== VORTEX QUEST 6-3 ==
== SNAKE AT MIDNIGHT ==
The passage of time in the abyssal realms had various cyclical consequences but a regular change between light and dark was rarely among them.
The faint auroras and even stranger phenomena had given Goro little indication that 'bottom notch' was approaching.
That was until the Sneak Attack had entered the distant, rarely used branch of Hiwinymb's cavern system where Starbeholder resided.
Towering statues and monuments along the sides of the 100 yard wide cavern tunnel had been crumbling for centuries, the former place of reverence now a depot for heaps of debris. An eternal storm raged from the tip of the tunnel far ahead, which had broken off into limbo, blackness oozing into the area.
The place looked like night. Even the exoteric void beyond the fracture seemed darker than usual.
And at the center of the storm, at the edge to limbo, untouched by the brutal winds, was the Storm Observatory -- a jumble of stone, clad in a cloud of smoky, pink bubbles.
Chay checked the time again, on the borrowed glass sphere where three concentric rings spun and turned, and handed it to Goro.
The berserker shoved it into his bag that was slung around his chest. Being the strongest and biggest in the group automatically made him the designated carrier pretty much his whole live. Not that he minded playing a role in this adventure.
He gave one last glance back at the Sneak Attack which was leaving to refuel, then joined his friends power-hopping into the storm.
It was an icy wind, tiny pieces of sand and debris cutting skin. Xane had a shield of thaum-force ahead of them to filter the worst, but it was still an unpleasant march.
The Storm Observatory didn't touch the ground and the winds were too strong to fly on magic butterfly wings. Jumping with pure leg power and demigod-drive let them hold onto the lowest hanging wall of the crumbling cluster of stone buildings.
They made it inside the crooked, angled hallways where the storm as funneled into even greater strength. Goro wondered if being the biggest made him extra affected or if his insane strength more than compensated. Chay seemed to struggle the most, so the mania-warrior gave him a gentle push from behind. Or maybe he just wanted to hold onto someone.
Chay let a puff of smoke get blown into a corridor. He shouted something inaudible in the storm and gestured forward.
Stemming the force of air, the demigods wandered farther in, then around a corner where the wind came from their back and quickly slithered into darkness.
Finally, the eye of the storm. It wasn't a tornado, rather a constant flow of air from and to limbo in interweaving loops, but the center of the loops was eerily still all the same.
A large, decrepit hall, the walls plastered with charts and diagrams. The realm's characteristic pink clouds caught in the storm's eye were lazily drifting on a gentle current around the area. A hole in the roof. Three man-sized telescopes pointing in various directions, surrounding a truck-sized telescope at the center.
"And now?" Marcus asked.
"The waiting game," Chay said.
"Ugh."
They were all rock hard, their dicks irritatingly slipping around in their fundoshi.
Goro handed out plasma from his bag's waterskin and they quickly hammered their own prostates. He wasn't even really jerking off anymore, just rubbing the lubed underside of his cockhead like it was a fucking clit. Cumming did nothing to decrease his horniness but the feeling like it *should* was cruel enough to make him want to scream.
His softened dick packed back into his thong, Goro tried to assess threats, hiding spots and vectors for escape. Although he knew Chay was doing the same and better.
Then the clock in his bag chimed for bottom notch and the world stood still.
It had already been quiet. But now it was *Quiet*. Even the whistle of wind in the hallways was gone.
A Wyrm of dark blue and purple popped into existence. She was perhaps twice as big and long as the average adult Wyrm, coiled into a complex pretzel, shimmers like constellations dancing along the scales.
She had two heads, one slightly bear-shaped serpent on the right and a chameleon looking one on the left. Both heads dropped down to look at the pantheon, the chameleon's twitching back and forth to assess the area.
"Balls, that's big," Xane whispered.
"Greetings," Chay started, one hand raised. "We've followed the rumors of your wisdom to ask for advice."
"Ah," the weirdly ursine snake head said. "Four little Figments braving the way here? How odd. Who sent you and how was this accomplished?"
"We're not slaves," Chay said and let his shoulders smolder with umbra-power. "We're demigods from earth and we'd like to free the ones trapped by the Time Ghoul."
The chameleon head moved away to look through two telescopes at once. Constellations of light started to fade in around the walls, floating in front of diagrams until they found their match.
The bearish head leaned in. "And have you brought me anything?"
Goro looked to Chay for a nod and unpacked the bag's paper content. Books, news, pamphlets. Anything a creature who lived outside of time would need to stay up to date.
Constellations flickered. The papers fluttered off the ground and spread before the serpent.
Constellations continued to dance overhead, attempting to conjure strange memories. Goro could feel himself recall gym sessions and study meetings as if the memories came from elsewhere.
He shut the intrusion down.
Starbeholder hummed at the first page spread of the KKa'Shwe Herald. "I see," she mumbled. "Typical. Another fuel crisis. Who's gone to war now? Hm, and Jeggri-Glaff is expanding back into his old territory. Good for him. Hehe, seems the Ripping Bitch Tribe overextended themselves. Tehehe."
"I..." Chay started. "We were given the impression we wouldn't have much time."
The right head vanished behind the sheets of the Mogomogo Tributary. The chameleon head moved closer instead. "Don't you worry about *time*. I have my own supply of that and it is nadir notch until I'm done. Now... Why can't I see your patterns?"
"You mean..." Chay started. "Ah, we had lessons from an Esper Wyrm."
"That'll do it. So you have talent. Then there's hope."
Starbeholder's tail wiggled like a hand doing an ever-so-forth gesture as the ursine head spoke again.
