isolt griffin

An admitted impossibility is it to say with any measure of certainty what, truly, dominates her persona and thus the pressures upon the veritable marionette strings knotted about her limbs in the moment that his words delve their treacherous spires into the stilled fabric of her heart. Isolt is, in this moment, the very embodiment of the tapestry of emotive concept that comprises her. She is anger and she is fear, trepidation and the barest shard of adrenal anticipation. There had existed a time, a grand suspension within the now-infinite span of her life, that the crimson-haired girl would surely have withered before him as some proverbially shrinking violet; the blistering heat of his ire would have seen her turned a mewling coward in the face of its licking flames. But now...

To say that she fears him not in this fateful present would have been the highest of disingenuous fallacy, staining tar upon the heavenly pillows of her ruby lips. But she would not, could not permit herself to cower in his presence. It would seem that so much pain had been wrought by his hands, and the hands of those who both commanded and followed him, that so far suppressed within the depths of Isolt's soul crippling fissures had begun to form. Glistening bulbous droplets of fortitude had begun to erupt from betwixt the cracks of this dam of self-doubt... homage to the wealth of inner-strength so long left untapped. These fissures are, perhaps, evidenced in the utilization of physical force to stay his advances, to establish boundaries left blurred and indefinite in the wake of what history and circumstance had fostered between them. He had gorged himself on more than a mere pound of the young woman's flesh, and in this moment she assures herself inwardly that he shall partake of little more.

As he moves to right himself, however, the conciliatory measure of her ire against his paints a vastly less bolstering picture. Isolt's anger is fledgling, it is new, a nestling that could not dare take to the sky. And his... his is a fearsome thing indeed, for many decades has he had to foster it, to nuture the monolith that is his own rage between calloused and practiced hands. Tight are the coils of muscle that squelch against the infrastructure of her bones with this second approach, barely a moment passing in which Isolt pleads for strength she does not have... before the warlock with the barbed tongue casts himself before her.

And then, she herself is cast into the darkness that pervades.

Desperately grasping hands find the weathered slab of the counter over which she had only moments ago hovered, instinct dictating that she press herself plush against this one and only source of stability to be pilfered from the corrosive dark. Crystalline eyes peer fruitlessly into the impenetrable miasma of the warlock's own making, discovering only the briefest flash of utterly familiar crimson before that, too, is consumed by the smog. For all of the many months that the young woman has spent swathed and curled within the cool and comfortless embrace of the night's darkness, Isolt finds herself capable of doing naught but blundering within this artificial night. Frozen is she as the whoosing pounds against her waiting ears, followed by the sickening and moistened thud of a slew of whetted blades finding their respective homes.

Light then comes in filthy rays as it penetrates the magic-made gloom, Isolt's eyes traveling a hard line to the elder vampire who slumps against a wall so blessedly far from where she now perches. Ice crusts over every stilled organ nestled within her body, phantom prickling sending her skin to crawling with the imagery of him there, his features now brutalized so far beyond the point that he would ever be recognized again. He would never be whole again. The flame-locked woman exists within a state of suspended reality for what feels like hours, transfixed by the horror of what she sees and moreso appalled at the sliver of... relief that blossoms as some macabre bud within her gut. And yet though she yearns so rightly for the justice of his true and final transcendence beyond the gossamer veil of death, Isolt must look away when the final blow is dealt, delicate hands clenching ever tighter against the wooden grain of the countertop. It is only as the fleshy curtains of her eyelids peel back with his words that she comes to realize she has closed them.

"You've made that abudantly clear," she retorts levelly, azure eyes gazing upon him in softened suspicion. Though she bares him far more gratitude than trepidation in this moment, the latter cannot fully be appeased... for his continually-professed ire for her race has made it a decided impossibility. "But... thank you." Her gratitude is proffered in little more than a breathy whisper as the young woman descends to her knees before his floored figure, the ivory blade now glasped possessively between her curled digits. "We can't stay here. It won't be long before the others come. Can you stand?" With that she rises once more, a single delicate hand outstretched for his taking.