CH866

He was back at Pelenia’s residence by the time the god he wanted answered, Ben left sitting outside to stare at the buildings as he waited, only perking up to the sound of Nare’s voice in his head.

<Myriad said you were looking for me for something? What can I do for you, Ben?>

Alright, so this is kind of a tough ask and if you don’t want me to then I won’t, so just keep that in mind.

<An immediately worrying statement.>

Yeah, maybe. You know I brought back one of your people with me when I came back from the demon world, right?

<...I do. Where is this going?> The god asked him, sounding far more serious now that a believer of his who’d been left to go insane for thousands of years was being brought up and was at the crux of what Ben had wanted.

He and so many others are being sealed away right now for their own safety as much as anyone else’s and I haven’t been able to do anything to help them until now. I’ve tried talking to them and I’ve tried strengthening their minds with my own but nothing was able to fix the things they went through. Now though? I just spent the morning figuring out how my mind break works by testing it on demons and I can destroy memories with it-

<And you’re hoping that destroying memories of their time on the demon world will be enough to stabilize their mind.> The god finished, with Ben nodding in the world below.

Basically. It’s a bit more than that, I’ll also be trying to strengthen their original memories too, kind of forcing them to mentally relive their lives if I can and with eldritch mind it shouldn’t be hard but this is the best shot I’ve had so far to genuinely help them.

<And then what are you asking me for?>

Permission. These people, I can’t just leave them like this but compared to anything else I’ve tried, this feels like it will leave the biggest room for problems. I don’t know what deleting thousands of years of experience from a mind will do to a person. Compared to the tests I was able to run on some demons, I have no clue if this is going to be safe for them but the only way to know is to try but… It’s not like any of them are going to have any surviving family to consult about how they’d feel about this, they only have you. So Nare, knowing there’s going to be some risks behind it, may I please try to help one of your believers?

<Mmh, you know, I really wasn’t prepared for a question like this when I started the day.>

I know but I don’t know who else to ask. You’re one of the first gods on the world, right? That means your world was invaded early enough that if there are going to be some negative effects for this, they should present most strongly in the ones who’d been held the longest and you’re the god I’m close enough to to be comfortable asking. If you’re against it then I won’t. There’s always a possibility that some other option will present itself if I have more time to work through it or I can get Myriad to look for other gods who’d be willing.

<...You can do it, if anything goes wrong then the guilt can lie with me.>

I wasn’t asking to pass on the blame, Nare. I just want to do the right thing.

<I know, which is why you’ll be guiltless. Do it, Ben and if it doesn’t work then at least make sure you learn all you can for the experience.>

Alright. I hope I’ll be able to give you some good news.

<I’ll be watching.>

With the god’s agreement, Ben let himself into the building he’d made, the walls lined with pods holding Oaun’s prisoners, each of them frozen in time. Still trapped but hopefully in a kinder way and Ben knew where each individual it held was kept, their minds deeply explored for whatever glimmer of salvation there was to find but until that day coming up empty, with the test he was about to run dictating whether the method he’d devised would hold any hope for giving them back some of what they’d lost as the shell holding his target came before him.

His memories had already been explored, Ben knew well who he’d be looking at. A young man for his kind who’d been a hunter back on his lost world, not one to participate in the crafting his god ruled over in any great way but instead choose to focus on Nare’s other aspect of challenge, wanting to push himself in the role he’d decided on in life that had left him with enough skill to survive past the time Nare had abandoned his planet, becoming a trophy for an invading god.

But the memories of that life were nothing, a blip lost behind the countless years of containment that had come after, seemingly completely forgotten in a way that forced Ben’s new mind to notice something that his old one never paid attention to. Few people held truly perfect memories but when he’d look there was an entire life to be seen, telling him that what he’d witness any time he used the skill in such a way wasn’t memories recorded in their brains but the perfect information recorded in their souls, leaving him to wonder just how well what he was going to do could really work at all.

Destroying a demon’s mind had seemed to have erased its memories for both itself and Ben, meaning he was likely removing them from both vessels but he didn’t know what deeper implications such a thing held. Did the brain itself even have the capacity to remember the entire life it had forgotten, even with his help or would that act of trying to erase all of those long centuries leave nothing left, destroying the very vessel that held them despite the intent he had.

Countless thoughts ran through his head but in the end he slapped his cheeks, forcing his mind to order.

“This will work or it won’t, all I can do is my best,” He muttered to himself. “It’s not like anyone else is working on a solution for these guys, if I don’t do it then they might just end up left here for either the countless years it would take my enchantments to decay or until some future generation wants this bit of space and gets rid of them in one way or another. I can’t just hope someone else figures this out, I have to try.”

The pep talk only increased the weight of responsibility he felt but this wasn’t something he could just put off for fear of failure. If he were to die then they might never be saved, it was yet another time limit he felt weighing on him that he wanted to get rid of them and there so delaying no longer he reached out with his soul, through the enchantments and thin sheet of metal before him to link himself to the one trapped on the other side, laying out the whole of their existence across his thoughts and began carefully pruning away entire days the other didn’t need.

He wasn’t going to get rid of all of his imprisonment, at least not at first. Should all else fail then that would be the last, desperate attempt but what Ben really wanted to do was trim it down, taking away any days that were obviously worse than the last so those memories couldn’t haunt him and sliming down the rest of them too, an entire century disappearing instantly for how plainly awful it had been, all while he forced the man to relive the life he’d lost, playing the beginning of his existence over and over again back at him to try and strengthen it with all of the skills he held.

There was the question of if Ben should include Nare’s world’s invasion as he did it, the start of that deep trauma that seemed like it would be so much better forgotten but the point of it all was to try and bring him to a state where he could come out to the world and to do that he would need context. The understanding of what happened and why he was there, for fear that holes in truly important memories would only lead to a future breakdown that couldn’t be fixed. Every choice he made had to be measured against distant consequences but even then, another thousand years were shattered, all while a fragile stability began to take shape.

Internal consistency was becoming more important with every swath he took, trying not to leave memories of the man thinking about breakdowns that now never happened but on that front, there were few cases to really be concerned about. With each day unchanging, being left to look out on the swarm that had killed his people and his world, there was little enough in the way of variety for many true holes in his mind to be truly noticeable, even to the most discerning. If another memory reader showed up then as things were, they’d see a century of torment but nothing more, with even that feeling weaker than the memories of his time before, Ben having done as much as he’d been comfortable with, leaving only to see how his work had fared.

Pulling the remade mind into his own, he constructed a space based off of one of the man’s happier memories, just different enough that it wouldn’t be suspicious in and of itself while he created a mental construct for himself to act through, taking the shape of a more elderly worshipper of Nare in an open meadow and watching in his mind’s eye as the man was left briefly dazed before jumping up to look around at the scene Ben had created, panting out as he did and speaking in what had been his original tongue, the worldspeak bound to him still unnatural on his lips.

“Am I…is this real?”

“You’re free,” Ben told him, cutting to what the other really wanted to know rather than break the news that what he was seeing was very much an illusion. “A lot has changed, there’s plenty you’ll need to adjust to but I promise, those walls won’t hold you again.”

Falling to his knees, tears rolled down the other’s face as Ben walked to his side, wrapping him in his arms, creating the feeling through the connection that bound them for what felt like the man’s first bit of touch in a century, giving all of the comfort he could.

Author's note

Oh sweet merciful god, it kept my italics and didn't bold the entire chapter for no reason. Genuinely, as small of a thing as it might have been to fix, the fact that that was a problem at all for a month was driving me insane and now I'm finally back to just copying the chapter over (so long as it doesn't start again). Either way, definitely managed to put a smile on my face.