Too far away for Ben to read any of their minds, it didn't matter as he looked at his girlfriend, floating above them. Even before they'd started dating he'd been told he was unusually good at understanding the subtleties of her expressions and features despite her golden eyes making it a challenge for even her family at times and seeing her there, it was undeniably the woman he loved. Not a construct or illusion, that was Thera in every way but the look on her face, distinctly out of place compared to everything else he was seeing that told him that even if she was right in front of him in every way that mattered, he wasn't facing her.

Therein lied the problem. If that really was Thera but she wasn't in control, her mind and soul dominated by the same attempt that had been made on himself, then that implied the thing that had her also had access to her insane pool of mana, leaving it ready to be used against them.

That also meant the others around her were no longer in control of themselves either but that was basically ignorable in comparison. As strong as they were, Ben was sure he could have either handled and subdued or at the very least escaped from the rest of them if it came down to it but she was different. If it meant a fight then he’d be putting his life on the line and one of them was going to die, an unacceptable result that led to a different choice.

With time at a standstill, he wove his thoughts deeper into the connection he was already keeping up among the others and giving both an order and a desire to follow it before they even understood what was happening.

Run.

He already had their feet moving for them, not choosing forward or back but off to the left since the path seemed more clear before they could understand they hadn’t moved through their own will, with that changing at the first sign of reaction from Thera and her group.

They could hear the pounding of feet behind them and through the eyes of his swarm of bugs, he could see an arrow fired by Galda aimed for him in particular that left him stuck deciding if he should take the hit.

It was aimed at his legs and he’d designed his pants to be better than any armour, Galda shouldn’t have had the strength or quality of weapon to break through them to bring him to the ground but the fact that something was controlling her created an unknown variable as to how much damage he might actually receive. There had been too many times in the past he’d encountered attacks that had bypassed his designs and he couldn’t judge through what little mana sense the insects he’d bound to him possessed when they were his eyes on the coming blow.

In the end, he tried to split the difference. Dodging faster than an arrow could fly would put undue strain on his body and letting it be a clean hit would have been too much risk to one of the limbs currently carrying him so instead he gently shifted his weight, not wanting the archer to hit her mark and changing it to a glancing blow.

He was prepared to feel it cut through his flesh and the sting that would follow, an undeniably unpleasant attack but one he could deal with, but he never got it. The arrow hit and he felt a dull thud but his pants did their job and it slid past to sink into the dirt, that attack done while he waited for something far worse.

Thera still hadn’t done anything. He was expecting some burst of earth magic that wasn’t coming and it was keeping him on edge as he tried to imagine any way he could possibly deal with whatever attacks she would throw, powerlessly left in waiting for it to come.

What are the odds she saw my face and the power of love broke her free from her mind control? That could happen, right?

He didn’t believe it for a second no matter how much he wanted to and soon enough his pessimism was proven true in a way he was less prepared for.

While Thera was half earth spirit and had been focusing on her life magic recently, it wasn’t like that was all she had after all and immediately walls of mana went up, splitting their group to divide them and leaving six of the chimeras to end up outside of his range, herding them just slightly too far away as they ran, breaking their connection to him and creating room for her next attack as she held forth her staff and used a power that came more naturally than any other, casting out he charm to bring them under her thrall.

It affected the ones with him as well but at that point he took them over in full, becoming each of his remaining seven party members as he ran with all he had, using one of his chimeric bodies to pick up Azeezol as they rushed away since he could feel her body reaching its limits in a way the others weren’t, just in time for the next attack.

This time the expected earth magic came into play as Ben strained his minds, feeling the potential in each body he held as the ground beneath their feet shot up to try and ensnare them, forcing him to contort himself and all he occupied to avoid the various strikes while he shot out his own magic where he could to break up some of the incoming attacks, watching as they crumbled when his precision met overwhelming power in a way that let him feel just a bit of hope they’d have a chance to get away until it was near instantly dashed by the sight of a familiar face.

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Pato arrived, appearing in an empty space in front of them and Ben had no doubt in his mind that despite how little he knew the other, he’d been conquered too. There was some subtly in the movement that betrayed the fact that the one using it didn’t know how to handle the body they held and he was proven right as the man reached out to cast his magic in front of them, forcing Ben to use every bit of his mana sense to try and judge the scope of the forming attack before he dodged forward, trying to break the distance between them.

Four of the remaining chimeras vanished, whether they were even alive he couldn’t say and left only himself, Azeezol and two others as Ben tried his best to improve their odds by getting Pato into his range, only to see the man disappear mere feet from him being close enough to connect and forcing them to continue to run, even as questions filled his mind.

Why did whatever held Pato force him to retreat? He understood that something was using them and likely had access to their minds and memories to some extent as a result but he hadn’t told the other summoned about that power he held.

So did it come from Thera’s memories? Had the demon or demons already read what she knew so thoroughly and prepared for him as a result? Given the way they’d used her magic, it seemed unlikely. As difficult as it had already been to escape from, the way it was cast spoke of someone who was still trying to figure out how to apply it, doing simple things with the power it now held.

But then, just because I can think of a million ways to trap us with her power doesn’t mean whatever has her can or that even she can. She knows a lot of spells at this point but in general, she’s pretty straightforward with how she uses her options, maybe those attacks were a result of that? But even then, I think they could have done something more effective so what does that mean?

…It means I don’t have enough fucking information. Okay, step one, get away, step two, figure everything else out, step three, save her and hopefully everyone else and maybe try to kill the demons doing this too. Alright, plan formed. Myriad, tell me you’re still watching as I run for my life.

Okay cool, then you’ve seen things have turned cataclysmically bad. I’m officially upping the threat level from yellow to red so do you have any advice on how to get out of this?

How surrounded are we talking?

I’m sorry, what? I don’t see any. Hell, I haven’t accidentally connected to any either.

Strange how?

What?

As unlikely as it was, Ben could imagine that they’d somehow come across a group of demons who were all unusually proficient in time magic, even if there were a few major issues with that assumption. It would be unlikely but possible. Thera though didn’t remotely have the affinity for that one. With only a single point of potential to it, it was by all accounts a magic she would never be able to wield no matter what she did, meaning that if she was getting any benefits from it it had to be through the one controlling her.

But that doesn’t make sense either. He thought to himself as he continued to dodge and try to escape all oncoming attacks without losing even more of his group. Prophecy is literally the least useful aspect of time magic in day-to-day life. Why would everything be using it on such a large scale?

From all of his reading, Ben was an expert on the subject and knew that simply wasn’t a way the magic was generally used for any number of good reasons. The mana cost for one, the strain for another, and then also just the sheer number of potential futures that existed. Everyone made choices every day, from the wisest in the world to the humblest of insects, and all of that would knit together into a dense tapestry of potential. There was a reason that there were so few groups on the planet who’d dedicated themselves to it and why of those, they tended to focus on identifying broad things like storms and disasters or the results of harvest seasons.

It was such a difficult and annoying branch of the magic to try and take advantage of that even the world’s time gods, beings who by all accounts were the greatest masters of the power, had given a range of multiple years when using their skill to try and predict when the invasion was going to begin. The farther out one looked and the more specific the thing one looked for, the harder it was to find and the greater the cost would be.

That may have made it sound like it would be easier to do on the short term like what he was currently going through but that was wrong too. If he had a hundred choices in front of him then he had a hundred potential futures to take advantage of and anyone looking at all of them during a fight needed to process not only which one he’d actually choose but also keep track of what he was doing as it examined those choices. It was practically a recipe for leaving oneself open to attack.

Of course, in general, some futures are just more likely than others. Is that how the demons have been hiding then? They’ve been following the futures that let them just casually avoid us and every future where I get close enough to connect to one they get found so they move before that can happen? Okay, this is bad but now that I know it’s not insurmountable. Myriad, give me a rundown of all of the demons in my surrounding area as fast as possible.

Me finding out how they’re tracking us was their worst bit of luck they could have had. I’m going to see how many futures they can handle.