Thera woke up alone, not surprised to see that Ben must have gone the entire night without rest working on whatever plan he had to complete his current quest and followed her bind skill to find him.

It was early in the morning still, which meant he was in the first place she’d look, even without it. He was in the kitchen cooking breakfast, and for whatever reason, the small dryad child was sitting on his shoulders and hounding him with questions.

“What’s that?”

“Pancakes, it’s a breakfast from my homeland.”

“Why aren’t we having frattles?”

“Well, I’ve never had a frattle, but I’ll see if your mom’ll teach me later so I can make them tomorrow if you want?”

“Yes please, they’re the best!”

“Ha, alright, you got it kiddo.”

“Hey mister apostle?”

“Yeah?”

“Why do you look so weird?”

“I promise I look very normal for my species.”

“But you’re not green and you don’t have boobs!”

“Haha, what? Not everyone has boobs, you know? Or’s green for that matter.”

“Why not?”

“Let’s see, I’m going to leave that as something you should ask your mom, okay?”

“Okay!”

Cute. Thera wasn’t used to being around small children, but it was adorable seeing the young girl so full of questions and energy, and there was a certain charm to how patiently Ben was talking to her as he worked, despite his hair being pulled and his chest kicked as she swung her legs.

She watched their exchange for a little while longer until Fontesh came into the kitchen.

“Delair, if you’re going to make him carry you then at the very least don’t kick him while he’s doing it.”

“Sorry mom. Why doesn’t he have boobs?”

“Uuh, I’ll tell you a bit after breakfast, okay hun?”

“Okay!”

“Thanks for putting up with her,” She told Ben, “I know she can be a little energetic.”

“Don’t worry about it. Food will be ready soon if you want to wake the others? Oh, but Skoe’s only been asleep for two hours so maybe leave him to rest.”

Fontesh agreed and went down to the basement while Delair continued to play with his hair, while Thera walked up beside him.

“You’re good with kids.”

“It was only a couple years ago my brother was her age, I’m used to it.”

She saw the look in his eyes and cursed herself for asking, it should have been obvious given what she knew about him, but even if he’d answered Ben always got a little bit sad when he’d think of his family. She could see it in his eyes before he’d try to push it away, and she was never good at knowing what to say when it happened. Thankfully Delair changed the topic, but the new one wasn’t much better.

“Why are you dressed like that?” She was asked in a voice filled with childlike innocence and left having no idea how to answer the question. The honest explanation was a bit complicated to tell a child, but it also wasn’t something she should brush off or lie about. Luckily, after a moment of silence where she struggled to figure out what to say, Ben saw what was going on and gave one himself.

“You see, Thera’s a super pretty girl under there, so she has to hide away or else everyone would fall in love with her.”

“Isn’t that good though?”

“It might seem like it would be, but she wants to be appreciated for her personality instead, so she has to hide away her looks.”

The young girl was now staring at her, wide-eyed and full of wonder. “Can I see?”

“Um, maybe later,” She said, awkwardly deferring it.

“Yeah, I’ll make you a magic necklace so it won’t cause any issue, you’ll just have to wait a bit, okay?”

“Okay!”

The girl seemed satisfied for the meantime and went back to kicking Ben's chest, already forgetting what her mom had told her as Thera quietly whispered to Ben so she wouldn’t hear.

“Was that the best you could come up with?”

“It’s basically the truth, I just phrased it so she’d understand.”

“Well, I guess it got the idea across,” Still, how am I so bad with children? Ben made it look so easy.

They continued to chat for a little longer until everyone but Skoe was there and Ben served the pancakes and a fruit sauce he’d made, a meal she’d had a few times now thanks to living with him but was a novelty for everyone else eating it, especially Delair who seemed instantly taken with the dish and as she devoured it while Ben outlined his plan for the day.

“So like I said before, I won’t be able to give you guys much help from here. I need to find materials to make resistance amulets for everyone and other than that I need to figure out some work around the town. Speaking of, Fontesh, I couldn’t help but notice the enchantment on your cold box isn’t the greatest. If you’re willing I could redo it so the mana cost is lower, or remake it to take just as much but have a time aspect added to slightly slow the span of time within it.”

“You could do that?” She asked in shock, and seeing the seriousness in his eyes was quick to agree. “If you’re willing then adding the time effect would be fanatic, thank you so much!”

“Don’t worry about it, I can look over your other enchanted items as well to see if I could make any improvements if you’d like. Also, I couldn’t help but notice the fence around your home and the house itself is broken down in some places, please allow me to fix it for you.”

“I couldn’t possibly put an apostle to work like that,” She said in a hurry. “Improving the cold box is already more than enough for giving you a room for a while.”

“Please, don’t worry about that,” He told her as Thera watched him throw on a smile and growing wise to what he was doing. “I’m both a craftsman and an enchanter by trade, and as an apostle it’s my duty to help people. Since I’ll be here for as long as it takes Sachel to complete her quest but can’t do more for her than I already have, I might as well do what I can for the village. Speaking of, I think I should be able to finish anything the house needs today, please let the others in the village know my offer. I get the impression they aren’t used to outsiders, but I’d like to do what I can.”

Fontesh looked touched and Sachel’s eyes were sparkling seeing the apostle of the god she worshiped wanting to help her village so badly, even Ralia seemed impressed, but Thera could immediately tell what the point of all of this was.

So that’s why he’s being so open about being an apostle, he doesn’t want all these good deeds to be attributed to Ben, but to the apostle of Myriad.

She didn’t doubt he was fine with doing all of this to help the village, though he was probably putting a bit more effort in than he otherwise would since he was specifically trying to make his god look good. Still, it was probably a good idea to try and get the village to warm up to them a bit regardless, even if he was being over the top about it.

In the face of that offer though Fontesh couldn’t help but agree. They were all aware of the state of the village, and having a competent craftsman to try and fix it up would be a blessing.

All that was left was whatever she would do, an issue that was quickly resolved by Sachel.

“I was thinking I could show you where we’ll have to be hunting if that’s alright with you?” She asked. The half-dryad was trying to be polite, knowing full well that while she had never acted as blatantly antagonistic as Skoe, they weren’t exactly on the best footing either, but she agreed easily enough. After all, she’d already told Ben she’d work with them, there was no reason to back out now just because she didn’t like them.

“So this is the edge of the forest,” Sachel said after their hike to it. The trees she was pointing to were a far more vibrant shade of green, though there were trees from the surrounding woods mixed in as well. “Damaging them is a far greater offense than just entering the woods for outsiders, so we won’t be able to use your magic at all, but if you can draw the frost bats out then we can handle the rest.”

“Since I’ve last worked with you I’ve gained the zeroth level in both dark and life magic, as well as telekinesis if that helps with your planning, though the last one isn’t much use in battle.” Since she was going to be working with them for at least a few days, she knew that sharing the improvements to her magic skills was for the best, even if it felt a bit too open.

Sachel seemed surprised by her situation to have changed so much in the past year when she could only use earth magic at a low level, and Ralia looked at her with approval.

“What led you to learning so many branches of magic?” The naga woman asked curiously. “You seemed pretty obsessed with your earth magic before.”

“That hasn’t changed. I was told that people in my situation where the difference between their power and control is so great can increase their control by getting a broader range of magics, with each one increasing the wielder's overall abilities as well. I’ve been seeing decent results from it, but my affinities won’t let me learn any more and I was only able to get the one non-affinited one by luck, so for now I just need to work on improving them,” Specifically improving life magic and telekinesis. She would use her dark magic when she needed to, but given how many she now had access to there was no need to push it while Ben was making progress improving her resistance brace.

“Oh cool, and that gives us a few more options for dealing with them once they leave the woods so that’s great!” Sachel said enthusiastically. “For now let’s just survey the area around the woods to figure out the best way to go at it and regroup at Fotesh’s after.”

With Sachel taking the lead they walked around the area, trying to judge the best place to stage their attack while at the same time noticing a few other dryads watching them from a distance.

It was obvious they were there to keep an eye on them to make sure they didn’t break the rules, but if they were going to insist on staying in the area then Thera was going to have to make a note to herself to ask Ben to prepare even more resistance amulets. She couldn’t very well avoid going into the forest only to break the law by attacking the minds of bystanders, even if it was unintentional.

Sachel noticed them off in the distance as well and her mood noticeably fell. It wasn’t hard to see why, this was her home village, presumably where she’d grown up, and now because she’d changed her faith she was an outsider.

It was already up in the air how she’d been treated here, given that it looked like she was the only halfbreed in the village, but the fact that she’d come back to try and help for her quest indicated that it couldn’t have been bad, despite the way she and Ben had been avoided when they arrived.

Ralia picked up on her companion’s mood, and while not changing the topic to a more cheerful distraction, asked something that had been on her mind.

“So Thera, I wanted to ask about what happened with your friend and Elder Hentath. He seemed… more angry on Sachel’s behalf than I would expect.”

“True, as nice as it was that he tried to help me with grandmother, it was a little surprising.”

She made a face under her hood, having an idea as to why he was so angry, but not sure if it was her place to say. Still, it might be better to give them some clue than to let them bother Ben about it when he already had so much he wanted to do.

“It’s a bit of a personal subject to him so don’t go bothering him about it, but Ben isn’t able to see his family again, no matter how much he wants to. I think he was just angry to hear yours talk to you like that.”

The answer caught the other two women off guard and if anything the atmosphere of the group got worse.

Great, can only go up from here. She thought sarcastically to herself, all the while wishing she could just work with Ben like usual to deal with this.