The connection broken with the touch of a mind, the demon jerked from where it sat in surprise. It had already known it wouldn’t work but it hadn’t realized the feeling that came with it. A feeling of being seen, exposed in a way it had never been before and it looked at all of the paths the act had created while it processed what had happened.
Something had broken its link. It had been ages since such a thing had happened but never in such a way before and thinking about it made it feel like its own futures had diverged. Should it run, should it kill that final group and be content with the power it had already claimed or should it face them down to overcome whatever it was it had just touched in an attempt to win in the end?
Its desire was to live, same as all things, and while it valued safety to an extent perhaps abnormal for its kind, it also desired power and knew it was its god’s desire it achieved it. What it was facing with that group was a challenge but perhaps one that would let it grow into something more than it currently was, or failing that, at least earn it a new limb that could put it on that path to power.
So no, it wouldn’t run and it wouldn’t kill them, not yet. Instead, it continued to watch from a distance as that group moved, with a realization coming to it as they did. Those creatures were coming for its newest limbs.
Considering they’d originally been part of the same group perhaps it wasn’t surprising they had some way to find them through the dense woods but as it looked at the paths it might take itself, it decided to wait and see, letting the two groups meet to try and close them in.
A task that was still far harder than it had expected. The limbs it held were some of the most powerful it had ever gained, with one possessing what felt like a near-limitless supply of mana. Given time to master that power, the demon felt like it would be able to conquer that world by itself but the key was that it needed time. There was only so much it would be able to do with that power by the time the final group appeared and with no path it could see leading to their immediate capture, all it could do was follow the ones that looked the most likely to eventually lead to success.
Which began with trying to hobble the one the demon thought was creating so many futures, using one of his new limbs to fire an arrow, only for it to nearly become sick with the amount of potential created as its target reacted to that single shot.
It hadn’t been that many when it had first looked ahead, only split between the most likely probabilities, but when the actual shot had been fired, that had changed. It knew before it attacked that it was never going to succeed but the second that arrow was released the demon felt the future around it fracture into a thousand more pieces, each of them subtle variations of just where its target intended to take the hit or how to dodge away with each of them leading to different reactions that would carry forth, a tangled bush of probability that collapsed once the attack hit and casually slid past into the ground, leaving it to reel.
The magic it used to see the world had its limits but one of the bigger ones was paths splitting unexpectedly. It wasn’t something it had to deal with often and when it did it was still typically in a manageable range of a handful of new potentials at most but what it had just gone through was far beyond that. It was looking at a target that could potentially radically alter its own future.
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It was knowledge that led to the next attempt of splitting the final group, one it could already see a successful path for as it brought up walls between them to divide them up as they fled, confirming once more that the ones around it were less valuable, even if the demon still took them for itself once they were out of whatever range the strange fleshy creature needed to protect them. Even if it could only see so far, it knew that having them would create more options for it when they each held so much power and it refused to lose out on that bit of potential either, even if they weren’t the prize.
With that first success, it carried on its attacks with its new limb, seeing all of them fail before they went off but not despairing. All of it was to herd the group it wanted and also gave the demon practice with using those magics. Some of its other limbs had held them in the past but not with the level of skill or power its newest one possessed and in that practice one of its other new options arrived, wielding its space magic while the demon continued to look for a better path, only managing to snag a few more from the group without getting its true target and feeling its frustration growing.
Long had it been since it struggled so much to get something it desired and it was feeling its efforts fail the longer things went on, even as it told itself that it was not but a matter of time. A little longer, just beyond the paths it could see laid its victory, with that belief shaking too soon after as potential paths split once more.
Not like the last time though. No, hundreds of new options would have been negligible in comparison as hundreds of thousands of paths were made with each one splitting just as much, more than a few weaving back into each other but creating an overwhelming volume for it to sort through as it tried to measure probabilities and coming up lacking.
A path was picked and even more sprouted, another was picked and more went on as potential was forged and collapsed repeatedly in a way that was too much to keep up with until it no longer had to.
An attack shot from some of the most unlikely paths, its limbs were injured and targets lost as they got away.
Hours later and it was still reeling from the loss, torn between the potential limbs it had lost the chance to get with all of the power it could have claimed from them against the danger such a thing was to it.
It couldn’t imagine anything beyond a god being able to create so many paths which made the demon want to take the creature for its own all of the more but it knew that trying would carry risks far beyond what it would normally want to take in exchange for those rewards.
But wouldn’t the risk be worth it? It had been sent to grow, that was the desire of its great god as well and even if it somehow failed to dominate the other, it would most certainly be the sort of challenge it needed to break beyond its wall to greater heights.
An opportunity that seemed lost to it as well at first, vanished in the endless woods and from the sight of any of its paths as it sat until one distant limb found something. Catching sight of them, that single one was outnumbered and captured, whatever it went through unknown to it but left the group it was hunting to turn from where they were and focus in on its exact direction.
A shudder went through it and it clipped away that path, killing the limb they would have found to make sure that would never come to pass and letting violent glee course through it.
Whatever they had done, they wouldn’t be finding it so easily now but the demon knew where they’d be, it just had to go out and get them.