Beneath Your Lies

The campus grounds were exactly the way Isobel had learned from, the intricate architect arena surrounding the grounds where Royals and skilled privileged officials would fight. She didn’t understand why someone so young of an age would actually go on a public subway full of thieves and assassins just to watch bloodshed unfold. She had to give Penny credit however, she was a child like no other and from that, Isobel couldn’t be any happier.

They sat near to the fighting grounds, front row, thanks to Penny’s connection to her uncle. No one questioned the hooded figure, chin high, back straight women who stared down others who dared to stare.

So it wasn’t the casual titanium wig and four inch stilettos but today was about making the Royals look bad. Even Penny’s brother who also happened to be one of the selected champions fighting today.

Isobel had heard rumors and legends about the ceremonies that happened once every forty-seven cycles, pin-pointing on the day when the moon’s alignment with the sun had been believed to strengthen true power. From turning humans into savage animals at final eclipse, to drinking the death of an opponent's blood, the bartenders and drug dealers Isobel had bribed had been completely useless.

It was until she persuaded Penny, that she finally understood that today was all about impressing the Royals’ Houses of Power and showing how they progressed as future warriors . It was also to show others without powers that they should cower because of what they can do.

She squinted at the burning sky and saw that the sun and the moon were coming close together.
“Isobel! My brother’s next! So far he beat every single opponent he had and I think he might win this whole ceremony right when the sun and moon eclipse! That is the coolest thing ever!” Penny screamed over the roaring crowd of rulers and government officials.

It made her blood boil being surrounded by a heavy amount of jerks with unfair powers that made their existent a burden for Isobel to bear. She wondered if Corlain had finally told Gabe about her whereabouts. She could only imagine the rant she would get after Gabriel would have to bust her out of prison. Again.

“That’s great, remember why we are here though, okay? You need to get your uncle and myself a meet--”

“GO DARIUS! MAKE EVERYONE SORRY THEY EVER CAME!” Penny cheered, Isobel’s ear drums slightly exploding. “Oh sorry what did you say? Oh, yeah. Uncle Tony loves to talk to his fans.”

“I bet…” Isobel was saying when all of a sudden she got a good look at Darius.

It was the same cool ruthless face that almost got her killed and made her soul and mind quake with anger. From only seeing the eyes of Death himself splattered on that ruthless sharp face, Isobel’s heart beating so fast and loud she didn’t bother trying to plug it all in. Then, a flashback--
He was on top of her, holding her down as if she was dirt beneath his lying bastard body. She hated being powerless like this so she tried a tactic of her own talents. Interrogation. But it was in that moment, the trained fighter that held her against her own will dug out a syringe of something that did not come from the world she bled for, had she started to panic.

“I’m a cold-blooded man with a need for justice. How’s that?” he had said, the last thing Isobel could recall.

Isobel closed her eyes. As if she could strangle the vision away, drown away the screams that were tugging out from deep below cobwebs. A soft breeze drifted to ease her burning skin and she calmed herself, pinning together a straight-forward plan.

Brother of Penny or not, he was going to die now for injecting the drug that killed her off. His mistake was that Isobel was a mythical phoenix that would die to be reborn different. Each time you killed her in any way, the more times she is born into a darker shell each time. Because once you die and come back to life, you take something with you from that afterworld whether it’s hell or heaven or something else completely. Isobel was done having to get over this bullshit.   

“What are you doing? Isobel, you can’t interfere with the fights! Your going to get yourself in trouble!” Penny started saying, watching in fear as Isobel abruptly left her seat with a sudden urge to do something very bad.

She skipped down the stairs with her heart beating faster than she could remember. Not with fear but with a dangerous rage that filtered her instincts.

“Ma’am-- ma’am! You can’t go beyond this point,” one of the guards said, blocking her path.
By the time Isobel entered the arena, she knew all the escape routes, how many cameras and their positions around the dome, the closest leverage (important ambassador from the Southern Nation seated at level A, seat four) and how many champions were here. But all that went away as she collided with a solid human being, blocking her path of something bigger than he will ever be.

“Get. Out. My. Way.” Isobel bit out, her growl sounding more feral than normal.

    She scanned her surroundings, the shock guns and other weapons that were displayed on the west wall in case the champions got a little too carried away. She saw the gun all the guards strapped on the right side of their pants. She saw the women at the back give them a curious glance.
Faster than she could think of, Isobel jabbed her knee into his groin and knocked the air out of his lungs as she disabled him in one quick move. She smiled as he was clutching his part, shivering on the ground.

She stepped over his face to reach Darius, a name she nearly yelled out to soon murder. Then, the odd women came into view, analyzing her.

“Which house do you come from?” she asked, her ivory hair swept into a warriors’ knot, gray eyes holding firm.

“It doesn’t matter, this is a place to fight without warrant or risk of imprisonment, correct? Let me through,” Isobel commanded, moving to the right.

The woman moved to block Isobel. “Why should I let you in, girl?”
Isobel’s eyes ran frantically, her mind screaming at her to just kill the women already and get over it later. But something about the way she stopped to ask questions before judging her had tugged at something deep below. “Justice,” was all she said, moving nimbly to finally graze the arena.
As soon as her foot touched the soiled grounds, none of the guards interfered. As soon as she mentioned she was here for a reason, it was by some pathetic sacred rule that they could not do anything until it was all over. Then it was bars and stripes for her.

The camera at 6 o’clock had zoomed in on her hooded figure as she stepped closer to Darius, his back still facing hers as he was taking in the screaming crowd.

She took her hood off. Her eyes stilled. And it was in that moment that the whole world slowed down. The cheers and warnings had distilled until it was merely just a breeze and even the air changed.

    Isobel looked up to the smell of a storm brewing and saw the clouds in their normal time grow darker. There was a flash lightning surrounding the newborn eclipse, creating a spectacular view. She felt the alignment, something clicking inside her soul, a beast awakening to something of a dream. The fire of the sun moved with the water of the moon creating a dark energy in her that even the world slowed down to witness.

    She took her hidden knife out of her jacket and started to advance to Darius. Time sped up until everything was a blur as the knife she struck out missed and landed on his shoulder blade instead of the heart. He spun too quickly.

    “Who the hell are you?” he shouted, blood rushing from the knife.
    She didn’t notice the way the man flinched.
    She didn’t notice the feeling that possessed the pregnant silence in the air.
    She didn’t notice that she attacked the wrong man.

    Darius was talking to a scared hyperally-confused Penny to her left before slowly moving towards her.

    Isobel’s eyes did not waver, nor did her intentions for war. She ran to him, roaring in a language only the shadows could understand as she forcefully dragged the beast out of its prison.
    The stadium lights flickered, then shuttered close. The crowd was too intrigued by the mysterious demon girl with their golden boy Darius to notice anything wrong with the innocent man sagging to the grounds with a knife slowly killing.

    That was one of the many reasons why Isobel hated the world.

    All of a sudden, she could see the lost energy from the lights, feel the cameras zooming into her, and the scariest of them all she could see the life energy as if they were batteries in the little shells she could break with her thumb.

    Darius’s piercing blue eyes stabbed arrows of hatred on her body as he summoned his power of ice and water.

    He must have been a very powerful Royal at some point, being able to annihilate water particles from the air itself and turning it to hard ice.

    Isobel detected his move by the way his power from the energy he had been storing had sparked to life. This almost saved her life when three spears of ice came soaring above her head.

    She blocked all of his tricks, the undying ice making little cuts around her cloak. She could’ve sworn he summoned the sweat off of her brow to create more attacks.

    Not once had she ordered the beast to destroy from the life below her skin or the hell above them, not once did she give in to the tiredness and the strain of her still aching abdomen. Darius was the same ruthless cunning man, who stormed in that one night to destroy her over and over again.

    “You like to do it the old-fashion way, huh? I didn’t take it the ‘Scarlet Assassin’ would be this disappointing, after all the kick-ass I heard about you. I guess they were all lying about you, same way you lied about everything in your pathetic dirty life,” Darius said, spitting blood out of his mouth.

    Again and again, the two warriors of light and dark fought, one using the powers of creation and imagination, bending it to it’s will. But Isobel had something she always thought was a curse that was better forgotten, but then again, all bad things stay with us forever.

    “I hear you live in a bankrupted shop with other little dip-shits like you. With all that dirty money you steal, I bet you could at least make yourself a little bit more presentable to the public,” he retorted, shooting a cloud of tiny shards of ice into the space around them. “You are just monster that deserves to rot in he--”

    Words stopped coming out of his mouth. So did his airstream.
    Isobel’s hand was raised, quaking with the wild anger that coursed through her blood. The storm was here and decided to unleash Armageddon with it’s Queen and shadows.

    Her raised hand started to close into a fist, Darius’s body started to lift off the ground and the blood, the liquid, inside him had started to riot. The deathblow to this creature would be through his own medicine.

    She could feel his own power energy turning against itself, his arms flailing around his useless body as he tried to rid of his blood crystallizing and turning it solid. His blood was freezing into ice.

    Isobel unleashed a wicked laugh, not exactly knowing why she did it or why it should bother the paralyzed fear inside the audience's spirit. Even the lightning above seemed pleased with her, considering it was the first release of the beast she kept hidden for this very reason. To her horror, Isobel was enjoying feeling the fear and pain radiating off his aura caused by her power to make her opponent to do awful things by their own powers.

    She started to lose herself to the storm’s lullaby, her power driving deeper and deeper amongst the well inside her. She could feel Darius’s life come to a diminishing end before ocean eyes shined amongst the shadows.

    Isobel turned around from Darius and looked behind to find a boy who had cared for her demons and her actions, who protected her at all costs, looked at her as an equal, performing what she feared the most.

    Gabriel was there with a look of complete terror as he stepped in front of the equally petrified Corlain. She could now hear Penny screaming but not for victory or for help, screaming at what she was doing to her brother that she risked seeing today. Screaming because she was murdering a loved one right before her eyes.

    Isobel suddenly jerked to the far right, tumbling to a fall so she would no longer have to keep destroying the death god himself.

    The impact to the hard soiled ground and her head had been a blessing that she had completely collapsed of pain and regrets. Until the only right thing to do now was to rest her head on the ground and to never wake up again.

    But Isobel knew best, that things like that didn’t happen in the world she lived in.
    She saw Darius fall to the ground, losing her power to sense if he was still alive or not. In fact, the beast she unleashed curled back farther into it’s locked cell once it met reality.

    She looked up at the storm above, cursing it for what it made her do that night. And she could’ve sworn she heard a sinful delighted laugh above the heavens, laughing that she lost something dear to her heart once again.