Vortex Quest B. 02

== VORTEX QUEST 2-9 ==

== FATE & DESTINY & CURSES ==

They found the Ceiling Dancer again.

The realm liner had escaped before the start of battle and waited as per instructions. The captain was not inclined to let them back on but Chay's negotiation skills and the entire sack of the pantheon's remaining obols were convincing.

Goro fixed his hair clasp and dropped his perfect-specimen-body onto the planks, casually leaning on a chain-ringed iron pillar. He closed his eyes and tried some light meditation as the barge's cables hummed on the way up.

The glistening hunk was glad he didn't have to fight the crew and take the pilot hostage. He was done with violence for the day. But it *would* have been easy -- and a welcome distraction.

He had begun to hate sitting still, because it made him keenly aware of how horny he was. His nipples begged to be brushed, scratched, bitten. His hole kept pulsing as if demanding an intrusion. His dick... well, he felt ready to jerk off for a year straight but the aegis prevented all sensation, leaving the urge to get erect as a lingering whole-body craving.

Goro did pushups just to spend some energy.

Chay dropped his naked ass next to him.

"Well then, big dude," the leader started, seeming a bit nervous. "I... I just thought I'd let you know I appreciate how you keep a calm exterior. Marcus s prone to freaking, if he sees others freak around him. And Xane trusts you enough to follow your lead. You keeping your cool is... It's pretty vital. And impressive, considering you're ready to blow up."

"You can tell?" Goro grunted. He didn't slow down his pushups, trying to reel in his mania-power which kept instinctively compensating for his muscle exhaustion.

Chay only nodded. "You're scowling... differently. Like you're hangry, but it's not food that's missing."

Goro rammed one fist into the ground, which earned him a twitching glare from the nearest Aeobold and made the Glitzer turn his faceless head around.

The berserker brought the other hand behind his back and did one-arm pushups. "I fucked pussy the night before we got recruited to be demigods," he said. "Two actually. Was a threesome. Anyway, now it feels like a lifetime ago. I'm so horny it's like I've never had sex."

Chay chuckled. "Hehe, yeah. When we got dick-caged I started thinking about ass nonstop. Uh, *girl* ass. I fucked a chick three times in one night the week before we got here, if we're bragging. But now I..." He groaned, letting his head drop. "You're... hot."

Goro switched the arm he was using. "I know." He felt himself grin and his eyes met Chay's. "But... I feel it, too. I stopped thinking about girls. I had an aesthetic appreciation for men, obviously, but..."

"But now," Chay said, breathing heavy and avoiding Goro's gaze. "I kinda get what all the thirsty comments from guys were about. I *do* have a great ass. I'd fuck myself if I could, hehehe."

The Japanese hunk grunted. "I'd rape the shit out of every one of you if the Goroconda got unleashed."

Chay's eyes squinted shut with silent laughter. "Did you come up with Goroconda or a girlfriend?"

Goro paused. "Some thirsty fags called it that when I posted a pic with bulge. So... Is the abyss turning us gay?"

"No idea. Maybe it'll be reversed once we stop the vortices and escape."

"I'm okay with bi," Goro said, now sitting opposite Chay. "I just... I mean, can you imagine dating a mess like that?"

He gestured over to the thaum-mage who was 'tagging' the Ceiling Dancer's interior with illusory cock-and-ball drawings. Captain Lasher had been rather displeased before learning they were fleeting. Xane's butterflies were hopping between his biceps in a game of their own. His mohawk was bright orange for the moment.

Goro's view wandered over the ship. "Hm, where's our swim team champ?"

Chay pointed at a stack of iron supply crates. "Face down, ass up, getting Kobold dicked. Oh, speak of the ass-fucked devil."

The tan, lithe athlete with a white mohawk dropped beside them. There was no more pretense of them being regular humans in front of the crew.

"You're not going to believe that," Marcus said, "but I know what the curse was. Tell them, Morsel."

Marcus gestured at the Aeobold in a tented loincloth who folded his wing membranes and sat with them.

"Greetings. I'm Cr'kknaa," -Boldian for Falling Morsel of Gruel- "and I've got a bit of an interest in warlockcraft. I think you got hit with the Drowning Destiny. The victim is doomed to unquenchable thirst. Most drink until they burst, some walk into the sea and just drown. If you got any treasure buried anywhere, now's the time to tell me."

Chay stared between his feet. "I was feeling oddly parched. I want to say we're immune but..."

Xane walked up to the group and stood over them broad legged. He smacked his lips. "Guys, I know this doesn't make sense but I'm kinda thirsty."

Chay sagged. "Fuck."

===***===

The rest of the journey was mostly quiet and somber.

Goro's thirst grew considerably. Even if they were immune to the deadly effect of the curse, which was no guarantee, the constant thirst would still be torturous.

They met the Daemon Fiend in the revealing toga again, Sremnan, the contact to their benefactor who had a few jars of nectar ready to reward the pantheon.

The men first chugged the golden muscle-sex-drug, then started quenching their water-thirst on a fountain.

Unfortunately, Sremnan could only confirm their knowledge.

"It's not working," Marcus whined. "Still as thirsty and I'm starting to get a tummy ache."

Goro slapped his hand on the wall and scratched the stone. "Fuck. He's right. I'm exploding and I'm just as thirsty. If this doesn't kill us this is how we spend the rest of our stay in the abyss."

"We'll find a solution," Chay said. "We need to find an expert. Sremnan said there's nothing to be done but he's just some guy. Young and inexperienced. For now, let's piss."

They stepped to the edge of a section where the fallen tower's wall had broken away, put their hands behind their necks and pissed wild sprays from their lightly gleaming cages into the canyon below.

Marcus bent forward, saying "Ahhh", pretending to catch drops with his tongue.

Xane smirked and turned his own piss spray into a stream right into the Filipino's open mouth. "Hehehe."

Marcus snapped away with a retching sound, then froze. "Oh no. Oh *no*. Do that again."

"What?"

"Hold it," Marcus said and cut his own stream.

Goro flexed his entire body, fibers and veins popping, to distract from the unpleasantness of cutting his stream, especially with a painfully full bladder.

"Why?" Goro asked, but he already understood.

Xane shot his stream at Marcus' mouth where it splashed on his tongue. The taller man swallowed with a mix of eagerness and disgust.

"Are you for real?" Xane asked and bent forward. He directed his stream into his own mouth, then flexed his ass, cutting the piss. "Nope, nothing's happening."

"I swear it helps," Marcus said. "I'm not a faggy piss freak."

Chay sighed. "Maybe it synergizes with the paradox curse and we can't, uh, drink our own piss."

Goro was ready to punch through a wall, with or without magic support. He was full to burst and at the same time dried out like he was about to go on stage. If there was a way to end it, he was going to take it.

Goro dropped to his knees. "Let's fucking go." He drummed on his chest and took Chay's aegis in his mouth, trying not to let the umbralist's balls touch his lips.

The leader let loose and finally Goro's thirst got quenched. It was a feeling he'd have called orgasmic if his time in the abyssal realms hadn't taught him that orgasms were a pale shadow of what he could experience.

Before long, Xane was between his massive thighs, drinking from Goro's cage. Chay got Marcus' piss after. It was enough to quench the thirst and left them in stunned silence. Nobody wanted to mention what this meant for the future and Goro wasn't going to be the one bringing it up.

Xane made illusory frogs jump on Goro's head, Marcus did juggling tricks with his chakram, Chay scratched Pie's chin.

Their aegises flared up suddenly. Was Sremnan coming back already?

The light between their legs increased, turning blinding.

"Shit," Xane said and dismissed his frogs.

Chay opened his fan and waved a strip of darkness over their crotches as the retreated into the building.

A horde emerged at the end of the canyon. Kobolds and Drakes, Goblins and Trolls, Gusters and Gloopers, Hellions riding on panzer-Varks, armored lizard and giant spiders. Above them was a cloud of Daemons, Fiends, Wretchers and Griffnix-riders.

"Three-fifty to four hundred on foot," Xane said. "Another hundred airborne. Not sure we should stick around."

Sremnan burst up the stairs behind them. "We're in deep shit. It's Loyakken. Our own army will be here soon."

"What do you mean 'we'?" Chay asked, too quiet for the horned guy to hear. He glanced at the others and Goro nodded toward the hole in the wall. Chay imperceptibly nodded back.

The leader started giving Sremnan a run down about where each squadron's leader was among the chaos, which flanks were badly covered and so forth. The demonling cast his white toga aside and slipped into spike-riddled leather bodice. He had mold-mail on his thighs, grafted perfectly to follow his contours.

Meanwhile Goro picked up their remaining possessions and used the discarded toga to wrap them into a thick bundle he bound to his chest. Under the cover of Chay's growing mist, Goro pushed the other two demigods to the exit.

Four realm liners were coming in from the other side of the canyon, 200 foot long each, decks teeming with Kobolds. Gawri thralls and weird plant-octopus creatures rappelled down the canyon wall, while flapping demonlings carried gobbos into position.

This was going to be a battle for the ages. Goro was almost sad he couldn't stick around and watch the mayhem unfold -- or be right in the center. But logically, there was nothing for him to win. He had no favored lord, he wanted them *all* dead.

Finally, with the dark, rolling mist thickly pouring through the cracked walls down to the ground, Chay rejoined the pantheon and they dropped through coalescing clouds.

"Our dear Chralloth has severe defender's advantage," Chay said. "I think I fed them enough garbage intel to even the odds."

Their crotches were bright enough to cut through much of the fog. They stuck together in a fog-tunnel, hands holding wrists, illuminated by Xane's torch orb.

"Doesn't feel like a job done," Marcus said, "if we won't know who wins."

"All vortexes are confirmed down," Chay said. "Nothing left for us here."

"I know but-"

They broke through the fog, somewhere behind 'friendly' lines, to look for the crawlway entrance. A lot of the tunnels in the fallen tower's area were ill maintained, some entrances strategically collapsed.

The aurora far above got ripped apart and the ceiling's rocks blinked open like eyelids, revealing burning, red-gold eyes the size of house blocks. Four of them, each different, searching stares piercing the army lines like sun rays.

"Holy shit, what is that?" Xane near-shouted. Chay fanned a cloud over them as the eyes moved their way.

"King Miph'grix," the leader murmured. "Was wondering if he'd want to watch the war personally."

"Can he see us?" Goro asked.

Chay lightly shrugged. "He's gotta know we're behind the vortices going down. I'd say there's way too much happening for him to care about us right now." He gestured at twenty armored Crocs getting forced to storm into enemy barricades by two crowned Fiends with lightning whips. Overhead, the fight for air superiority was already beginning, with Wyverns isolating a realm liner, their riders throwing fire orbs. Sparks drizzled down.

Pie dashed between Goro's legs and wrapped herself around Chay's shoulders.

"I think she found the exit," Chay said. "Good girl."

They followed the pet into the crawlway, which lacked the curated illumination of known paths. Bioluminescent bugs lived off plentiful lichen, green glowing stalks swayed in the breeze and slugs hung from the ceiling.

Some tunnels had collapsed, some had *grown* shut, but the demigods found their way to a larger room, filled with hip high, whirling stalks in eerie green.

Goro sensed the incoming projectiles more with mania-instinct than human perception. He shoved Chay aside with a roar. A spear dug into his shoulder.

Before he even hit the ground, he tore it out and threw it back with the force of a gun, then rolled into cover.

Marcus was down but his stomach wound was already burning shut with transparent, white, holy flame-licks.

Boldian calls echoed from the walls. "God's blood!" "Drink the divines!" "For the Dirt Grubber Tribe!" "Feast now!"

If spears was all they had, Goro wasn't going to play defensively. He rushed in with a twenty foot jump, already in frenzy. The mark spread from his arm pit up his neck, its tendrils reaching to his right cheek.

He swiped two Kobolds up from the abyssal grass with his hands, breaking both necks as he flung them. His pupils turned to battle-scanners and magic madness guided his fists. The Drake ahead practically opened up by himself as Goro dug into the entrails.

Xane's lightning arched overhead. Marcus was throwing himself into the battle on the other flank. Goro tried to stay tuned to Chay's voice just in case but human speech meant little in his state.

As Goro tore through the Kobold hordes, he realized just how many there were. More were streaming in. This was going to take a while. He had to stay close to his friends, who wouldn't heal as fast.

A second battle broke out on the other side of the chamber.

A war-vark charged into the assembled Kobolds. The almost elephant-sized creature was a mix of hog and octopus. Bristled tentacles wiped lizard men into the air.

A second warvark joined. Pandomonic shouts echoed as the Hellions on vark-back commanded the Kobolds to cease.

Goro dropped like a comet next to Chay who followed Xane around to give cover and intel. They had a puppeteered, four-armed Kobold with two bidents covering their backs.

"Friends?" Goro asked.

Chay laughed. "The dinos want to use us as living blood sources. The Hellions were reinforcements for what's happening outside, but it's possible they were hunting us, specifically. The vortex lords have to be mad as fuck."

"Same," Xane said and lobbed necrotic orbs.

"The Hellions are trying to negotiate but in the heat of battle that's like herding cats. Oh, no offence Pie, you're the sweetest."

"Are you okay on your own?" Goro asked.

Chay turned in a circle. "For now, think so. Hit the shouty one first."

Goro took off, bounced off the ceiling and threw himself at the Hellion army that pushed back the Kobolds. Flame orbs raced along the ceiling to provide light and blind the Kobolds who had the advantage in dim lightning. Goro grabbed one out of the air and rammed it into the 'negotiating' Hellion's face-plate.

He kicked the warvark hard enough to make it shudder and toss off its riders into the infantry.

Goro kicked and punched until the creature's back was broken. By then arrows and fireballs were coming his way. There were casters among the hellions. He was taking damage faster than he healed.

With the now dead vark as cover, Goro used the swords and axes dropped by warriors as projectiles, making at least one enemy go down with each throw.

He kept an eye out for the warlocks among them. Heavy armor hindered their casting but they wore more than robes. He let his instincts -- and their fireballs -- guide him.

The cavern was swarming with crazed, bloodthirsty lizardmen and desperate elite warriors whose discipline broke as the last living warvark thrashed its own handlers in blind panic.

The trampled stalks underfoot sparkled like a rave dance floor as bioluminescent liquid leaked from their roots.

Every part of the room was a small front and Goro was a force of nature zooming between them to wreak extra havoc. He couldn't tell where his friends were, aside from Chay's plume of thick smoke that kept an area clear.

In all that chaos, another monster appeared. Either a secret weapon, or the creature had been woken by the noise.

A creamy white Wyrm rushed from a higher tunnel and plowed through screeching Kobolds. It had a frog-head and a bull one. Tusks and horns decorated the entire length of its body. An Ivory Wyrm.

Part of the creature vibrated and poisonous tusks shot from the end of its tail.

Goro bounced off a Hellion's head and grabbed a tusk from the air. With the momentum of the item, Goro flung around and let the tusk slice a path through a Hellion general.

A flash drew his attention.

Warlocks had unpacked a hip-high, bulbous sci-fi machine ringed by blinking lights. Rune-button presses made it hum to life.

The high tech device emitted a force field bubble around the casters. As the field established, it slammed into the Ivory Wyrm which got pushed into the warvark. The monsters fought -- two tusked serpentine animal heads against an onslaught of bleeding tentacles.

The protected warlocks formed a circle and began to chant.

Goro found Chay. "What is that?"

"Mockery-tech?" the umbralist guessed. "They're casting some mass curse to pacify the area. We better go. Find Marcus."

Goro jumped to the ceiling and levitated. The animus-fighter was throwing holy roundhouse kicks amidst Kobolds who hadn't gotten the message. Most were abandoning the fight.

Goro squished a warrior underneath as he made a comet-landing.

The Filipino flinched. "Fuck, you look scary."

Goro looked down on himself. He was covered in flecks of blood, mostly blue, and other gunk. "Uh, anyway. We're bailing."

They jumped away like skipping stones to reach Chay who was directing Xane's entrance clearing effort. Goro grabbed the biggest rock in their way and tossed it at the Wyrm. Poisonous tusks dashed across the room. Marcus' weapon took them off their path.

Xane chuckled. "Abandoning two battles in the span of, what, ten minutes? What's that gonna do to my reputation?"

Goro grunted. "Worried demons won't find a coward fuckable?"

Xane glared.

The warlock cluster turned into an expanding storm of ethereal skulls.

"Shit," Chay said. "Too late. Run!"

The magic projectiles found victims, often passing through them and finding another. Multiple bounced off the Wyrm, which was bleeding shimmering, white blood, the frog-head shattered and deformed.

There was no escape. The skulls homed in on the demigods, too, and no thrown weapon or rock was an obstacle. Goro felt a new curse dig itself into his flesh. His vision briefly faded. Marcus and Chay blacked out for real.

The cavern was mostly empty now.

The force field went down, ripped through by the curse projectiles. The mockery-tech machine sputtered.

Goro rushed in, brushing two casters aside hard enough to kill one.

He grabbed the tallest warlock by the collar and pulled him down to eye level.

"What was that?"

The Hellion behind the light helmet clawed into Goro's arms, getting no reaction from the berserker.

"What. Was. That."

"F-Feeding Fate."

"Undo it."

"That's impossible. A curse, once ca-"

Goro threw the warlock into the ground so hard that the helmet shattered and the skull-head splattered apart. The corpse ran long the ground with the neck stump rubbing off like a crayon.

The mania-warrior grabbed the next one. "What does it do?"

"All hail Champi-" This warlock died even faster.

Goro raised the strange, sci-fi machine and started crushing it like a soda can over his head. "What does it *do*!"

"Food craving," the nearest Hellion said quickly. "Starvation. No amount of food will prevent your demise by starv-"