Journey of the Mind

You stand outside the mental respresentation of Jen and Allie's apartment. You stroke you chin as you stand there and think. There was something bothering you in the back of your mind, but you had trouble bringing it to the forefront. "As much as I'm glad and hate to say it, given the amount of detruction we're not seeing here, I can make two guesses as to who didn't cause this."

"You and Singularity," Annabeth guessed. "Still, whoever- whatever- caused all this, had to be powerful."

"Is this how your visions usually are?" you inquire.

"No, usually they are images- feelings. This is the clearest I've ever experienced one, and I've never been able to interact with one," Annabeth explains. "It's like we're back on the Astral Plane, only we're in my mind, not yours."

You turn to her speculatively. "How much control do you have here?"

She closed her eyes, obviously trying to concentrat on something. Her face was scrunched up cutely and you couldn't help but marvel at how adorable she could be. She gave up with a sigh. "As much as I would have if this were real."

You frown in thought. "If we're in your mind and not mine, we're still, on some level, on the Astral Plane. Only, we're not immersed in it like before, we're on the outer fringes."

"So what does that mean for us?" Annabeth asks.

"It means I have to be extra careful when exerting my will here," you inform her. "This place is more malleable than reality, but much, much more rigid than the Astral Plane is. Like we're in some sort of between world. I don't really know because my kind don't come out this far. We can't come out this far. It's technically impossible."

Annabeth raises an eyebrow at you. "Technically impossible?"

"I have a working theory, but it's all guess work. The short answer to every question we could possibly have is our psychic link," you tell her. "Because our abilities are on the opposite ends of our powerbase, we're both capable of being more than we theoretically should be able to be. It may even explain why I'm mostly immune to second sight abilities."

"Mostly? More like completely," Annabeth argues.

"No... I'm not..." you say as you keep thinking on it- more and more things keep falling into place. "Not completely. Your powers still work around me. You see me in your visions."

"I found a work around," Annabeth counters. "The visions I do see you in, aren't about you."

"Who's future are they?" you ask, already suspecting the answer. "You've read multiple people's possible futures, even your own. When looking into other's futures that didn't involve you, how many of your visions was I in?"

Annabeth blinks at you in shock as she thinks it over.

"You told your roommate, 'without Hawkins, there is not Tyson'. What if the reverse is true?" you speculate.

"Ashlynn could feel my power, both before and after what we went through," Annabeth countered. "She even made a point to tell me that my powers had changed, that they felt different to her."

"Different how?"

"She couldn't explain it... She said that the feeling she got from me were conflicting, like I was somehow more and less than I was before," Annabeth informed you.

"That's because she couldn't see all of you," you theorize. "If I'm right, on a purely psychic level, we're one being. Anyone trying to look at me won't find me because they should be looking at you, or rather, at us- both of us combined."

Annabeth frowned. "I can see how that would explain you being psychicly invisible, but not how I am still able to be seen."

"Because in order to see, you have to seen," you elaborate. "You and others like you sit out at the edge of two worlds, situated in the void between them. You're apart of both worlds, yet separated from them. Belonging to both, yet belonging to neither. The only ones who would truly understand that feeling are others like you who possess a form of second sight. It would mean that all clairvoyants, like yourself, are somehow connected to each other. Why you all are more loyal to each other than your causes- except in rare exceptions like ours, where our bond is stronger and more intimate than the one you share with them. Hell, it even fits with your Prophetess' theory, making her second scenario both more and less likely. Especially if you consider that neither of her scenarios are mutually exclusive."

"That would also mean that we're working under a time limit," Annabeth points out in realization. "It means we have a betrayer, willing or not, in our midst that could be somehow corrupting the Diviner's Conclave. Depending on how fast the corruption spreads, we may somehow end up destroying it."

"And our connection goes both ways," you add. "You shield me from second sight, but I make you incorruptable, as our bond to each other is stronger than yours to them. They'd have to look for and corrupt the both of us simultaneously, and even then, I'm not sure whoever is behind all of this could manage it anyway."

"Why not?" Annabeth asks. "It sounds simple enough to me."

"That's just it though, nothing about the mind is simple," you explain. "And we're in unexplored territory. It would take a duo like us to match us and I doubt there is another pair even remotely similar or else we wouldn't be needed."

"So what do you suggest?" Annabeth inquires.

"We investigate this... Vision, seems like an understatement at this point," you reply. "We investigate this place. This is obviously important in some way. Your mind subconsciously called out to mine to help you make sense of everything and my mind has stablilized the vision to the point that it's practically a subdimension of it's own. If we can figure out what happened to make this version of New Liberty look like this, maybe we can prevent our New Liberty from meeting the same fate."

"But how? New Liberty is a small city, but cities aren't exactly small," Annabeth responds pessimistically.

"That's were I come in," you say as you begin floating effortelessly. "Guide us where we need to go and I can get us there. As much as this looks and feels real, it's not. Our powers should be easier to use here since neither one of us are constrained by the limits of our physical bodies."

Annabeth looks at you shrewdly. "What's the downside?"

You sigh. "As I pointed out earlier. This place is more fluid than the real world, but more rigid than the Astral Plane. If I push things too far, best case scenario, we die."

"Best case!?"

"So you're going to need to watch me," you push on. "Make sure I don't try to do too much. If my will starts to overpower reality as this realm knows it, anything and everything that exists in this here and now could be absorbed into me, including you, and I have no idea how that could affect either of us or others."

"Others?" Annabeth asked as she simultaneously paled at the notion that anything that went wrong with what they were doing could have consequences beyond just the two of them.

"Do you really want to know?"

"N-Not really..."