isolt griffin
Not ever, in this life or the one that had come before, had Isolt entertained the notion that she might have possessed some latent inner strength. It had always been Harley, or Aaron, that had possessed the confidence and personal fortitude that Isolt had always wished for herself. In life, her demeanor had been dictated just as stringently by this characteristic demureness as it was now; and in death, the young woman had been consumed by a pervading uncertainty regarding every portion of what she had believed of herself and the world within which she existed. Self-doubt continued to act as the rattling shackles upon the mind of a woman who had never believed much strength of herself. And now that the world as she had always known it had been wretched from beneath her by the cataclysmic and unforgiving hand of fate, everything she had ever believed was cast in the shadow of enigma and doubt.

It is this doubt that halts her, an already silent body growing static, with the appearance of two sharply-dressed gentlemen making their entrance into the clearing were before there had only been Raven. However, it is much less their domineering choice of garb that ignites a phantom chill at the base of the redhead's spine, and more so the manner in which Raven seems to recoil (if only slightly) from each in turn. This and the pungent odor of the silver chains as they appear from the expertly-starched folds of one gentleman's suit send Isolt's innards to writhing. Silver, once something so innocent, so beautiful, has transcended into the realm of macabre for the wayward vampire; on more occasions than she would ever care to retell, Isolt had endured the sensation of searing and parted flesh, had suffered the thick aroma of decay that seeped from beneath whatever silver bindings had been chosen for her. This precious metal had become the much-preferred method by Risque and her lemmings in which to subdue the newly-turned vampire, though never had the girl with the crimson curls given cause for such demonstrations of force.

It cannot rightly be presumed what unseen hand finally coaxes action from the lingering vampire, whether it be the presence of the silver chains, the manner in which they are employed to disable perhaps one of the few individuals Isolt might have considered a friend, or the forced equanimity of the words that slip into her mind as if they were but products of her own brain. They were a farce, these honey-coated syllables, whispered to her in some valiantly misguided attempt to placate. But from within there bellowed something far louder than any cooing words meant to comfort; there, in the unchartered depths of Isolt's heart, there stirred a dormant leviathan. She would protect Raven in the way she had so failed to protect Aaron... to protect herself.

She is upon the seated gentleman before he is fully aware of such imminence, what little attention he and his counterpart have spared the redheaded vampire proving far less than she is due. Even in her current, dilapidated state Isolt is still faster, still stronger, than them. Deftly Isolt coils the faux-delicacy of her own hand around the calloused hand that caresses Raven's neck, wrenching the offending appendage from her curly-haired friend... the movement accented by the muffled snapping of so many spindly bones as they give beneath the pressure of her vice-like grip. A series of obscenities growls from betwixt clenched teeth as he rises, turning to face his captor, the fleshy curtain of his top lip peeling back from a row of well-kept pearlescent teeth in what could be naught but the most loathsome snarl. Not a moment of hesitation passes before Isolt mimics this display, the beautifully ominous curvature of her fangs appearing from beyond the cherried cushions of her lip.

Movement from beyond sees Isolt turn as the pudgier gentleman moves to approach the pair... an attempt that sees his partner forced to his knees before the lithe redhead, his shattered hand still within the vice-grip of the fledgling vampire, his head pulled to the side by her other hand and his neck fully exposed. Never before had Isolt so much as entertained the idea of harming another being with her newly-acquired and quite treacherous cutlery; however, in death so much had been pilfered from her, so many beautiful things had been tainted and lost that, in this moment, she found the thought of further loss, of further pain, unbearable. "Unchain her..." The demand issues as a cutting whisper, a veritable dagger hurled at the plump gentleman, the silver chains rolling nervously within his hands...