isolt griffin
There can be no regret without clarity.

Regret was, above all other things, a beacon that would shine the rays of its falsely gracious light into the deepest dark only after the macabre leviathan to be fleed had already taken its prize. Blatant and triumphantly-mocking was this regret as it blazed as some newly risen sun within the otherwise dark and befuddled psyche of the fleeing vampire, illuminating the folly of choice that had inevitably brought her to this. She had been lead astray by her own hand. If only she had taken a staying hand to the whims that had tugged at her, pulled at the fraying fibers of a fragile mind to further the progression of what had heretofore been a slow unraveling. If only she had possessed the wherewithal to bolster herself against the nostalgia of Harley's disappearance; if only she had not come searching for familiarity in a place so undeniably and perilously strange.

If only.

The metronome of her shoes as they collide with the pavement echoes etherreal and audaciously loud, a frantic soundtrack to play against the backdrop of thoughts blurred by the reckless hand of fear. Fear that ebbs from the shores of her heart for the barest, most beautifully farcical moment; it is a mirage, this true belief that she has eluded the predator that would come to seek her so vehemently, and it is one that Isolt reaches for in ravenous desperation far more befitting a dying man to the salvation that lingers untouchable beyond him. And yet just as salvation had been in the moments prefacing her own death, so too is this reprieve a bitter lie. No sooner does she register the advance of her blonde-maned foe, the soles of her shoes grating harshly against the pavement below, then the wretch's hand coils brutally about the tender slope of Isolt's neck. Though long ago had she forfeited the breath of the living, her windpipe long since stricken still and worthless, Isolt's own fingers rise to press into the supple flesh of the elder vampire's forearm in a miniscule showing of defense... though even this seems an afterthought, a formality of the present circumstance.

Her attention, it would seem, lies elsewhere, committed near entirely to the glacial blue of her assailant's eyes; and though the timid buzzing of clandestine magic at work crackles at the deadened stem of her brain, a thing far more sinister sets her skin to crawling. Isolt has seen that look before and swears that she would know it anywhere, for it is a look that had been given to her in horrific plenty... a look that had always promised retribution, that had always prefaced searing, glorious agony. It was the only look that Risque had ever deemed fitting to bestow upon her, and it was a look that would forever be burned into the delicate silk of her progeny's memory. It is only with this realization that panic, true panic, bleeds into her system and draws every steely coil of muscle to slink over the bone. Forever will she know this deepest horror, and in this moment the heft of it causes some unseen dam within her to buckle, spindly fissures threatening an absolute and imminent collapse.

Promptly does a single, tightly-balled fist rise in a smooth arc to seek connection with the blonde derelict's chiseled jaw, the force of the motion impressive for one as outwardly fragile as is the crimson-haired vampire. Yet perhaps it is not quite as impressive as the force Isolt exerts upon her blonde captor, attempting to questionable avail to force the woman into the brick laden wall at her back, slender digits rising to coil themselves about the tender flesh at her adversary's neck in due course. It is, of course, as they always say: do unto others...