== VORTEX QUEST 3-5 ==
== REVOLUTION 2 -- JOIN US ==
Rhibinelg's suns brightened the ocean above to a shimmering blue, the reflected 'nighttime' light dyeing the red sand a gentle navy.
The demigods were on the war path.
Marcus carried a bandolier of darts and daggers.
Xane had three butterflies sitting on each round shoulder for a total of six, their bright colors trailing behind them as illusory comet tails.
Chay lead an army. Goblins in leather straps, carrying clubs, Hellions in spiky armor, a well-paid Wraith and even a Glitzer -- its semi-transparent body casting torchlight sparkles. Two tine-varks served as gear carriers.
Goro had pushed 'healing' into his hair, making it grow nearly to his ass. Xane had kindly braided it, which his third, optionally visible hand made easy enough. A few black metal pins held the braid together. He'd always wanted to try that, but chickened out at the time and effort required. The mark of madness ran across his left thigh.
Goro found the idea of Chay as a grand general a bit spooky, but as long as a divine berserker had a place in that army, he wasn't going to objects.
Marcus, on the other hand was talkative as ever. "One of the slaves is a Filipino, by the way. Not totally lucid of course, but close. Thinks it's 1988 so he's gotta have been recycled a fuckton of times."
"I'm sure you had lots to talk about," Xane teased, "with how much time you've spent overseas."
"Fuck you and that's not what it's about. He spoke Tagalog and, like, for a second I was embarrassed because I always feel like my Tagalog should be better and then I have to be like 'sorry, I grew up too American' but I'm a magic god now and speak everything so it's actually chill."
"Can you speak *less*?" Xane said and got a face full of kicked-up sand. "Hey!" the Korean sputtered, "no charged kicks or I'm sending a spell at your ass."
The group dipped underground into one of Hakkri's disjoined crawlways - sandy tunnels with sporadic illumination. Goro slapped away some dry vines grasping weakly at him. Eyeballs hanging from the cave ceiling followed the army of two dozen. An imp fluttered to safety.
Goro stayed tense. If they had been betrayed, a narrow tunnel was an excellent ambush opportunity. Minutes later, they made it to the surface fifty miles from the entrance just as the suns flipped and bathed the desert in light.
"How's your Thai, Chay?" Marcus asked.
"Fucking zilch," the leader said without turning around. "I'm adopted. Also, we're almost there."
In the distance, heat haze created a mirage, but underneath was a real oasis, ringed by tufts of light green and blood red vegetation.
The bean-shaped body of water was home to a lord's castle and his bazaar on one end, but caravans were allowed to park around it.
One such group was packing up and leaving as scheduled -- the army's target.
The caravan was focused around an eidophant -- a giant, headless tortoise with a flat enough back to house a wood-and-sandstone mansion. It belonged to an Arch-Hexer by the name of 'Fourth Ascension' and her coven - and she needed to die.
Her entourage, trailing the eidophant, was a mix of Kobolds and vark-handling Goblins but also a good hundred enthralled humans -- rows of naked, blank-faced, sweaty, bald or buzz-cut man like a military parade with the uniforms removed.
Goro felt a spike of horniness at the insane amount of dangling dicks and glistening muscles. He didn't have a problem with his attraction to men anymore -- he'd always loved bodybuilding so finding them sexy was just a new appreciation -- but he had a problem with the level of horniness. He couldn't get distracted.
His mark crept up his hip, promising the zen calm of murder-machine-mode.
Chay steered his army into the path of the caravan. "They're getting nervous," he told his Hellion aids. "See the Kobold guard at the edge of the shell? Blue, eye patch. He's putting his men at alert. They'll take a minute to prepare archers."
"We're close enough," the Hellion said and raised a horn to his skullhead bone-lips.
"Yeah... let's hit them. Attaaaaack!"
Goro didn't wait for more instructions. He plowed ahead with huge jumps that made the sand shoot up like geysers and rammed his mania- -enhanced body into the ground-based gobbos.
The superhumanly broad, short greenskins burst aside as their bones got shattered on impact and landed on top of their fellows. Goro grabbed some and threw them at whoever was still standing. That would make enough of a path to the eidophant.
At the fenced edge of the shell, Kobolds dropped. Marcus threw darts ahead of his advance as he levitated into the defenders. The projectiles zoomed like bullets trailed by whitefire.
Several dark robes emerged from the shell-back palace.
The sound of the revolution alliance army behind Goro came closer.
With the energy of a battle god in his muscles, Goro hopped onto the eidophant, fists in Kobold faces instantly.
Blightkin Hexers were made of gnarled, matted robes, heavy with fungal growths. Their empty sleeves reached out and tumors popped up on Goro's skin. They burst like zits as Goro's body healed them away.
Fighting fabric-beings was Marcus' job, who was already on it. The Goblin army below clashed with the defenders. The alliance Hellions began their surround of the eidophant.
"Cinereant!" shouted someone below. Having Chay mistaken for an ash man was a double edged sword. On the one hand, desert dwellers were familiar enough with them to have a healthy respect for the possibility of getting suffocated. On the other, Chay would be a priority target, especially once they realized his smoke wasn't thick enough to kill.
The alliance Glitzer crawled onto the shell with clumsy crystal arms and started breaking shit. Goro joined in.
Liches stormed from the shell-back palace's side wing. The tall, purple men in robes had wild, pale masks over their faces. With open arms they summoned skeletal imps.
Goro threw himself forward, blood exploding from his body where the blightkin cursed him with tumors. His fists shattered a lich mask, brain matter splattering in a cone behind the hit.
The berserker crushed his way through a swarm of skeletal imps that bit through his skin, aiming for his face. He grabbed and crushed bone.
Xane was doing something. Color flashes behind Goro were followed by relative quiet from the Hexers, his body no longer fighting off sickness.
He ripped a Lich in half, purple blood staining his ultra-ripped pecs.
"Stop," shouted a Lich on the ground. "We surrender. We didn't mean to anger the Reapers. *She* told us-"
"Shut up!" Goro roared. He gestured at the next batch of Blightkin floating from the palace roof. "Join us, fight them."
The Lich nodded frantically and the masked men directed their skeletal imps to attack the Hexkin from behind.
"Where is Fourth Ascension?" Goro asked.
The Lich pointed at a palace tower. "She might be summoning something."
The eidophant shook.
Goro took off. He jumped onto the roof of the highest part for an overview. Chay was a huge black cloud, Xane within the darkness shot lightning at surely strategic targets. Marcus and the Glitzer worked along the shell's rim and made it impossible for the defenders to use the height to their advantage.
The battle below was pure chaos. Goblins and Varks and Hellions fought on piles of dead, the corpses bubbling with tumors and blisters. Skeletal imps were now attacking the defenders but the message hadn't quite been received so everybody slapped the bony creatures as they saw them.
Creepy robes hovered over the battle field, without flaws, pristine and gently flowing, the staffs beside them straight and tipped with precise geometry -- thrallkin hexers.
The thrallkin cursed alliance soldiers to join their side as mindless slaves. The mindlessness made them less effective at combat but every ally denied to them was an issue. The revolution's Wraith was counter-cursing them but he was getting swarmed and his many hands were busy fighting off greenskins.
Goro rammed his foot into the roof over and over, stone and iron no match for muscles of heavenly power.
He went into the palace like a torpedo and didn't slow down as he shoulder-bumped the wood portal before him off its hinges. His spine-length braid swirled around him.
The Arch-Hexer Fourth Ascension was a dark, hollow robe three times bigger than a human. She reached out with her finger-like, parted sleeve. Goro briefly felt a bizarre need to punch himself in the face hard enough to shatter his skull, then another to land on a spike heart-first. It didn't matter. His curse-overload, combined with the training from Oldblue made him immune.
He jumped and rammed the Arch-Hexer through the tower walls. Wrapped in the living fabric, Goro fell through rubble and dust until the eidophant shell broke their collective fall. Within half a second, his shattered bones were mended and he began to tear.
"Marcus!"
Goro ripped with hands and teeth. The martial artist's razor ring failed to show up.
To Goro's surprise, the bitch was able to use his open signature and crush his balls. The pain was not mitigated by his magical near-invulnerability. His balls were getting brutalized hard enough to make him feel like his entire stomach was getting ripped from between his legs.
He roared loud enough to make his own ears ring as his vision blurred. The fabric in his grasp tore away as the living robe slid from under him.
Fourth Ascension gained the upper hand. With her flexibility, she slipped from his stiff fingers and pulled up. Goro jumped and dug his hands in. She slapped her body at his face, slamming them both onto the eidophant shell again, covering him, cutting off his breath. He ripped as much as he could while his balls got quasi-kicked again and again.
