Confined again, though in a far more desirable way than the last, when Ben woke up he was tight in Thera’s arms, his girlfriend asleep beside him but holding on for dear life while he let himself enjoy it. There was no greater sign that he really was back and he let himself indulge in the feeling for all it was worth, wanting to forget for just a minute how the future felt to him while he could before months would be devoted to what felt like a futile attempt to change it.
He was going to be beyond busy soon enough but he could spare a few minutes on that small comfort, completely unprepared when Thera shot up, looking almost in a panic as her eyes darted around the room and only calmed when she looked at him.
“Bad dream?”
“Just accumulated stress,” She sighed before laying back down to hold him once more. “With at least one bit of it gone for now. You came back at the perfect time, with things marginally calming down, if I ever had the downtime to process the fact that I couldn’t feel you I was going to have a breakdown.”
“Ha, well I always come back, just remember that the next time.”
“Ben, if there’s a next time then I’m going to go insane. Find a god that can give you luck enhancement or something.”
“Not a skill, luck still isn’t an innate property of the universe.”
“Yeah? How bad yours is could make anyone question that.”
He tried to reassure her with a smile as he went to switch topics, with few decent options to choose from. She mostly knew what had happened to him over the last month and he knew that she’d been stuck doing nothing but healing and fighting constantly, neither of which was going to make for light conversation and led him to diving instead into the practical.
“When do you have to go back?”
Perhaps it wasn’t exactly light either but he knew her work wasn’t done, with Thera groaning as she planted her face in his chest.
“Realistically? I’m awake, I should be going. However, since having you here and knowing you aren’t dead is doing wonders for my mental health, I’m giving myself five more minutes before I run off so right now, no more talking or thinking about anything else and just hold me.”
“Yes ma’am.”
With everything that had happened, just quietly making the most of each other's company really was the ideal when there was nothing lighter they could say and he made sure to enjoy it for all it was worth until time ran out and they needed to part, Thera to her work and Ben to his own.
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He never saw Pelenia as he walked out, Ben could only imagine how busy the queen of a nation was going to be with everything going on, but that was something he could try to change later. For that day, he was going to be swamped with work beyond the scope of what he should have ever needed to handle.
Valaria and two others were already waiting for him outside, with Myriad having helped arrange things after learning what Ben intended to spend the day on and managed to snag a few others to help with things. Both a priestess of Anailia, someone he’d technically met in fact as the woman the goddess had descended upon when they’d gone to deal with the demidemons and the forbidden gods stood before him, as well as another older incubus who acted as the local head of the communal church, all of them giving him polite bows and nods.
“Alright, so I believe you all know why you’re here?” Ben started, getting nods from all of them with the details of the situation being passed over by the gods the prior day. “Okay, I’ll get you all to manage things a bit but for now, get comfy. I first need to inspect them.”
With that began his main task as he turned to the giant structure he’d materialized just the day before.
A part of him still couldn’t believe he’d managed that. Just looking at what he’d brought forth from pure mana left him feeling like a god, even if the ache in his soul was there as a constant reminder that it had only been possible from the millions of points of power he’d pulled through himself to make it happen. Still, it had allowed him to do exactly what he’d needed to as he slowly walked around and through the structure made up of enchanted pods, each one of them freezing the time for the thousands of prisoners they contained.
As he walked through he connected with each one, getting a feel for their minds and memories as he catalogued the lot of them, breaking them down into different manageable groups based on what he was seeing until his examination was done.
With one group standing out as the biggest by far; those who had gone mad. Ben knew that was going to be the outcome before he started too, it was obvious enough just from his month of observation and his glimpse into a few heads when they’d made their escape, but it was still a headache-inducing problem. He wouldn’t be able to free them until that was solved.
After everything they’d been through, he couldn’t just toss them out into the world until they were in slightly better shape but that became a question of how to get them to that point, with only a few ideas on how to solve it. One of which was of course seeing if he could get the great dark spirit Funa to help but that was going to be an issue for later. Now that it seemed he could connect to a great spirit without immediately dying he’d be sure to put it to the test but as things were she wasn’t even around to help. He’d need to approach things from a different angle until he got her.
But all of that was going to have to wait. They were the very last group he was going to deal with, left only behind the injured who had been attacked before he’d made it to the space spirit. They’d need the help of either Thera or Lux but to start he went with the depressingly small group he had good news for. The ones who’d held onto enough of their sanity that he wasn’t afraid of what they might do once he freed them, who were also members of races who had survivors on the planet, with him approaching the first he would free.
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Before he even opened the pod though, there was something else he needed to do first as he repeated the trick he’d done in creating the structure before them, though at a smaller scale. Before opening it, Ben materialized a talisman around the neck of the first, enchanting on it at the same time it came into being to let its resident resist the charm that filled the land, all while he critically examined what he’d just done.
Interesting, that’s a lot worse for mana than just materializing something and enchanting on it after, I wonder why? A part of it’s going to come down to practice but I don’t think that’s going to be enough to lower the cost to what I’d expect when doing it separately. Oh well, something I can work on later and for the time being I have other things to worry about.
He knew he was stalling and couldn’t keep it up, so without another second of letting himself hesitate he opened the pod, breaking the effect on it to free the imp that it held and hearing as they screamed.
…Yeah, that’s about what I expected.
“Relax, relax,” Ben said gently. “It’s okay, you’re safe. You’re free.”
Still the man screamed, forcing Ben to re-evaluate if he’d actually picked someone with a good enough mental state to let out and accepting that it was always going to be complicated. With the man’s memories ranging from falling out of his prison to seemingly blanking out until he was suddenly somewhere else, with a new face in front of him and talking in words he had no reason to understand, that could have been stressful to even the most well adjusted, not someone who’d been held for centuries.
He was content to wait for him to calm down on his own, he could see the other’s skills and knew they’d be of no harm to him even if they wanted to so he waited by their side, telling them again and again that they were okay, that they were free, until they were finally calm enough to stop and look around.
“Where am I?”
“My world, a little refuge for those whose planets have been conquered. I’ll explain it all so do you think I could talk you into coming with me?”
He held out his hand as he asked it and after a second of hesitation, the one with him took it, being led down through the strange building of pods to wait with and be spoken to by the three he had with him, letting him go through the process of releasing a few more so he could explain everything to them all at once.
Each time was a struggle but by the time he had ten of them out, he decided to start things. Of those among the prisoners who were in a state that he was comfortable freeing and had members of their race on the planet, there were only going to be thirty in the end, meaning only three rounds total until he’d need to work on the next group.
But that’s for later. Time to get this started.
“Alright, first off, hello everyone, my name’s Ben and I’m the apostle of a god none of you would know by the name of Myriad. I’m sure you all have a lot of questions but hopefully I’ll be able to cover them here and then after I say my bit we can all talk after while we sort you out, okay?”
He got nods and the equivalent that various body types could manage all around him as he smiled and did his best to make them comfortable.
“Good. Now, first things first, I don’t know how long you’ve all been held for but let's start with something you’ve all been missing for a while. We’ll of course feed you later in the day but for now, enjoy this.”
Pulling mana from his jacket and ignoring the pain of it passing through his soul, he materialized a table and glasses before them all, each filled with something they hadn’t been able to enjoy since they’d been taken.
Water. In all of its simplicity, it would be the first beverage any of them had in centuries and he watched as one hesitantly reached out and took their cup before the others followed suit, none of them commenting on the act of power before them and instead getting to enjoy the first feeling of consumption in ages and showing them all once more that they were free.
It seemed like that stimulus alone threatened to overwhelm some of them, even if Ben wasn’t as worried about their mental health as some others it still wasn’t good by any stretch of the imagination after what they’d been through, but after giving them a moment to calm down he began saying all he needed to.
“Alright, let’s start with the most important part first. You are not alone. Whatever memories you have of your world being invaded, each of you has surviving members of your races on this world that were able to escape before their destruction. We’ll be arranging things for you all to meet up with them and be looked after by your churches but first I’m just going to explain the situation of the planet first.”
For good or ill.
Ben went on from there, telling them all about the world they found themselves on, the collection of races that made it up and how that came to be, along with how they’d all been working to try and prepare for the invasion they knew would one day come, leading into the far darker news for those who’d escaped their imprisonment that they were now on a planet that had just passed the second wave of it all.
None of them looked comfortable by the end, a few seemed like they might even break down from the fear, even as Ben did his best to stay positive.
“Now, as bad as things might sound from that, we’re all doing our best and all of the gods of this world believe we have a better shot of surviving than any planet in the past. As I already said, I am an apostle so I have it on good authority that things have been going excellent so far, all things considered, so despite everything I’ve said, please try to stay positive.”
Saying that felt like he was lying to them but it didn’t really matter. They’d seen what he had on the demon world, they’d seen it for untold years. His words were going to do nothing to convince them if they didn’t want to believe and did nothing to improve their moods, leaving him to move on.
“So do any of you have any questions for me?”
“Yeah, I have a question,” Began one, the imp that he awakened first. “That box you had me shoved in? Can you put me back in it?”
“What?”
“I don’t want to be out here waiting for the end of the world. No matter what you say, there’s no chance it ends in anything other than disaster and I don’t want to wait around to see it happen so can you shove me back in there or not? If you all really do win in the end then you can take me out again but I refuse to just live in this place until that point.”
“...If that’s what you want then that’s what we’ll do.”
He had conflicting feelings about it but if that was his choice, Ben had no right to stop him, with his agreement leading to four others to voice the same desire. None of them wanted to watch a world fall again, with the half that didn’t give in to the same desire holding back out of an urge to see any surviving members of their own kind again after so long.
With that done, Ben led the ones who wanted to be frozen again back to their pods while the head of the communal church took the five that chose to stay out, leading them back to his branch for the other priests to look after for the time being as they arranged things before it was time to move on.
Alright, for better or worse, first group down and a bunch more still to go.