Bane

January 6, 1998

Sandra moved in a blur of preternatural speed, and thrust her palm into Bane's chest. Bane felt.his boots leave the ground, felt himself falling in a horizontal arc away from the woman shaped creature. He landed heavy on the black glass floor, and slid to a stop.

"You don't tire, do you?"

Bane sat upright, and pushed himself to his feet. He flexed his shoulders, and cracked his neck. Bane unsheathed his daggers.

Sandra's eyes widened. "I drew the poison out of you. I saved your life!"

"Your last mistake." Bane moved with the grace of Nakhash, and fury of Tannin, his blades like their claws and talons.

Sandra winced, the first cut landing across her palms, the next across her forearms. The wounds opened, bled, and sealed fast as he delivered the next series of strikes.

"If you can bleed..."

"Wait!"

Bane stopped. Sandra stared him in the eyes. "You don't want to destroy me."

Bane narrowed his eyes. Beneath his bone mask, spinning his blades in his hands, inverting them, and thrust them into her, through her each shoulder, and into the carved wall behind her. The blades did not sink into the wall, did not stick. Still, he held her there.

"Kill me..."

"...that's the idea."

Sandra ignored him, ignored the excruciating pain in her shoulders. Her canines crept to length. "Kill me, and you won't know why!"

"You are an abomination. That's why."

Sandra struggled, and felt his blades scrape against bone. "Why you're here!"

Her scream echoed through the hall.

Bane lifted his blades, and Sandra rose up the wall. She bellowed, her anguished cries echoing around them.

"Tell me," Bane twisted his blades in her shoulders, and smiled when she screamed. "Why am I here?"

✟ ☧ ✟

"I've no patience."

Sandra stared up at Bane from his feet, blood tinted tears streaking her cheeks. He had her arms in his hands. "That's for goddamned sure."

Bane clubbed her across the face with one of her arms. "There is not bargaining. There is no parlay. You will die. Later, than sooner if you do not tell me what I want to know."

"Fuck you."

"We'll start with a foot, then." He dropped her arms, and knelt down before her. Bane clutched her ankle, and unsheathed a blade.

"Why are you like this?"

"Business first." Bane pushed his dagger through her Achilles tendon.

"Fuck! You!"

Bane pulled his blade down through her tendon, cut through it with little effort. Sandra bawled. He turned her ankle, twisted it until he heard bone break. He pulled until he heard it pop, and began sawing in slow, deliberate strokes with the blade of his dagger. By the time her foot came free, Sandra's screaming became a whistling, silent cry stuck in her throat. "Why I am here? What is it I need to find?"

"I'm a prisoner, motherfucker!" Her voice was dry, cracking.

"Below the knee, then."

"Stop! The black desert!"

Bane stopped, the blade of his dagger resting behind her knee. "What about it."

"They're coming through the black desert."