Vortex Quest Bk. 05 Ch. 11

== VORTEX QUEST 5-11 ==

== ONE LAST MISDEED ==

True to his word, their style-wizard had given Chay a suitably powerful shave-job. Chaotic but geometric patterns, clearly inspired by Goro's ever-different mark now ran all over Chay's buzzcut. The glaring cartoon skull now sat on the back of his head, staring at any would-be backstabbers.

Goro meanwhile had acquired gold silk from the ex-angels and twirled it into tiny, formfitting fundoshi for the pantheon.

Chay wasn't sure how he felt about their flashiest outfits yet. They seemed more like flimsy stage posing trunks. He would have preferred to continue the theme of subtlety but he was outvoted. At least they didn't sparkle *that* much.

Marcus had insisted on checking his unicorn dust supply, filled a whole closet in the funnelcastle with glitter and, upon sucking it back into the ring, inhaled some. They had let him ride Xane's mage-cock for a Ringturn before helping him. He insisted he had 'no regrets' and took a long nap.

Chay, when he had not been reading or fucking, had negotiated with the Aelves for their explosives.

In most realms, anything earth would have recognized as simple explosives was outlawed. And with the kings' powers, prohibitions were akin to laws of nature, rather than legal contracts.

There were always exceptions, however, and a clever mix of runic artefacts, rare materials and high yield magic created substances the kings didn't bother to suppress as long as the detonations were kept reasonably rare or small.

And the funnelcastle had some anti-siege reserves Chay wanted to tap.

After all, sadly, the Fist of God had become useless.

The ship had been 'mark-struck'. A difficult and complicated spell that created unmissable blazes of green fire around the whole structure. That alone made it a beacon for attackers, but mark-struck objects were also trivial to scry for, so everyone in several canyons radius would know it was there.

With how much havoc the pantheon had brought to the slave economy, Champion Slyell'Pvan must have found it easy to create a quick coalition against them, casting such a powerful tracking curse.

Stout muscleman Chay, in his gold string thong, swaggered into their common chamber, his prominent thighs rippling with every overconfident step.

The trio of demigods was on all fours, ass up, getting licked and rimmed by Xane's anatomically silly mage-triple-tongue.

"Hey fags and ass eaters," Chay said, "guess who just got us a big fucking kaboom." He pointed both thumbs at his chest and nipple-flicked himself. "If I could get erect I'd be diamond-hard."

Marcus chuckled. "If you're into fireworks so much, why did you go for Goro and not the kaboom-wiz? Tall guys do it for you?"

Chay flipped him off. "I'd never steal your boyfriend."

"Technically not boyfriend," Marcus said. "We haven't really picked an appropriate term for our close emotional bond cause we're just straight guys being buddies but it seems relevant how much we fuck but also-"

A mute symbol appeared over Marcus' lips and his voice became rather quiet. Xane rose to his knees. "So we're going?"

"We're going," Chay confirmed. "The final preparation mission. Before we bring too much attention on Völundr's court. By the way, anybody want a sip?"

"Me, please." Goro rolled onto his back. "Can someone punch me in the guts a few times first?"

Chay crouched over the mania-beast's face, fundoshi stripped off, and pissed into his mouth, while Xane's mage-fist went elbow deep. Chay offered to drink next and Marcus stood with wide legs above Goro's quivering torso, putting his aegis into Chay's mouth. Chay held onto Marcus' ass while the animus-fighter traced the chaotic fractals in the leader's buzz cut.

They'd come a long way.

===***===

The Reapers who ran the soul collection programs of Hiwinymb probably had complicated feelings about the pantheon. The price of slaves must have skyrocketed, which was certainly a boon, but the disruption had been severe enough that the champions of the realm who were sick of paying out the nose were using every bit of leverage -- extortion, raiding, blackmail -- to extract whatever slaves were left.

There was a chance of 'helping' the Reapers, in the hopes they would turn a blind eye to the pantheon's activities and keeping them tied up in their own Reaper-y schemes.

The bastion of Arch-Hexer 'Third-Waning' was a cluster of towers, poking from the black, igneous rock in a highly defensible position at the end of a narrow canyon, cut by a teal creek.

A village of a few dozen houses lay before it, atop and partly built from the ruins of the previous bastion which had stood in the same spot and crumbled three thousand years earlier. A few houses were covered by illusion bubbles - colorful trees and swaying bushes lining the unnaturally bright, smooth walls.

The hexer-kin had seen fit to put their considerable slave reserve up for auction in the village square, guarded by Hellions and Wretcher Fiends.

Twenty realm liners were parked in hovering positons at the canyon entrance, having brought desperate buyers from all over this province of Hiwinymb.

The Fist of God raced right past the docks, the green fire of the mark-strike spiraling behind it like a comet tail.

Panic and alerts barely had time to raise the area's ambient sound before the vessel hit the village center where shades awaited their fate calmly, figments screamed with terror and abyssal dwellers fell over each other in a rush. Those who had been attuned to the mark-strike had had only a minute of preparation and clearly, the hexers hadn't mounted enough of a defense yet.

The Fist of God impacted the market and ripped apart in a flash of blinding indigo, exploding like a cloud of dense, blue smoke. The engine's soul gem was shattered apart and caused secondary explosions as the shards impacted in the vicinity.

The village was covered in expanding indigo detonations. There were even some tertiary explosions. The souls of melted human pseudo-bodies either escaped or got sucked into insufficiently shielded machines, causing overloaded equipment to tear itself apart.

The pantheon's view from their platform was excellent.

They had climbed along the side of the cliff faces, using their divine power to hop like mountain goats, umbra-senses keeping them out of sight of guard posts.

Now the leader sensed incoming attacks. The bastion was brimming with hasty activity as the Hex-kin managed to scry the demigods' position and set out to engage.

Chay tore his eyes off the fading indigo smoke cloud and turned around.

"This is the one, boys. Let's rip apart some fancy dresses."

They crouched down and pushed off the rock with godly leg strength, floating on down to where blue and purple particles settled in a shallow crater.

Xane was giving them an ominous aura of red sparks, weaving through the smoke trail of Chay's expanding cloak.

The first line of the bastion's defense were car-sized, floating squid creatures. Their bulbous head was wrapped in bronze plates that stretched along their too-many, too-long tentacles.

"Thralls," Chay said as he took control of one and turned it on the others. "They'll fight to the death."

Ghastkin Hexers exited the castle. Where other Hex-kin appeared like floating robes around an unseen person, Ghast-Hexers were fully transparent. Fleshy, veiny robes that made clear how hollow these beings really were. Their sleeves held onto greenish-blue staffs of twisting roots, eyes blinking along the length, topped by deformed skulls.

Chay froze in shock. His body no longer obeyed him. The whole pantheon was standing still, trembling with terror as the squid thralls descend on them, their tentacles' thin ends finding human skin.

With their curse-overload gone, the demigods were more vulnerable to curses again.

Marcus' chakram were still spinning into soft squid meat but with the animus-fighter unable to turn his head, the defenders had an easy time floating out of sight.

Eye contact, of course.

Chay puppeteered *himself*.

Moving robotically, he swiped the summoned fan and his billowing mass of smoke -- large enough to cover a block of houses -- wafted between the Ghastkin and the pantheon.

Free from the terror-curse, Goro grabbed onto the tentacles wrapped around him and pulled the squid down as he pulled himself up, ripping into the creature's belly, even biting down.

Black ink sprayed from the underside of the armored thrall. Of course it was highly acidic, too. Goro's skin melted where the ink washed over him, including his entire head. It didn't even slow him down. His fundoshi popped off his body as he pulled himself and the squid together like putting on a car-sized sea-creature as a hat.

Marcus had leaped up and bounced off the bronze plated helmets, doing his own maneuvers.

Xane and Chay met in the middle.

"Where?" the thaum-mage asked.

Chay pointed. "Their staffs are their power source."

"Wood?"

"Some kind of bone-fungus, I think. Won't burn easily but will splinter."

"Say no more."

Xane sent two motes flat along the ground, around the smoke barrier from opposite sides. Lighting crackled.

Through the chaos of squid-armor clanking, Goro's roars and rips, Marcus brain-smashing stomps and the howling of fleeing barge engines, Chay's umbra-sense lead him hear the clatter of staff shards hitting the stone path.

"Fuck yeah," the leader said just before his throat was seized by a tentacle.

Xane burned through the descending squid's limb with a fire beam. The floating army was becoming a dense soup overhead, blocking light and forming a dome to lay over the pantheon.

"Move up," Chay yelled. "Close in on the castle. Xee, give us an out."

As the tentacle mass uncoiled like curtains going down all around them, Xane turned a butterfly into a rainbow of damage, cutting through the sea-creature forest, zapping straggler tentacles with a black bolt every other second.

Chay, Xane and Goro made it out -- were joined by Marcus dropping from above -- and rushed at the bastion gates, with a swirling chakram securing their backs.

Green fire of massive proportions.

"Wait," Chay shouted and held his arms out.

Three giants materialized. Easily nine foot tall. They had the bodies of centaurs, with their lower half being massive bovines, but their upper body was only so human, turning into cattle from the abs up, with a bull nose and horns.

"Woah," Xane made. "Bulltaurs."

"Oxtaurs," Marcus said, confrontationally, at Xane. He was right. Tauren only got to grow up if they were castrated. Too hard to handle otherwise. Chay was astonished the tall hunk had paid attention to his summary of 'Semi-Sapient Vertebra of the Leftward Hinge' and shot him a subtle thumbs up.

The creatures were armored with leather and carried weapons. The biggest one, appearing in the center, carried a gold rimmed axe-lance, as long as he was tall.

Chay grinned. "He's mine."

The Oxtaur swung the axe, holding the lance-handle just far enough back to drive the blade right into the face of his right neighbor. As the hit Oxtaur began to collapse in death, the puppeteered one put his weight into pulling the axe free and rammed the pointed grip into the chest of the left neighbor.

As the surprised Oxtaurs died, Chay had his puppet vault over the pantheon and engage the writhing squid-mass that had started to follow them.

"Let's see," the umbralist said. The bastion's size and surface configuration indicated construction via a shallow spin drill method. With an age of about 400 years -- late Dzhar'Suuk period, give or take -- there'd be no bunker or panic room. The most fortified place would be the throne room or some adjacent quarter, found...

"Up two stories," Chay concluded. "Then basically straight in. We-" Movement, a metallic creaking, a wall shape that lent itself to rail mounted defenses.

"Evade! Up!"

Yellow bolts of energy zoomed at them from three places along the bastion and one from a guard tower at the side of the village.

The bolts impacted with a deafening bang, yellow smoke obscuring the levitation-jumping demigods who clung to the bastion wall.

The four men pulled themselves up in nothing but tiny, golden fundoshi, except Goro who was nude, his black hair growing in a wild mane from the top of his head.

They made it onto a platform. A reinforced iron gate blocked their path. It was ornate enough to lead into an important room -- large with many thought out ambush opportunities. If there was a way to...

"Stand right there," Chay said. "Uh, don't move but be ready to."

He let go off the Oxtaur since it was getting strangled to death by the mass of squids below and could more effectively take out squids by fighting for its own life.

Chay let his fog wall roll closer, but kept it low to give tempting vision to the shooters.

A yellow glint, then three more.

"Jump!"

The destructive bolts turned the platform's reinforced entrance into splinters and dug deeper into the room below. Pillars broke and wood exploded. Hexers died.

"Go," Chay shouted and fanned his fog wall into the gateway, making it rush overhead.

The place was something like a ballroom, with mirrors and banners and chairs. No, more like a church, but the pews had been shredded by the bolt-throwers. Occult symbols crowded around an altar -- currently not a threat.

Bloodkin poured into the room. The robes dripped with illusory blood, forever falling of them, never hitting the ground. Their staffs were gnarled with pustules.

Xane set shit on fire. Goro rushed them and tore with bare hands. Chay sank into his fog.

While Marcus inflicted cuts and tears on a dozen enemies, Goro was on top of one in particular, roared and humped his hips down. A shot of cursed-cum erupted from his aegis, so powerful it tore the 'flesh' of the robe apart, letting Goro's hands separate the Bloodhexer.

Wounds opened on the demigods, blood pouring out. Goro could outheal it. The others... less so, least of all Chay. Pie sensed something wrong and shot from his toe.

Chay spoke with his tongue bleeding into his mouth. "Nothing to suck the life out of I'm afraid, girl. Try biting those bitches, huh? Mayb-"

Chay's lips burst, as did his forearm arteries. Fuck. He was already getting dizzy. How did they even target him? He was invisible inside his own-

A look toward the high, vaulted ceiling made it clear.

Chay raced to the short Korean hunk. "Xee, the Noggins."

He pointed up where skulls were hovering, some decently well hidden in the rafters and tattered banners.

"They're looking through my fog," Chay said. "Focus them down."

"You got it," Xane said, split blood, and shot his first shattering bolt up, climbing along a pillar.

Chay's fundoshi burst as his skin got ripped along the leg. He hadn't been too fond of the color scheme but he wasn't happy about losing it either. Maybe they'd go back to black now. Or even better- Wait, he was losing focus. His blood... down his leg...

"Marcus," Chay shouted, sounding weaker than before. "The sleeves. Disarm them."

The Bloodkin Hexers were already in retreat.

Chay felt his strength return. But he was still bleeding as much as before. Pie must have found something to bite. Where was she?

Broken Noggins kept dropping from the ceiling with every snap of lightning happening up there. Chay stayed close to Marcus and took over ripping-duty of downed enemies to let the more capable fighter move on.

The surviving Hexers fled as soon as the last few Noggins dropped and Chay's fog became impossible to see through.

Xane dropped from the ceiling, his wounds mostly closed already, but swaying.

"Everyone okay?" he asked. "Cool... give me a second, I'm replenishing myself. Had to turn a mote to blood and it still wasn't enough."

Marcus was burning white on every cut and bruise. Goro was drenched in dark red but rapidly stabilizing. Chay was being fed life-force from somewhere.

"Can we keep moving?" Chay asked. "They're in totally disarray. I'd like to capitalize on that."

"Sure thing, boss," Xane said and wiped his eyes with a mage-hand.

They headed for the only prominent door.

The berserker and the martial artist took one wing each to wrest from its hinges, revealing... a vertical wall of water?

Xane tried to push it aside with continued force but only made waves like a stream dripping straight onto the water-wall.

"Can't make us a tunnel," the thaum-mage said. "Break through a wall?"

"It goes all the way around," Chay said, seeing the minuscule curvature at the edges.

Chay attuned his senses to the transparent, wobbling surface blocking the corridor behind it. Umbra-power wasn't a magic encyclopedia that just handed him answers. It merely let him sus out weaknesses, read between the lines, grasp situations more firmly -- a subtle boost to his intelligence.

This was a blockade, triggered from within. Had to be runic since there was no way the Hexers had enough slaves left to power something with soul stones. So it had to be limited and specific in effect. Under normal conditions, the whole area was probably layered with illusions, both as indulgence for the inhabitants and traps for invaders. But again, the shortage...

"Pretty sure that's an anti-demon field," Chay announced. "Would be the only thing they'd build major protection against."

"You sure?" Xane asked. "We've not dealt with much Hex-magic."

"Sure enough," Chay said, doing his best to project confidence. "No idea how long it would take to go down on its own, so..."

He reached into the 'water', feeling resistance and weight like he was entering an actual, if vertical, pool. He filled his lungs and stepped through.

Wading, the leader felt the anti-demon water push against him, but not too strongly to swim through. It burned on his skin. More than burned, it was cutting into him like razor blades just big enough to break his skin.

Despite doing fairly little damage -- compared to many other injuries he had suffered in the abyss -- it was stupidly painful to receive a million papercuts.

He had to close his eyes and endure cuts on his lids to avoid having his eyeballs sliced.

Pie started feeding him life from wherever she was. That cat-snake deserved a raise.

He broke through.

A corridor, lit by green and purple torches burning in slow motion. The rooms along each side were blocked off by silver shards covering the entrances.

They acted as mirrors.

While a million not-bleeding cuts on his body healed, Chay noticed that at least all the blood he had spilled was washed off him. Also, his head was shaved to perfect baldness. He took a second to regrow his eyebrows.

"Fuck, man," Xane said, emerging from the 'water' hand in hand with Marcus.

The kung-fu champ gave himself a mohawk and eyebrows of holy fire, while the thaum-mage stayed bald, his remaining four butterflies sitting on his head like a red-yellow-blue-purple mohawk.

The thaum-mage looked at Chay with disapproval. "Those fuckers," Xane said. "I put *effort* into your cut."

Marcus nodded back at where Goro swam to the vertical surface, his hair rapidly growing back to a shoulder length mullet.

"You think you have it rough?" Marcus asked and held up his golden fundoshi that had been sliced in a few spots. "How do you think our *tailor* feels?"

Xane took the ribbons in one hand, holding his own in the other. "I can fix that. Give me a second."

Sounds of struggle echoed from ahead.

"We're not camping here," Chay said. "We're closing in on the throne room and I bet they have more than what we've seen."

They made their way down a short flight of stairs, Goro and Chay at the front, with the leader shedding a constant fog cloak.

In the lower corridor, Pie was fighting.