RESIDENT EVIL VILLAGE - The House of Dimitrescu

Chapter 13 - Know Thy Enemy

As the winter nights began to grow longer, Y/N laboured silently in the shadow of Castle Dimitrescu. After his tense encounter with the three daughters in the library, Y/N found that they mostly left him to his own devices, and rarely met him in passing. The only times he would ever catch a glimpse of him, where on his twice-a-day reports to Lady Dimitrescu. These meetings were often held in her study, where the countess sat amidst a mountain of papers and files, barely glancing up as he entered. The exchange was identical each time.

'Have you fulfilled your duties?'

'Yes, milady.'

'Do you wish to yield?'

'No.'

'Very well, you may leave.'

Y/N would then nod respectfully and leave the room, collecting his daily basket of food from the castle kitchens on his way out. As for the work, the collecting of wood was easy enough, but very tiring. Deadfall was plentiful under the bare branches of the forest, and each tree Y/N felled produced a day's worth of fuel for the castle's massive boiler.

The offcuts and branches he kept for himself, fueling the small iron stove in the corner of his cabin, keeping the winter chill of the ice and snow at bay as winter crept ever closer.

In his spare time, Y/N began to train himself in preparation for his eventual escape. His chain whip was almost a part of him by now, and his accuracy with the rifle and revolver were improving rapidly from excellent to perfect. However, as time went by, Y/N inexplicably found himself drawn back to the castle.

He now passed the time aiding the kitchen staff, where his rudimentary woodwork skills and dexterity served him well in repairing the dozens of shattered chairs and tables that seemed endless in supply. He filed out claw marks, replaced screws, and once he discovered the simple pole lathe in an outside shed, began to turn replacement legs and spars himself: the doctor to the inanimate victims of the Dimitrescus' rage.

When Y/N worked outside the back entrance to the castle, more and more often he saw traces of black flies crawling across the cobblestones at the edge of the doorway, which was normally left ajar by the kitchen staff to allow some cool air into the stifling kitchen. The flies themselves never set foot over the threshold into the outside, but Y/N knew that the girls were watching him.

However, it wasn't until almost a full week and a half into his new life that his first visitor came. Y/N was reminiscing of home, working out how many days he would have been there for should his crash have never occurred, his foot bouncing absentmindedly on the pedal of the pole-lathe as the leg of a chair spun beneath his chisel, when he heard the castle's back door creak open up ahead of him.

Stilling the lathe and putting down his tools, Y/N stepped out of the shed to see who had arrived, and with a lurch of uneasiness, saw Bela hovering on the step below the porch. She looked distinctly uncomfortable, and Y/N knew why. The cold air of the outside must be lethal to her.

'I wouldn't come too far outside,' Y/N warned, stumping down the slope through the snow towards her, 'the air's quite cold out here.'

Bela automatically took half a step backwards, drawing a thick woolen shawl tighter around her shoulders, and watched as Y/N strode to the bottom of the steps where she stood, then stopped, glancing up at her.

'May I help you?' He asked blandly.

'My room's supply of kindling had run out.' Bela told him flatly. 'Fetch some more for me?'

Y/N bristled slightly at her tone, then calmed himself, knowing that there were far worse ways she could have framed it. He nodded, then moved back over to his shed, where he grabbed up a bunch of thin twigs and log offcuts that he had brought down with him from his cabin.