Slightly early update since I'm not about tomorrow morning.
Even after the near death experience Lianna had inflicted on her, Ophilia was still determined to forgive her sister, to bring her back to the light.
Blinding
"Li… anna..." Ophilia managed to croak her sister's name between gasps for air once again, her nails digging into the flooring beneath her as she tried to pull herself to the door, to do anything more than simply lay face first on the ground.
Her lungs felt as though they were on fire, burning with icy cold pin-pricks whenever she tried to breathe, every other breath caught in her swelling throat. Within her chest, her heartbeat felt as though it was hammering a mile a minute, thrumming through her veins and deep into her temples, blinding her in pain far worse than the concoction was inhibiting her sight. With limbs that felt at once too heavy and too light, Ophilia couldn't find the strength to stand, to pull herself along, to do anything but struggle for breath as her senses failed.
The last thing she recalled was a light breaking through the darkness that had become her vision, a light most blinding that appeared with the slamming charge of an opening door…
She could not say how long she slept, not that sleep was necessarily what she was doing. It certainly didn't feel like she had slept when at last she opened her scratchy eyes onto the horrifying bright world, closing them immediately as she struggled against the light. Her lungs felt dry, prickly as though they had been drained after an experience of near drowning and her limbs still felt weighted down by anchors, if anchors could indeed weigh down jelly. At least her heartbeat had now stabilised and, as she opened her eyes more gingerly, it seemed as though she had regained her sight.
As her head rushed into overdrive, hurriedly trying to piece together where exactly she was, what exactly had happened, Ophilia couldn't help but groan in pain. The fire that had nearly destroyed her insides was gone, true, but so was the fire that had driven her onwards in her quest. That Lianna would do this to her, that Josef was…
"Sister Ophilia?" A quiet voice immediately grasped her attention, pulling her up as she struggled to see the voice's owner. "Please do not strain yourself, Sister."
"Bishop Donovan?" Ophilia managed to croak, immediately falling into a fit of coughs as she struggled into a seated position.
"Please, Sister, rest." Donovan gently pushed her into her pillows, offering her a cool glass of water that she gratefully drank. "I did not think you would wake so soon."
"What..?" Ophilia gasped out before resigning herself to her resting position, speaking seemed impossible, every word dragged like a hook against her throat.
"I believe you were given a powerful concoction, Sister," Donovan began mixing together some foul-smelling soup. "Had I not found you when I did… I shudder to think what may have happened."
"The… The flame."
"It has been stolen, I'm afraid." Donovan shook his head. "I suspect that whoever did this to you, they did it to steal the Lanthorn."
"Oh, Lianna..." Ophilia sighed, a sudden desire to cry welling up inside her as she started to pull at her blankets. "I must-"
"You must rest, Sister." Donovan insisted, pushing her gently back down as he offered her the soup he'd made. "Rest and recover, we can plan a course of action once you are well again."
"No. I-"
"Ophilia." Donovan looked her square in the eye as he ordered her not to move once again. "Rest."
So she did, begrudgingly admitting that doing so would make her far more able to recover the Lanthorn than she was now. However, her every dream that week she rested was full only of darkness and death, a deep purple flame wandering the darkness as it sought out its master, to turn everything in Orsterra to the darkness it coveted. And the person carrying the flame, leading people to the darkness, away from the light… It was Lianna, drapped in cleric garbs as dark as the flame she carried.
That Lianna would do this… Ophilia couldn't imagine how she felt, how deeply affected by grief she was to feel as though this was the path she should walk. To follow the so called 'Saviour' who had likely promised her all manner of impossibilities. Who had likely promised her he could return her father to the land of the living once again.
Slowly, far slower than she liked, Ophilia started to stand again, to walk about her inn room and make her own food. There were days when eating seemed only to bring up the foul concoction that had put her in this state, harming her more than the food was helping; other days it felt as though she couldn't eat enough, that all of Goldshore's stores couldn't satisfy her hunger.
And all the while she did all she could to remember what Lianna and the 'Saviour' she followed had said. They were to go to Wispermill to carry out some most forbidden ritual, to resurrect the dead most likely. That the world had not turned yet to darkness gave Ophilia hope that they had not carried out their ritual yet, that when at last she was able to stand and travel once again she would find her sister and talk her out of making such a grave mistake. That she wouldn't be able to do so, what would happen if she failed… Ophilia had no time for such negative thoughts, she had to retrieve the Lanthorn, she had to finish the Kindling rite that she'd set out on. She had to stop Lianna, to bring her back to the light.
Even as she left the inn and Goldshore, a week later than she would have liked, Ophilia had no idea what she was going to do or how she was going to do it. She simply set out for the Flatlands, following the determined fire in her heart once more.
