Bane

October 26, 1993

Sunset

Bane scoured the floor of his ruins until he found it. The trapdoor. The way beneath the ruins. He pulled it open, and slid into the hole, pulling the trapdoor shut above him.

Alone.

Bane searched the memories of Jonathan Walker, the echoes of emotion, and found nothing on alone...

...but he could feel it, whatever it was.

It was nothing words could describe, nothing he could comprehend; it was something as alien to him as walking on two legs, or seeing only through his own eyes.

Bane stared at the skeletal remains of three children huddled in a corner. Something happened here once, something to do with fire. They tried to escape the flames... and maybe they did, but no one came to their rescue.

Was that what alone was?

Bane removed his mask, and dropped it at his feet. He removed
His gloves, and ran a hand over his scarred face.

Jonathan's scarred face.

Was this alone?

Bane stepped slowly toward the skeletal remains of the children. The smallest had a fabric facsimile of a rabbit.

A stuffed animal.

It was threadbare, and moth eaten. Bane reached for it - stopped - hesitating. She died with the others. Died with them. She was not alone.

They were not alone.

Bane plucked the stuffed animal up into a large hand, and it disintegrated.

He stared at the flakes of decaying fabric in his hand.

Outside, above the cellar, rain pelted the ruins through the holes in its ceiling, it's roof; winds howled through old rafters, and empty, half burned rooms. Down below, Bane rose up.

He was not whatever he was before. He was not the Emim. He was not Jonathan Walker. He was something else.

Not mortal. Not emim. Not Nephilim.

Not anymore.

Bane sneered, his brow furrowing, teeth bared. He growled, the bass in his voice echoing in the empty cellar. He cringed at the sound of his voice - not even his own - but now the only voice he had.

Alone.

This was what alone felt like.

He stepped carefully over the earthy cellar floor, and knelt next to the bone face plate he wore as a mask.

This is not me. It is someone else. A bitter memory of a creature once bound to a fallen giant... a slave to the bridge in-between; a slave to Taal, the dead god. A time before time existed, in a place that spanned forever, he was one of eight things that were one mind, one being in eight - seven - bodies.

The foolish boy, Jonathan, got the better of the exchange. Perhaps he was damned to walk the endless planes in the kingdom of the dead god, but with someone he cared for... and someone who cared back.

Even he was not alone.

Bane pulled the bone mask back over his face, and shook his hair over his shoulders.

They would all go. Coven. Inquisition.

When the smoke cleared, he would be the last standing.

Alone.