Alright, so, in a world of men and monsters, where magic is commonplace and can be learned by any if they can endure the training, there exists a group of people who have dedicated every ounce of their magic into, mostly, one area: to see into the future. Known colloquially as "Oracles," they are incredibly powerful, being able to see into the future with ease and their "visions" of the future are incredibly detailed, and very accurate. They can make “predictions” of events that will happen hundreds of miles away, so long as they “focus” their vision on a general area.
For example, If they look into the future of some bar in a random town, they might see a conversation between a group of people an hour from now, and will see exactly how the conversation went, what was said, and how it ended. They would also see about a dozen different events in that same small town, each with the same amount of clarity and detail as their first vision.
Their only weaknesses were that they could only have so many visions a day (let’s say in the dozens, with each one being a different event), and if two Oracles tried to see the future of the same event/place, both of their visions would “blackout” due to interference from both of their magic. Oracles were once known for being game-changers in the world, able to predict the movements of any one person, or even large organizations, with ease. They could learn an enemy’s plan, see who could be useful to them and who needed to be taken care of, learn the motivations of every person in their vision, and use that to their advantage. They were some of the scariest magic users in the world.
For a short while, anyway.
For you see, due to the abject threat they posed to everyone, a group of magic-users developed a perfect counterspell to them. In essence, the spell would be cast on a person and/or place, and if any Oracle tried to see the future of those places or people, it would seem to work as normal. They see the future of whatever people or places they happened to see in their visions, with the same amount of clarity and details as always. Except it wasn’t a real future they were seeing.
The counterspell works by showing an Oracle completely fake futures that are indistinguishable from the real futures. For example: say an Oracle uses her powers and sees a variety of futures. in Future A, an Oracle might see Bob fighting Dave, with Dave winning the fight after whipping out his magic Glock and shooting Bob in the face, and in Future B, they see their own home, and nothing happens to it, or them, at all, it’s just a normal day. However, once the events actually do happen, Bob is the one that wins the fight by nailing Dave in the head with a brick just before he could take out his gum and the Oracles Home was raided by their enemies and torched to the ground, and they’re killed in the flames. And this absolutely crippling counter spell could be cast on anything and anyone, and could be done by even the most incompetent of magic users.
(Edit: Additionally, the counterspell itself is what determines what the Oracle sees, able to create convincing visions without any need for creativity on the caster's part. And for further clarity, the counterspells are placed on a person/place/thing that isn't the Oracle, which makes all predictions from all Oracles about that particular thing false, to varying degrees.)
The counterspell was quickly spread to almost every corner of the globe, and the Oracles, once one of the most feared people in the world, are all but a laughing stock in the magic community. And one of my characters is a part of this fallen group of magic users, hellbent on restoring them to their former glory. The problem is, they need to first overcome the hurdle of that counterspell. They can’t really “break” the counterspell, as for one they have no idea if one is being used until what they saw in the future either does or doesn’t happen. And even if they know one has been placed, they can only “break” it if one someone goes in person to “wipe it” off whatever person or place the counter was put on.
Through study, my character has found that if they use their powers for short-term visions, as in events happening in the next few minutes, they're more accurate, if somewhat flawed. For example, they see themselves in a fight, Thug #1 throws a punch that hits them in the face and then Thug #2 sneaks up on them from behind and hits them with a wooden chair; when the event does happen, the Oracle uses what they saw to doge the punch from Thug #1, but when they turn around, expecting Thug #2 to attack from behind, instead he comes at the Oracle by jumping off a wooden chair and poised to stab them with a knife. If they try to see further than a few minutes, then their vision is completely “deceived” by the counterspells.
So how does an Oracle use their powers effectively in a world that’s learned to counter their abilities?