Chapter Text
Long after the bomb had gone off—after the last echoes of the blast had faded into oblivion, after the clouds of smoke and ash had billowed up to their highest reaches and dissipated, and after the escape chopper carrying Chris Redfield and Ethan Winters’ family had disappeared past the horizon—there was silence. No woodland creature roamed the forest floor in search of food; no lycan stalked through the trees in search of prey. Even the leaves on the trees—what few of them remained—hung perfectly still, as though reluctant to rustle against one another and interrupt the quiet.
But just as nothing on this earth lasts forever, so too did the stillness eventually come to an end. For through the thick silence that had descended onto the forest like a dense fog, a pair of footsteps made themselves known. The quiet crunching of dead leaves underfoot grew louder as they moved closer to the epicenter of the blast, gaining volume until it became apparent that these footsteps were being made by a massive figure. After each set of two loud stomps, a third sound, much smaller and weaker, could be heard like a short staccato. Through the forest these noises moved, until they reached the hollowed-out clearing that had been made by the explosion.
The figure—a man of massive size, supported by a long wooden cane that seemed far too thin to properly carry his weight—came to a stop in the middle of this clearing. He bent downward, his enormous weight shifting around him, and his eyes spotted on the blackened stone path a severed hand, bandaged and bloody and with several fingers missing.
The Duke recognized this as the hand of Ethan Winters, and his head nodded once with understanding even as his lips pursed into two thin lines.
The hulking man stood up straight again, his eyes scanning the immediate area. Where Ethan’s hand lay, the rest of him was not far to be found. An arm here, a leg there, a piece of his scalp hanging off one of the lower branches of a tree that was still standing. And everywhere, stains of black mold whose host had been the grenade’s target coated the ground and what was left of the trees and shrubs.
“My…” the Duke said quietly to himself as he took it all in. “What a sight.”
Ethan Winters—a man who had brought the Duke much business, and whom in return the Duke had brought to his final confrontation with Miranda—was now scattered across the ground, no greater literally than the sum of his parts. The Duke had heard the explosion from afar, had seen the aircraft take off, and had intrinsically known that Ethan was not on it.
The large man bowed his head down, giving the weight of Ethan’s sacrifice a final moment of quiet dignity before it too was interrupted.
“Well then, let’s get on with it,” he said, as though he was addressing Ethan’s remains. “We’re not finished with you yet.”
With tremendous effort, the Duke bent down to pick up Ethan’s severed hand, bringing it up to eye level as if to appraise it. Even as he did this, a number of smaller animals—squirrels, rabbits, polecats and others—approached the clearing, called in by some unseen force to attend to the task at hand. They moved towards Ethan’s remains, collecting them up with teeth and claws and dragging them towards the Duke’s carriage, which now approached the same clearing drawn by a single dark horse.
The man stood up once more, using his cane for support, and as he watched the animals work, a smile spread on his lips and his grip around Ethan’s hand tightened.
This father’s story was not done, and indeed there was much left to be told—because nothing in this world was final, not even death.