Desolate was the first word that came to mind. The sky looked like shattered stained glass, the ground was rough red gravel, even the air tasted stale.

"What happened here?" I asked.

"The gods happened." Hestia replied, "after they locked up your race forever, they slaughtered everything in this plane and robbed it of its magic. This is all that's left."

I should have felt depressed, but desire still flowed through my veins. I saw something else in this realm: a blank slate.

"You said they killed everything?" I asked.

"Yes Tristan, the gods took the lives of every original inhabitant."

"I declare this plane to be my Demesne."

A thrum of vibrant pink magic pulsed out across the land. I remembered one of my dreams from back then, a home. I wanted a place that was just mine, where I was safe and in charge. The pink, lightning-shaped desire flooded me even more than before. I could take on anything.

"Tristan, what have you done?" Hestia yelled. "I said they slaughtered the original inhabitants! No plane is unreachable, there are plenty of hidden Gifted and Outsiders here!"

"I don't care." I said. The logical voice screamed again, but I silenced it, crushed it. I would not be denied my desires.

"I- Tristan-" she stared at me with gorgeous eyes like the deepest oceans. She looked up at the sky and back at me, then she pointed into the distance. "There's a defendable place about five minutes that way."

Her features flickered and settled into her most massive form yet, a towering four-armed centaur with a big cat of some kind as the bottom half. She grew a tail like a bladed whip and a muzzle filled with more teeth than any earth animal I'd ever seen. Huge moose-like antlers shined like blue spotlights atop her head.

"Why'd you change?" I asked her.

"I don't see you in any other Path." She answered. "Climb on Tristan."

I did, while pink lightning and flickering blue flakes flooded my limbs, the air around me started to visibly vibrate with power.

---

We stopped atop a large hill with a flat top, Hestia didn't let me down, telling me to "play support" instead.

"I wish you could heal me."

"As you wish. Why not just wish I could heal everyone?"

"Because I do not value everyone." Was her answer. "They're coming Tristan."

"Who?"

"Mostly freed djinn who were lucky enough to land in the body of Gifted. They are experts on Contact magic, we should expect a familiar army. I wish for your magical range to cover this hill."

"As you wish. Thank you for not just wishing for us to win by the way."

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"I understand you that much Tristan," she smiled at me with a mouth full of death. "I respect that quality of yours the most. I have questions for you while we fight. That was the deal, remember? For our 'date?'"

"Of course," I replied as the horizon started to fill with various monsters, "ask me anything."

"Why did you claim this place?"

The monsters rushed towards us faster than a fighter jet.

"Because I wanted it."

The roars and cries reached our ears, it wouldn't be long now.

"I am very attracted to you right now, Tristan."

As the first waves rushed up the hill, I clenched my fist and folded the earth around them, killing hundreds.

"I know, Hestia."

With me on her back, Hestia shot forward like a bullet, carving through the familiars like butter. I conjured a floating array of the most powerful military weapons I could imagine: rail guns, artillery, smart missiles, giant machine guns that were usually entrenched.

The weapons fired, Hestia slaughtered. Whenever her damage would get too great she would retreat to the hill, which I was using as an area of death, so that I could heal her. Thanks to her earlier wish, I could control the hill even when we weren't on it.

"What's your favorite food, Hestia?"

She had just finished killing a cyclops the size of a skyscraper, and was taking a breather on the hill.

"A Path of vengeance, where the mortal ruins their own life with revenge. What about you?"

"So far? A wendigo's desire to bed a djinn." I smiled as I beheaded a Fae in glowing silver armor. "My turn, when were you born?"

Hestia didn't answer immediately, she was dueling a vampire who was almost as fast as she was. Only when he forgot her tail and she bisected him would she answer.

"Wendigos came into the planes when Fate did, but I've died so many times since then that I feel much younger, perhaps just a few billion years old, with massive gaps. All together, my memories encompass almost a thousand years."

"What is most important to you?" She asked during a quiet moment some hours later.

"My family comes first, but right behind them is my own desires. I won't neglect them again."

"What do you desire right now?"

A swarm of spiders that covered the horizon closed in on us.

"A home, and a beautiful woman."

Hestia was covered in gore at this point, a monster out of a fairy tail. She had skin and bits of intestines in her teeth, and multicolored blood all over her claws and tail. She still knew who I was talking about however, because she confidently nodded to herself again.

"You are halfway there."

---

The fighting lasted what felt like a few more days at least. There was no sun in Debauch, or any other celestial body to tell time with. I could heal fatigue like any other injury for Hestia, and our combined desires kept me going like coal in a steam engine.

After the army finally ended, we hunted down the remaining Gifted and Outsiders who dared think they could keep my home. Most surrendered, and promptly left. A few didn't, and Hestia ate well.

What felt like a solid week later, we laid down on the top of the hill. I was wearing the haggard remains of a purple suit, too tired to repair it. Hestia was in another elvish form, this one had no fur and dark leather armor instead.

"Hey Hestia?"

"Yes, Tristan?"

"Thank you for helping me," I said, still staring up at the shattered sky. "You didn't have to, and this was a very shortsighted idea."

"I thought it was a wonderful 'date' myself," Hestia replied, blocking out the sky as she moved my head to her lap and looked down at me.

"Honestly, so did I."

She leaned down and kissed me long and deep. Over the time we'd been here, I had mostly got a handle on the desire addiction.

But when we started to undress each other, I let it take me over once again.