Goro was ready to punch through a wall, with or without magic support. He was full to burst and at the same time dried out like he was about to go on stage. If there was a way to end it, he was going to take it.
Goro dropped to his knees. “Let’s fucking go.” He drummed on his chest and took Chay’s aegis in his mouth, trying not to let the umbralist’s balls touch his lips.
The leader let loose and finally Goro’s thirst got quenched. It was a feeling he’d have called orgasmic if his time in the abyssal realms hadn’t taught him that orgasms were a pale shadow of what he could experience.
Before long, Xane was between his massive thighs, drinking from Goro’s cage. Chay got Marcus’ piss after. It was enough to quench the thirst and left them in stunned silence. Nobody wanted to mention what this meant for the future and Goro wasn’t going to be the one bringing it up.
Xane made illusory frogs jump on Goro’s head, Marcus did juggling tricks with his chakram, Chay scratched Pie’s chin.
Their aegises flared up suddenly. Was Sremnan coming back already?
The light between their legs increased, turning blinding.
“Shit,” Xane said and dismissed his frogs.
Chay opened his fan and waved a strip of darkness over their crotches as the retreated into the building.
A horde emerged at the end of the canyon. Kobolds and Drakes, Goblins and Trolls, Gusters and Gloopers, Hellions riding on panzer-Varks, armored lizard and giant spiders. Above them was a cloud of Daemons, Fiends, Wretchers and Griffnix-riders.
“Three-fifty to four hundred on foot,” Xane said. “Another hundred airborne. Not sure we should stick around.”
Sremnan burst up the stairs behind them. “We’re in deep shit. It’s Loyakken. Our own army will be here soon.”
“What do you mean ‘we’?” Chay asked, too quiet for the horned guy to hear. He glanced at the others and Goro nodded toward the hole in the wall. Chay imperceptibly nodded back.
The leader started giving Sremnan a run down about where each squadron’s leader was among the chaos, which flanks were badly covered and so forth. The demonling cast his white toga aside and slipped into spike-riddled leather bodice. He had mold-mail on his thighs, grafted perfectly to follow his contours.
Meanwhile Goro picked up their remaining possessions and used the discarded toga to wrap them into a thick bundle he bound to his chest. Under the cover of Chay’s growing mist, Goro pushed the other two demigods to the exit.
Four realm liners were coming in from the other side of the canyon, 200 foot long each, decks teeming with Kobolds. Gawri thralls and weird plant-octopus creatures rappelled down the canyon wall, while flapping demonlings carried gobbos into position.
This was going to be a battle for the ages. Goro was almost sad he couldn’t stick around and watch the mayhem unfold — or be right in the center. But logically, there was nothing for him to win. He had no favored lord, he wanted them *all* dead.
Finally, with the dark, rolling mist thickly pouring through the cracked walls down to the ground, Chay rejoined the pantheon and they dropped through coalescing clouds.
“Our dear Chralloth has severe defender’s advantage,” Chay said. “I think I fed them enough garbage intel to even the odds.”
Their crotches were bright enough to cut through much of the fog. They stuck together in a fog-tunnel, hands holding wrists, illuminated by Xane’s torch orb.
“Doesn’t feel like a job done,” Marcus said, “if we won’t know who wins.”
“All vortexes are confirmed down,” Chay said. “Nothing left for us here.”
“I know but-”
They broke through the fog, somewhere behind ‘friendly’ lines, to look for the crawlway entrance. A lot of the tunnels in the fallen tower’s area were ill maintained, some entrances strategically collapsed.
The aurora far above got ripped apart and the ceiling’s rocks blinked open like eyelids, revealing burning, red-gold eyes the size of house blocks. Four of them, each different, searching stares piercing the army lines like sun rays.
“Holy shit, what is that?” Xane near-shouted. Chay fanned a cloud over them as the eyes moved their way.
“King Miph’grix,” the leader murmured. “Was wondering if he’d want to watch the war personally.”
“Can he see us?” Goro asked.
Chay lightly shrugged. “He’s gotta know we’re behind the vortices going down. I’d say there’s way too much happening for him to care about us right now.” He gestured at twenty armored Crocs getting forced to storm into enemy barricades by two crowned Fiends with lightning whips. Overhead, the fight for air superiority was already beginning, with Wyverns isolating a realm liner, their riders throwing fire orbs. Sparks drizzled down.
Pie dashed between Goro’s legs and wrapped herself around Chay’s shoulders.
“I think she found the exit,” Chay said. “Good girl.”
They followed the pet into the crawlway, which lacked the curated illumination of known paths. Bioluminescent bugs lived off plentiful lichen, green glowing stalks swayed in the breeze and slugs hung from the ceiling.
Some tunnels had collapsed, some had *grown* shut, but the demigods found their way to a larger room, filled with hip high, whirling stalks in eerie green.
Goro sensed the incoming projectiles more with mania-instinct than human perception. He shoved Chay aside with a roar. A spear dug into his shoulder.
Before he even hit the ground, he tore it out and threw it back with the force of a gun, then rolled into cover.
Marcus was down but his stomach wound was already burning shut with transparent, white, holy flame-licks.
Boldian calls echoed from the walls. “God’s blood!” “Drink the divines!” “For the Dirt Grubber Tribe!” “Feast now!”
If spears was all they had, Goro wasn’t going to play defensively. He rushed in with a twenty foot jump, already in frenzy. The mark spread from his arm pit up his neck, its tendrils reaching to his right cheek.
He swiped two Kobolds up from the abyssal grass with his hands, breaking both necks as he flung them. His pupils turned to battle-scanners and magic madness guided his fists. The Drake ahead practically opened up by himself as Goro dug into the entrails.
Xane’s lightning arched overhead. Marcus was throwing himself into the battle on the other flank. Goro tried to stay tuned to Chay’s voice just in case but human speech meant little in his state.
As Goro tore through the Kobold hordes, he realized just how many there were. More were streaming in. This was going to take a while. He had to stay close to his friends, who wouldn’t heal as fast.
A second battle broke out on the other side of the chamber.
A war-vark charged into the assembled Kobolds. The almost elephant-sized creature was a mix of hog and octopus. Bristled tentacles wiped lizard men into the air.
A second warvark joined. Pandomonic shouts echoed as the Hellions on vark-back commanded the Kobolds to cease.
Goro dropped like a comet next to Chay who followed Xane around to give cover and intel. They had a puppeteered, four-armed Kobold with two bidents covering their backs.
“Friends?” Goro asked.
Chay laughed. “The dinos want to use us as living blood sources. The Hellions were reinforcements for what’s happening outside, but it’s possible they were hunting us, specifically. The vortex lords have to be mad as fuck.”