RESIDENT EVIL VILLAGE - The House of Dimitrescu

Chapter 7 - Four Masks

By the time Y/N returned to his hidden room, he was ripping himself apart with shame and disgust. His encounter with Cassandra and her sisters, which should have been either a terrifying ordeal or a miraculous escape, had turned into an act of unprecedented violence, and not from the girls. 

Y/N flung his chain from him onto the table and only just resisted the urge to flip the second table over by slapping himself hard in the face. His hands were shaking badly, his skin cold with sweat and fear, but not fear of the blood-soaked cannibals he had just escaped, but of the rage and fury he had felt born inside of him. 

He felt like a monster, ashamed of himself for losing control the way he did, and by the time the shaking had stopped, Y/N had sunk to the ground against the wall and begun to sob uncontrollably. God... he was so ashamed of himself... sure, they had tried to kill him, and yes, that meant that defending himself was warranted... but behaving like an animal had no excuse... not even for him... 

It was several long minutes before he felt able to stand again. 

Wiping at his eyes with his sleeve, Y/N scratched at the scrap of cloth which he had used to bind the wound on his arm, wincing in pain as the cut continued to bleed. It was a good thing the girls couldn't smell his blood, otherwise they would have known where he was hiding. 

Wrapping himself in a large cloth to hold off the cold, Y/N moved over to the tables and slowly began to spread out the items he had stolen from the castle. Many of there were probably worthless, but perhaps the Duke would find some use for them in his sales. 

The main items of interest were the ones that had been hardest for Y/N to find: a bloody wineglass decorated with metal spirals, taken from Lady Dimitrescu's bedchamber and study on the ground floor. A ring displaying a beady maroon eye, which he had found on the finger of a stone effigy inside a hidden fireplace. A scarlet bottle of crimson liquid, decorated with metal symbols and spirals, taken from a basin of blood in the back corner of the kitchens. 

The bottle of liquid, after closer inspection, Y/N realized to be the "Sanguis Virginis" that he had seen mentioned in the text found in the wine room upon his first escape, and the glass its matching counterpart. The maroon eye ring he strongly suspected would open the doorway to the daughter's corridor, the one with the one-eyed carving built into the door. 

Knowing that he would probably never use it, Y/N prized the maroon eye from the ring's surface with the tip of his chain's blade, then placed it inside the small box containing his journals and research. 

Packing up the wine, glass, and the remainder of his loot, Y/N stowed it inside a folded sheet to carry with him, then reluctantly re-attached the chain to his belt and made towards the roof through the attic. 

'I... I can't live like this...' he murmured wretchedly to himself as he pushed open the door to the blisteringly cold air outside. 'I'll die here... I know it...'

'You have the ability to survive.' the logical side of Y/N's mind told him firmly. 'You've faced them down at least twice already, bringing one of them to the brink of death in the process... you can kill them with ease.'

'That doesn't mean I should.' Y/N argued quietly, moving slowly and silently across the rooftop towards the elevator. 'The Countess is beyond my strength to destroy... and to kill her daughters would make me no better than them. This is not a war I will win through blood... this is not one I should win through blood...'

He reached the elevator, ignoring the distant shrieks of the creatures circling the castle spires, and brought out the elevator key to summon the cage. As he waited, listening to the hidden mechanism whirr as the cage rose up the shaft, his mind wandered to the pale faces of the daughters as they had dragged Cassandra away from him.