[color=ed145b][center][h1]Dante Virelli[/h1] 
[sub][indent]Location: The Bastion - Personal Workshop[/indent][/sub][/center][/color]


The flickering buzz of an overhead lamp casts long shadows across the cluttered workbench. Half eaten cheeseburger in one hand, warm, half melted milkshake in the other, Dante Virelli sat hunched over a sheet of oil stained parchment. His mess of black curls still bore the flattened imprint of a bunk pillow. The Bastion never truly slept, however. Grinding gears, echoing bootfalls, distant howls, but the halls were still quiet enough for thoughts to crawl in. Dante took another bite of the burger, jaw working as his other hand moved with mechanical certainty across the page. A sketch formed: [I]Sleek, spring loaded vambraces capable of launching silver stakes with a flick of the wrist.[/I] He chewed. Considered. Crossed out a segment. Scribbled again, this time a modular design with rune inscribed cartridges, maybe for varying monster types. Vampires. Lycans. Fae. His foot tapped restlessly beneath the table.

[color=ed145b]“Effective,”[/color] he muttered, voice rough from sleep. [color=ed145b]“Also, wildly illegal under the Warden Oath if you forget the runic limiter.”[/color]

Not that it mattered. Morality was a clock with too many moving parts. One crack in the glass and time got slippery. Dante had seen it. The Wardens were supposed to be humanity’s blade against the dark, but sometimes blades turned. Sometimes it bled its own, like it had bled his parents. Dante’s glance fell from his paper onto the twin obsidian daggers resting in their velvet lined slot beside him. Each was carved with the blood rune seal of House Virelli, engraved in the language of old magitech. One had a chipped edge.

He didn’t polish them. They were meant to kill, not to shine.

[B]"Better to be the hand that forges the weapon,"[/B] his father used to say, [B]"than the fool who trusts it blindly."[/B]

Dante swallowed the last of the burger, dropped the wrapper into a bin already overflowing with failed blueprints and half shattered gear components. He angled the next drawing into the lamplight. This one was different: A neural linked gauntlet designed to trigger a spectral snare, a tool that could trap the supernatural. [color=ed145b]“Problem is…”[/color] he mumbled, fingers drumming, [color=ed145b]“...if it works, it doesn’t [i]just[/i] catch the monsters.”[/color] It could trap practically anyone, or anything, making friendly fire a high concern. Was it worth it? Was anything, really, when justice came ten years too late and smelled like blood-soaked metal?

Dante glanced around the workshop. Cables snaked across the stone floor like the entrails of some long forgotten machine, tangled and half alive. The sharp scent of solder and oil hung in the air. Tools were scattered like shrapnel across every surface. Wrenches crusted with ichor, broken lenses, rune-burned pliers, and scorched gloves.  A cracked photo of his parents, young, dressed in formal Warden greys, was taped to the far wall. He'd stopped looking at it directly years ago, but today... today it pulled at him. His mother’s eyes were bright even in the black and white print, her mouth betraying a smile. His father stood just behind her, a hand on her shoulder, posture like stone, gaze sharp enough to cut through the Veil.

What would they think of him now? The boy they left behind. The boy The Bastion rebuilt from ash and grief. The young man who couldn’t stop inventing new ways to kill things faster, and more efficiently. Dante sometimes wondered if he was building things to protect humanity… or to punish the same world that took his parents. Dante exhaled and let his focus fall back toward his bench. He leaned back in his chair, stretching muscles still sore from the last hunt. Sunlight hadn’t touched the Bastion, but above the iron slat vent to his left, a faint breeze whispered through. Cold, sterile, and mechanical reminding him the world was turning. Time marched on, whether he did or not.

He clicked his pen. Drew a new schematic. Dante leaned forward, elbow knocking aside a cracked crystal energy capacitor, and pulled a fresh sheet of parchment toward him. The old kind, because digital blueprints couldn’t capture the mess in his head. His hand moved quickly. First came the skeletal frame of the gauntlet; sleek along the forearm, plating designed to flex with movement. The housing units came next. Four chambers, each labeled with tiny, hurried shorthand: [I]Nightshade-X, Redspire Serum, Viper-Veil, Ghostfire Dust.[/I] Every enhancement serum the Wardens had cataloged. Dante sketched microtubes coiled like veins, each one feeding into a central injector port buried into the palm. A clenched fist represented the trigger mechanism. Just one motion, and all four doses would slam into the user’s bloodstream. No hesitation. No turning back.

His pen paused, before continuing. Dilated pupils, vascular overgrowth, joint distortion. [I]Scribble[/I]. Loss of speech. Rapid neurodegeneration. Madness. Death. A note was added to the top of the page: [B]“Temporary godhood. Permanent damnation.”[/B]

Dante sat back and stared at what he’d drawn. From an engineering standpoint, it was brilliant. From a humanity standpoint, horrifying. The idea came from a place not of duty, or even rage, but of desperation. A Warden facing a swarm of thralls alone? A greater vampire? An entire Lycan clan? A brother in arms charging into the dark, veins glowing, voice lost to screams, a living weapon tearing through horrors like a divine plague. Not a Warden, or Man, just… [I]It[/I].

Dante felt the bile rise in his throat. He exhaled sharply, pen clattering to the bench. He balled up the parchment, knuckles white, and flung it across the room. The paper hit the edge of the trash bin and then bounced off and rolled beneath a shelf already drowning in blueprints of other discarded sins. [color=ed145b]“Desperation isn’t design,”[/color] he muttered, more to himself than the silence around him. [color=ed145b]“Not yet.”[/color]

Dante rubbed his eyes with ink-stained fingers and reached for a new sheet. Something practical this time. Something… humane, as he awaited a message from Commander Dane or a fellow Warden. Yet, he secretly wished the next notification would be the old dating app he’d downloaded months ago. Mostly as a joke, but it still pinged now and then, less looking for a love connection and more so to scratch that desperate itch in the middle of too many long nights alone.