[Suzerain of Sheol]

She'd hobbled her way through the teeming streets, through the lonesome confines of the Palace, to the Poor Knights' barracks and divested herself of her armor in tedious, pained increments. Her crushing shame is spared only by the isolation.

Unclasping the strap on her helm, Amélie hurls it with her good arm crashing against the nearest wall, no longer able to suppress sobs as all of it: the hurt of her wounds, the hateful words of the foreigner, and her absolute failure as a knight, crashes upon her. The pulse of anguish from her ankle alone is enough to make her swoon.

Clinging to the bedpost, Amélie shudders and attempts to calm her breathing, quel the black spiral of looming unconsciousness. Somehow, she manages to fight through it and dress herself in a faded white cote, apt garb for penitence. Limping, she forces herself down empty corridors until coming to the Knights' chapel. It is all she can do not to collapse through the doors as she opens them.

It is empty, of course. The faithful have all flocked to the Maiden's congregation and the sinners are still at the tourney ground. Well enough.

She finds once more the prayer bench before the icon of Jesu, and lowers herself into as contrite a posture as her wounds will allow. There is pain like an iron spike in her hip. Amélie cannot control her weeping.

"In nomine Domini Jesu Sabaoth, Fillius Dei...." She cannot even go on, devolving into wracking tears. She knows what it was that did this to her, saw the presence of light at the girl-knight's back, the embrace of an angel. Amélie could have... could have broken her, if God had willed it. If he had not... had not...

Her bare fist slams down onto the unyielding wood, again and again as her weeping overtakes itself with outrage. Through streaming tears, she hurls her head back and screams to the holy vault:

"LAMA SABACHTHANI!?"

It is too much. The hurt too great. She can only stare at the passionless Christ through bleared eyes.

"Damned..." she murmurs. "I am damned."

And so unworthy. These wounds... She cannot look away from the stark lacquered scarlet leaking from the stigmata in his hands and feet, the thorns and their bloody sap. This is not for me. My suffering is a mummery, an ignorant mockery. It was not... it was not my sins for thou didst die.

"God forgive me."