[center][h2][b]Ophelia[/b][/h2][/center]

Ophelia had learned by then that strange looks were always going to accompany her, and she had as little interest in paying attention to the concerns of those Hunters as they seemed to have with stopping her. They all had things to do, all had more important focuses, though some of the looks she received--particularly by White Church Hunters--almost made Ophelia wish they had tried something. The walk gave her plenty of time to think in relative silence, to ponder and consider, and she found herself wondering how many of those Hunters had ever done such a thing. Oh, yes, the work was noble and difficult and necessary--everyone knew that--but she came to realise as they travelled that so many of those Hunters were not people who knew better. They were violent people, scared people, people whose only true talents were the judicious application of violence... not thinkers, or scientists, or those steeped in the kinds of arcane knowledge and experimentation that had plagued Byrgenwerth and the former Choir both (not that she knew particularly of the Choir, and certainly not by name). They were people who'd been given a great gift, the raw strength of the Old Blood, but without the eyes to see it for what it was and what it did to them--she wondered how many of them would end up burning their friends on those pyres, how many of those charred and ashen hunks of carbonised matter had been people before... before it hit her that the answer was "all of them". 

It made her feel unsteady. A grim chain of affliction, subdual, and resurgence--they had to bring people closer to beasts to fight beasts, and ended up making more beasts than people--she wondered idly if the proportion of living beasts was now greater than the proportion of living Yharnamites. They were a dying subsection of people in the city, now, with truly only Ophelia being from among their ranks--perhaps Torquil, too, though he didn't seem to know and certainly wasn't a Yharnamite [i]culturally[/i]. She supposed she wasn't either, not really. She struggled to believe that Ego had succeeded: he'd been a great king of Isz, but the nation had still fallen--and from what little she'd been able to piece together from her studies and her dreams and the notes from the little ones, that others had fallen even after he'd become Ego. Whatever he offered, it seemed to Ophelia that it was quite distinctly not a solution--at least, not the one that she imagined... but if he took the Old Blood away, perhaps that would be for the best... though that was condemning any born with Paleblood to wither and die, and she idly wondered if people would still be born with it at all. 

When they reached the Industrial Ward Ophelia had a similar reaction to Torquil, though she could only cover one of her ears and she winced and gritted her teeth with the immense of pain of having to listen to the unfiltered scream.

"Shit, have they already found her? We have to stop him from killing the Crowmother, at least--if she's smart, she's no true beast. Come!" Ophelia spoke through gritted teeth after the noise had faded enough for speech to be heard once more, and immediately began running south towards the source of the sound. She didn't expressly know where she was going, per se, but she could follow the evidence--there must have been freshly trodden prints or other signs of a large number of people passing through. She was suddenly very glad that she'd given herself a ludicrous amount of stamina.