BANE

 

Bane is tall and has black hair and vivid blue eyes. He was born the only child of a wealthy baron. By the time he was seven Bane despised his father and pitied his mother who was a spineless mental wreck and did anything asked of her by his power mad father. His father cared only for his own ambition which was to become always more wealthy and influential than he was. He tried everything in his power to shape Bane into a useful tool but met constant resistance from his stubborn son. When Bane’s mother died and his father showed only mild annoyance at the inconvenient timing, he decided to go. Stealing a large sum in gold from his father’s treasury, 12 year old Bane left home.

He learned quickly to fight in the cities he passed through as well as to hate and never to trust. He fought in competitions for money when his stolen horde ran out and he found that he enjoyed the power it gave him. By the age of thirteen he could beat any opponent set against him and when he heard about the order of Tien he gladly set out to join them.

By the time he found the order’s headquarters two years had passed and he was an arrogant fifteen-year-old. He walked up to the gates and demanded entry upon the grounds that he was unbeatable and they needed him. The doorman laughed but let him in.

He was beaten in his test fight but impressed them enough that they accepted him into the order unanimously. Bane was given extensive training and found that he was becoming happy. The order were the closest he had come to friends or family in his life and he gradually gained some sense of trust.  He didn’t fight or socialise with the members of his own age, seeing them as inferior and judged Siren as an annoying, spoilt child who had no real right to be there. When he was drawn against her at eighteen he was outraged that this fourteen-year-old girl should be his fighting partner even for the one fight. He held her in contempt and teased her until she suddenly lashed out with a perfectly controlled rage, which knocked him flat. When she did it again he started to look at her differently. He realised that she was very skilled and could be very dangerous. She was also very pretty. Bane started to train with her and was surprised at how he began to learn new things in order to beat her. They soon became friends, they worked together on assignments and he became closer to her than he had to anyone else in his life.

But Bane was still arrogant and believed that the Tien should have more power. He saw that this power was just there for the taking and he became frustrated that no one seemed willing to reach out and take it. He started to disobey the first rule of the Tien – never kill if another solution can be found to eliminate the problem. Bane didn’t bother looking for the other solution. He took some assignments independently where he did the job he was paid for and asked no questions. When Siren found out she was livid and threatened to tell the order but Bane managed to convince her not to.

Bane continued to accept assignments independently but more carefully than before. He accepted an assignment from a lord who wanted a certain man dead and a certain book in his possession stolen. The man turned out to be his father, the lord turned out to be Sade.  Sade was impressed with his heartlessness and tempted Bane with visions of power. When Sade shared some of that power he gained Bane as his ally for life.

Siren had grown suspicious as Bane had grown distant and as he was sucked further into Sade’s dark world they fought viscously. One day he had gone.  Even though she hated what he had become, Siren could never believe he had anything to do with the massacre of the Tien. In fact it had been his idea, he did however make sure that she would not be there when he did it. It was also Bane who tracked down and killed the remaining members. He had plans for Siren joining Sade’s cause with him and was more than slightly annoyed when Ageless got there first….

 

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