The future it wanted refused to arrive.

It was a problem the demon hadn’t faced since it had been nothing more than a beast. No matter what it did, no matter how it approached the issue or what branch it tried to zero in on, it couldn’t bring its desires to reality, with them consistently left just beyond any path it could see.

Its target, the resident of the world it had come to claim, had kept avoiding capture no matter what path the demon tried to herd it onto, even splitting probabilities once more in the few times it felt like it was close, continuing to gain some new way to escape each time as mortal limits were pushed, making it feel like reality itself was on that creature’s side.

If the demon wanted to take it for itself then it needed to be able to push past limits of its own but every time the thing it wanted created more futures, the demon was stalled in a way that couldn’t help but enrage it, even if it continued to tell itself it was nothing but a matter of time. If the creature was able to break the thread of itself the demon sent out while it was conscious then it just needed to wait for it to not be, either once it fell asleep or once it was beaten into submission, with the second feeling like the preferred option by the minute.

But no matter how much the demon ground its teeth in frustration, it couldn’t deny that things weren’t all negative. Its fightful prize may have been avoiding it until that point but it was going deeper into the heart of its territory, slowly surrounding itself with the waiting limbs, and just as important, it seemed to be weakening as well.

It was no longer breaking off as many limbs in the paths that the demon saw, meaning it didn’t need to move them away before it arrived and spoke of a potential growing limitation to how long it would be able to keep doing that in general. There was even a chance that it would only be a little while longer until it was too weak to save itself should it come down to it, letting the demon take it over without having to risk anything in the end.

For weakened it seemed, and not insignificantly so. After a previously failed surprise attack, it had one of its more powerful companions carry it forward afterwards while the other two vanished. It was a result that created questions of course but seeing as it hadn’t saved itself it couldn’t have been sending them to safety either.

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So then what had happened? Was it some waiting trap sitting outside of the range it could see? The demon’s instincts said that wasn’t so but it couldn’t understand what other option there could be, leaving it to accept that no matter how infuriating, it would just have to wait for them to appear on its paths again.

And as for its main target, as much as the demon had hoped to do things more safely, it was all coming to a head. As much as it enraged it, this was the exact challenge its god had wanted it to gain with its early arrival on the world and now that it was there and waiting it couldn’t back down. It needed to take the experience for all it was worth to grow beyond its limits into something more and to make that happen it began its work creating its own future.

With a perfect knowledge of exactly where its target was it could tell that it was walking near its general direction and a few of the paths it could take would bring it close but while the demon’s gentler attempts to herd it had been working so far compared to its failure to incapacitate it, it was quickly becoming time to lay on a heavier touch as it looked at the options it had and the paths that would create.

It still hadn’t sent out its most powerful limb, the demon was still trying to understand the depths of the abilities it held beyond its magic which had led it to holding that one back despite its strength and if used in tandem with its space mage, that created the potential for a potent combination of powers.

Soon, the one it held that possessed such a powerful lightning would be able to work itself free too. If it was brought and all three were used in tandem then perhaps that would be a chance.

Or perhaps not. Why was it still trying to play it so safe when its prey drew ever closer? Why was it holding back inferior resources when some small sacrifices could get the demon a new limb that would be able to create whatever futures it desired?

With those questions at the core of it, it looked again, not just bringing in those three and not just adding the other powerful force it had caught with them, as its target moved through the woods it reached out to everything it had in the surroundings and began to pull it all in, closing the space to trap it completely before beginning to move its true self as well.

Stretching its body to prepare for whatever might come, the demon felt a small jolt of excitement reach to its core. It was cautious, yes, but that wasn’t the true nature of its kind. It was meant to be a predator and it was going to act like it, so examining every path it could in the time it had, the demon sought to pick whichever ones would bring its desire into reality.

It would meet its target and should everything else fail it, the demon would break the thing’s body until it was nothing more than a crippled vessel for whatever mind it held, letting it use the creature's brain for its own purposes to take full advantage of as it went out further to kill the world around it.