isolt griffin

I'm more alive than I've ever been

Her body floats, suspended upon the gently rolling sea of the unconscious nether, its dark waters having washed away the marring stain of reality to leave her mind in the embrace of a splendid peace. A peace that she had not felt so wholly, so completely, since the moments following her departure from the mortal world, when all of life's trivial worry, all of its fear, had fallen away from her. She could have stayed here forevermore, floating to the ends of the earth to leave her tribulations so far behind her. She was unafraid, unfettered by the absence of the ones she loved so entirely, perhaps completely unaware of their existence beyond this rippling nirvana. It was only she, her only companions the feeling of weightlessness and the promise of eternal numbness.

But it was not to be so.

The craggy shores of reality find her soon enough, too soon, her head finding the unwavering solidness of its banks with a less-than-gentle thud. Isolt does not open her eyes, for she cannot, her body as heavy as if her every limb were filled to the seams with sand. The cool aroma of damp earth teases at her nostrils, seemingly the only thing capable of piercing the acrid stench of organic rot as the silver muzzle about her mouth continues to sizzle away at the supple flesh of her jaw. It is tentative but it is not the first of her senses to awaken from the peaceful slumber of moments prior; the insidious tickle of blood does not go unnoticed by the vampire queen. It seeps from beneath the silver contraption, drawing dark and hellish ribbons upon the pallor of her jaw and neck and into the gossamer waterfall of her auburn curls. The raw and weathered grain of the wooden table upon which she lies catches beneath her fingernails as she laboriously seeks purchase, though the exercise itself is a futile waste.

Only then does the young woman manage the feat of coaxing her eyelids to raise their veil from azure eyes that glisten even in the dim light of the space that holds her. With an agonizing languidness does Isolt's vision begin to clear, the blurring smog of the ether receding to reveal the finer details of where it is she finds herself. Her eyes follow the spindly avenues of mortar long ago dulled and made brittle by the passing of time, the plaster trail interrupted entirely in some places where it seems to have fallen away from the cobblestone walls of the windowless space. It is only when her chemically-abbreviated attention falls from its useless travels upon the walls that her eyes skate over the first of them. A figure, enveloped by shadow, stands sentinel aside a wooden door surely as aged as the room it conceals. And another. And another. Towering figures punctuate the shadows that choke the room, not one bothering to utter a single word, their silence coaxing the beginnings of unease into Isolt's subconscious.

Yet no time does she have to attempt cohesive consideration of the reason for their presence as another, much smaller, figure appears in the open doorway. The elderly woman's approach is slow, staggered, her hunched figure seeming to labor heavily despite the relatively short distance that separates Isolt's body from the doorway from whence she had come. As she emerges into the halo of lantern light her age becomes all the more apparent: time and a life spent beneath the sun's cruel rays had leathered the woman's dark skin, made her grey hair brittle and dull. Blindness had stolen the vision from one of her eyes, leaving it merely a sphere of pale smoke that contrasted harshly with the rich brown of its companion. She halts her shuffling at the edge of the wooden slab upon which Isolt rests, a smile pulling taut against her features as a single aged hand reaches out to brush in an almost loving fashion against the supple flesh of Isolt's cheek and then into her mane of auburn hair, handling the strands with something that could have been naught but reverence.

Muttering in a language that the vampire woman cannot possibly place does the elder turn away, hobbling to a table nearby that is cluttered with various accoutrement. And yet Isolt is robbed of the opportunity, wasted though it surely would have been given her state and the darkness that saturated every corner of the room, to identify the items with which the old hag fiddles, a towering beast of a man materializing from the shadows brandishing a crude dagger. It is then that Isolt is drawn to action, shifting her limbs in an attempt to ready herself against whatever assault he intends, but it is for naught. What little movement her disabled body is capable of voided by the restraints that coil tightly about her hands and feet; words, a protest perhaps, gurgle within her throat and yet they too fall away unspoken. The undead queen has so very little time, moments that are there and gone in the batting of an eye, before he grasps at the neck of her dress and draws his dagger down the length of it in a pair of impressively smooth strokes. Her dress, the dress that she had chosen with such care to be the one she would meet her husband in, falls away from her slendering figure to leave behind only her undergarments.

In the commotion Isolt has neglected to note the return of the aged beldam, her associate moving to the head of the alter, calloused hands pressing heavily upon the auburn-haired woman's shoulders. Pleading cerulean eyes seek those of the crone, though the woman is wholly and completely entranced with the bowl she cradles within a singled knotted hand, the other dipping a digit into the blood-like mixture therein. She traces her finger upon the expanse of Isolt's stomach in a pattern unfathomable, taking notable care in her craft for a handful of lengthy moments before disgarding the basin entirely in favor of a glass phial pulled from within the folds of her robe. A hymn of sorts whispers from her lips, a few of the shadowy figures about the room taking of the tune themselves as the contents of the phial are poured with absolute care upon Isolt's stomach. The remainder of the hymn does not reach her ears, nor does she care, for in this moment does an excruciating pain consume her unlike any she had felt in this life or the one that had existed before. Her voice finds her then, splendid and haunting, as a roar of agony rips from her gullet to bound across the room and into the waiting darkness.