== VORTEX QUEST 5-14 ==
== ENDGAME ==
The bastion of Champion Slyell'Pvan was set inside a horizontal tear in the rock, about two miles wide, a quarter mile tall. Stalactites and stalagmites obscured the view onto a barren, black rockscape, intersecting circles vaguely indicating where the missing vision bubbles usually produced glorious gardens and illusory delights.
At the far cliff wall were three structures, the imposing fortress at the center flanked by two lesser castles. The vortex rose over the left-most. Blue lightning from the contorting maelstrom zapped at the well-scorched ceiling.
The infamously many layers of force fields -- along the whole tear, wrapped around the fortress, covering minor entrances -- were turned off without exception. No fuel, no defense.
Multiple armies waited. The scattered remains of the champion's underlings, his realms cannibalized to create the Hell-Crown and now abandoned to scrape together a force like the abyss rarely saw.
Several Fiends in the air, multiple adult Wyrms, legions of Hellions, ranks of Hexers and their thralls, the sparks of large runic weaponry, Wraiths on the fortress towers.
Any onlooker saw a spectacle of indomitable might.
Chay saw weakness.
"...and then go directly for the vortex as soon as the Wraiths are dealt with," he shouted, sitting at the back of their winding ride.
A disembodied eye opened in the air above them, ten yard across. Gold and black, three pupils, all of them following their flight.
Chay raised his middle finger. "King Pwen'Gllach. He's just watching."
The bastion's weapons opened fire. Harpoons, ice bolts, heart-seeker arrows, explosive rounds.
Ascendant Völundr of the First Light Court flew to the front, his gestalt streaming like a dozen rivers from his white head-gem. Projectiles bounced aside.
The other Aelves expanded his shield. They were not going to enter the fray, but they were willing to render aid from the fringes.
The group was ten seconds from passing through the tear into the bastion's barren fields.
Monstrous eyes hung at the tips of stalactites, gazing at the battlefield, tracing the demigods. Chay liked to think the king was taking physical form somewhere just to munch on popcorn.
"Ready?" he said and handed the supercharge wristlet to Xane.
"As I'll ever be." The angelic band of four pearls snapped around the wizard's forearm. "Man, this better not disappoint."
Five seconds and they'd be over the battlefield. Chay oozed fog and let it collect around him.
Three seconds and the pantheon rose to their naked feet on the Wyvern. Chay was of course puppeteering it, since the creature would never have voluntarily flown into barrages.
One second and Xane slammed a kiss on Marcus' mouth. The Aelves broke formation to retreat, the gestalt-shield fading.
Into the tear, royal eyes opening across the ceiling to behold the spectacle.
The demigods continued a hovering self-powered flight, their Wyvern umbra-piloted into a Hellion-manned railgun down below.
Xane activated the first supercharge and-
===***===
Thaum-magic was the most versatile divine gift. That's why Xane had been picked to go first. He had to cause chaos among the defenders, eliminate big threats, all manner of shenanigans even umbra-senses couldn't fully foresee.
And so he did.
Xane was all rainbows and sparkles. Magic of every type radiated off him like a psychedelic star.
His aegis took supercharge energy and converted it into a holy blazing searchlight, his dick becoming the center of a full spectrum attack.
Rainbow light zoomed across the battlefield, erasing armies from existence. Frost, flame, acid, eldritch forces, the void, the cosmos. All at his disposal. He was carving through every static defense, every gun turret, breaking the walls of the fortresses ahead.
His motes were mere butterflies no longer.
Eight phoenixes of rainbow spirit hammered into the ground, exploding into waves of chaos, of iron shards, of grasping vines.
Hexers and their Gawri underlings turned to dust, rags and bloody bits. An Astral Wyrm -- a creature of cunning and knowledge and Slyell'Pvan's personal pet -- was bisected with a glance of Xane's beaming eyes.
The supercharge was fading. He could have activated another, the power was *intoxicating* to say the least. But that wasn't the plan.
As his rainbow aura shrank, he pumped thaum into eight new motes and dropped toward his friends, who were still two dozen yard off the ground.
"Woooooohoooooo," he shouted and his new butterflies, more colorful than ever, danced around his head. "Who's next?"
Chay reached out, eyes fixed on the battlefield where troops were reforming under the banners and horn-calls of Fiend generals between the burning and bubbling lines Xane had carved.
"Me," the leader said, and let the angelic band snap onto his wrist.
He vanished into a blob of gray fog and pulled ahead of them.
Enemy fire resumed, this time from Fiends who were rallying Hellions on the ground, flying above with strange, cursed weapons.
Xane, Marcus and Goro dove behind a turned over turret. Brain-numbing horniness gripped them.
The thaum-mage slammed a mote each into his friend's assholes and used his mage-cock on himself, making sure all three men got fucked so hard they could think remotely straight again despite the curse.
Three pairs of divine legs bent slightly and accepted the near incapacitating orgasms to preserve a shred of awareness. Xane kept his motes ready, Marcus his chakram. Goro was in mania-mode, his mark covering half his neck and chest, running down his right arm, making him least affected by what had to be a Wraith's doing.
White light erupted somewhere on the battlefield, diffuse but blindingly strong.
Xane glanced around their cover, eyes narrow, to see if Chay needed help.
The leader was still standing, reaching for his supercharge wristlet and-
===***===
Chay was a continuous explosion of pure white smoke.
The moment his supercharge had triggered, his aegis had shone too bright to keep his eyes open. But he didn't need sight. He had umbra-senses beyond reckoning.
He had nineteen priority targets, most of them Fiends. He took control of the two surviving Wyrms, now able to pull the strings on two major puppets at once.
The Lava Wyrm, made of actual lava as far as Chay could tell, snaked through the main Hellion force, spewing liquid fire to the sides even as its mere presence set wood and bone alight.
The other Wyrm was more esoteric in nature. Made seemingly of nothingness wrapped in loose ferns, the negative being propagated by having new ferns rapidly sprout in the air ahead of itself while the ones left behind withered to dust.
Chay sent the Fern Wyrm toward his enemies and plant matter sprouted from them, growing through their demonic flesh in ignorance of armor and magical protections.
But the Fiends had too easy a time evading.
He blanketed the area in his radiant fog. Shooting out a dozen tendrils of white smoke, Chay touched the Demonlings. They burned. His supercharged mists were too holy to handle.
Redirecting his puppets and using the fog like a soft wall on the Fiends, Chay pushed the collected armies away from the vortex.
As they scattered and broke, they made easy pickings for the Aelves, Gallant and his Nephilim, and Zlennrop with his Ultrallions who had joined as support units on the condition to be the first looters after battle.
Chay had twelve priority targets left, including the Wraiths currently keeping his friends occupied.
There was an entity inside his fog wall, unaffected by the heavenly radiance. What could- Pie.
Pie was feeding off the supercharge. Chay sicced her onto the disorganized forces on the main fortress wall.
She was a lion -- shining in the brightest white, enormous and lightning fast. Her fluffy cat fur now was an explosive corona trailing her long jumps.
Wraiths fell, ripped apart by feline bites, grown through with ferns, melted by mere proximity to living lava.
Six priority targets left. But he was running out of time. Pie drained his charge.
Chay had to reprioritize. The mission was the break the vortex, which was straight ahead, its base hidden behind a wall where- Of course. The Daemon Champion himself hadn't shown up yet because he was holding out there with... with... There had been too few aerial thralls for the amount of Hexers. And no casters among the Hellions.
Chay landed beside his friends who were just recovering from the Wraith attacks and set the Wyrms on each other, at the same time calling back Pie.
His fog dimmed. He held onto the Lava Wyrm. The charge band slipped off his wrist, two pearls left.
"Goro," Chay said. "The Champion is hiding in the vortex facility, with an exotic weapon. There's going to be enthralled Furies, Warlocks with curses a syllable away from being cast and probably some summoned monsters."
Goro solemnly nodded and took the golden band.
"You two," Chay said to Xane and Marcus, "cover us."
The pantheon moved forward under the cover of Chay's city-sized amount of fog, hopping over piles of corpses, shattered military equipment and Xane's chaos carvings.
Stones overturned on their path, eyes appearing on their undersides as if they had always been there. Pupils of red and green, silver insectoid eyes on stems, deep holes that blinked occasionally.
The king was watching and Chay flipped him off.
Four naked hunks with gleaming crotches burst from the fog a dozen steps from the left-most fortress' gate. Chay barely had to add a word to his gesture and a butterfly-turned-lightning disabled the trap above the doorframe.
Green fire pillars. Hellions teleported in. A full sized chakram zoomed left and right to relieve them off their necks. Marcus whitefire palm strikes and long-legged kicks sent more heads flying.
