== VORTEX QUEST 5-4 ==
== CLIMAX DENIED ==
The vision bracelet test run had been boring, the crawlway was boring, as was skipping a battle. The narrow tunnels had even made butterfly-winged flight boring.
Now nectar-kissing Xane, *that* had been exciting but it didn't make Marcus less antsy. If he was honest, he wanted the plug stored in his ass to be refueled.
Finally they were getting to a place where shit might be going down.
The air in the crawlway chilled with every step, rime covered the walls like a dusting of sugar, their breaths condensed. Then-
"A dead end?" Marcus asked.
"Not quite, Mercy said. "An illusion but not one powered by human souls. King Pwen'Gllach likes to put his own illusions all around the realm. You can think of them as natural phenomena."
Xane huffed. "I choose to think of them as fuckery. What now?"
The ex-angel pointed at their crotches. "From what you've told us, you can deal with this just fine."
The demigods exchanged glances. Marcus eagerly shoved his fundoshi down his thighs, flexing his ass around the plug.
Four divine lights radiated distortions into the illusory rock. They advanced with the Nephil a step behind. Darkness closed in as they marched through the no-longer-solid wall.
On the other end was a tunnel slick with rime, leading into a stadium-sized cavern where black liquid bubbled in a volcano, sucking up heat in the surrounding. The place was a frost desert, blue sand covering the ground and spilling up the walls.
"Don't let that..." Chay started, "uh... anti-lava... stuff get on you."
"Reverse volcano," Marcus said. "Fucked up."
"O...on..." Xane mumbled. He quickly traced glowing letters in the air. "Onaclov."
"Okay, genius," Marcus said. "Can you spell 'elemental attack' backwards next?"
Xane started air-writing. "Ckatta-"
"Elemental attack," Goro forcefully confirmed.
The Glitzers were barely visible against the ground. Despite being behemoths of jagged crystal they matched the hue of the blue sand enough to be camouflaged.
The air above moved. Gusters drew closer, made from nothing but air and swirling sands with sharp debris.
Chay gave orders. He was going to go with Marcus and the Nephil. The martial artist got grabbed by the hip, the leader's legs wrapped around him. They took off with Chay's butterfly wings -- a green spackled pair -- and rushed the Glitzers.
Chay summoned his fan and snapped Pie from his toe ring. "Up you go, girl," he shouted and shot her toward the other team fighting above. "Be a nuisance."
"Good kitty," Marcus shouted after her.
Smoke bolts shot past him as Chay catapulted them to specific spots on the humanoid elemental monsters. Those were the weak spots. Marcus sent his chakram ahead.
"We're not here to eradicate you," Chay shouted in Elementic. "Let us pass through and we'll be on our way peacefully."
The response was a thrown rock, big as a car.
They reached the cluster of five Glitzers. Marcus dropped from Chay's grasp and fell straight at the first weak spot, his manly foot ablaze with white fire.
The impact shattered the creature's upper torso, perfectly along the crystal's growth direction. It practically spun apart.
Marcus let his chakram be his shield from crystal splinters and used his momentum to evade the next attack with a mid-air backflip.
He zoomed to the next enemy, letting his magically burning muscles sing. Why fly in a straight path when three spins and a flip felt so right?
His burning palm shoved a Glitzer's head down, exposing the creature's back where a little cloud indicated weakness. With another overhead flip, Marcus' heel came down and tore the crystal in half.
Mercy was fluttering between the downed enemies, weaving gleaming, silver twine with angelic magic to tie them in place. There wasn't anything to tie them to but each other and the sand, yet the growing web kept them from reforming.
"Watch out," Chay's voice came from the side and the winged umbralist crashed into Marcus, pulling him away.
A stalactite came down and exploded in the blue sand, cerulean rock shards bursting to all sides. Chay rammed himself into the sand, using Marcus as a shield. Tactically smart but rude as fuck.
Spectral flames flared up on the cuts and scrapes all over Marcus' body, healing them away.
"See that!?" Chay said in Elementic while he unburied himself. "Your friends in the air are nothing but sand now. Flee before we do the same to you. We're not following you."
The last two standing Glitzers exchanged a look despite the lack of faces and grabbed the pieces of one shattered comrade.
"I think we did it," Chay said. "Wait... nope, betrayal."
He fanned smoke to indicate weak spots again, but Xane was faster. Some kind of purple lighting raced into the solid elementals and they collapsed with spasms as if suffering a stroke.
Goro plunged behind them, his weight making almost as much impact in the sand as the Glitzers themselves.
"Team melee," Marcus yelled and rushed in. Goro's fists met a Glitzer back just as Marcus' palm tapped it on the chest. The creature exploded upward in a shower of randomly ripped shards.
"Guys," Chay yelled. "Over there. It's why they got bold all of the sudden."
Two Gleamers were approaching from across a blue dune. Balls of lightning, too bright to comfortably look at.
"Not much here," Chay said, "to use as lighting rods. Xane, Marcus, now's the time."
"With pleasure, boss," the bodybuilder wizard in a skimpy black thong said and struck a wide legged pose.
A mote rammed itself into the sand on either side like cannon shots, melting the sand into one-foot semi-spheres of glass. The wizard picked one up, raising the other with his unseen mage-hand. "Here's hoping this works," he said. "Marky-boy, you're up."
Marcus tore his eyes away from the teammate and sent his razor ring at the approaching foes, blown up to full size. The chakram could conduct like metal if Marcus willed it.
The first Gleamer snapped to the chakram involuntarily. It took the energy ball a moment to violently eject the ring, leaving the Gleamer small and partly discharged.
Marcus used the momentum to hit the other Elemental the same way, right next to the first.
Xane rushed them, his butterfly wings a blur, a glass bowl held ahead of himself, the other one telekinetically closing in from the opposite side. Lighting struck the glass ineffectually, sparks obscuring the events.
The domes met. Both light Elementals within. A mote flashed at the rim, merging the semi-spheres into a wobbly globe.
It dropped in the sand, lighting up with the angry sparks of its prisoners.
"Booya," Xane shouted and hit a pose.
