== VORTEX QUEST 4-8 ==
== SCHISM 2 -- DEAD DEVIL WALKING ==
Xane flew with dark, skull-patterned butterfly wings on his back. Chay was wrapped around his hips, one arm on a round shoulder, the other free to fan, driven mad by the erotic skin-on-skin sensation, forever on the cusp of an unearthly orgasm.
Pie encircled them as they hung underneath the spire. She played whack-a-mole with anyone daring to poke out of the ornaments.
Chay kept the Reapers below busy by fanning holy mist around. The various complex fan-setups quickly cleared the major cross sections but it was enough of a barrier to their movement that it seemed worth it.
Meanwhile, Xane was planting motes in strategic places, firing the occasional bolt at any mutated imp that came too close.
Another spire-dwelling Reaper glanced out of an arch. Pie rushed for his face and he recoiled. Chay quickly assessed the level of commitment versus shock, preparedness and self-interest, concluding their feline cloud serpent was enough to keep the enemy at bay.
Xane chuckled.
"What?" Chay asked.
Xane gave him a peck on the lips. "Sorry. You're so cute when you're concentrating."
"Thanks?" Chay said, fighting a weird flash of jealously. No girl had ever told him he was cute when doing anything. "Uh, we need to find and break the soul gems down there, to make sure."
"Want me to land?"
Chay glanced at where Marcus was beheading a Demon in the air above Goro who was using a cannon's mouth on a Reaper's chest like a cookie-cutter. The Hellions outside the mist were awkwardly patrolling for an opening, locked out of battle.
"Yeah, their guards are busy."
He let his legs slide off Xane and floated down. Xane landed but kept the wings. His densely muscled body oozed the same cocky masculinity as before. Only his voice was a little softer, a little gayer, if you knew what to listen for.
"Run," shouted an unfamiliar voice in the mist, "I broke the Specter-abjuration runes."
Chay forced the mist to part but holy mist wasn't under his control as much as his own smoke and the unknown person -- humanoid silhouette, too short to be a demon -- was already dashing away.
"I'll summon one now," the stranger shouted, already around a corner.
A saboteur in the schism's ranks? A turncoat Hellion? Chay was stumped.
"What do we do?" Xane asked.
"Uh, grab the others and run?"
Chay pushed white smoke ahead of himself and fanned holy mist into the mix. Pie dove in and out of his custom soup.
Incoming Reapers were shoved out of the way as if running against a wall. Chay couldn't help but grin. "Finally, offensive fog. Wish I could bottle some of that."
===***===
Marcus wiped sweat from his eyes, saw Chay running and ran after him long before Xane voice-projected an explanation: A Specter was coming.
It emerged from the generic vapor of the cave with feathered wings, one pair, then two, then three, spanning ten yards each. They were colorful -- hypnotic even.
Marcus stopped.
*Everyone* stopped.
The feathers shifted, in gorgeous, geometric non-patterns, so varied, Marcus wasn't sure he wasn't seeing totally new colors and shapes.
And its song! A warm, melodic chirp, like a gently played recorder by the side of a child's bed. So calm, so sweet, so... sleepy...
Dark fog crashed into his vision, hovering between the demigods and the Specter.
"Xane, silence!" Chay commanded, his ears plugged. The sound died as a butterfly expanded into a dome around them. "It's the Weaver. Don't get got."
Only now did Marcus see the webs. Spidersilk filigree rained from above on long, long strands. He set his chakram on them, finding them impossible to cut, but rolling them up just fine before they touched down on the pantheon.
Pie gnawed on spidersilk threads in Chay's buzzcut and pulled them away. She could decide to be immaterial, so she wasn't affected by stickiness.
"Okay," Chay said and let Pie hop along his arm. "Fuck all this. Kaboom time."
Xane summoned the illusion of a red button in his hand. He grinned wide. "Here we fucking go."
The thaum-mage pressed the 'button' and four explosions along the circumference of the spire went off, purple fire bursting outward.
With a horrendous screech, the golden structure fragmented, the half that hung above the maze dropping onto it. Holy mist was pressured aside, slamming into fleeing Reapers, Hellions and panicked imps.
It was chaotic enough, Chay forgot to keep his smoke screen in place. Marcus caught a glimpse of the Weaver again. The wings were still there, still beautiful beyond comprehension, but spider legs just as long were stabbing out of the center, two Hellions hanging off them, getting spun into the webbing, not resisting.
"They're running," Goro said.
The schism had abandoned the HQ and was flocking to the vortex, some thirty demons, bleeding from the ears, having stabbed themselves deaf to escape the Weaver's song. Among them was the Daemon Marcus had beheaded, who'd grown his head back, black blood streaks drying on his torso. He tapped a keypad on a large armband with flickering screens.
"Are they going to earth?" Xane asked.
"No," Chay said, slowly. "Those rune stones they're putting down... They're trying to teleport the whole vortex elsewhere. Shit."
The demigods rushed, moving with Xane's deafening dome. Marcus let his weapon skitter across the ground to rub off the unbreakable spider threads.
The major Daemon saw them coming and rammed a spear into the ground -- sleek with a central coil. It 'lit up' black, oozing darkness so deep it hurt to look at. He flashed his fangs in a satisfied grin.
Four divine gasps. Marcus' balls got crushed like always when Hrailoth's signature activated. But this time, something else was getting pulled to.
Marcus tore his jockstrap off. The aegis shone like a diffuse flashlight in the presence of so many demons but now it also had a singular ray -- almost solid -- pointing straight down.
Whenever Marcus tried to move his crotch, the shining connection to the ground ripped on his package.
His dick cage was perfectly frozen in space.
