Every last one of her senses seemed heightened by the choking smog of detriment as it seemed to lay over her in some horrific film. Despite the phantom stars that flashed across her vision in an offhandedly comical display in the moment of impact, from her place upon the asphalt Isolt could see him in startling clarity. Every harsh line etched into his none-too-handsome façade betrayed the ire that he could not hope to conceal in the moments to come. Red veins twisted and snaked against the whites of his eyes, a clichéd homage to the festivities in which he had partaken... a glutton for the booze that had made him so. Paradox to his anger was the fear she could taste in the metallic tang of her own blood as it washed against her tongue, dripping its squalid heat in a smooth arc down her chin from the crescent gash of her busted lip. Her face is aflame with the heat of his blow, a tender blush having already been coaxed to the surface in the few moments that have passed. She would bruise later, a wretched and ghastly souvenir of sorts from this ill-fated evening.



So elevated is her state of awareness that Isolt is vaguely attuned to the scraping of nails against asphalt and the heaving of breath that is not her own. The young woman does not dare turn from her advancing aggressor, though, for surely whatever lingers beyond presents a far lesser threat than this heavily-intoxicated savage and the blade tucked against his curled fingers. She moves to scramble from him, the rubber soles of her shoes grappling for purchase against the cracked terrace beneath her. She cannot regain her footing, the terror of his assault and the lingering threat of his freshly-whetted blade having numbed her limbs to the commands of her mind. A spellbound paralysis that is hardly shattered by the shadow that overtakes her, a gargantuan and beastly form catapulting over her floored figure and colliding solidly with the scant voided space that separates her from him.



The monolith that acts as her fleshy shield is daunting, cementing the intensity of her paralysis for a matter of moments before an explosion of energy shatters all tension and chaos ensues. The lithe redheaded woman manages to scramble upright, supported by legs that hardly suffice as such, her body seeming to quiver down to the very bones as she reclines herself against the asperous expanse of brick wall at her back. The urge to run, though physically unreasonable given her current state of bodily numbness, consumes her, the guttural rumbling of the intervening canine sending the glacial fingers of a chill down the curved length of her spine. And then... a voice, far more timid from before, breaks through the smog of her terror, sinking the phantom blade of a knife into her stomach as depthless blue eyes meet those of her attacker. For a startling few seconds, longer than she would ever admit to in that moment or any to come thereafter, Isolt entertains the notion of leaving him there, abandoning this atrocious stranger to the jaws of this beast who, by all appearances, has sought to see her spared. And yet the terror that flashes as brilliantly as any star against the muddy backdrop of his eyes sees her halt. "Please..." he whispers to her in the barest moment before his windpipe is collapsed entirely between the jaws of the stripped canine that looms so menacingly at his throat.



It is, perhaps, the greatest folly of her personality that Isolt cannot find it within herself, not even in the darkest depths of her secret desires, to see him die before her. He has done her no kindness, and it could be argued with quite some merit that he deserves the fate that clasps so wantonly at his jugular. However, in a singular moment of absolute clarity she understands, knows, that she must bring this horror to a different end. "Wait," she whispers, her voice choked by the fibrous knot that has gathered there. "Stop." Her voice comes as a demand, stronger now than it was before, echoing louder than the gargling snarl of the wolf; it cannot be said why she speaks to it, her logical self quite aware that her words mean so very little. This is, perhaps, why she reaches out with a single, dainty hand to subject the beast to a gentle, yet nonetheless firm caress at its back before pulling away abruptly. It is a fool thing, a folly to attempt such an intervention; however, she seems drawn by something entirely beyond her ability to rightly comprehend in this moment. Something that, though she pulls back, does not see her recoil entirely, instead... it breeds the smallest seed of hopefulness within her.