Sentinel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAUHTchi8lY
 
The gym equipment was almost absurdly easy to acquire, and since he’d given it a space of time since having the underground of the mansion hollowed out by some perhaps less than reputable earth-workers, there was plenty of space for it.
 
I know you're tired
Of fighting and feeling you're losing ground
I know your desires
To shape your own fate and let peace abound
 
At the moment, the cave under the manor looked bare and sparse – he’d planned for later growth but at the moment he didn’t know what he didn’t know – and didn’t know what he would need. A lone desk sat to one side, covered with broadsheets, and in front of a wide board of his clippings and notes.
 
I see you're weary
With the ghosts of a life that is haunting your bones
Your spirit is angry
Howling defiance to all the unknowns
 
They thought he fought crime – in truth, he mused as he walked past the desk, he didn’t particularly care about crime. He cared about the fact that predators hunted the innocent – and somewhere, among those predators, was the monster he was hunting. The monster that had attacked his mother, that had passed this curse down to him. He could hear that curse, a voiceless and nameless hunger in the back of his mind at all times save perhaps in the midst of the fight itself.
 
So when you ask who will ride before you
Who will bring your banner to bear
Who will answer the carnage calling us
Send me forth, I will always be there
 
He passed the small cot he put down here that was as yet unused. With Mira in the house, she’d notice if he was gone that much and while the featherdown bed was too comfortable, too soft, and too large for him to feel comfortable in it, there were appearances that to be maintained.
Nevermore turned instead towards the exercise equipment which had originally drawn him here. He couldn’t go find a teacher – that would’ve been far too obvious; instead, he would do things the hard way.
 
I know the sorrow
In the words that you whisper out into thе dark
The fears of tomorrow
Cold as the grave, they refuse to depart
 
I see what this takes
And the iron will forcing your feet to move on
And left in your wake
WIll be a trial of the victories you've won
 
As so he closed his eyes, searching for some kind of focus and balance inside himself, and began to move through the exercises he’d researched – punches and kicks, shifting and moving to turn one fluid movement into the next. If he was going to go fight the monsters in the night with nothing but his bare hands, then it was time to begin mastering them in truth.
And as he fought, that gnawing feeling in the pit of his stomach and the back of his mind became blessedly silent.
 
So when you ask who will ride before you
Who will bring your banner to bear
Who will answer the carnage calling us
Send me forth, I will always be there