Soon after Jaci had left, Lauretta and her co-dancers were ready to perform another dance routine. However Lauretta began to feel ill and whilst in the middle of the routine she fainted. Increasingly frantic attempts to revive Lauretta were unsuccessful as explained in the mirror's (a doctor in the game world) report of the incident, when he described Lauretta's complexion at the moment of her death as changing to a "... whiter shade of pale," elves having a naturally pallid skin tone.
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It was discovered during the investigation into Lauretta's death that the waiter who had brought the tray of drinks to Delphina and the dancers was Jaci's boyfriend and that he and Jaci had conspired together to poison Lauretta's drink. In her trial Jaci tried to deflect all culpability for the murder to her boyfriend, saying that he had always had a deep-rooted enmity for elves and that there was no reason for her to want to harm Lauretta, but the truth - Jaci's seething jealousy and hatred of Lauretta and the coercive control she had over her boyfriend - was plain to see.
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Shar makes Zanzi know every nuance of Delphina's agony at losing her sister - Lauretta's beautifully sweet devotion to Delphina and her explosive passion for life gone forever. Zanzi now carries within her Delphina's cavernous empty spirit as Delphina pines endlessly for her sister to somehow become a part of her life again. Zanzi screams as she feels each cut of her mother's living essence being crudely excised from her, as if a blunt scalpel were the chosen instrument to inflict such enormous destruction. Each cry of Zanzi's despair echoes throughout the negative energy plane. But even this level of torture is not sufficient to satiate Shar's hunger for retribution, and she ensures that when Zanzi returns to the material plane she will not be allowed to forget her experiences whilst consumed within her mother's persona. As a final twist, Shar also feeds into Zanzi's crazed consciousness the shock, panic and disbelief her mother experienced when she read the short note Zanzi had written explaining why she had left home. Coldly, Shar pushes Zanzi's pain to its absolute limit by whispering softly over and over, "You have abandoned her as you have abandoned me," until Shar is forced to depart when Selune's piercing bright light reaffirms itself over the darkness of negative energy in preparation for Zanzi's transference back to the material plane.
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On her return to the material plane Zanzi is physically very weak and spiritually defunct. The only things she remembers after hearing the sounds of something strange entering the material plane are the events surrounding her aunt Lauretta's murder exactly as experienced by her mother. Hours pass as she slowly regains strength, but her extreme anguish at the loss of Lauretta remains the same, and in a state of numbed detachment from her surroundings she subconsciously composes a bardic song devoted to her aunt ("A Whiter Shade of Pale" - Procol Harum).
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