isolt griffin

I'm more alive than I've ever been

The mysterious gentleman was not wrong to believe her venegeful, to suspect that within her lay the blossom of a desire to know retribution against him and his. Such a barbed, heinous thing it was indeed. It was there, inside of her, she could not deny such a thing and yet... this retaliatory yearning was not for her. No, for Isolt had not and could not ever be a soul cast in the darkness of such yearnings as these solely for her own sake. In truth, the only thing she had wished for herself all of these impossibly long days and even longer nights was the etherreal embrace of the one true death that she was all but certain lay in wait for her at the end of this long, dark avenue down which she had been sent.

No, the retribution she desired was not for herself... but for Yumi. For those who had laid their hands to her and heralded the blood-curdling cries of agony that had punctuated the darkness on more occasions than Isolt cared to tally. It was for them that she wished the very worst. And yet, should this stranger be believed in his insistence that Yumi was now safe beyond the stone walls of whatever shared hell they had been brought to, perhaps her wants would not go entirely unanswered.

The greater cause at hand though, at least for the present moment, was the possibility that she might too escape from the confines of this room she had been ever so assured would serve as her tomb. It was so presumably impossible that even as the enigmatic stranger peeled the links of silver chain from about her limbs did she ponder if this were simply a fantasy crafted by the desperate hands of an ailing mind. But as he lifted the veil from over her eyes, heralding what little light penetrated the dark chamber within which they had stowed her away, Isolt cringed against the newness of it all... the newness of the very first face that she had seen in quite longer than she could rightly say. He may not have found himself capable of laying his eyes upon her, but surely could she find herself able to look upon him. Eyes that had once glittered with a light only immortality could have shone traversed the smooth lines of his jaw, the pale hue of his own eyes. And yet it is an observation sentenced to brevity as his hands moved deftly to remove the silver mask that had become embedded, entangled into the otherwise supple flesh of her face, to reveal naught more than a gruesome, clotted mosiac of blood where positively prestine features had once been.

Clenching her eyes shut does the vampire queen choke down the cry that threatens to shatter the silence of the chamber, a pathetic moan seeping from her instead as she is hoisted upright by this seemingly-merciful stranger. For so long a time had her body remained stagnant, her muscles atrophied in their neglect, that such movement bred a violent rebuttal from the entirety of her frame. Heavily does she slump against the muscled frame of her presumed savior, entirely unable to proffer her own body the support that his must provide. The gentle patter of her own footfalls upon the stone floor meet her ears as if from afar as she is ushered towards the heavy oak door that had for so long separated her from the world beyond.

It is a sound that is lost though, swallowed whole by the ether about them, with the unfortunate arrival of the man who fancied himself a medical practitioner. But Isolt has naught more than a moment to truly assimilate the reality of the man's presence and the dire consequences that it may herald for not only her but her impromptu companion as well before he is cast aside with all of the effort that one might afford a ragged doll. The redheaded woman's eyes linger curiously upon the crumpled frame of the discarded man, but too soon is her attention pulled elsewhere... beyond the whispered assurance of her companion, a subtle coiling of her frosted digits into the fabric of his shirt the only indication that she has heard him, and on to the screams that echo just around the corner of the stone corridor.

The pair reach the intersection in question all too quickly, rounding the corner only to come upon a scene cleaved from the fabric of the most gruesome of nightmares. And yet it is not the squealching of pooled blood beneath Isolt's bare feet that draws what mediocre measure of attention she has left to give, nor is it the mangled bodies littered about the corridor or the echoing war cries of those coming to their aide. No, there is but one thing, one person to whom she looks in this moment. The person she had feared for so very long that she may never have the opportunity to gaze upon again, the person to whom she had thought herself destined to be tethered to forevermore only for that dream to be shattered when it was to finally become her reality. The person to whom her thoughts had flocked with such desperate frequency in the aftermath of her entrapment.

Damon.

It is then that the remainder of her strength, so very little though it admittedly was, takes its leave of her withered frame and she falls to her knees, the tears that she had been battling against finally tracing their thin crimson paths down the ungodly pallor of her upturned cheeks.