Continuing to run but trying to keep it as quiet as he could, Ben used the time to think about what he knew and what it implied.
There were demons who could take over others and those same demons were time magic users, both of those facts seemed true with the only matter being how many there were who held those skills, especially considering that Helori believed awakened skills were at use in the mix.
Given what he knew of how the invasion took place there shouldn’t have been any awakened skill holders who’d come through the last gate but given there were at least a hundred demons experiencing the benefits of prophecy then that meant it couldn’t just be one or two of them, so what did that imply happened?
Did a group of awakened break their self-imposed rules and come through or did more than a few just so happen to awaken the same skills in the weeks they’d been there?
Or maybe it’s just the particular skills that have been awakened? I’ve been assuming that soul magic is the bit that's being used to take it over but it is in essence something acting the same way as hive mind.
...Okay, better than hive mind since it doesn’t have the same limitations of only being available within the range I can connect to others. Ugh stupid demons and their decent affinities for life and death, they could absolutely have some other soul-based skill helping them that awakened instead.
And who’s to say it has to be a group of awakened pulling this off? If whichever one managed to awaken whatever weird soul skill this is and found another that awakened their time magic then maybe the first got control of the latter and has been able to apply their effects to everything in the group of demons it gathered? It’s a working theory at least but I’m going to need to try and confirm it somehow. But later. First thing first, let’s get a little farther away.
Distance was the most important thing to get and he wanted it in spades, running as fast as he could while also observing the chimeras’ performance on a deeper level now that he was using their bodies as his own.
With his awakened attributes, the only thing they beat him on was speed but overall their performance was excellent, the exact sort of thing that would be powerful in a fight, even if his curiosity was pulling him away from that and in a different direction.
Since coming back, there hadn’t been much opportunity to experiment with hive mind. It was a skill that was essentially illegal for him to use in all but the lightest touches after all, with the only reason he was still keeping it up being that the other three would still be under the lingering effects of Thera’s charm if he didn’t, but it was the way Thera had been taken over that tempted him to try something. Could he force them to cast spells?
He had control of their minds and bodies but did that mean he also had power over their souls? With how much danger they were in it was worth asking for the help it could bring and he looked at the skills each held before making any attempt.
While Azeezol had her corpse song she held an affinitied magic too in the form of light magic, likely not bothering to mention it during their initial meeting because it was only at the first level, and the two chimeras had a few options between them as well.
He’d rather have cooked but didn’t want to draw any more attention to them that a fire could have brought so they made their way through the dried goods and water he had as they listened to the full story of what happened, all chewing stopping by the end.
“You took us over the same way the demons did?” Joois asked, looking horrified while Ben shrugged.
“It was that or abandon you since the moment you were charmed you became nothing but a liability. Of course, while I’d like to think that being taken over by myself is a bit better than having it done by a demon, if you’re not happy with it you’re free to go to one of them instead.”
“Ignore him,” Queemit said. “Thank you for saving us and so what now?”
“Now we’re trapped alone so deep in the woods that I don’t know how many days or weeks it would take to get out without a space mage to use and frankly, I wouldn’t even try without having Thera with me so here’s what’s going to happen. Everyone get some rest, I’ll wake you all in a couple hours. From there, we’re finding ourselves a demon to extract as much information from as possible. Once we have that then we’ll evaluate and decide what to do again from there.”
“And how are we finding a demon if they can predict where we’re going to be?” Azeezol asked. “That sounds like a good way to end up in a trap.”
“There’s no way they can look too far into the future,” Ben told them. “It has to be at a scale of minutes at most, otherwise the branching potential paths would get too thick and complex for anything to figure out on such a minute level. With that being the case we have options and I have my eyes in the sky looking for the best one we can take so for now, don’t worry and get what rest you can. There isn’t going to be time for much of that until this is done.”
Once the others had slept for a while as he kept guard, he woke them up and started moving, following the directions Myriad and Helori had given them.
He’d asked the gods to find as distant a demon they could, one separated from the rest of the group that they’d have at least a few minutes to get to it before it could go out and get some help in the hopes they’d be able to trap it so Ben could read its mind and memories for all that was worth, all to find whatever clue he could get as to the ones who were pulling the strings as they made their way over.
This time they were the hunters, keeping stealthy as they approached their target as the gods watched its every movement, the stray demon that was searching the perimeter completely unaware of their presence still until its future solidified and it saw one where it was chased and trapped, unable to escape.
Its hunters were too powerful and help was too far away as the one that controlled it made the only choice it could, not knowing the gods of the world were watching as it happened.
Myriad spoke, sounding defeated.