With the end of the vision, I found myself at last returned to my physical body. Evidently, little time had passed, as all of my companions still lay on the floor. Which, a little concerning, but at the same time, this would probably be a pretty freaky thing to wake up to, yeah?

I’d normally have been far more worried, but they’d apparently been healed by a literal deity. At least physically, they would be more than fine.

Hexaura stood in the same spot she had before, all the blipping about she’d done in my head not translating to the real world.

“So there you have it. As for the rest: The prison was old. It started breaking down. To compensate, it began to leech more and more of my mana and vented it off.” Her words were vaguely in line with what I’d learned in the vision, although I had to accept that I’d just have to take her on faith here.

“In turn, that expanded the deadlands, and when it sank further into the ground, it hit the kexids and started degrading the stasis spell I had on them.”

Recalling my singular run-in with them, I frowned. “And that turned them into angry zombies?” Seemed like a pretty bad side effect.

“Eh. Imagine being, like, 99% asleep with your only coherent memory being the fact that you’re under attack and everyone is dying. I cast the spell to be ongoing and to refresh itself with my mana, but it wasn’t really supposed to be chipped away at like that.”

Well, it was a plus, at least. It sounded like they wouldn’t be trying to run me through if we ever met again.

Aarris chimed in, likely happy that we were now done with all the mental shenanigans. “The rest, you are already aware of. With the prison breaking down, Hexaura had just enough strength to pull you all into the dungeon in hopes of distracting Ephesis. When he strengthened a connection with me, he was occupied with you, and instead of him pulling me out, I pulled on him. I was… not particularly pleased with him.”

Had I been in her position, that would have been an understatement. Still, it had to sting considerably worse for her seeing as the guy was her priest and Protagonist and all that.

Or, maybe not. She’d had a lot of time to get over it, after all.

In the end though, that really was all of it. Months of journeying. Strange mysteries abound. But it was just kind of… over.

True, when Ephesis had been trying to subdue me, he’d been using mind magic, but his words weren’t exactly wrong. I really had wanted this to end. It felt like I’d been running around blindly from the moment I’d been deposited on this planet, and there hadn’t been much time to breathe.

Now though, it was all just… done. I could move on from it all. Figure out what to do with my time. At least eventually. For now, everything was still rattling around in my head.

I walked over to where the high priest lay, taking a moment to let it sink in.

Even despite all that had happened, the sight of him lying there left me with a morbid sense of melancholy. This was a guy who’d lived a full life, summoned demons, lived with vampires, fought the gods, and kept himself alive for longer than anyone possibly should have been able to.

And after all of that: Nothing.

He was dead.

He wouldn’t look back on this with his goddess like he’d thought he would. Wouldn’t have another grand adventure.

Dead.

I let the feeling linger for a moment, and then as best as I could, I brutally quashed it.

He didn’t really deserve the sentiment.

“It’s kind of sad, but I’m going to be honest, dude. You were a ginormous piece of shit.”

There was, frankly, no reason to pity him.

“You mind controlled everyone. Committed a literal genocide. And I’m pretty sure you were feeding horny people to a demon at one point?” The exact details of that one were still a little unclear to me.

“And it wasn’t even, like, to save the universe or anything. You were just kind of — species-ist, if that’s a word? — and had some weird mommy issues to work out.” Whatever his deal with his goddess had been, it probably would have leveled up a Therapist by leaps and bounds.

Tagging onto that thought, Aarris jumped in. “A clarification. In this scenario, am I ‘mommy’?”

I winced, resolving to be slightly more careful in my wording when it came to divine beings. “Um. Yeah, Aarris. In this scenario, you’re mommy.” Not like I was going to lie to a god, and she did have a habit of calling everyone “child.”

She nodded. “Thank you for clarifying, child. Continue.”

Truthfully, though, there wasn’t much more for me to say.

“I’m happy you’re dead, and I’m pretty sure that killing you isn’t going to haunt me much.” Maybe it was insensitive considering how he’d been Aarris’s priest, but it was the truth.

Actually, now that I know the kexids were just in a stasis spell, pretty sure killing them is going to haunt me way worse. Let’s save that one for not right now. It wasn’t the time to check my notifications quite yet, but I was confident I was sitting on a treasure trove of Trauma Suppression level ups.

Yay me…

I sighed. The worst part of it all — well, scratch that, the ritual slaughter of an entire city was probably the worst part, but one of the worst parts of it all — was that it felt so easily avoidable too.

It wasn’t a story of someone who was seeking power or wealth and wanted to be a conqueror. The people weren’t the victims of some grand political machinery that would have taken heaven and earth to move aside. There hadn’t been some divine prophecy or a demon lord for a hero to slay.

It was mostly just some guy with issues who could have used some therapy.

I spun around, locking eyes with the small, goth god of darkness, and not just because she’d been idly reading my thoughts. Which, kind of creepy, but the lesser of the two offenses right now. “Really?”

She shrugged. “Sorry kid. I tried the whole ‘letting a Protagonist have their mental privacy’ thing, and it didn’t work out for me, you know? As for the other thing, well, I like a good pun.” She clapped her hands, ending that line of conversation there. “Now! Had enough time to take it all in?”

The answer, of course, was a definite no. This was not the “take a couple of minutes and wrap your head around it” kind of thing. I’d be sitting with it all for weeks, if not much, much longer.

And in truth, Trauma Suppression or not, I had the feeling that I hadn’t really emotionally processed anything yet. Even everything in the vision aside, I was still making a large effort to not think about Rock right now. There was a reason I’d gone to Ephesis’s corpse instead of his. I wasn’t ready for that yet, and once the emotions started coming, there would be no turning them off.

There was also some much deeper fear lurking around within my mind which I knew wouldn’t be going away anytime soon. Mental magic. I’d been manipulated, and I felt vulnerable in a way I didn’t know was possible. Having my own mind turned against me.

Could still be happening right now, for all you know. Maybe Ephesis was the good guy. Hell, maybe he was your best friend, and Hexaura’s just rewriting your memories on the fly. Can’t really trust anything anymore. Ever.

She was a deity, after all. It was probably within her power.

At the very least, the fact that that thought hadn’t resulted in a level up to Mental Resistance was a good sign, but it was hard to say. I knew I had to drop it, though. The alternative was living the rest of my life on edge, paranoid at every moment.

Or maybe that’s what she wants you to think.

I sighed.

On top of that, there was the sense that this wasn't really a victory for me. I was Tess, the Protagonist! I was blessed by a god and had a fancy class! My job was to go around and beat the bad guy with my amazing powers! That's what a Protagonist did, right?

The reality, though, had been anything but. Yes, I'd survived. But not because I was strong. If anything, this entire quest had been me getting roped into the affairs of higher powers. I felt like an ant who'd gotten lucky enough to scuttle out of the way before the shoe came down. And not only had I personally been vulnerable, but also, I'd failed to protect my friends.

It was, in a sense, a pyrrhic victory. The threat was gone. The forest was safe. But the image I had of myself and my place in the world had shifted, if not outright shattered. I felt... small. And tired. And I was confident that I'd be sitting with those feelings for some time to come.

So, no. I hadn’t had enough time for it all to sink in. I hadn’t had enough time for even a sizable fraction of it to sink in.

Still, it was enough for now. I was as collected as I would be.

“Yup. I’m good.” With her in my head, I had no illusion that Hexaura would really believe me, but at least she pretended to.

Perhaps by intention, then, her next words caught me off guard, taking me out of my head.

“Great! Well, Aarris and I really need a good vacation after all that. Before we head out, though, why don’t we talk about your rewards?”