Day 17 (They Who Envision)

(( CHAPTER 9: THEY WHO ENVISION ))

“I don't know about you,” Jacob said, glancing her way. “But I'm about to pass out.”

She shrugged. It'd been a long time since her last sleep, and while she should be feeling as exhausted as Jacob was, in truth she just felt hyper. The rest in the car had been enough for her, she guessed. Or she'd simply fall asleep on her feet at some point. Even if that were to happen, though, she wasn't going to be able to stave it off now by trying to sleep when she couldn't. “I'll be okay. Too much is happening for me to sleep.”

He nodded his understanding. “I'll be in the infirmary.”

Jacob walked away before Alyssa could ask him why he was planning to sleep there. It wasn't important. Far more engaging to her mind, at the moment, was the way Savant kept staring at her studiously when he thought she wasn't looking.

She turned to him, finding him feigning deep concentration on his writing. She stepped over to his table, pulled up a chair which he'd apparently brought from the library along with nearly everything else, and sat down at it. “Can I help you with something?”

Savant looked guiltily at her and turned the book up-side down so she could see what he'd been doing. Contrary to her initial impression he hadn't been writing – he'd been drawing. A likeness of her in the same sort of eerie, almost photo-realistic detail that marked Savant's art style was driven on the page. Underneath it was her name.

Alyssa raised her eyebrows. “I've seen that book of yours before.” she said. “Why are you drawing me in it?”

He turned it back toward himself, glancing down at it and then up at her face. His pencil moved to make some sort of minor change. She hadn't seen any faults with the picture, but evidently Savant was – among other things – a perfectionist. “You're one of the Gifted, and we're important in this struggle.”

He started writing frantically. Alyssa leaned forward to try to read some of it but suddenly felt a little dizzy, and sat back down. The thought that she was more tired than she'd initially believed crossed her mind.

“I've remembered prophecy.” he commented abstractly. “I don't mean that I've remembered a specific one, I mean that I remember how to do it. I got nervous waiting for everyone to come back so I decided to move some of the things I was studying to this room, so I could catch everyone. And when I was moving the table, one of the books fell off.”

Alyssa stifled a question as to why he'd moved the table with the unwieldy pile of books on top of it instead of moving the books first. Savant typically had some sort of incredibly bizarre rationale that wouldn't make sense anyway, and she didn't want to know what it was this time.

“It was a book I'd written for myself – I do that sometimes. This book that I'm writing in now had some notes I'd taken on prophecy.” At this, he finally stopped his frantic writing and looked up at her. “This kind of thing's happened before, you know that, right? Jacob's told you about other storms and such, but that's not what I mean. I mean this exact thing: The Gifted and the Council fading and the Unknown and the Unknowable coming to power. At least, at the time I wrote the book, I'd apparently prophesied that it was going to happen. I did some talking to the Council and while not even Yael is old enough to remember whether or not it actually had, she had remembered conversations with me in which I seemed to think I had.”

Alyssa smiled weakly. Savant usually sounded this way, especially when he was talking about something he'd done long ego enough that he'd forgotten. It made for interesting, if not enlightening, conversation.

“My point is,” he continued, as though realizing how difficult it was for him to get points across, “that life as we know it seems to go in cycles. There's order, which is us, and there's chaos, which is them. It averages out to a balance, I'm guessing, but at any one time, one is prominent over the other. If I'm right, it's happening again, though of course we can stop it.”

“We?” she asked. “Glad to know we have a chance.”

Savant nodded eagerly and opened a page toward the middle of the book. He cleared his throat and read:

“And it will come a time, but a moment, where Chaos and Order are balanced, and Chaos strives to overthrow. It is then, that They Who Envision may make a choice. Change will come upon them rapidly, and they may either destroy the world, or immortalize it.”

He smiled at her, seemingly happy that he'd kept her attention throughout his reading, which was somewhat of an oddity as he tended to go on. “I'm guessing that whoever They Who Envision are, and I'm not even sure about that translation, will be able to save the world – a win for Order – or doom it, which is naturally what Chaos is trying for. Then that side will win, and it'll start over again.”

“Translation? I thought you said you'd written this.” Alyssa wasn't sure whether or not she was going to regret asking.

Savant looked somewhat sheepish. “Judging from my earlier handwriting, this was written a very very long time ago. I didn't write it in a language anyone speaks today. So far as I can tell, nobody even knows what it is. I might have even made it up, to keep it safe from everyone else. But I'm pretty sure about it – They Who Envision, or maybe He or She that Envisions – the language didn't seem to be big on plurals. There were a few references that these people will be the eldest, so I'm guessing it essentially means people like us.”

She smiled at him. “I'm hoping that translation of yours is right. We could use a break like that.”

He returned her smile far more cheerfully than he felt. “I'm almost certain it is. I'm writing the rest of it now.” he turned back to his book, and began scribbling again.

Alyssa turned away and started walking down the hall, not sure where she was going. The good feeling she'd got by talking to Savant was slowly departing again as reality set in. Savant was an optimist, she'd long learned. He knew more than any of them, and his books had even more information in them; all this knowledge was of bad things, and yet he continued to see the bright side of everything. Alyssa had, beforehand, usually had a similar view if not quite so self-deluded as Savant. The events of the day before had undone that, though. If even the council couldn't hold against the Army of the Unknowable, what chance did the world have?

She entered the infirmary, perhaps to lie down, but as she stepped through the door, she stopped.

The infirmary was relatively small, and at the moment only had one patient. Chad was broken, she could see it from where she stood. He was barely visible underneath the many layers of gauze he was wrapped in. A tube in his mouth was attached to a machine which, judging from the noises it was making, was breathing for him. The one eye which wasn't covered up by bandages was staring at the ceiling, unseeing.

Standing next to Chad was Jacob. His hands were on the railings of the hospital bed, and they were clenched. Standing across from Alyssa, in the doorway at the opposite end of the infirmary, was Richard.

If the councilman noticed her, he made no sign of it. Instead, he walked quickly over to Chad's bed and grabbed hold of the railing on the side. He faced Jacob. “Go ahead and say it.”

Silence hung in the air. Alyssa wasn't sure she should be watching, but given Jacob's feelings toward Richard she wanted to be there to stop anything from happening if the former should get violent.

“Say what?” Jacob said, his voice as cold and even as Alyssa had ever heard it.

Richard's hands clenched around the metal railing, and his jaw tightened. Finally, he let go of the bed and threw his hands up in exasperation. “That is was my fault! My fault Hel died, my fault Chad's next, and my fault that we couldn't stop the storm before it took the town.” His brow was furrowed and he stared angrily at Jacob. No – not angrily, furiously. “Say what's been on your mind all these years, dammit! I shouldn't be on the council, it should be Savant or you or hell, anyone other than me. If you'd been there you would have somehow pulled Chad's ass out of the fire, just like you must have for Alyssa. You would have shut down the storm, just like you did the one that wasn't even supposed to happen. I should be the one lying in that bed, not Chad. Say it!”

Alyssa found herself torn. She'd thought Jacob would be the one flinging his hands in desperation; not that she'd ever seen him do so. At the very least, Jacob should have been the emotional one. She didn't know Richard well, but he'd always seemed every bit as calm and collected as Jacob himself. To see him this way was more than frightening – it gave new power to her earlier worries that the council was falling apart.

Jacob let go of the railing, and when Alyssa heard him speak, it was with a tinge of sadness. “I did not save Alyssa. The situation was the reverse of what you think – she saved me. If I had been with Chad instead of you, I would be dead now, as would Chad and likely Yael. I am no asset, Richard. I failed them every bit as much as you did. I failed her most of all.”

Richard blinked. “What?”

Jacob seemed to meet his gaze then, though Alyssa couldn't see it from her vantage. “I know you haven't been waiting for me to say that. Instead, you thought all this time that I blamed you, and all this time I believed you blamed me. We were backwards, but we were blaming the right people. I blame myself, and no other.”

Richard nodded. “As do I.”

Jacob reached out and put his hand on the councilman's shoulder. “You belong on the council. You have more experience, you are faster and more gifted with the sight. Your experience on the road gets anyone where they need to go faster than I could. Savant's insane, I'm far too worried about minute details, and anyone else would lack your experience if they were to try to replace you.”

Richard blinked again. “God.... Jacob, I'm so sorry. All this time....” He shook his head. “I never said anything to you because I thought you hated me, blamed me for Hel's death. I kept everything professional, hoped one day you and I would see eye to eye.”

“I think we do.” Jacob opined.

“Alyssa!” Savant's yell echoed down the hallway she'd followed to get to the infirmary, and the sound of rapid footfalls came after. Jacob turned to face her and nodded in welcome as though she hadn't been witness to anything. “I believe our friend is coming to tell us that the council wants us back. I apologize for the delay.”

Richard blinked a few times. “You're right, sounds like Savant's got done briefing them.” He glanced over toward Alyssa. “I know he's a friend of yours, Alyssa, but I can't stand to listen to him talk more than a few minutes at a time, he makes my head hurt after a while.”

Savant caught up to her, out of breath. “She!” he shouted triumphantly.

Alyssa regarded him wordlessly, as did Richard and Jacob.

Savant held up the book he'd been writing in. “She who envisions! It's a she! Not a they, I found a footnote I made. There was a council then, but they were all dead by the time the prophecy came to...” he halted then, upon realizing that one of the councilmen whose death he was prophesying was in the room.

“I take it your return here is because you let the rest of the council know of their impending demise?” Richard said, an eyebrow quirked in curiosity.

“Well, yes. That and some other conclusions I reached. They want us back.”

Alyssa shrugged as he started back down the hallway, and followed. She had initially came to the infirmary to see Chad, but there was nothing she could do there. Might as well see what Savant had determined of his writings.

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