== VORTEX QUEST 6-11 ==
== TIME AND FIRE ==
The dead volcano was of the classic, "steep mountain with a hole down the middle" variety. The fertile land around it was mostly autumnal-colored forest, coral-like undergrowth creeping up the mountainside.
A few hamlets at the rim hoped to take advantage of temporal fluctuations and speed up food growth without getting torn apart by temporal tides. Risky business.
The Sneak Attack sank into the volcano from above, cloaked in a vision of perfect reflection. Nothing gave away her presence.
Which was also a problem.
Xane was at the helm, carefully executing Chay's orders as the leader leaned forward between the bow arches and stared down.
The Ghoul had layered the volcano shaft with strips of time fuckery only Chrono-Sight could reveal. Lowering the ship was like threading it between massive spider webs, except touching the webs would rapidly age the ship's planks by a century or toss it back into the past and also the webs were invisible. And of course the ship was nearly invisible, too.
"Starboard, six Bnr'ess," Chay said and waved that way. "Thirty degrees right, then tip her gently forward."
Xane let the levers crunch into their positions.
Marcus came in from behind. "Lots of juice left in the vision gem, but the generator is running out."
"Almost through," Chay said. "Get ready."
Marcus pissed without so much as turning aside. Xane pissed, too, careful to redirect the splattering from the console.
Goro entered, Diego riding him as a backpack.
The pantheon was naked. Anything on their person made it harder to anchor in the present, so they made due with their cock cages.
"Okay," Xane said. "On course. Any last hints?"
Chay put the psychometric-lens over his left eye. "It's down there. It won't *have been* there once the fight starts. Time Ghouls have about a minute in reserve when at rest, so the fight'll start a minute *before* we attack. Less if we're lucky. We need to hit hard enough to make it waste the full minute."
"Time is such bullshit," Marcus mumbled.
"After that," Chay said, "we're down to the two-ish second skips we prepared for. Plus whatever the Ghoul has set up. Doesn't *look* like there's strands at the bottom of this hole but stay aware. Don't stand on those bone piles."
Goro glanced down into the shaft where silver sparkled at the walls. "Where are the demigods we're doing this time-prison-break for?"
Chay didn't point at anything. "These shiny orbs are something like spider cocoons. They're in one of them, trapped in time. We'll have to break open a bunch, I guess. Maybe I can figure it out from up close."
Diego hopped off Goro's back. "We're ready."
"Okay," Chay said. "Xee, turn our baby around."
===***===
Shapeless like the flow of time, barely solid enough to be a living creature. The amorphous quadrupedal beast slumbered, a shimmer in the air the size of a mansion, resting on black ground. A gentle aurora running along the volcano shaft provided illumination, occasionally setting off a glint in the temporal fabric of the cocoons stashed along the walls.
The Ghoul's sense were turned inward in peaceful dormancy.
Then an object nearly as big as itself crashed right into it. A sharp tip of wood and iron, full weight bearing down. The Ghoul was torn apart, time-energy and guts splattering as its immaterial bones were ground to paste under the weight of the assault.
Tension uncoiled. The Ghoul spent its Large Leap for a minute past-ward and rushed aside. There wasn't anything coming its senses could detect. Concerning.
Eventually, the timeline caught up and the assaulting projectile hit empty rock as it appeared from nowhere mid-crash, the Ghoul safely out of the way.
It had been one of the flying vessels the Linears used -- that much the Ghoul's intellect recognized. The cover of gray smoke hanging in the air and expanding was a stranger phenomenon. A cloud this far down?
A blinding beam. Again the Ghoul was ripped through. A leap. The beam came from the smoke. And it followed to the new position. Another Leap, now a mere half second. The Ghoul barely avoided getting sliced.
It ran as it kept leaping, zig-zagging through time and space, faster than the beam could reacquire. The beam died. Bipedal Linears dropped from the smoke.
The Ghoul roared into the continuum, summoning its defenses.
===***===
Goro waited for instructions.
Pumped up and ready to come down on wherever Chay pointed, he strained his Chrono-Sight to catch the Ghoul's maneuvers in the wake of the Doom Pipe's beam.
Chay's fog grew tendrils, refracting and breaking where they met ethereal Ghoul skin. "Can *not* puppet it."
Goro flexed his muscles and catapulted himself into battle. He rained onto the barely visible beast.
A sense of movement in all directions hit him. He steeled his chronopsychic focal-juncture, like the serpentine bird lady had taught them. Like burying his heels in sand, but the sand was the present and his heels were... also the present. They had never found a great metaphor.
His hit landed... on air.
The Ghoul had 'teleported' away by side stepping two seconds earlier. Another jump, another escape. Goro kept the creature occupied, waiting for orders that still didn't come.
"It's summoning," Chay shouted.
"Where?" Xane asked.
"Everywhere."
The ground was littered with bleached bones. Shimmer surrounded them as they rose and flesh grew on them.
Chimeras big and small rose, resurrected by being dragged back to a time before their death.
Goro switched track and attacked the abominations instead. Slime-filled heads exploded, guts gushed, bones cracked. It didn't matter. The damage was undone within seconds.
Marcus appeared beside him, burning chops eviscerating a few monster faces. "Keep going," the animus-fighter said and arched his spine as he flew over a reptilian skull he had just ripped apart.
"They heal," Goro said.
"No, they get rewound. There's only so much time stored up in them. Chay said."
