The Adventures And Mishaps of a Half-Plant Apothecary - Febuwhump 2024

Day 10 - Killing in self-defense

CW: murder, blood, mentions of injuries, mild threatening, mental breakdown(?)

AN: This is a bit of a continuation from Day 2! I don't really know how they flow though so :/

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Prisons in the middle of nowhere were more guarded than Nyxie thought.

To be fair, this is the first one that she's ever been to, but if she's going to have to break any of her friends out of any more of them, that might be a bit of a problem.

Nevertheless, she and Emery are both out. Sure, Emery is currently leaning on her heavily and trying very hard to hide her sprained ankle and Nyxie's been trying, a bit more successfully, to ignore the throbbing pain in her shoulder from when she was half thrown down the stairs, but it's basically fine. She has a spear strapped to her back and potions with various effects in her backpack, and she knows for a fact that Emery hasn't let her knives be taken away from her. If the chains holding her down were a little more loose, Emery would have probably left by herself.

But alas, the chains were tight to the point of almost cutting off circulation, and now they were here.

Nyxie glances around the corner. A guard, evidently bored, leans against the opposite wall, smoking a cigar. They don't seem to be paying that much attention, though, so it should be easy enough to only let them see the pair once they're out of this godsforsaken dungeon.

Nyxie takes a cautious step toward the hallway, gesturing for Emery to stay back, but she steps on a loose rock in the concrete floor, and it creaks.

The guard's head snaps towards her.

Shit.

The guard immediately springs into action, running toward her, and Nyxie instinctively steps off to the side, letting them trip over themself when there's nothing to run into. Suddenly realising that Emery's there, though, Nyxie starts to try to push them back to where they came from. She grabs her spear, then tries to strike them with the edge. The guard dodges.

"What even are you? What are you doing?" the guard grits out, and wow, they sound young. Nyxie chooses not to think too hard about that.

"I'm a person, and leaving," she says, shifting her stance, "I dunno if you've noticed, but solitary confinement is not great for one's mental health."

"Yeah, but—" the guard stumbles a little— "you look— you're supposed to stay there!"

Nyxie makes a faux thinking noise. "Hm," she says, "Not fucking good enough."

She starts to fight back with increased ferocity, becoming more aggressive as the duel drags on. Even with a few minor issues, the guard is good at this, and Nyxie is starting to struggle to keep up.

She barely notices that the guard is struggling too.

Finally, Nyxie kicks the guard's legs from out under them. She shifts her hold on the spear and holds it to their throat. The guard exhales roughly, their eyes widening in shock.

"Do you have any last words?" Nyxie says, voice deepening to a growl. She wasn't going to kill them, of course, just knock them out— less trouble that way.

The guard scrunches their eyes closed, and for a second, Nyxie thinks that they've just accepted it, but then they shove the tip of the spear away from their neck and jump up.

Nyxie stares for a moment, but she's dragged back to reality by a dagger flying way too close to her face. She yelps, leaning back. One more dagger misses her face, but the other cuts into her cheek a little before falling to the floor.

She moves without thinking. The spear is suddenly in her other hand, and she jabs forward before swapping again. She ducks under another slash of the guard's dagger, and she's in perfect range to strike, and—

Her spear slides between where she knows the guard's ribs would be.

She has won.

"Nyx? What happened there?"

Nyxie's head snaps back, and there she sees Emery, looking... almost in awe of her. She's sitting curled in a position that would not be comfortable for them, and that's when it hits Nyxie that she just killed someone.

She inhales a sharp breath, but it feels like no breath enters her lungs, but that's okay because that's what the dead person on the floor probably feels, and now she's on the floor.

"Nyx?"

Nyxie hears Emery's voice again, but it sounds far away. Something warm drips down her cheek, and she reaches up to her face to find that oh, she's crying. She reaches up to wipe it away, but Emery beats her to it, gently wiping away the mess on her skin before dabbing away at the stickier sap dripping down the moss on the left of her face.

"Nyxie, uhm, please breathe?" Emery looks a little unsure, and Nyxie is sure that it is her fault. If she hadn't killed them, they wouldn't be in this situation, they would be out—

She giggles hysterically. "I killed them," she repeats, over and over, "I killed them, it went into their lungs, they're dead by now."

Emery stares at the body on the floor, before turning back to Nyxie. "Nyx, it was not your fault—"

"I killed them."

"—it was in self defense—"

"—could've knocked them out—"

"—you were protecting us—"

"—could've done it cleaner—"

"—But you didn't." Emery pauses, half-waiting for Nyxie to interject again, but when she doesn't continues. "It... wasn't the most ideal thing to do," she says, "But, uhm... it's already done, innit? You did it because in the moment, you thought you had to, didn't you?" She sighs. "Sorry, I'm not very good at this comforting thing."

Nyxie inhales, then exhales. "It's okay," she says, "You're fine. I'm just..." she doesn't continue.

Emery stares into the distance, a faraway look in her eyes. "Well. I guess we better get going, huh?"

Nyxie nods. "Yeah. Uh, yeah. Let's go."