Grace dripped. From my forehead fell dignity. Everything I was which I possessed inside, fell from me. Love swept me, swept from me. Patience and virtue clasped hands and abandoned me. Valor and honor withdrew their twin chains. I sweat all this from me, helpless to hold them, as I prostrated - lie? - here on the floor. Where I had first begun my life I now lost it.

Vision discarded herself last. She left me with a shimmering rainbow, painted through the stained glass windows upon the church wall, reds and sun yellows sparkling in the crook of St. Vincent's arm. Without movement, I could not turn my head and give him the attention he demanded. He mocked me in gilded anger, ignoring me where he had lain his sword on my shoulders before.

I could not speak; I had forgotten language. As vision at last crept from me, and darkness descended in terrorizing finality, I began to learn another.