[Reaction.]
The house and landscape were unfamiliar, but the grandeur was not. Dietre had grown up in equally extravagant surroundings, though in a more classic style with dark woods as the backdrop rather than valleys and palms. Caspar’s memory, then.
It was instinct to want to step back from the man who approached though he shared very little physical similarities to Dietre’s own father. Henrich Abendroth was not a thunderer, his anger was not the fury of a bull, it was cold and quiet like being abandoned on a vast expanse of frozen tundra. His contempt was an ice cold needle slowly driven into your heart. But in the end the effect was the same, you felt small in the presence of men like this, your insides hollowed out and fragile. There was no arguing with these men, their word was law, your only choice was to obey.
Dietre tried to shrink away from the memory. This wasn’t something he wanted to see. But he couldn’t close his eyes against it, couldn’t block his ears even as his heart broke in sympathy for Caspar. He knew all the things the man felt because he experienced them himself. He knew what it was to hit rock bottom.
All he could do when the memory left him was shudder, weighed down in his chair, his heart somewhere in his stomach.