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

The first thing that Ophelia felt was the immediate concussive impact, incredible force passing through her and carrying her along with it. It knocked the air from her lungs and strained, creaked, and cracked through her ribcage as another impact from the back seared through–and then a burst of brightness as the cutting edge of the blade sprayed forth her lifeblood and the ruinous forces now exiting her body faded. She gasped awfully, her regeneration already knitting together her wounds enough for her to draw air back in, and the pain brought forth another wave of sweet revelation: the deception to her guidance, the shadow to her light! It was suddenly all so obvious! The next breath she drew in through her nose carried a grave-stench even her hardened senses protested against, she could feel the impacts of its movement against the ground and through the wall and vibrating through its chest, hear the madness that oozed from its lips as bile and pus did from every other aspect of the horrid creature she espied as she opened her eyes.

“Arrayah…” she repeated, her voice gasping and straining as she stared at this thing that wielded the other half of her blade. She… hadn’t expected it to be so… unimpressive, compared to the splendour of her blade–but it hadn’t been half as luminous until she’d truly wielded it for the first time either. But its power was not in the bearing of brightness like hers was–no, it was Mother Moon’s shadow. To have the power to reveal, one must also have the power to conceal–and it was a [i]mightily[/i] powerful illusion. There was no way any of them wouldn’t have heard, felt, smelled, and tasted this thing on the air long before it ever reached them–it was as though her mind had simply refused to register its existence, and she guessed it was only by the grace of her Guidance that [i]she[/i] could perceive it now. [i]Well, that poses rather a problem,[/i] she thought, waiting for a moment to be able to wriggle free enough from the rather precarious position she found herself in to administer herself a blood vial and quickstep away to relative safety.

“It’s invisible!” was all she could command herself to shout to the others, and even then she wasn’t sure if anyone but Gerlinde who’d been close to her already might have heard it–her mind was spinning, as though compensating for all the loss of perception before, and she reeled as the waves of surprise and surges of sudden information fought for control of her faculties.