Content warning: This chapter focuses on the story and contains sexual content and masturbation. 

Laurelai flew throughout the night, uncertain of where exactly she was, but grateful to be out of the suffocating wizard's tower. It had only been barely better than the hellish depths she’d spent so many months in. Here, the night air was cool and comforting, and the stars filled her with hope. It felt so right to be soaring like this. Before she’d been tainted, soaring on the air currents like this had been one of the greatest joys of her life, and she was incredibly happy to have it back. 

It wasn’t until morning that she saw the Carpangian Range and turned towards the largest peak she could see. She’d practically gone full circle, she realized. From this high in the sky, she could almost see the Abbey of Saint Erianne, where this whole horrible thing had started. It felt like fate as much as anything to her, and she flew in that direction just to have a goal to aim towards. There was nothing there for her, of course. Given what had happened, it had almost certainly been abandoned already, and that suited her fine. She just needed a place where she would be left alone. A lonely place where she could be closer to the divine would be even better. Let the angels come for her, she decided, suddenly making up her mind. By the time they found her, she would be well on her way to redemption, and they would no longer be an enemy.

It was an easy decision in theory, but as the day wore on, the straight and narrow became harder to focus on as her needs began to reassert themselves. Laurelai spent the night by a lonely roadside shrine, ignoring the pain and trying to pray, but it was harder than she would have believed. Up until now she hoped that most of her darkness had come from the place she’d been trapped in, and the things that the demons there had forced her to do, but it would seem that the stains they’d put on her soul were going to be hard to wash away. 

Determined not to give in to despair, she took flight again the next morning, but this time the urges of her needy sex were even harder to resist. Around noon, she watched as a shepherdess and her lover had sex in an empty field while she circled far above them. She wanted to beg to join them, especially after she heard the woman moan loud enough that it was obvious that she didn’t care who heard, but Laurelai managed to resist that indignity at least. She wasn’t able to resist fingering herself at sunset while she perched alone in a cluster of empty ruins, though. She told herself that she was just trying to take the edge off, but she secretly hoped that some monster would make itself known, and that some ogre or troll that made its home here would give her the fuck she needed. 

“It’s not my fault,” she whimpered as she fantasized about being stretched and filled by an inhuman monster. It would be her fault, of course. She was here. Somewhere that was obviously dangerous and moaning like a bitch in heat as she came on three fingers, but if the monster that found her was forceful enough, maybe she could lie to herself and tell her that it had been rape, not just her lust making her do stupid things for a little taste of pleasure. Nothing attacked her while she had herself on display, though, no matter how loud she screamed, and nothing tried to ravage her while she slept. 

While she tried to sleep anyway. She was haunted by dreams that dripped with lust and made her ache for all the pleasure she couldn’t find. In the end, she lay awake for several hours after dawn started to color the sky, wondering if maybe her place really was in hell now. 

It was a terrible thought, but an inescapable one nonetheless. Even if they hadn’t put this awful mark on her, this sensitive and sensual body that the demons had forced her into would probably still have craved an inappropriate amount of sex for even a normal mortal woman. No - sex felt like part of who she was now, how could she ever hope to repent against that? Did she even want to? 

Shortly after dawn, she took to the sky, once again determined to reclaim her holiness and find purity. That determination didn’t even last until noon, though. Not after she saw a well muscled farmer plowing his field, and she begged him to plow her instead. At first, he had sank to his knees and started to pray for divine guidance, but after Laurelai had let her impromptu toga slip off her shoulders and fall to the dark earth of the field, he’d paused in his fervent act of devotion as she said, “I need you to get off your knees and worship me in a different sort of way good sir.” 

He knew that he should respect and honor the orders of angels. That’s what all the verses said, but he never suspected that an angel would demand something like this from him. After he feasted his eyes on her beautiful tits for another few seconds, though, he decided not to ask any questions. There wasn’t time for talking while they kissed and moaned and fucked over and over again under the wide blue sky. She wasted half the day there, getting fucked ragged by him. It was only when she dressed him and left him exhausted in the shade that she felt guilty about it. It had been exactly what she needed, but she hadn’t even asked for the man’s name before he bent her over the low hedge wall that separated his field from the next one, and he’d fucked her into oblivion. 

After he blew his load in her for the second time, she discovered a new facet to her powers. Even dimmed, her holy light still worked, but it had a new use now too - it didn’t just heal wounds, it made exhausted men hard even after their body was no longer able to get it up. Unlike the Warlock that had summoned her back to creation though, she had no interest in seeing him dead, so after his fourth orgasm she decided she’d had enough for now, and it was time to let him rest. His dick had been wonderful, but there were cocks scattered all throughout the goddess’ creation, and there was no rush to settle on just one, she thought with a smile. 

Three days and two more farmers later, Laurelai arrived at the ruins of the Abbey. The chapel, where most of the fighting had taken place was burned down. Much of the courtyard where the portals to hell had opened was still blighted, but the rest of the building was largely intact, if overgrown. Nature was definitely winning here, and it was obvious that humans had abandoned it since her defeat. That made sense. She could sense the darkness here, and practically see the patches of cursed earth here. In time, that taint could draw all sorts of dark powers to this spot. 

“Does that include me, I wonder,” she asked herself. It was a fair question, even if she was certain that she was here because of the light that was left, it wasn’t impossible that the darkness called to those dark parts of herself that she rejected. 

Even if the thought haunted the back of her mind for a few days, she was still determined to resist it. On the third floor of the cloisters, Laurelai set up a small altar and palate in the office that had once belonged to the abbess. She tried not to think about how she’d last left the woman in the pleasure guardians as she fled, but the image of her heavily pregnant and getting fucked from behind by an incubus while she moaned in ecstasy often came to her at the worst times. 

It couldn’t be helped, though. The light of the divine shined the brightest here, and Laurelai was determined to use that to save her soul, however long that took. But day after day she made very little progress in her efforts. Most of the time she was able to keep her hands off of her sinful body while the sun hung high in the sky, but her resolution almost always failed once it set and night was there to hide her shame. All her prayers did was slow the urges. They didn’t stop them. 

Laurelai also tried the warlock’s diadem without much luck. Simply wearing it mostly just made her feel tired, while the stone in the crown throbbed dully. It seemed that it didn’t do much without pleasure or pain to release more mana, but she kept at it just the same. She needed to find something that could help to dull her urges. 

In the days she spent at the place that had changed her life forever, the only thing that really improved was her swordplay. Looking through the now abandoned rooms, she’d managed to find clothing and armor that actually fit her after a few alterations. For the first time since her transformations, she could finally go through her sword drills and practice her strikes without her breasts pulling her wildly off balance. It was a step in the right direction, and she took pride in her improvements. 

Eventually she switched to using the blessed short blades that the nuns favored instead of the mundane longsword she’d stolen from the Warlock. It hurt a little to wield them, but it was manageable, and it felt like the right sort of penance to her. Eventually she took to a two bladed style, just for the added difficulty. It wasn’t what she had done most of her life, as she had always preferred her giant claymore of righteousness, but over the centuries she had trained in practically every form of fighting to get an edge on her opponents. She was still only a shadow of her former self when it came to fighting, but every day she was getting better, and the discipline and focus helped her to keep her mind off the worst of her fantasies. 

No matter how much she might dress and act like a steely eyed warrior during the day though, during the night she still found herself whimpering and moaning while she touched herself almost every night. The evening would start with prayers - begging for strength to fight her wicked urges, but it would usually end the same way, with one hand pinching her nipples painfully while the other ground slid two or three fingers as far into her steaming pussy as they would go while they ground against her gspot. 

She tried to tell herself that this was better than finding someone to fuck. That it was still a sin, but a smaller, more forgivable one, and that she was slowly weaning herself off of her depravity, but that was a lie. The truth was that she just couldn’t live without this terrible pleasure she’d become addicted to. Before her return to creation she’d only ever touched herself once, but now it was a constant temptation, and she was getting good at it.  That was her wake-up call. When she realized that she could make herself come so hard, she almost didn’t need anyone else’s help. 

She would find no salvation here, she realized one night after her third orgasm. She would have to resort to stronger measures, but she wasn’t immediately sure of what. Going back to that repulsive warlock was hardly an option. He could keep her pregnancy at bay perhaps, she thought idly caressing her taut belly, but his price for that would almost certainly be to use her constantly, and once he got her in chains who knew what he would do to her. No, she needed to find another way. There had to be someone else that could help her combat this terrible affliction.