and accepted that he was chaste again, for good.
Chay would have seen fit to use Gallant's cage collection in any case since the poison progressed too fast to let them get stuck in debates, but Chay had been confident the artsy muscle-sculptor wouldn't miss his freely dangling dick out of anything but principle.
"Wish I had enjoyed it more," Xane said, letting Marcus rest on top of him. "If I'd known the most recent jerk off was my last..."
Chay crossed his arms. "Then what?"
"I dunno," Xane admitted and vanished the puddles of cursed cum from his body, leaving Marcus sticky. "But I liked being the only top in the group. Psychologically."
Chay's thighs flexed as a large dollop of cursed cum forced itself from his aegis. He had the black fundoshi around his neck, letting the white goo splatter freely onto his abs, thighs and ahead of him.
"But," Xane continued and created a ridiculous ten inch cock illusion over his cage, "guess I still am."
Diego, cum dripping past his jockstrap, hugged Chay from behind and licked his ear before speaking. "So since we're going back to the collector to drop off the royal artefact, and since Big G told me about Xee's little water kink, maybe I should show you the bath I found there."
Marcus had sat down on Xane's illusory cock plus mage-dick and let the wizard fuck him from below. "We spent half an hour in that town. How did you get so much done?"
Diego shrugged. "I'm just good at making friends. So?"
Chay knew he'd be outvoted if he said no. Not that he wanted to. "We'd better wait out the poisoning a little anyway. I'll ask if we can rent the sanctuary's Griffnix. The Sneak Attack is low on fuel and I don't want to ride plasma chutes with something so valuable."
===***===
The bathhouse of Ugun-gu Fa'avn had a rentable steam room, where five men could easily spend all day having sweaty, hot fun in every configuration.
After a little while of double fisting in a hovering steam circle, Xane and Marcus made off to fuck under the shower, Xane's mage-dick fucking him at the same time as his illusory cock fucked Marcus.
Chay and Goro grabbed nectar shots from the bathhouse bar while Diego finally figured out how to make a ward – shaped into a demon-size cock – slide smoothly without lube. His control over the shape suffered when he got ripped apart by unspeakable pleasure himself, however.
Just when Chay thought he'd had enough for a while, the shower fuckers returned into the steam with a new idea. Triple fisting.
Goro volunteered, taking in a hand of Xane, Marcus and Chay, then the forearms, slowly working their way in.
The leader gave the musclebound mania-beast a sip from the nectar shot glass and took one himself, briefly transported into a world of demons and fists and insane sex-beauty.
With the bottom's okay, the tops dipped their fingers into a nectar shot and started punching and spreading.
The berserker was utterly still and silent, no longer able to breathe or think, driven mad by a sensation that would have physically killed any mere human. That much Chay's enhanced senses gathered. He volunteered to go next.
It was too much and not enough. The experiment passed in what felt like two seconds, leaving Chay standing under a shower, pondering life and the cosmos with his head spinning in emptiness.
They extended the rent on the steam room and ordered more nectar shots. Every demigod `volunteered' as bottom, creating an obvious impasse.
Luckily, Diego proved as good at making friends as he had bragged and willing, nectar-sipping tops with green or red skin were easy to come by.
===***===
The Necrarch was extraordinarily pleased with his addition to the collection, even though he couldn't yet display it, which was half the joy in owning a hoard.
He had to let things cool down before officially `coming into the possession' of the frozen thunderclap.
Nevertheless, he made good on his promise.
Chay hadn't even been prepared for the possibility of betrayal. He really should have... but he was so intensely relaxed and at the same time wracked with tension. He wanted to still be having sex. They hadn't even gotten around to trying Marcus' other idea of foot-fisting. The Filipino dude was clearly a one track genius.
No, he couldn't get distracted.
Taking a deep breath, he signaled Xane to muffle sound in their area and slapped himself awake when the demonblooded Lich wasn't looking.
Deeper inside the collector's house lay a chamber of forbidden objects, of items the king had disabled through an altered law of nature, of creations too infernal or too cursed or too otherworldly to allow in circulation.
They were each covered in a blanket, chained up or all together locked in crates that told nothing of their nature.
Master Tsee-Hyaa-Rou and his green, froggy Kobold helper carried the promised weapon out of the room, into a lounge.
It was nearly as long as Goro was tall, mostly cylindrical, slimming in segments toward one end, a foot wide on the other.
The blanket around it dropped away and revealed a mix of styles. Sleek, dark gray plates along the thicker half that seemed to stem from a sci-fi prop, ornate technical details reminiscent of celestial work interrupting the structure, a crude barrel into which runes were etched.
Chay felt himself cream hard and squeezed the thaum-mage's ass to signal a clean-up, feeling the cum vanish before it dripped past his knee.
"Okay," the leader said. "Let's see how the baby handles."
Xane took it onto his shoulder like a bazooka, the mage-hand on the barrel to drag it where he wanted to aim with precision.
"This is a continuous beam weapon," Tsee-Hyaa-Rou said, "as you requested. Apparently it is strong enough to bring down a Daemon when fully charged."
"And how do we charge it?" Chay asked, even his umbra-sense failing to, well, make sense of the device. Not that social superpowers should have been able to tell him much.
Tsee-Hyaa-Rou pulled on the sleek plates, making parts of them slide around like puzzle pieces clicking into a new configuration. It revealed a crystal cube embedded in golden, runic frames.
"A converter," Tsee-Hyaa-Rou said. "You should be able to feed any type of divine magic into it, but obviously I'm unable to verify as much and I won't allow you to try it in my museum."
"Naturally," Chay said. "And there's something else burning on your tongue."
The faceless Necrarch twitched. "Yes. I would be loath to lose this artefact. I insist on you letting me track it. Not you, just the item."
Chay saw no way out of that, but the pantheon hadn't planned on stealing the beam gun so he didn't bother to haggle. The assistant poked Tsee-Hyaa-Rou with a needle and the dark giant marked the weapon with his blood.
Then the demigods were allowed to leave, carrying a long and heavy bundle over their heads.