Beast Within the Beauty

By H.R.C. Stanley

My name is Elise, Princess of the Kingdom of Soleanna. I'm a living symbol of its glory and purity, but I also contain its darkest secrets within me.

Ten years ago, when I was very young, my father, the Duke along with a few researchers, began experiments on Solaris, the Sun God, in the hope of bringing it into physical being, but something went wrong. Due to the constant abuse my father were putting upon the god, it soon became unstable and split into two living forms in a massive explosion: They would be known as Iblis, the raw power, and Mephiles, the cunning mind.

The Flame of Hope soon became the Flame of Disaster.

My father managed to contain Mephiles inside a dark sceptre, however the artefact wasn't enough to fit both of them, so with no other option, Iblis was sealed deep within my soul. My father succeeded, but it was at grave cost. Before his last breath, he told me to never cry, as doing so would destroy the seal holding Iblis within me.

Since then, I had to be the perfect little girl that everyone sees me as, when inside, I was hiding a monster.

To this day, I feel the beast, its untameable rage tearing and breaking at my very soul. It fills my mind with these dark, evil, twisted, and angry thoughts; thoughts of burning down anything and everything in my sight. Seeing all those people who loved and embraced me, seeing them fear me and scream before they faded away to ashes in the wind and fire.

I keep pushing it back, but it always pulls me in, down into an abyss so deep that I fear I may never climb back up again. I feel it surge beneath my skin and through my veins, quick yet subtle glows like embers. I look at my reflection and I always see it, looming over me like a wraith and staring back at me with eyes of raging light. Even more terrifying, I'm the only one who sees it. No one else knows, no one else can know, no one else should know.

I may become the very beast I was told to be afraid of.

I am salvation, and I am destruction.

Please Sonic, you must destroy it.

You must destroy Ibilis.

You must kill me...

Please...