There was nothing pleasant about reaching into the mind of a dying beast, feeling the pain of its crushed body or its desperate struggle for life, but Ben pushed that away as well as he could to focus on what really mattered, touching the monster’s memories to learn its history, wanting to find whatever he could with whatever time it had left.

He could feel it wasn’t long so he threw himself in, seeing its most recent experiences and the feelings that came with it, so much dirt as it burrowed through the earth, the feeling of a call, an order, both making it want to keep the land clear while joining up with others, both keeping it in that area as it dug down ever deeper to the cavern below.

Fuck.

He was seeing hundreds of them in its memories, swarming the vast space as bodies climbed over one another to get in and out, along with the subtle force keeping them all in line just enough that they wouldn’t kill each other, even if the instinct was still there. How a species so filled with an innate bloodlust could have conquered the stars would always be a mystery to him but he ignored it and kept probing, wanting to find whatever it was that was keeping them all in line and coming up short.

Damn it, okay, if I can’t see that then maybe if I just keep going back farther…

He could feel the beast growing weaker with each moment as he went farther back, seeing its travels through the forest, its escape from those who hunted it until it found traces of its kind, working back farther till he got to it coming out of the gate it had come through, feeling it tearing through people in its rush until he was finally back far enough to go past that interstellar gate network.

Since he was limited to the memories of a creature that in that stage of its life was really no more than a wild animal, he hadn’t been able to take in the surroundings to the extent he would have liked. He could tell the gate was operating on different principles compared to the one his world had, but it was hard to tell beyond a series of fractals and splits passing by faster than the demon that had traveled through it could be bothered to process. It only cared about getting to its destination.

But let’s see what was before it for myself, shall we?

After watching the thing’s life in reverse order, he was finally about to see where it had come from and braced himself for the reveal, unable to deny his interest in the world these things called home, only to be unable to take in any of it the moment he got there for the feeling it contained. A violent, oppressive force that had weighed on the demon right until the creature had passed through the gate, making it hard to move or breathe as it struggled to fight the feeling enough to keep itself alive and functional.

A small part of Ben that wasn’t being crushed by the experience was able to pick up on the sheer number of others around it but not much else, nothing to denote any real level of civilization from the sapient members of its race, only a desolate landscape that was filled with the strange bodies of its kind.

He wanted to take in more, wanted to understand it on a deeper level, to push back even farther into its memories to see whatever he could but felt it slipping further and further away.

He wasn’t going to give up, wrapping his minds with the beast to make the connection stronger, wanting to see what that oppressive feeling could possibly be but came up short. As the last dregs of life left it the demon died, breaking the connection with it.

“Fuck!”

It was his first time feeling anything bigger than a bug die while he was connected to it, especially at such a deep level and the experience was violent. There was a sense of loss he’d never expected before that left him shivering, everything he had reeling from it as he tried to get himself in order, raising a hand to try and reassure the other two that he was fine despite how it may have looked before he moved to give them an update.

“Okay, so bad news, being connected to something that’s able to form complex thoughts when it dies sucks a lot more than I expected. Slightly worse news, it looks like there's a cave system beneath us with hundreds of demons currently chilling in it with these five coming up to act as a mix of guards and gatherers. I suggest we figure out what we're doing from here in the safety of the cart so we can make a quick escape if we have to.”

He was already in the process of dragging them as he was explaining but once the words were out, Verbum needed no extra motivation. Instead, Ben had to hang on to him to keep the guy from running too far ahead when there was a risk of danger all around them.

In only seconds they had hopped into it and were floating high above the treetops, each of them wanting as much distance as they could get for whatever safety it might mean. Both Ben and Thera clearly remembered the invasion, even if being near hundreds was technically on a much smaller scale, it was far from comforting.

“Okay, so the obvious question is how we’re handling this,” Ben sighed, debating if he should refill his mana by stealing from Thera now that she was within range or let it refill naturally for the sake of his growth. “I’m pretty sure the five we saw were being marginally controlled by something so there’s a non-zero chance that it’ll be noticed if they don’t come back, so do we leave to get help and risk them running off or handle this ourselves here and now?”

“Leave! We obviously leave!” Verbum yelled at him from the back. “How the hell would we even be supposed to fight hundreds of demons by ourselves? You both can come back with whatever group is sent out here and get yourselves killed with them if you want to so badly but don’t go dragging me into it too!”

Even if it was coming from an entirely personal position, he had a point. They were there to guard him, neither Ben nor Thera could reasonably justify putting him in danger by launching any sort of attack that might put him in harm's way, but on the other hand, doing nothing could be nothing more than delaying any sort of harm which Thera decided to make clear.

“This is one of the largest groups I’ve heard about since the wave,” She told them. “And if Ben’s right and something’s controlling them, do you really want to do nothing?”

“Yes!”

“Even if that could just be pushing any danger just farther down the line?” She sighed, beyond tired of Verbum’s attitude by this point. “What if the group just keeps growing larger? Hell, what if they start acting to actually hinder the war effort? The world is a big place, they could do a lot of severe damage before any armies could get to them. Hell, they could actively destroy entire towns and cities. Doing nothing when we know they’re here is beyond irresponsible and the sort of thing that would lose you any respect you might have for the skill you possess. So unless you want your life to get worse and to risk putting the entire planet in a worse place, I vote we actually do something.”

She was looking at Verbum with eyes cold enough to make him want to shrink away, even if he still put up his meager resistance.

“Hmph, that’s easy to say, but how the hell would you both even do anything? I don’t care if you’re both rank one, this is too much.”

“Verbum, my guy,” Ben started, putting on a confident grin. “You can’t have your skill doing all of your thinking for you. What we’d be doing is the easy bit so just watch. I’ll keep you safe while Thera destroys the forest.”