[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/hSbxgyH.png[/img]
[sup][@Pyromania99][@Rune_Alchemist][/sup][/center]
Isidore gasped, his lungs heaving in air before he coughed violently, heart hammering against his rib cage. The air tasted dusty, stale, and yet, it was amazing too. Mind-numbingly sweet, in a way that he couldn’t describe. Clarity came to him with a swiftness akin to waking up, and the man scanned his surroundings. Rusted chains extending from the ceiling, black shackles extending from the walls, and a partition where iron bars once stood. It was a scene that made for-profit prisons look good. But for all the dingy disgust that filled him upon seeing the room itself, there was one brilliant boon beside him as well. A woman of surpassing beauty, platinum hair like silk drapes, framing a heart-shaped face. Her proportions were as close to hourglass as one could reach without becoming wholly uncanny, while those eyes…those eyes could drown a man on dry land.

The slight worry in her expression didn’t detract from her beauty either, nor her humongous, almost bat-like ears, and though he would be remiss to refuse a lady’s hand, it would be even less tasteful to use her as leverage to get himself off the ground. Though he was but an old man, though he was once an honorless scoundrel, he could still pick himself off the ground fine. Bracing himself for the straining of old sinew and crackling bone, Isidore pushed himself off the ground and found his movements seamless.

His eyebrows raised slightly as he looked at his hands.

Ah. The Goddess who refused his respite was kind enough, at least, to offer him a body not so broken as his previous one.

The room continued to shake, but less and less, whatever massive creature moving through this prison travelling away from them. Isidore listened, counting the seconds between each rumbling quake, before nodding to himself, apparently satisfied. A prison, but old and in disrepair. A warden of prodigious size, no doubt from taking too many bribes and pizza slices, roaming the hallways and looking from prisoners to thoughtlessly brutalize. A beauty with big ears, no weapons but what chains he could tear out from the ceiling and walls. He hadn’t expected to be back on the field like this, but, well, he hadn’t expected any afterlife beyond Satan’s lake of fire either.

[b]“Call me Isidore,”[/b] he said, finally addressing the beauty in a tone much different from his gravelly, chainsmoker voice. It was a crisp baritone instead, so youthful it brought in mind his daughter’s first boyfriend. Fucked up, really. [b]“Permit me to ask two questions. Were you human once? If so, did the Goddess bestow a gift upon you as well?”[/b]

He patted his breastpocket for his smokes, only to realize his outfit didn't even have pockets there. No gift for him then, but maybe this was a sign that it was time to quit.