== VORTEX QUEST 4-1 ==
== MOCKERY CALLS ==
A pantheon of four men with truly divine physiques dropped into a dense cluster of ferns under the mile-high cavern ceiling of the tropical realm once known as Hrancliay, now only called Mockery by those few who still spoke of it.
Naked, save for the cock cages, the demigods righted themselves in the vegetation, ready for battle.
Goro's two Hellion maces -- black, spiky, too heavy for a regular human -- had survived the crucible. His shoulder long hair flowed in a breeze that gave an ominous rustle to the shrubbery.
Marcus was hacking at plants with a black scimitar, his chakram traveling at ankle height to cut the stems. The white mohawk standing out on his tan skin, the lean martial artist stayed low to be a more difficult target to acquire.
The other gifted weapons hadn't made the journey. Chay watched the remains of a disintegrated dagger run through his fingers, the iron dust as black as his buzzed hair.
Xane shoved ferns aside with magic force but his focus was elsewhere. His six butterflies broke from his mohawk and swirled happily in the jungle flora a few feet away. He called them back with what control he had over them.
Mockery had many of the features of generic realms -- skulls the size of hills, ectofalls, canyons, stalactites -- but the cavern walls were broken with long stretches of astral void seeping in like foggy galaxies.
The whole area was covered in low jungle. Green, blue, purple bushes drank in the different spectra that shone down from gleaming gems or the many void tears, more plants growing up the realm's walls as moss and lichen. Clusters of thick trees interrupted the hip-to-head-high growth, often gathered around an arboreal behemoth, reaching a mile toward the vine-hung leaf ceilings.
"Down there," Chay said and pointed ahead. "At the edge of a canyon. Some kind of structure. Four, five stories tall. Decrepit."
"Don't see it," Marcus said, pouting.
Xane stepped behind him, one hand on the taller man's shoulder, and drew a glowing outline in the air so the Filipino would see the blocky shape of the building among the equally green surrounding. "That one."
"Oh, cool."
The pantheon marched into Mockery, levitation hopping to escape the jungle critter, while staying low to avoid being spotted. Sliverlings attempted probing attacks but between scimitar strikes, mace pummeling and Chay's ability to puppet the swarm leaders, Xane didn't even have to pay attention.
They entered a forested area -- taller, denser shrubs more so than trees - when Goro raised his hand to signal a stop.
Xane sank down and enhanced his hearing by shaping the mage-hand into a shell around his ear.
"Something on the ground moved," Goro growled.
"Advance slowly," Chay said. "Marcus, cover this area, Xane this one. No sudden motions."
The demigods moved back to back. Xane felt the heat of three men taller than him even before their skins touched in the jungle air. The musk of divine man-sweat gave him a horny tug in the belly, like the smell of a nectar dollop about to reach his tongue.
"There," Chay whispered.
A thing rose from the shrubbery -- splayed pale brown threads coalescing around a shapeless body. Like bandages wrapping around the amorphous blob, the long tendrils tightened the figure into something humanoid.
"A mummy?" Xane asked. "Fire?"
"Maybe," Chay said. "But that's not exactly TP."
The mummy had gained enough shape to have legs and stomped forward. Xane sent a butterfly ahead of Marcus' zooming ring.
The mote turned to fire and expanded into a searing phoenix, colliding with the mummy in a display of napalm fireworks. Bandages burned away. They didn't catch fire but smoldered where splashed.
Underneath the mummy's wraps, the blob was congealing into a transparent mass of organs. Xane hadn't drawn much interior anatomy but the creature didn't seem to have human parts he could recognize.
Dark shards broke from the disturbing interior, burst through the transparent flesh and rushed at the demigods. Xane evaded and shot the closest one from the air.
Goro shoved Chay out of the way and brought his maces down on the projectiles.
The dark shards detonated with a deafening blast, black energy pulsing in a shockwave. Goro was flung off course and rolled over thick roots. The shockwave pushed Xane off his feet, too, and he stumbled into a mossy trunk.
The chakram was slicing the gelatinous mummy where it could, with Marcus himself moving in to deliver charged blows.
Chay shouted something. Xane was nearly deaf. He pumped magic into his ear drums to fix them faster.
Marcus flinched back from the mummy, his hands burned by acid, darkness flowing into his body through the hand's veins. He retreated, holy fire burning out the poison.
The umbralist stumbled toward Xane, shouting and gesturing his flat hand down. Xane's ears were still damaged but now he heard Chay as if underwater. "...down," the leader yelled. "Get down."
The wizard rammed a mote into the ground and earth-shaped a knee high barrier to hide behind. He pulled Chay down with him. Marcus was up a tree, Goro behind one.
The mummy exploded in a screeching wave of darkness, tearing his ear drums apart again -- even exerting enough pressure on his eyeballs to make a few vessels pop and blur his vision. His lungs had gotten fucked up, too, probably torn. Inhaling hurt too much to do.
A white, blue-rimmed butterfly hopped onto Chay's head before Xane had finished his thought. He let healing seep into the leader's body while used personal magic on his own, starting with the lungs.
Marcus dropped from a tree, blood running from both ears as they flickered with whitefire. "What the fuck was that? It just offed itself?"
"No clue," Chay said. "This is the weirdness of Mockery, I guess."
The pantheon reconvened, cleaned up and continued on their path, now through increasing thicket. Xane squeezed his magic into a new mote to get back up to four. Tactically important, plus it helped him calm down.
===***===
By the time they reached the concrete hull, Goro had grown sick of his hair sticking to his face and tied it into a high ponytail with a durable vine. Xane melded the vine's ends together.
The building was the ruin of a generic, depressing apartment block - thick uncolored walls, cracked tile or exposed concrete on the floor, rusted fixtures. There was little left of doors or windows, save for dulled glass shards.
"Do you think this was ever a real place?" Marcus asked, aegis lighting up the ugly staircase.
"King Jnessos dropped this thing here," Chay said. "Maybe copying a real place, but I don't think it was in use. Not a trace of furniture or fixtures."
"Look," Xane said and shone his orb at an unhinged door. "Apartment numbers, except... this isn't numbers in a real language, is it? Some rare abyssal glyphs?"
"Wouldn't bet it's anything," Chay said. "It's just... experimental set dressing. But there's a vark skull in this apartment. Might still be someone's burrow. Keep moving up."
The pantheon arrived on the roof, which had rusted metal boxes symbolizing an air-con unit with no pipes connecting it down. There was a roof pool, filled with green water and covered in debris.
"Could you purify that?" Marcus asked.
Xane shrugged. "Give me twenty minutes. Although, it would be easier to water-shape the liquid and-"
"Guys?" Goro said, getting instant attention. "Look down."
The demigods walked to the edge that faced the canyon below the building. There was jungle, as expected, but it grew over a vast city, more ruined than the tower they stood on.
Collapsed houses, claimed by vines and trees, stood in intersecting grids through the entire canyon until it bent out of sight. Bridges over nothing, scaffolding too bizarrely angled to have ever been climbable, lightly smoking factory chimneys in the middle of the road. Flickering neon lights suggested the shape of letters, blobs of color suggested graffiti without regard for its surface. Far at the back, a huge ferris wheel spun without cabins.
Occasionally a building was sat along the edge, as if the city had spilled over when it was created inside the valley -- such as their current rooftop.
"It'll be *brimming* with enemies," Chay said. "I don't think we'll find post-apocalyptic humans adventuring here, as fucking cool as that would be."
Marcus wandered to the edge of the pool. "Always dreamed of having my own roof pool, is that weird? Like, I felt that's how I'd know I've *made* it. But I'd have wanted a bigger one, and an infinity edge and- Woah!"
Xane had given the rambling man a push and chuckled as Marcus' feet dipped into the muddy green before his magic carried him across like a skipping stone.
"Fuck you, piss sucker," Marcus said. "Next time you need a fist in your ass, mine's going in your face instead."
"Well next time *you* need-"
"Visitors," Chay said, loud enough to shut the bickering down.
Three white figures swooped from the sky. Bat winged men with marbled skin, wearing flimsy brown clothes made of jungle material over their supernaturally muscled physiques.
Four godly crotches lit up.
"Wretchers," Chay confirmed. "Bet they think we're runaways. Mere Fiends, inexperienced and wishing to impress each other, hesitant even though they expect us to be easy prey."
The demigods moved apart, one at each edge of the roof. Xane took positon next to the vines that crept up the five stories and had taken over half the walkable area. The vines snapped at him but were easy to kick aside.
The first Wretcher swept in for Goro and got a pincer punch -- one fist to the head from each side. The berserker mutated to his mania form and swung the demon into the ground. Concrete cracked.
"Get them," Chay shouted as the other Wretchers turned in midair to flee. Goro leapt, while Marcus took care of the downed one.
