The connection made, Ben’s mind clashed against another.
Alien and grand, it wasn’t quite as powerful as his own but it made up for it by acting in ways entirely foreign to the way he himself thought, experiencing reality through vacuum and void in a manner reminiscent of some other strange forms of life he’d connected to, even if it was on an entirely different scale as his suspicion as to what had been contained was confirmed, with Ben coming face to face with the great space spirit.
Long ago, Thera had told him about how two groups of spirits had vanished before the fall of their world, the time ones off to see the end of the universe itself and the space ones off to explore it, never coming back, with the answer as to why before him.
There were more containers of them aside from the one he’d broken, holding the spirits in their entirety, trapped for untold ages in tight confines that bound a race that craved freedom and exploration more than any other and used to power the demon's conquest of the stars but that was a problem for after. First, he enveloped the alien thing before him into the confines of his mind, feeling the sheer scale of it resist everything he was as he joined their thoughts, bringing the speed the other would think to match his own to do what he needed to. Convince the spirit to save them.
A goal that had hit a roadblock as soon as it had started. When the connection had been made, Ben had been expecting something, anything, but what he got was silence. The spirit didn’t react to him, too withdrawn into itself to even notice he was there.
“Hey, hello there,” He at least tried, needing to get its attention and was more than willing to go far farther if it was going to come to that. “Could you please react to my existence a little, I’m in a hurry.”
“Go away.”
“Oh good, you’re acknowledging me, that's the sort of progress I love to see. Anyway, I’ve freed you, you aren’t trapped anymore so why not do me the favour of helping me and a few others escape this hellhole and then we can call it square.”
It felt like the least he could ask for, all things considered. There were certain implications behind the greatest space magic user in the known universe being trapped in the world of a species that was going out to conquer the galaxy as a whole, but Ben wasn't interested in getting into that. All he cared about was getting away and getting home, something the spirit seemed to have no interest in.
“I said go away, you’ll see no help from me.”
“Alright, interesting stance you’ve taken but there’s literally no way in hell that’s happening considering that there’s nowhere else for us to go. You’re my option here buddy.”
He could feel the great spirit ignore him and Ben briefly considered whether he’d have to put his newest awakened skill to work. If it came down to it, he was more than ready to see if he could take over the space spirit’s mind to force him to bend to his will if it meant saving himself and the others, ethics be damned, but before he gave in to that last option he instead dug deeper into the mind he was touching, feeling its depths.
Guilt, horror, self-hatred and despair, all of that screamed across the spirit’s thoughts. It knew how it had been used. Not completely, but to a great enough extent that the immortal being felt the weight of lost lives pressing down on it, leaving it all but crippled if not for the last feeling that clung to it. Desperation.
If not for all of the regular space spirits trapped there, Ben was sure it would have tried to end its existence long ago, only holding on because of an ancient mistake that had led them there.
The space spirits were especially curious among their kin and like any other, loyal to their great ones, perhaps to a fault. When the one before him had been captured and trapped, the ones that followed it had given up their own safety in return for its life, in return being used as bargaining chips themselves to bend to the demon god Oaun, leading to the conquest of worlds and the deaths of hundreds of trillions of sapients across reality with the loss of total life being uncountable, all to ensure the safety of those few.
Feeling it confirmed parts of what Ben had already guessed during his imprisonment, even if seeing it through the other’s memories left knots in his stomach as he forced himself to keep going, feeling the strain from connecting to something like a great spirit affecting his body, with his god’s warnings about connecting to sufficiently powerful beings echoing through his head.
But it didn’t immediately kill me, which is good enough for now.
How long he’d be able to handle it was another question entirely. He could feel the strain growing in the fractions of a second he was thinking at, warning enough that he was placing a huge burden on his mind and body by doing such a thing and creating a time limit to work through as he spoke again.
“The other spirits are trapped beside you! Scoop them up as we go and I’ll be able to break them out but every second we waste is a second for Oaun to notice and do something! So stop wasting your time and get going already!”
“It doesn’t matter. If he wants us back then he’ll be able to take us, he’s become too strong for a simple matter of distance to change things and I don’t want to know what would happen if we left. No, it’s safer for us to stay here.”
God, this is going nowhere.
It wasn’t like giving up was an option though. This was his only hope, one he needed to take advantage of, so before he finally gave in to what felt like might have been inevitable and just dominated the great spirit’s mind, he tried his last angle.
“Don’t you want to see the other spirits again after so long?”
“The other spirits?” It asked, perking up in a way that made Ben feel like he had a shot. “How are you so aware of my kind?”
“I know them! I’m even dating one’s daughter for god sake!”
“I don't understand what that means.”
“It means your old world got just as conquered as any other and they were stuck trying to adapt to the reality you helped create! So are you just going to stay here or are you going to help me get home and then maybe you can own up to this a bit!”
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It felt harsh to say and only made the spirit’s guilt and anguish explode. It knew some of the part it had been playing across the cosmos but it hadn’t been able to tell the finer details through the chains that bound it. It hadn’t known the harm it had caused its own race on top of everything else.
“I caused that…”
“Yeah, and now all of us are left fighting for our lives to try and survive the reality you helped create, so are you going to try and help us get back to them or not?”
That was it, the last chance Ben was willing to reach out to try and convince the other before taking the option from him. He didn’t think it would be as easy to dominate the mind of the great spirit as it had been for the other prisoners around them, he still didn’t know the limits of his skill without having had time to experiment with it, but he was willing to put everything he had to the task until the great spirit spoke up, sounding dejected.
“It wouldn’t matter. Whatever part I may have played, I don’t pick the worlds I’m joined to and I don’t have the power to take so many across the stars by myself, there’s nothing I can do.”
“But if you could, you would?” Ben pressed, finally feeling a bit of give against the ancient mind.
“But I can’t.”
“By yourself,” Ben clarified. “Lucky for you, I’m here in all of my glory, with the small issue that it's just going to hurt one of us a fair bit, namely me. But that’s fine, I’ll probably maybe survive so pick everyone up and let's get the hell out of here!”
He was leaving no leeway to argue, already embedding his mind into the others further, strengthening their connection and letting his desire to go home bleed through, the effects of hive mind making the great spirit feel it as his own as well, along with what would be acting as the light shining their way back.
Bind. The second the barrier broke down, Ben was able to feel the skill again in its full effect, pointing him not only to Thera but to his world as a whole, with the direction making it through the connection for the great spirit to follow as it finally began to move.
Ben and the ones he’d brought with him were engulfed in an instant, space itself warping to hold them before expending its mana, aided by the speed Ben could think to push its power to a whole other level as it warped around the grounds, taking in the trapped space spirits and going back from the rest of the prisoners, saving them from the jaws of the demons that had made it through his flurry of attacks before it prepared to leave the world.
That one too. Ben thought at it, feeling a questioning reaction coming from the spirit that still did as he asked, swooping to take just one more before it left the world as Ben pumped power into it, pulling it to himself first and passing it through his soul to fill the spirit as reality itself warped, the raw mana flooding a being with such a degree of space magic already making the act unparalleled as millions of points flooded into it, allowing for a previously unseen degree of power and as they traveled through the fabric of reality, Ben experienced it all through the great spirit’s senses.
It felt like becoming one with the universe as the concept of distance was changed to become something so much weaker, light years passing by in seconds to draw them ever closer to their target, breaking down how far away they were, even while Ben’s body broke down in response.
Even while he was pushing himself, the strain on his body and soul were both feeling like they were reaching a tipping point. Being connected to the space spirit was leaving blood to drip down his eyes and nose and he didn’t even want to guess what was going on in his soul with the millions of points of mana that had passed through it. It felt like it was going to burst under the weight of all of the mana and every point starting to feel like a razor blade scraping through him.
It got to a point where he wondered if it would be enough too. If all of the mana in his jacket would be able to compensate for the thousands of people they were trying to transport to safety as Ben reached out to connect to the other captives too, wanting to get a rough feeling of how much mana he might be able to take from them if it came to it and pausing after feeling their minds.
He hadn’t been able to feel it in the minds he’d dominated before, with them being too suppressed to think themselves, but with the many more that now surrounded him, either on the edge of sanity or on the deep end of madness, many just wanted to die and seemed like they fully intended to if they got the chance.
It wasn’t something he could fault, what they’d been through was enough that they couldn’t be blamed for wanting the release after so long, but it wasn’t something Ben wanted to accept either for that very reason. They were finally free, he didn’t want them to just die so soon after, making it another problem for him to deal with, and soon.
The space spirit felt a disturbance in the void, not an attack but instead a mass. A planet, directly in line with where they wanted to go that told him they were nearly home, only a few million points of mana left to spare in his jacket as they kept going, piercing the atmosphere and landing directly above the hospital he knew Thera would be, healing all she could.
He wanted to get the spirit to stop there. He wanted it so badly, but things had changed now that he’d seen into the minds of the others with him. He had to create an area where they wouldn’t be harmed or be able to harm themselves, so from there he directed the spirit, guiding him to the gate network and then out beyond to a different place, a different land and through various streets, leaving them at the large open yard on a palace grounds in one of the few spots in the world that he knew wouldn't be swarmed by demons, Pelenia’s home in Anailia, as he alone was released to act.
Not caring about the notifications ringing out in his ears, Ben grabbed tight the rest of the power coursing through him as an outrageous volume of mana beyond what he’d ever wielded before filled his soul and directed it, giving it form as he materialized in a way he’d never tried before, needing it to work and feeling the mana bending to his will as he created items and the enchantments on them in one go while a new structure of interlocking capsules came into being before them, towering nearly as high as the palace itself and covered in predominantly time enchantments as he screamed out to the spirit with him.
“Put every one of them into a different pod, NOW!”
Again the spirit listened, hearing the desperation in his voice and doing as he was asked with each of the prisoners trapped in a new cage, each of them ready to run wild or succumb to their injuries, only stopping as Ben slammed his hands down onto a plate in front of him, activating the massive swarm of enchantments all at once to bring the flow of time for those within to as close to a standstill as he could manage, collapsing to the ground the second it was done.
Everything hurt. His body, his mind, his soul. He couldn't move, nor could he breathe as he laid there as one question danced around his head.
Did I finally push myself too far?
He felt confident in giving the answer a yes as he briefly wished in his desperation that he’d had the thought to ask the space spirit to put him in a pod as well. He’d done what he’d wanted, he’d saved the rest of them, only at the cost of his main goal of saving himself.
He still had his failsafe hanging around his neck and activate it for the extra minutes it would buy him but at that point he didn’t even have the strength to try and ask for help, lacking the energy and air to get the words out, with the help that came in the end feeling more like a miracle than anything else as a pair of bright hands reach down to touch him, both Lux and Abrus having appeared with a speed that would have made him think that they’d teleported too, with the first doing everything she could to save him while the second stared at the spirit he hadn’t seen in so long, with no end of questions that wouldn’t be answered until Ben at least was in the shape to give them.