The act of reversing the effects of that ancient petrification was long, with each minute of it giving Thera far too much time to reflect on the exact nature of what she was doing.

With the museum staff looking after the victims she’d put to sleep while others led her to the storage room holding the last few, it was only once she was done that the representatives of the communal church arrived to take over from their care, letting the two of them find a place to stay for the rest of the day and leaving Thera to promptly bury her face in Ben’s chest.

“Uuugh.”

“It’s okay,” Ben encouraged. “You did great.”

“But did I even do the right thing?” Thera asked him, feeling emotionally exhausted as she did. “They’re all starting over with nothing in the worst point of this entire planet’s history. And I did that to them!”

“No, some dead asshole did it to them, you saved them from an eternity of stone.”

“And I’m sure each one is going to be super grateful,” She told him sarcastically before quieting down. “Sorry.”

“You have nothing to apologize for.”

“No, no matter how I feel I shouldn’t be taking it out on you. It’s just, this is so… Ugh!”

He understood where she was coming from so he did his best to be supportive, holding her in his arms as the night wore on as she struggled with the implications of what she’d done.

Given that the gods themselves had asked her to reverse the petrification that all of those people had been under, it wasn’t like she could have even said no but that didn’t make things any easier on her. Once the sleep she’d cast on them all came undone and they’d be forced to face the new world they found themselves in, she would be the one feeling responsible for it all.

It was too much to handle, but as Ben continued to try and comfort her, stroking her head and reassuring her as best as he could, she finally managed to drift into an uneasy sleep.

He took another hour to watch her, making sure her dreams wouldn’t wake her again too soon before he finally closed his own eyes and forced his mind into his god’s realm, finding only Myriad and Helori there.

“So just for the record, I want to say that vacationing has kind of sucked so far.”

“It’s been a bit unfortunate given how things have worked out,” His god agreed. “But the point of it all was to get you some rest and it looks like that’s worked.”

“And if you both hadn’t shown up, this never would have been discovered,” Helori added. “Tell your partner to take more pride in that.”

“What, do you think unpetrifying them all was the right thing?”

“Of course.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“I’d always choose to survive another day,” She told him confidently. “No matter how bad things might look, as long as you’re around to see it, there’s hope for the future.”

“...Okay, that’s a little too optimistic right now but thanks I guess. So are any of them awake yet?”Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“They are,” Myriad confirmed. “We haven’t broken the news yet, it’s obvious that’s going to be difficult, but the various priests dealing with them are doing their best to prepare them for everything. It looks like they were all people who she’d found in need of help during her travels and she’d petrified them by surprise after that.”

“Jesus, this entire planet is so fucked,” Ben sighed, creating himself a chair to fall into. “It’s way too easy for me to look at magic as some cool thing and forget about how easy it is for stuff like this to happen. There has to be people abusing their powers all of the time.”

“Well, it’s not exactly easy,” Helori added. “The level of skill for that sort of petrification is pretty rare.”

“Sure, but there’s easier spells out there. It’s not like mind effects are hard to pull off either for anyone with the right affinity and I can think of a billion ways of abusing any type of magic.”

“But most people don’t,” Myriad tried to reassure him. “I won’t lie and say it doesn’t happen, people are people, but most in the world are generally good sorts and the presence of so many gods acts as a handy deterrent for plenty of others.”

“So it’s just the motivated and the insane doing it, gotcha.”

“That’s one way to put it I suppose. Every world is going to have its bad people Ben, the good just have to do their best to win out in the end. All of those people have a second chance now thanks to Thera. Even if it might take a while for her or even them to feel it, this is the best outcome for everyone.”

“Well, if the sleep doesn’t help I’ll try to pass that on to her. So what’s going to happen to all of them anyway?”

“It’s going to largely depend on what they want but for the time being the church is prepared to take care of them to try to prepare them for the world they find themselves in and set them up with decent lives if they can.”

Ben bit his tongue at that. Had he been set up with a decent life after the world forgot about him? It felt a lot more like he’d needed to go make it himself, but that wasn’t the point of any of that. Despite how he may have been treated in the past, whatever they were going to have to go through wasn’t about him. If anything, as one of the few people on the planet in a remotely similar position, what he needed to be doing then and there was empathizing more than anything else.

“Okay, Myriad if I donate some money to them can you ensure that nobody at the church misappropriates any of the funds I’d be giving? I’d rather not find out that a corrupt priest decided to skim some off the top and be forced to kill them.”

“I think I can safely say that most gods up here would be happy to ensure you have no reason to feel justified in doing anything that might push you over the edge for your sacrilege, but are you sure Ben? You really don’t have to.”

“It’s fine, I’ve been there so I get it. When I left the church I got about six months’ worth of cash after father Yan reached out to other branches to pull funds together, I’m well aware of how cheap the gods are. There were what, about a hundred victims? I’ll send enough to make sure they can all live for five-ish years so just make sure they all know it came from the apostle of Myriad.”

It would be a lot, but then, he had the money to spend and it was a lot better to put it to that than wasting it renting out a museum or art gallery like he’d discussed with Thera before, and he’d still be far from destitute. The amount of money he had coming in every single day thanks to the braces and his other various patents along with everything he was making from the strengthening potions constantly going out around the world was more than enough to keep his bank account constantly full. Add in the fact that he could make legendary items and materialize so easily that if by some chance he was ever to find himself poor again, he wouldn’t be for long.

The gods seemed to approve as well, with Helori getting off her place atop Myriad to ruffle Ben’s hair.

“You know, if other gods got to see this side of you a bit more you’d be a lot more liked.”

“Hey, plenty of gods watch me which means plenty get to see my minor acts of kindness all of the time, the fact that some still don’t like me is a reflection of them.”

“True,” The goddess smiled. “But it’s still good of you.”

She gently patted his cheek before leaving the realm, off to give word of just how he was going to help and leaving god and believer alone together again.

While his god had no face, Ben had long grown used to reading him and if he could, the apostle was sure that Myriad would have been smiling.

“What did I say, you just need those acts of good to win in the end.”

“Ha, well consider this my big one for the foreseeable future.”