
When the ordeal had started the knight had accepted what she thought was her fate and though her eyes had welled with tears they hadn't spilled over. Lina would have been utterly damned if in her last moments of life she'd spent them crying rather than looking square into the eyes of the person that was reaching into her very soul to tear it from her body and end her existence. But that wasn't what had happened. Feeling the hand inside of her chest stiffen Lina Knight had had enough consciousness to see, to know that Zinkenite was doing the precise thing she had told him she would not willingly accept. That was when the tears overflowed, lips moving to silently form a denial before her world erupted into agonizing pain.
If corruption had been bad, if her subsequent promotions had been painful, and if purification had made her feel like she was being cleansed in fire this was the exact opposite of that. Chaos wormed its way into those healed cracks, ripping them apart to make room for its influence once more with little care for the pain it inflicted upon the traitor knight. She wanted to scream, she thought she could scream, but there was no sound.
Then there was nothing at all. There was only the prone Captain Linarite lying on the pavement as Howlite crawled over her in pained disbelief to make sure she yet lived. Unfortunately, she was indeed very much alive and brought to Zinkenite's ideal of home, whether she wanted to be there or not.