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

Ophelia's vigil over Arrayah's movements--what she could make out of them owing to the increased darkness, at least--had borne some fruit as she witnessed the first half of the attack that Arrayah had made. Her eyebrows furrowed and her pulse quickened as the expected sound of metal hitting stone simply did not come, and for the briefest instant she wondered if that too were another layer of illusion before concluding it could not be owing to the Mask rune, but her attention was instead directed to Torquil behind her who had been impaled by the very same length of blade that had disappeared in the shadows surrounding the pillar Arrayah was curled upon. Ophelia was already primed for action and quickstepped over to Torquil, withdrawing the blood vial she'd stowed recently during the motion, and would immediately stab it into him while her stance shifted and her neck craned to ensure she could keep Arrayah in her vision.

She pondered in that brief window of time whether the Holy Moonlight Sword gave her any resistance to the arcane (something she had not yet really been able to test, owing to a lack of foes that had summoned its power against her while she'd been wielding it) or whether that was simply something inherent to Arrayah herself. She wondered whether that immunity had faded now, and whether the light of her own blade would be sufficient to counteract the deepened darkness of the shadows that had gathered since Arrayah awakened her half of Ophelia's blade. She could test the resistance easily enough, but did not want to waste the motion until Arrayah had attacked again--in this empowered state, Ophelia wasn't certain if even a single hit might remove her from the fight with her frail constitution. She decided she would have to wait until Arrayah had just made another attack, as there seemed to be some amount of a wind-up necessary before she could strike from a distance. She ignored Farren's directive to run, hoping to bait such an attack on herself (knowing that her now rather exceptional endurance and lack of battle fatigue would likely give her the best chance of both dodging and capitalising on the movement), but urged Torquil to spring into action with a quick "Go!" while she stayed trained on Arrayah and coiled like a spring. She considered moving over to one of the eerie sconces on the wall, figuring that having no source of shadow nearby with which to allow a weapon to pass through might be beneficial in dodging it (or seeing it coming enough to dodge)... but that could wait until after she measured Arrayah's resistance to her blade's destructive blasts. Even through the effects of the Mask rune she made her will known to her blade, asking it whether it had any more insights into what they faced now that it was so close to its awakened twin... and waited for a response while she focused intently upon Arrayah, ready to quickstep as the blade began to plunge into shadow or to avoid a different attack as best as she could with limited information.