The man’s mental defenses were laughably weak; Nightmare Moon battered them down in a handful of milliseconds.
But her quest for information stopped before it had even begun.
Something else had already been using mental magic on this man. Tendrils of influence and suggestion threaded throughout his psyche; there was no overt control, no thralldom, but this man had long ago lost most of his free will. They pulsed with an energy that was neither normal magic nor her own.
She did not recognize the magic, but she felt her host scrutinizing it.
So, someone had likely caused this man’s betrayal and behavior—an interesting note. He was less than a pawn—a cat’s paw with no choices of his own. Which meant that her job wasn’t done, and she couldn’t consider the contract fulfilled.
How bothersome.
Angrily, she returned to her search, tearing through the man’s mind viciously.
She was rewarded with a small nugget: the words ‘Project Proteus,’ and an image of a large, strange-looking cargo ship.
But as she grasped the words and tore them away, the magic, against everything that governed magic, noticed.
A wave of force beat at her own mind, trying to force entry, and nearly succeeded, tearing through her millennia of discipline and focus as if it was wet paper, and brushing aside her (and her host’s) magical wards like flies.
Only barely did she manage to stop the intrusion, but in the process, she had lost her foothold on the man’s memories.
When the attack receded, the man’s mind was gone. It was not wiped empty, and he was not dead—rather, her assailant had torn his memories and instincts into shreds. Pieces of his life mixed and melded, and tore and broke in a never-ending scene of utter chaos and destruction.
This man, at his luckiest, would never do anything more than drool and spout gibberish the rest of his life. He was now worthless, and it was a waste of effort to kill him now that he posed no threat or opportunity.
Not when there was something else out there that matched her powers.
She released his mind with distaste and he fell to the floor. “Something has interfered,” she declared to the huddled humans, just as more began to file out of the superstructure. “But it has removed itself.”
“I’m afraid you’re wrong on that point,” a voice chuckled, and she could feel her host’s mental gasp, along with a feeling of disbelief.
She spun, only to see the man was, impossibly, standing and speaking. “I’m very much here, you know. Color me impressed—I haven’t seen one of your kind here in millennia! Tell me, how did you ever get loose and infiltrate here so easily? I’m always looking for tips.”
That slip of the tongue made her wary as she prepared her next assault. Any beings with lifespans similar to hers were not to be trifled with.
She did not miss the way one of the humans behind her recognized the voice.
“I did not ‘get loose,’ interferer,” she smirked. “I was invited.”
The man took a step back. “Whoops!” he said, a trace of nervousness entering his voice.
“Which means I have my full power at my disposal, fool!” she trumpeted, throwing everything she had in a mental assault, expecting to hit a wall and for a quick siege to take place.
Instead, she hit a wave. It was unlike any mental defense she’d ever envisioned—instead of purpose, emotion, and focus forming the base and instead of a figurative wall or fortress surrounding this being's mind, there simply wasn’t anything for her spells to latch onto. A mass of incredibly quickly shifting thoughts and concepts flicked away her spells, taking with them only a drop instead of the chunks which should have gone missing from a normal defense.
Her attack would have broken the mind of any creature she had heretofore met several times over.
It just amused this one, she saw, and she shrunk back, desperately preparing one of her fallback spells.
“How far the mighty have fallen,” he sighed. “Now, before we get down to the whole epic-mental-duel business, let me just say something. Charlie, you never called.” He bared his teeth. “You naughty boy. Now I have to influence things directly, and I hate doing things myself.”
Then he attacked, and her reinforced defenses shattered before him.
It slowed almost to a stop, however, as she cast her spell.
This was not a time-stopping or even a time-slowing spell—she couldn’t afford to expend that much energy; she would be even more helpless than she was now.
No, this simply sped up her mind for a few seconds, in what appeared to be about forty minutes. Gave her some time to think and strategize against this vastly superior foe.
Unfortunately, half a subjective hour of thinking later, she’d only come up with one, highly unpalatable, suggestion to beat back the unstoppable flood of magic about to destroy her mind just like it had the first’s. This creature's magic was too unfamiliar and too powerful to beat back; if she tried, it would only delay the inevitable defeat. Slightly.
Mentally, she knocked on her former prison. “I have a proposition.”
Five subjective minutes left.