[The plan had been simple. To fight with every ounce of defiance in him and to step away from the madness bloodied and bitterly triumphant as he has before. But being killed – disintegrated by a powerful blast - only to wake tinglingly aware of the last few seconds marking the end of his existence and the beginnings of a vivid, dream-like non-existence has a way of complicating things. His priorities haven’t changed. They’ve merely made room for another that thrusts itself into the forefront of his mind and feeds an all-encompassing desire to kill. Revenge is always a powerful motivator. It too is an old friend.
Survivors can be the most dangerous sort of people - and more dangerous yet is one with little left to lose. And it’s hard, harder than ever to remember a time when his hands had shaken and his throat had filled with bile at a grinning, bloodied skull of a faceless enemy staring back at him or while watching fingers clutch desperately at slimy, unraveling spools of intestine.
The stench of blood and sickly-sweet rot hangs heavy in the city square. It’s there, among the stacks of corpses, where he stops for the first time in hours and pulls in a deep breath. It smells like home.
BOMB SEARCH SCENARIO: Something has been pulling at him, a tingling at the edges of his awareness that has only built and built into a steady hum. Souls; a concentration of hundreds of souls writhing, calling to him across the wasteland.]
[Days 3 (after the bomb is dealt with by infiltration team) - 4, pre-reinforcements]
[Through the efforts of others, history is denied the chance to repeat and death is averted for another moment or two. But while the bomb threat is neutralized, the matter is far from resolved in his mind.
Pale eyes wild and hungry and bright with purpose, Isaac turns Abel and his own anger onto the enemy swarm, tearing bloody swathes through them. Time is on his side. And while watching men roast in their own armour or slamming the stiletto of his boot down between a fallen cultist's legs and giving it a twist doesn’t offer him closure, it’s something. It’s something to do while the voices in his mind crescendo from a hum to a dull roar to a deafening screech, pulling at his brain in all directions. They clamour for the blood of those who robbed him of his chance to kill those who had killed him first.
But devils have their limits and eventually Isaac is forced to pull out of the fray, teleporting to his Day 1 resting place outside the city to eat, drink, and chase down a small, quick meal with a sip of Julia’s potion while Abel guards him relentlessly. Everything carefully rationed.]
Isaac [Days 1-4] tw: gore, disembowelment
[The plan had been simple. To fight with every ounce of defiance in him and to step away from the madness bloodied and bitterly triumphant as he has before. But being killed – disintegrated by a powerful blast - only to wake tinglingly aware of the last few seconds marking the end of his existence and the beginnings of a vivid, dream-like non-existence has a way of complicating things. His priorities haven’t changed. They’ve merely made room for another that thrusts itself into the forefront of his mind and feeds an all-encompassing desire to kill. Revenge is always a powerful motivator. It too is an old friend.
Survivors can be the most dangerous sort of people - and more dangerous yet is one with little left to lose. And it’s hard, harder than ever to remember a time when his hands had shaken and his throat had filled with bile at a grinning, bloodied skull of a faceless enemy staring back at him or while watching fingers clutch desperately at slimy, unraveling spools of intestine.
The stench of blood and sickly-sweet rot hangs heavy in the city square. It’s there, among the stacks of corpses, where he stops for the first time in hours and pulls in a deep breath. It smells like home.
BOMB SEARCH SCENARIO: Something has been pulling at him, a tingling at the edges of his awareness that has only built and built into a steady hum. Souls; a concentration of hundreds of souls writhing, calling to him across the wasteland.]
[Days 3 (after the bomb is dealt with by infiltration team) - 4, pre-reinforcements]
[Through the efforts of others, history is denied the chance to repeat and death is averted for another moment or two. But while the bomb threat is neutralized, the matter is far from resolved in his mind.
Pale eyes wild and hungry and bright with purpose, Isaac turns Abel and his own anger onto the enemy swarm, tearing bloody swathes through them. Time is on his side. And while watching men roast in their own armour or slamming the stiletto of his boot down between a fallen cultist's legs and giving it a twist doesn’t offer him closure, it’s something. It’s something to do while the voices in his mind crescendo from a hum to a dull roar to a deafening screech, pulling at his brain in all directions. They clamour for the blood of those who robbed him of his chance to kill those who had killed him first.
But devils have their limits and eventually Isaac is forced to pull out of the fray, teleporting to his Day 1 resting place outside the city to eat, drink, and chase down a small, quick meal with a sip of Julia’s potion while Abel guards him relentlessly. Everything carefully rationed.]