Numbness, loss, a deep pain that she had never felt before, and a fog that made it difficult for her to think. The foreign princess from distant Vyrndar, who had been married into the royal house of Altrantor, stood by the window of the nursery. Her fine clothing was stained with blood and other unpleasant materials best left undescribed as her arms cradled the cooling corpse of her daughter. Lin'Lise watched as the king of the realm plummeted bleeding and missing an arm to his death below and met the inglorious fate of being feasted on by swine. She watched as new fights broke out below in the courtyard with little thought as her blood soaked silver hands gently soothed a child who was beyond soothing. 

How could this have happened? Her father had known strength, he had chosen this nation, these people, despite their humanity as worthy of his daughter. Could he have so greatly misjudged the strength he saw in Altrantor when he sent her there? Could she have been wrong when she judged Erasmus to be a man who despite his humanity was worthy of respect and admiration? Should she have been more forceful in insisting that they flee when the war had begun to go poorly? Could she have saved Vel'Lis from this... Her hands clenched with surprising strength as a flash of burning rage pierced the strange fog in her mind.

In the wake of the rage came grief and her golden eyes began to leak as she looked down at the limp bundle in her arms. Her daughter was growing cold in death, but even blood soaked and dead the little girl remained beautiful to her mother and her arms tightened around the limp bundle as she cradled it to her chest once more. Then came a sound that managed to drag her from her grief and clear the fog from her mind for a moment. The sharp clinking of metal boots against the stone of the hallway drew a sharp look towards the door and she could hear the men joking about the plunder and pillaging that they would be rewarded with for having taken the castle. 

Lin'Lise had been startled out of her grief and she did her best to avoid being sucked back into that morass of emotion. As painful as it was that Vel'Lis was dead, and that all her dreams and plans had died with that little girl she still needed to act. The sound of the boots began to fade into the distance and reluctantly Lin'Lise lifted her daughter's corpse up. "Goodbye, My love." She whispered the words, one of the few times she had even spoken of love sincerely and pressed her lips to her daughters forehead. "May her light engulf you." Then she set down the bundle upon the bed and with an expression of pained determination she turned towards the door. 

It was fortunate that she had been healing when the wall fell, that she had been cautious and taken the dagger her father had given her with her this day. Even now she couldn't think of it as anything other than a dagger despite the fact that it was longer than many human swords and substantially heavier. She did wish she had learned how to use it better though and as her hand awkward gripped the hilt she could already tell that what little she had learned in the old lessons wasn't going to help her here. 

The sounds of the boots had faded and Lin'Lise opened the door quickly. She glanced down the hallway and seeing no one there quickly ran for the quickest way out that she knew of. The servants quarters were just down the hall, she had insisted on it so that Vel'Lis would have all the care she ever needed close by, and if she could get to them she could get to the ground floor, and it was just a few hallways and a door to the courtyard, and then she just had to figure out a way to get out of the walls. That seemed a losing proposition but it was the only one that she knew of. 

Lin'Lise could hardly be stealthy on the stairs, they were old wood and she weighed much more than a human. A chorus of creaks and groans came from the belabored wood as the half lorenvolk did her best to sprint down them. But aging wood was not her friend and as she neared the bottom of the twisted stair one of the steps simply snapped with a sickening crack and as she tried to catch her balance on the railing it too broke. She staggered forward and landed awkwardly at the foot of the stairs as several more steps and then much of the staircase itself collapsed under the strain in great crash. 

With a very real flash of terror, such a clamor could not possibly have gone unnoticed, Lin'Lise hauled herself up. She could already hear footsteps in the hallway coming towards her and there was no chance they would just pass by like the soldiers had before. Her sweaty and bloody hand gripped her dagger as she drew it awkwardly and held it in a way that showed she had little to no idea what she was doing with it. There was certainly terror but there was something else as well. If she was to die now, she would show them how a lorenvolk died. She stepped from the room with her weapon held out in front of her and as much fear compound as she could ready to be released. 

To her surprise though it was not the soldiers that she saw but rather a man that she knew and she managed to move her sword so that he did not impale himself on it as his headlong run took him straight at her. "Roderick?!" The exclamation came as part surprise and part relief, surprise that the backwards sage was one of those who was still alive and relief, she had always been told he knew the castle's secrets. "Can you get us out of here?"