Ichor And Steel

Chapter Three; This place feels like the snow

ᴛᴏᴏ ꜱᴀᴅ, ᴇx:ʀᴇ

A sombre room, deprived of light with curtains too heavy with dust and age to move. The weathered bedframe groaned with the gentlest lean. Carpet damp, moisture seeping out beneath each step of Ethan's feet. He speculated who belonged to these lonely quarters, the chambers weeping and whining against the wind's beating to the frail walls outside. This half of the Dimitrescu residence was feebler, decrepit decay and slender walls. The infirmness allowed the cold to seep through, flutterings of snow sitting on Ethan's chest as he lay, too afraid to be beneath the quilt and melt into the pillows.

An empty warmth yearned to be filled on his chest. He shed his jacket and swathed a spare pillow, pulling it tight against him. He could only smell himself, but that was enough to ground Ethan within this reality of becoming their servants...their runner. What his duties would entail were never communicated to him as Miranda made her children disperse. Heisenberg and Moreau took out to the cold whilst her lady remained, seething mutterings, head bowed, and nose pinched. She allowed those wretched girls to quarrel around him and pinch his arms and face. Down a corridor, flight of stairs, up another and lost in another maze of halls, they detained him where he lay presently.

Ethan Winters was forever their prisoner—however long this eternal fungus root breathed and inflated the Lords' lungs, he was but a flesh and bone punching bag. The formidable torture that would eventually lay harm's hands upon his body. It was inevitable, an inescapable fate readily befalling him tomorrow.

CrEaK!

Or maybe now.

Ethan's spine defensively erected, the hairs of arms and neck bristling like a cat's. A trembling candlelight quivered through the door's crack but something small and sharp passed through. Its scamper clattered along the floor. He breathed harshly, glancing between the shimmering light and the wild doll leaping to the foot of his bed. Angie.

"You little bastard," Ethan rasped, his lip hitching in a snarl-like fashion.

Angie placed her chin on her folded hands and swung her legs. "You're a little bitch, Ethan!"

Ethan smashed the doll with a pillow, Angie yacking beneath the smothering wraith. He reminisced not-so-fondly of her mockery and bothersome piping voice.

"I am so sorry, Ethan!" a kinder, smoother voice exclaimed. The puppet master intervened but Ethan slapped her arms away.

"No, I'm doing us both a favour!" he hissed.

"Ethan, please!" Donna pleaded, although she restrained from further interference. Her reliance on politeness brushed off on Ethan and he settled leaning back on his knees. He heaved as Donna collected Angie, who crept into her chest.

"Don't you control that thing?" he accused, eyes narrowing cruelly.

Donna swept her hand, removing her veil; each movement was delicate. Skin like a doll's porcelain but the mutation where she cracked. However, she appeared not ugly but vengeful. "I chose whether my control is needed—"

"Clearly it is," he snapped, fearing no power from this lord. Ethan knew it wasn't because she was the easiest kill...it was more so her kindness, which he knew from his field wasn't welcome as a strength.

She was stupefied from his tone and, despite their being something more to speak, she departed. Ethan wanted to ask her to stay, not leave him alone in this dark corner of Dimitrescu's dwelling. Yet he remained quiet and went to figure out a lock on the door. Frustratingly, there was none but he remained by the door, intrigued by whispers further down the hall.

"I wished to only see if he were alright, but he snapped at me, Kar." Donna, with the additional rasping from Angie.

"What did I ask of you?" A male's voice. "Don't talk to him, damnit."

"Kar," Donna spoke, her tone the voice of reason.

"Go to bed, Donna. He hurt us; he destroyed decades of hard work—"

"But you don't believe that, right?" she asked. Ethan imagined her tender touch, a reassuring tap of her hand on the man's. There was a quiet confession of the lie and then the silence in the wake of footsteps. Ethan was alone.