CH955

There was a lot to process as he tore through their minds, trying to understand what had created that situation, but one thing more than anything else was immediately true. The feeling of evil he’d been detecting had disappeared, with only one explanation. It was clear it hadn’t been coming from either of the two he’d caught and nothing else would have been able to escape with them, leaving only the item itself.

An item that was no longer giving off the feeling either, but that was easier to understand. Tools themselves could rarely be considered inherently evil, it was the fact that while it had been trapping the two that it had been active in that use, perpetuating the wrong done to them what must have been thousands of years prior.

But as for why… oh. Oh fuck.

“Thera, put everyone around us to sleep, now!”

“What?” she asked, still starting her spell as requested but not before noticing the change in so many of the people nearby. Adventurers and templars with glassy eyes, locked onto the two as they began to shuffle towards them, with not even the other sirens safe. A scene that seemed almost familiar to her in a way that made her stomach twist, even if she didn’t instantly understand what was happening before they all fell to the ground unconscious, though it was something she’d been traumatized through more than enough times herself, with everyone in the area falling under an overwhelming level of charm.

But that wasn’t a discussion for then. Quickly materializing a resistance band around both of their sirens’ wrists, there were other clear problems that needed to be sorted first before he could deal with it all and seeing their panic rising, both of them in an unfamiliar place with things that looked like people yet clearly weren’t of their race, the priority from there was calming them down.

“Hey there, I know I must look strange to you, and this must seem scary and confusing, but I promise you’re both safe,” Ben told them, speaking in their native tongue instead of allspeak to try and make them more comfortable. “How you ended up here is complicated, but I promise, nobody is going to harm either of you, so please, try to relax while we sort this out.”

Reassurances that did nothing for the older of the two, the mother of the young girl looking more panicked by the second.

“No, we have to go, we can’t be around so many people like this, we-”

“Are not going to be charming anyone, don’t worry,” Ben finished for her, seeing the shock in her eyes as he said it. “I don’t seem charmed, do I? I’m personally nice and immune, you don’t need to worry about it and you and your daughter are both fine for as long as you wear those bracelets too, they’ll keep you from charming anyone else around you for as long as you wear them, okay?”

“What? Where did this come from?” she asked as she looked down at her arm, leading Ben to try and make things simple as he gently placed the two down before materializing a doll in front of their eyes and handed it over to the child.

“On this one front at least, you can consider yourselves in luck. You appeared in front of a master mage and the apostle of a god. For now, I’m going to get the two of you comfy, and we’ll try and talk about what happened. It’s a long story, so do you think the two of you could relax for me?”

“Um, yes, of course,” the woman nodded, Ben calling himself an apostle leaving her more nervous for the secret she kept and made him regret not seeing that might happen, with the child in her arms more uncomfortable, scared of the situation and picking up on her mother’s mood, leading Ben to try and focus on that first.

“For now, can I offer you both some sweets?” He asked, pulling some of the food from his rings out after selecting what would look most like food to them considering the alien ingredients it would be made from, ending up on cookies and watching as the daughter’s eyes lit up, dropping enough of her fear to notice her hunger as they both took from the plate, letting Ben direct some of his thoughts Thera’s way.

Thera, operate on the assumption that everyone you put to sleep has been charmed, except for Amy, Jake, and Yuzu since they should still have had their amulets on. For the rest, do me a favour and cast magic nullification on them to try and speed up the time it will take for them to get over its effects.

A request that instantly filled her with some level of understanding about what happened, it left her to cast a look at the two who came out of the item once more before doing as he said, with Myriad using the pause to speak into his head.

<Ben, we need answers up here. Who are they? What happened?>

What happened, Ben started, allowing the rage he was feeling to touch his thoughts, even if he made sure to keep it from his face. Is that the world just got a new demigod.

---

“Well, looks like I got us our answers,” Ben started as he sent part of himself up to face the gods, finding the four Siren ones still with Myriad. “And boy oh boy do I have some feelings about it because the girl down there? Has to be what, eight? Looks like she was Eletar’s embarrassing little secret, your god of pride didn’t want her getting out.”

“Ben, if you could explain for the rest of us and try to be calm about it,” Myriad told him. “Whatever happened, it doesn’t sound like it was their fault.”

Ben took a breath. As much as what he’d seen had enraged him, his god was right, forcing him to try to calm down a bit before going on.

“I take it none of you knew that demigods could be born from pairing up with mortals before coming to the world?” Ben asked them, getting negatives all around. “Fair enough, it sounds rare even on this god-filled mess of a planet. So here’s what happened, as far as I can tell from reading the woman’s, her name is Mirian, memories. Let me set the scene: a young farmer looking after her fields in a remote village on your old world, she happened to meet a charismatic priest of Eletar, at least so she thought, and fell in love. This priest was obviously someone Eletar was wearing as a suit, he must have suppressed his divinity to try and keep that fact from slipping out. I can’t say anything about his intentions, I don’t know if he was watching this woman and fell in love or if he got curious about sex and decided to sneak down to knock boots with the first mortal he found to match his taste. Hell, for all we know, she wasn’t the first. If birthing a demigod is as rare as I’ve been made to believe then managing it on the first mortal he laid his hands on would be poor odds, but what matters is that he did end up impregnating her, creating that little girl, Kalley.”

“And he imprisoned them,” Telenen said, indescribable emotions coating his voice as he tried to process what he was hearing, same as the rest of them while Ben shrugged.

“Eventually, there were a few steps before that. Considering that sexual relationships between gods and mortals seem to be a somewhat controversial topic up here, I’m actually not sure if there’s been a demigod from a race with a passive magic before but at the very least, to see someone comparable you don’t have to look any further than my girlfriend. Technically, Kalley seems like she has a weaker range and a lower resistance threshold for her charm than Thera did, but it’s still more than any normal siren can resist and those effects were showing up even back in utero. Mirian noticed something was wrong with how people were acting around her, told Eletar who at that point came clean about who he was and hid them away, supposedly to keep them safe but considering everything else it seems just as likely to hide his shame. From there, while trying to hide a daughter with divinity in her veins that would be noticeable to any god who looked at her and the ability to take in anyone who came too close, he apparently settled on that. He made a mythic item and locked them away.”

“For so long,” one of the goddesses muttered. “How many thousands of years has it been since he showed us it?”

“To the minuscule amount of credit I can give him, I can at least say it seems he had no intention of killing them,” Ben admitted, for however the others there wanted to take it. “I’m sure it would have been significantly easier to make their bodies disappear if he’d wanted to, and the time dilation effect on it is frankly superb. All of those thousands of years yet from their perspective, they’d been trapped in there for a couple of hours. The most generous assumption I can make is that he was keeping them there to decide what to do with them, but frankly, I don’t care about whatever that dead asshole’s intentions were. His foolish choices repeatedly ripped his wife away from the life she had and subjected his daughter to isolation. All that matters is what the rest of you are going to do now?”

“We’ll look after them, of course we will,” Telenen told him. “You’ve got Kalley braced, she can live among our people, and we’ll see that they want for nothing. If this is what our brother has done then it’s the least we can do and… and no matter how much this is to process, no matter what wrongs it seems he’s done, this girl will be all we have left of him.”

The source of the conflict in all of their eyes. A mortal child who was their brother’s shame, wronged by that dead god’s sense of embarrassment yet that didn’t change the good he’d done either. It didn’t change the fact that he’d stayed behind to let the others save as many as they could. There was no bringing him back to rightfully admonish him, but even then they loved him still, with his child appearing before them so long after his passing.

Ben didn’t know if Eletar had loved their his partner or daughter, in the two’s memories he seemed to have in his own way at least but without that god there he had no way to truly judge but at the very least, the remaining four seemed sincere enough about wanting the girl looked after that he didn’t feel the need to push the issue, even if he didn’t leave it there either.

“Alright, if that’s the least you can do then there’s one more thing you should as well,” Ben told them, feeling expectations about him in their minds from how he normally treated the gods that he ignored. “I am currently explaining as delicately as I can the state of this world to a very scared and confused mother and daughter. I know that this isn’t your fault but seeing as how your brother isn’t around to do it, what you can do is go down there, into your priests and your oracles and apostles, and you can tell her your sorry and introduce yourselves to your niece while you’re at it. Tell them what you told me, that you’ll take care of them.”

“Yes, I suppose you’re right,” Telenen agreed while the others nodded before one by one they went down, leaving the part of Ben that was up there alone with his god once more and let him flop back onto the ground.

“Myriad?”

“Yes?”

“I hate this world.”

“Ben, with how hard that was to get through, if you hadn’t beaten that puzzle then there’s a good chance nobody ever would have. You’ve done a good thing here.”

“I know, I know,” he sighed as he forced himself to sit back up. “I just wasn’t prepared for anything like this when I set off to try a fun little puzzle challenge, you know?”

“Yeah, I know.”