Shades of Grey

MURIAS— APRIL 1844

Isabella’s pyrokinetic eyes flicked to the left and the flames that lined the wall on her right suddenly took the shape of a great lion. I backed away as the lion crept towards me, my hand stretched out behind me blindly searching for any makeshift weapon that could combat a lion made of flames.

The beast then lunged for me, but I leapt quickly to the right. I rolled across the floor and dangerously close to the flames on the opposite wall before watching the lion fade into smoke. No sooner had the lion disappeared than the flames on the right wall doubled in strength and formed a herde of raging stallions, their wildly angry eyes set firmly on me.

I stole a quick look at Isabella, whose eyes had turned black with mad power. I then leapt over her, kicking off the opposite wall and proceeding to run down the hallway, listening as the stampede followed me.

“You cannot run from me, Grey!” Isabella called as she rode forward on a particularly large flaming stallion at the head of the charge.

I ignored her, continuing to run down the stairs until I arrived at a decimated entrance foyer, watching as patients ran around wildly in their attempts to escape the burning Asylum.

“Stop them!” several of the orderlies commanded, eagerly racing after the patients as they ran out of the gaping crater in the front of the building. One particularly large orderly lunged for me, but I was too quick and ran across the room just as Isabella came streaking around the corner with her fiery armed forces. I then noticed the plumbing system that ran along the ceiling and an incredibly simple idea struck me.

Just before I left the foyer, I picked up a large shard of glass from the window that had once sat over the main entrance to the Asylum, knocked to the floor by an explosive blast. I then turned down a spiral staircase, taking the steps by threes and fours before I arrived at the wooden door that led to the dreaded treatment wing. Without stopping for a second, I rammed it with my shoulder, successfully breaking it from its hinges. I raced down the dark hallway to the very last room: the theatre where Kingsmith had shown me the mass execution.

“Oh, very good, Grey! Let’s stop to watch another execution!” Isabella laughed maliciously and the great flaming stallions leapt for me.

I ducked behind several theatre seats and threw the glass shard at one of the plumbing pipes as hard as I could. It burst open brilliantly, all of its watery contents spilling over onto Isabella’s flaming cohorts. The stallions stopped just short of me, frozen as they dematerialised into smoke under the shower of water. Isabella stood in the doorway, gaping at how she could have missed such an obvious flaw in her plan. I stood up and looked at her strongly.

“Face me like a true Creature Hunter: leave your fiery army outside where they belong,” I taunted.

Her face contorted in rage and she leapt ten feet into the air with the familiar grace of a Hunter, bringing her foot into my stomach and sending me into the inch deep pool of water that was slowly gathering on the theatre floor.

“I am begging you to reconsider joining me. Aside from your acerbic bravada, I quite like you and really would rather have you alive than dead.”

I gritted my teeth and brought my foot into her side, easily flipping her around and pinning her between two seats in front of me.

“You force my hand then,” she said decidedly, proceeding to agilely swing her legs around into the side of my head, knocking me through the air. I landed easily on my feet between two rows of seats and took only a second to rest before I spotted my glass shard under the seat in front of me, having been knocked loose by the cascading water.

I quickly picked it up and smoothly brought it across Isabella’s sternum. She stumbled backwards, looking down at the wound. I proudly admired the long gash I had left in her chest as it began to bleed profusely. She looked up at me, her head cocked at an eerie angle as she stared at me with her icy blue eyes through unkempt black hair. The water that had been falling from the pipe up until this point suddenly turned to a hideous rain of scarlet fire. I gulped at the horrific sight.

“Grey, we could have run the Asylum together. You could have been a marvellous addition to the Board!”

I shook my head, anger and disappointment welling inside of me.

“Isabella, I can understand your fervent passion when it comes to saving your Maisling, but controlling the citizens is not the answer!” I inveighed.

“IS IT?” she shouted with such volume that I tripped out of the row of seats and into the aisleway. I inched backwards as Isabella stepped forward with ardent rage, the shower of flames still falling around us.

“Is man not man’s own greatest threat?! You cannot ignore the lives that would have been saved if we were to never have invented weapons, which we would never have invented if we had not feared other countries, other people! Control is the only solution!”

Isabella attacked me again, but I was ready and I brought my foot up in time to kick her in the stomach and send her across the room onto the stage.

She looked up at me maliciously and before she could come at me with a counter attack, I picked up the shard and leapt toward her, slashing it across her face and leaving a long line similar to the one in her chest. She stood, buckling in a dazed sort of stupor as blood began to stream from the laceration. Her hand rose, ready to strike again, but I brought my hand up faster and struck her in both the stomach and the chest, agitating the wound I had given her earlier.

Isabella stumbled backwards into a mess of ropes controlling the curtains in the stage left wing. I quickly raised my glass shard to her throat, pinning her in place. I watched the brief panic rise in her eyes, but mildly credited her for keeping a diplomatic tone.

“Now, Grey, we are not enemies, we are on the same side…we fight for the same reasons! Please, Grey, you must understand; this is for my Fairy!”

Her voice became loud and unbearably heartfelt, so much so that I nearly lowered the glass, but I couldn’t. I understood exactly who Isabella was: a fallen Hunter, someone who had lost their mind and their morals, someone who would do absolutely anything to protect her Maisling, no matter how wrong or corrupt...

“I can’t.”

Isabella’s eyes narrowed dangerously and I could hear the gathering of fiery flames behind me.

“No!” she protested. “You must!”

In her wild, instinctual desire to remain in control, she kicked me in the stomach, sending me backwards into the brick wall. I fell to the floor, watching as she tried to lunge for me once more. However, the ropes she had fallen into had locked themselves firmly around her limbs, trapping her. As soon as she realised this, she gave a hideous scream that caused the flames to increase tenfold in size. I watched in horror as they quickly engulfed the power generators in the corner next to me.

The explosion was massive, but I never felt the flames. I could only watch Isabella convulse in the throes of electrocution as the burning Asylum began to fade and I was magically transported back to Verrilius’s castle.