== VORTEX QUEST 3-1 ==
== TWIN LAND ==
The pantheon landed in hot, rust red sand in front of house-sized slabs of pale, dead coral.
The dull light of Rhibinelg was bright enough to blind Xane as he caught his bearings. With a swooping gesture, he wiped the wet sand off his body, then did the same for his companions.
Not a second after he was done, Chay was overcome by carnal craving and worshipped Marcus' and Xane's abs and pecs.
In the middle of an eye watering nipple-tonguing, a desert sleuthken attacked.
The solitary predator - a mix of boar, hound and porcupine -- received a mage-hand punch in the eye before Goro was upon it with kicks that sent the creature into the next dune. It retreated with a whine.
Goro high fived his gym buddy as he sat back down.
"Good to know," Xane said, "there's still fuckers we can wreck without giving a shit."
While Chay's licks sent brain melting horniness into Xane's body, Goro was ripping up the shredded remains of the toga.
The desert before him was sand dunes as far as he could see, interrupted by gentle hills and skyscraper-like, pale, organic towers. No enemies.
Xane leaned back and enjoyed the... was it foreplay? There was no option for sex as his straight-bro-self thought of it and climaxing through the ass wasn't going to put him into a refractory period. Whatever Chay was doing, Xane enjoyed it, creating a new mote atop his lazily flexed biceps.
"Man," Marcus moaned. "I've got to get railed by a demon sometime soon or I'm going to rip my asshole out of my body."
"Hehe, I wouldn't mind some nectar to wash the taste of your cum down."
Chay grunted. "Don't fucking remind me." With an eye roll he went back to their abs.
Xane stared at the sky. No aurora, but a strangely turbulent canvas, where nearly black and washed-out white streaks swirled on top of every shade of blue like wandering paint strokes. It was gorgeous, but weird.
Light came from a few balls hanging in the sky like... flat suns? Overgrown lampions?
"Mend here," Goro said. Xane interrupted his mote-creation to give the flimsy strips of fabric stability. Goro was making new fundoshi for all of them and a hair tie for himself.
With their crotches clad in tiny white panties, the pantheon wandered under the abyssal not-suns across sand that would have burned them without divine aid.
They wandered through a swarm of Sliverlings. The transparent Sand-Jellon were smaller versions of the brain-squids they'd seen before, only as long as a human and drifting in a loose group of a hundred. They subsisted in imps, uninterested in the pantheon. Chay puppeteered one, while the others played whack-a-mole to clear a path. The hit Mini-Jellon dug themselves into the sand like it was water.
The pantheon's aimless wandering stopped as they spotted a caravan.
A group of Hellions rode an Eidophant. The truly massive, faceless creature was half-tortoise, half-elephant, with enough space on the shell to comfortably hold a wood cottage secured by ropes and a few smaller huts. It was trailed by Kobolds, some blending into the desert with their scale coloration, some shimmering blue or brightly red. The skull-headed warriors were lightly armored, the dinos mostly clad in leather strips or veils.
At the edges of the caravan were Trolls, their nearly naked, ultra-broad greenskinned muscle-bodies used to pull along a sand-colored variety of tumorous blood-varks who carried tents and other equipment.
Forming a long trail were Kobolds with tine-varks, a mix of deer, crocodile and porcupine that held the owner's possessions on its bristly spikes and many antlers.
"What's the plan, boss?" Marcus asked.
Chay gestured them to stay low and follow, his gaze fixated on the tail of the marching line.
The demigods took position behind a collection of huge shells with faded coloration. A tine-vark wandered diagonally away from the group. Its Kobold owners kept pulling but the creature was stubbornly heading away from the cluster, toward the pantheon's hideout -- puppeteered by Chay.
The animal brought along three Kobolds and two naked humans -- shades, going by their dead eyed stare and gaping mouths. The slaves were smoothly bald, indicating a recent "rebirth".
When the caravan was a good enough distance, the demigods jumped into the air and landed around the confused Kobolds to encircle them.
Chay had black smoke rising from his skin, while Marcus was ablaze, the chakram zooming like a blur, Goro's muscles pulsed with gorgeous, sexy -- Xane blinked the thought away -- with menacing power.
The mage went for a rainbow afterimage as he moved, slow motion lightning racing along his limbs. He made his eyes glow blue, for that extra touch.
A handful of Gnomes rained off the vark and bounced around between its legs.
"We're demigods," Chay said. "Sent to destroy the vortex that threatens earth. If you want to leave alive, just answer a few ques- Bad fucking idea."
A green lizardman had tried to secretly pull a dagger from his veil. He spasmed and slammed the hilt into his own face.
"Don't try that again. So, who wants to talk?"
The sky trembled.
The suns spun around, letting blinding disco-ball light race over the sands as they flipped -- to their dark side. The realm was briefly cast in total darkness until the many suns came to a halt pointing upward at the sky. No, the *ocean*.
Above them was water. Nothing but stormy sea, dotted with small islands glinting as the fake sunrays raced across them. The reflected light of the ocean surface gave the darkness an intense, blue tint.
The Kobolds tried to flee but Xane slapped the nearest one down without moving and Goro rammed his fist down hard enough to make a dino-skull split. As the reptile dropped dead, the remaining two seemed to get the message.
The Gnomes squeaked as they rolled zig-zag through the sand like tiny dust clouds.
"You could start," Chay said, "by explaining what the fuck just happened."
===***===
Rhibinelg was a dual-realm. The desert Hakkri below and the ocean Lydeth above, connected only at a few points. They had just experienced the irregular switch from "day" to "night".
Both places were ruled over by King Vaagh'tang, but the great deity had a dual nature as well, preferring one area over the other, which changed every few centuries. Currently, Hakkri was preferred and its lords held greater power.
The vortex was being built in the Wandering Oasis, the realm's most important capital, which could not be reliably tracked, moving by the will of its champion.
