== VORTEX QUEST 3-6 ==
== DEMIGODS BETWIXT ==
The academy had gyms for the Hellions. Chay wasn't quite sure how much of their physique was inherent but the skull-headed warriors apparently still needed to train to stay at their extreme peak.
Naturally, he found Goro there, pumping his biceps with a dumbbell of bulky iron on a sandstone slab bench, superhuman muscles glistening, his white fundoshi soaked and hugging the tiny package.
Pie slipped from the umbralist's arms and raced around the powerlifter's legs before dashing off to who knew where.
Goro threw him a smirk. "Craving the pump, too?"
Chay tried not to be mesmerized by the biceps. "Just needed a break from the library. Figured I'd catch you here. Hot new look by the way. Right mix of savage and sophisticated."
The large powerlifter dropped the weights and flung his braid. "Ha, you know how to make a berserker blush."
Chay was taken aback. The hunk sitting before him was feeling genuinely flirty. Or rather, he was horny to a point where sexuality just oozed from his mind. Umbral-analysis made that impossible to miss.
Chay fought the urge to swallow suspiciously. "So Sharpeye thinks we got a chance to kill the vortex before it's up and running, but we got to seriously speed up the revolution. We'll need a permanent connection to Lydeth. Right now, they're only communicating with secret messages over other public channels, in so far as this hell-feudalism has public infrastructure."
He knew he was rambling but he *wanted* to ramble. The other demigods would have already interrupted him but Goro just waved him to follow to a vacant squat-rack.
While Goro put his plates on the beam -- much longer than at earth gyms -- Chay kept going over his and Sharpeye's plan.
Eventually Goro started squatting the weight, making Chay's overgrown cyclist-thighs seem average by contrast. The berserker roared in a perfectly human way, face a grimace of pain.
"Uhhhh, fuck!" Another squat. "Uhhhhh ffffuck! So hard not to let magic do the trick by instinct, hehe," Goro said, turning to Chay, neck still under the bar. "I've always dreamed of healing powers so I could train all day every day and my muscles would grow and grown and fucking grow."
"Same," Chay said. "When I do an exercise I don't like, I pretend I've been doing it for five hours after getting a secret military serum that makes me instantly recover."
Goro readied for another rep. "Military serum, huh? For me it's a naked chick with a magic wand." Plates clanked. "Hhhnnnngaaaaafuck!"
"Now I'm wondering if you'd really get bigger. I always assumed the healing *resets* your body."
"No idea," Goro said and squatted again. "Ggggrrrrr fuck! Not like I'll be at it long enough to find out. Last one, hhhhhffffguuuhh Fuck!"
In a way, the mania-warrior had become Chay's favorite. Sure, Marcus and Xane were more entertaining when they didn't bicker, but Goro's excess of calmness and discipline had seemed aspirational on campus even before Chay had known his name -- and unwillingly seen his nudes after the crazy-ex thing.
Pie returned and dropped a dead Gnome at Chay's feet.
"Uh... thanks, girl."
The weight slammed back into the rack. "What's your favorite monster dick, aside from demon?"
"Huh?"
Goro grinned. "Don't say human. Don't believe it for a second."
"W-whats yours?"
Goro shrugged. "Troll, probably, even if it's a little plain. Unless we find something thicker. Marcus said it's a toss-up between Hellions for the length and Kobold for the ribbing. Xane said Kobold first but I think it's Lich now."
"Wow, uh, Drake maybe? I mean, after Sharpeye was done scheming..."
"Is he a good lay?"
"Sure," Chay said and tried to sound locker-room-casual, eyes on Pie as she nibbled his fingers. "Bit rough."
"Going to have to sample him later."
"Oh that reminds me," Chay said. "Reapers should be here any minute."
===***===
Reapers were wingless, minor demons, their skin deep blue, approaching black with purple or teal hues. Their horns were mostly bent forward and spiraling, letting them wear hooded robes.
Of the three Reapers, two were about nine foot tall and in robes that dragged along the floor. The third one was a Reaper Fiend, barely eight foot, with much looser robes that made his bizarrely muscled physique obvious.
Chay's aegis was radiating hard enough to shine lightly through the fundoshi.
Sharpeye introduced the pantheon, then Lord Ghir'Ragvel and his associates.
"Pleasure doing business with you," said Ghir'Ragvel, fangs sparkling with gold rings that matched his huge septum ring. "I assume you're ready for a covert takeover mission?"
Chay analyzed his allies. Ghir'Ragvel was driven by bitter revenge, rich enough to ensure his closest followers loyalties but not enough to stay securely in power. While few Reapers were thrilled about the vortex, some profited more from the project than others. He was on the losing side.
"Absolutely," Chay said. "We'll rely on your support." He could tell Marcus was *seconds* away from asking, so he preempted. "How about nectar for us, as a showing of trust? Do you carry any?"
The Reapers glanced at each other. Ghir'Ragvel dropped his clothes first, the others followed.
While the dark, blueish muscles were already an oppressive wall of flesh, Reaper-cocks were a class of their own.
Each demons sported triple-dicks, each dick a twenty inch tentacle, extending in segments, prehensile.
Chay's hole was twitching. He took off his fundoshi, momentarily blinding everyone, even himself, with the aegis.
"You get used to the glow," he said, apologetically.
He and Marcus knelt on all fours next to each other, getting fucked by one of Ghir'Ragvel's dicks each, while the third tentacle-like appendix traced their back muscles.
The other two demigods were positioned as if sixtynine-ing, with Goro on his back and Xane on top. The Fiend had two dicks inside Goro as requested and spread him while nectar injecting. The third dick was between the slick humans, rubbing off on their abs.
Xane was getting fucked by the other adult Reaper, of course, with the two spare dicks slapping his bubble butt cheeks like drums, flinging little lines of nectar on his shredded back.
It was one of the best nectar injections ever.
Goro's question had made Chay consider his personal ranking of demons. Reapers were probably near the top. Not as thick and pumping as Wretcher's muscle dicks, not as beautifully devastating to his guts as a greater Daemon's rippling, but a good mix.
He certainly could have gone for hours of brain-raping sex visions and whole-body explosions. And he didn't even have to share or switch, just enjoying the tentacle dicks sliding into him.
His hands found Marcus' body and reciprocal caressing ensued. They were both sobbing into each other's necks.
Xane and Goro started laughing uncontrollably, almost panicked. The whole pantheon madly chuckled and cried and giggled and wailed as golden honey drops painted them.
Chay was trembling as he fell apart in the Reaper's grasp.
They had only gone without nectar for a day or so. And already the return of pleasure broke them. At least the addiction wasn't getting worse, or was it?
In the shockingly brutal bursts of pleasure, it sometimes felt like he was riding Marcus' tentacle-cock instead.
Practically screaming at each other in lust, the men melted into each other's embrace.
===***===
The dual realms of Rhibinelg were connected in several places by the twixtway. Most of those locations were sand maelstroms, claimed and fortified by some abyssal faction. But a few were up for grabs at any given moment.
The Thorn Bomb twixtway lay somewhere within a pillar of warped, dead coral in off-white that speared like a minor skyscraper toward the ocean-sky.
As this was a low profile mission, the pantheon revolutionaries traveled light. They were accompanied by three Kobolds and two Goblins, who led the tine-vark that carried equipment.
"Sleuthken ahead," said Grrrn'va - Track-Seeker. He was an Ultrabold, his scared, orange reptile body enhanced with a blue gem in his left eye socket, more gems on his clawed toes, and a silver shotgun barrel worked into one of his four arms.
"Can you take them?" Chay asked.
"Probably," Track-Seeker said, instantly mistrusting, tense. "You're not helping?"
"I think the Nettlex are stirring already."
The enhanced Kobold focused his gem-eye at the coral pillar's many organic holes. "Yes... we'll take the hounds down here."
The Nettlex unfolded. Brown, thorny, complexly woven.
Thirty yard long tree-trunk-like beings unwrapped from the corals or slid tentatively from the pillar. They extended loops, like asymmetric, hollow, thorn-riddled butterfly wings.
"Let's go," Chay shouted and took off, levitation-hopping toward the pillar.
The Goblins swung paddles at the territorial sleuthken below as he zoomed past. Chay grunted instruction in their language. Goro landed on one of the mutant-hogs, breaking its neck as he pushed himself into the air.
The pantheon made touch with the porous coral. Thorny shadows moved across them.
"The Nettlex are fragile," Chay analyzed. "Wood-like exterior. Flexible at the joints. They're way faster than they look. Ignore the wings, go for the main trunk. Xee, fire time."
Two butterflies dashed forward and turned the nearest two Nettlex into firework. They didn't burn easy but retreated, smoking.
With levitation assisted climbing, the demigods ascended into the flock of hostile creatures. The first of Xane's victims broke in the middle and dropped as two smoke-trailing, jittering parts.
The immense wood-moth-snakes shifted as if about to-
"Incoming!"
Thorn bombs dropped at the flap of hollow wings.
A hundred needles exploded from the seed-balls and hammered into the pillar. Marcus evaded gracefully, his weapon deflecting stray shards. Xane was hit a few times, his mage-limb taking the brunt of the impact and rippling apart. Goro was nailed to the coral, roared, and tore himself free.
