Bane

April 15, 1980

Donovan Blackwood stood at the bay window in the ballroom, staring out at the storm.
Lightning lit up the sky, illuminating the acres of his property in blue light. The rain fell in thick sheets over his land, over his home.

A decade alone in this place, since Angela left him for the demon Amiel, seduced by promises of power... and now Angela was dead.

Andrea.

His little girl - maybe not his at all. Yes, she looked like him; she had his eyes... but given the abilities of Amiel, there was no telling.

He hid her away, but that was a decade ago. The Order considered her a threat. Tainted.

He was alone; retired and alone. Fat, and complacent. He was always a larger man, tall and even regal in his time, but time and excess made him lazy, and muscle sagged, and withered.
Wealth, and luxury were the rewards for an old man with impeccable service, bereft of any sons who would receive his estate when he was gone... and what good was any of it? Three stories - four if you counted the vast attic - a ballroom without parties, or dances, and three beautiful cars. They were things, like trussed up corpses at a wake. Nice to look at, but the spirit of it all was gone.

Long nights in the study lamenting his lost family, too tired to be angry, to angry to be hurt. The Men am Women of The Order; the sons and daughters of The Inquisition knew the risks. They knew they were at war. They knew they may survive their children, and that their fallen were honored dead... but the dead did not care. The dead had no use for accolades, or wealth, or cars. A mark in the family crypt to gloat over a successful service, and glory in the field of battle. Sacrifices that left old men bitter, and alone.

Donovan grimaced. Ten-thirty-five. It was time to go and drink down his sorrows in the study, to stare at old pictures, and long for his youth when he was useful; to slip in and out of sleep dreaming for the thing what might have been.

He paced at the bay window a moment longer. Lightning flashed, and the storm answered back with an applause of thunder, as though it marveled at its own ferocious nature. Greet eyes from the courtyard, only a moment, but when his eyes adjusted, no one was there. He turned, his worn boots heavy on the marble tile, a man of good health, fortune, and leisure, feeble under the weight of guilt, wandering to his study like some drunkard lost in a museum of thanatology.

He found his way into the study, and poured himself a glass of aged scotch. In his life, only four times did he know this drink; the day he returned from his advanced education, the day he married, the day his father died, and the day his daughter came into the world a perfect wrinkly pink newborn, all wriggling toes and screaming toothless mouth. He drank down the first glass in a single drink, and poured another. Perhaps tonight the good Lord took him while he dreamt his restless dreams. Perhaps he woke tomorrow with a splitting headache.

Donovan carried his glass of scotch carefully to his chair, sat, and sipped while staring at the portrait of his wife that hung from the wall behind his desk. That antique, unused relic from the days where hunting meant putting in footwork, research, and study. The thick layer of dust and cobweb told the story of a man no longer needed, no longer wanted; it told the story of a man who one day simply stopped.
The pencil he last used at that desk the day he learned Angela left with Amiel - and took Angela with her - sat where he placed it eighteen years the prior. His gloves lay neatly, folded over one another, untouched, the same.

Donovan hated this place, hated the indulgence. Everywhere he looked, a different arrogance, a different vanity, and it was his, all of it his, and how it lorded over him, a sharp contrast of the man he was, and the man he became,