Home again, at last.... It was... odd, returning to Castle Refuge like this.
She cast her mind back to the battle at the frozen valley. Suborning Smelly Kelly's commandos and making them fight the creatures in the valley had irritated him immensely, but he'd been too busy trying to round up his Faerun captives (most of whom, she learned later, got away, though many died or were captured later on, instead) to make an issue of it right then.
And so Field Team Six had gone onward, locating the entity behind the power manifest in that awful place. Ophelia had tried to slip in unseen, but had been caught, and before she could even fully comprehend what type of... thing... she was seeing, her frail heart had begun to fail again.
Separated from the others, she figured she was done, finally.
And then she heard a beautiful, calming voice in her head, there in the dark place underground.
I can help you. You will survive, but you will not be able to return for some time.
I can't abandon my team....
If you die here, will they not be just as bereft? I will make sure they know you survived--better to give them that hope.
It was a sound argument, and really, Ophelia didn't want to die. Already, it was growing hard to think.
What do I have to do?
There is a Ley Line above this cavern. You must become one with the energies within it. You will retain your sense of self, but you will be cut off from the rest of the world for a time. I will show you how.
And Ophelia felt herself being guided, channeling her considerable psychic might into her own being, then pushing that up into Ley Line above. She thought, at the last moment, that she hard a psychic scream from the entity, enraged that it had lost its victim, and then, nothing.
No, not nothing. Peace. Incredible, soothing tranquility.
She emerged from the Ley Line almost a year later, and then spent months in Psyscape. First, as soon as she was corporeal, there had been the team of mystics who had helped her recover from the heart-attack (it left her bemused that she returned to the world still suffering from that organ's failure). They had taken her with them, healing her body as they brought her to Psyscape. There, she was given time to recover before she was brought to her rescuers--a group of elders and other respected members of the clan, working behind the scenes to empower and protect their kin.
And now Ophelia was a member in good standing in their ranks. There had been promises made, of course, both to the Inner Circle, and to the City of Psyscape itself. But she ha been taught the techniques--the escape into the Ley Line was only a small part of the wonders they'd shown her. Finally, they informed her that they'd been in touch with Castle Refuge, and arranged for her return. She was even going to be given a pass on being AWOL so long.
And so she traveled home, eager to meet up with any of the team who might've survived the encounter with the Cold Sleep without her....
And then, this.
As soon as it became apparent that things were seriously awry, Ophelia adopted her normal procedure, shifting out of phase, using the ground for cover, and searching carefully and quietly for survivors and anything else she could learn. She opened her mind to locate any survivors, or even see if there were still stragglers from those responsible for this total devastation. In addition, she sought out a high vantage point and used it as a baseline for a psychometric scan, watching as the events unfolded before her mind.